Concepts

The first question I have to ask myself is what exactly do we (my group) like to play. Generally we waver between games that involve either the relationship twixt dragon and dungeons or the grim darkness of the far future, a darkness so grim that there is only war.

Other games certainly get a look it but D&D and Dark Heresy rule the roost and this is because they possess both setting and mechanics that draw us in and make us want to play them. So D&D's setting is vanilla, that's fine because we still know it will involve dungeons and the slaying of fabulous creatures (as in elves not camp hairdressers... There is a difference) where as Dark Heresy is heaving on the Warhammer 40,000 setting that we know and love; either way we know instinctively what we're getting into when we choose to play them.

What I have to decide is how to make a game from scratch that is both mechanically sound and thematically interesting. To this end despite having a fair idea of how I want the mechanics to work I need an idea of the setting I want to play in. The trick here is to get a setting that allows me to create a set of rules that sit snugly in the world but that can also be extracted with ease and appropriated for a different use.

So the question is what do my players like. Thinking back over previous sessions I can see that whilst we've done alot of combat in all our games we've found that the social side of things tends to bring out the more crafty and interesting roleplaying. Combat is quite stale by comparison , with limited maneuvers and a detached string of numbers as players wither hit or miss.

Partially this is to do with grind, 4e D&D is particularly guilty of this, whilst the fast, deadly combat of Dark Heresy has done more to put us all on edge in a single combat than any of the best bits of 4e. This is not to disparage 4e, with which we've had great fun, but combat seems to have more 'zing' when the players every move could invite mortal peril. Any game I make would have to include this peril, combat in my mind should be fast and brutal and not central to events.

So what do we have so far: A game of indeterminate genre with fast, brutal combat mechanics and interesting social elements. Perhaps not the most definitive list of components ever.

I'm still finding it difficult to distill what is best about our social encounters in terms of game mechanics. These things have a tendency to be more about player aptitude and cunning than the actual mechanics; but I'm not sure my players are ready for a skill-less system alá 0e D&D, or perhaps it is I who am not ready to adjudicate it, so for now I think there will be a skills system in the mix there.