Since I am against innovation, I thought that I would talk about some of the things that have been influencing my designs lately. Since Origins, I have been slowly working out some ideas for a renovation of the system that powers Seraphim Guard's HeartQuest game. I like the existing system but I have felt for a long time that it could have gone farther in attempting to simulate its source material. That's not saying that HeartQuest as it is is a bad system, far from it. It is a solid game system that is really robust and flexible in what you can do with it. The designers did some really good stuff with making that game, it just isn't the approach that the ME in the here and now would have taken. Different strokes for different folks.
So, any way, I said that I would be talking about design influences in this post.
First off is The Story Engine, originally published by Hubris Games and currently published by Precis Intermedia Games, is one of the big influences. A friend loaned me his copy of this slim, tiny little hardcover a couple of years ago. Now, I will be the first to say that this game could have been done better, and it certainly could have been written better, but I just love the concepts that are buried in this system, particularly in regards to character creation.
The character creation in Story Engine has this freeform nature to it that really appeals to me as both a gamer and a designer, and I really like how it maps easily to the freeform nature of Fudge as well. I like the idea of character creation by the process of "describe your character and then pick out the few important pieces of the character that you think need/deserve mechanical backing." Brilliant idea, and one that is so very helpful for HeartQuest. After all, shoujo anime is so very, very broad that HeartQuest needs a character creation system that covers a lot of bases, is easy to handle at the gaming table and that covers all the characters more or less equally during play. Game balance may be a myth but that doesn't mean that there can't be ways to make things a little more equal at the table.
Next up is an important part of the source material of shoujo anime -- relationships. If I had to point to one place where the current HeartQuest trips a little bit it would have to be in dealing with relationships between characters and their world(s). This is so very important to the source material, and it should be even more important to the game simulating it. There's a couple of games that influence my thinking in this area. The one that stands out is Chad Underkoffler's PDQ system. I love Truth and Justice for how it mechanically handles so many things, and many of these things are certainly applicable to how to think about Fudge in general, and then HeartQuest in specific. Even just in the way that T&J handles how characters can get damaged brings a lot to the table.
The two games that are the most recent additions to my "design stable" for this project are games that I picked up while I was at Origins this past summer. Those games are Weapons of the Gods by EOS Press and HeroQuest by Issaries. Both of these games blew big holes in my head while I was reading them at the Con this summer, pointing me to ways to have the characters (and their players too) not only develop ties with each other and their worlds, but also how to shape those worlds too. I have, for a long time now, been big on interactively creating the bullet points of a campaign with the players, after all what is important to them will cause them to have a deeper commitment to the game and what is happening in it, as well as helping to create a world that they're going to appreciate more. In the end, everybody wins. These two games then gave me some new perspectives into running and designing my games.
There are some others that trickle in as well, but those are some of the big ones that pick at my thoughts.
