Mysterious Mysteries

First of all, I must confess: I’m not exactly a prolific roleplayer. There are so many systems out there that I would love to play but could never get a group together for. Likewise, pretty much all of my gaming experience has been with dice, so everybody will have to forgive me for delving into theory.

That said, I just prefer thinking seriously about games without dice, since they just strike me as more fun. Rather than asking the player to decide how beneficial something is to him versus how likely he is to succeed, the player can simply decide what he would like to do. It’s basically taking chance out of the equation, like a collectible card game with everybody’s entire deck starting in their hand right from the beginning (a concept which will sound familiar to you if you have ever been to Tony’s ProductionKey.com).

Of course, diceless does not strike me as being ideal for classic combat-based systems, which is just fine because I’m not all that interested in writing those to begin with (though I do have one I’m still toying with). For the most part, Tony (who is, by the way, the other half of Eroth Productions, which is the company that we use to both sell anime merchandise and hope to release our roleplaying games under) is content to write combat-driven systems, while I come out with the more story-driven systems.

Even diceless combat-based systems can work out nicely, because they eliminate annoying randomness (”Come on, anything but a one, and I’ll win! Oh… a one.”) and replace it with a somewhat lesser evil of building your character around sustainable cycles (”Activate shield, take four damage. Kill one enemy, take three damage, shield breaks. Activate shield, take three damage. Kill one enemy…”). It’s a tradeoff, and I can’t come out and say that I think that diceless games are absolutely superior to dice-based games.

And after talking in a bit of a circle, I come back to why I like diceless systems: they are just more well-suited, in my eyes, to systems where the players take the ball and run with it wherever they please. When you get away from combat, dice just become unnecessary. He’s your character, shouldn’t you be the one to decide whether he accepts redemption or continues down his path of self-destruction?

Two things: Yes, this means that I have decided that I will be worried about the page count of The Company. And second, yes, I said “value” rather than simply “pages.” I’m not about to cheapen the product by padding it with useless garbage nobody cares about.

Anyway, while I myself am not a very big setting junkie, anybody looking through The Company’s playtest copy will notice that there isn’t anything about the setting at all, except for mentioning this big monolithic company you get to spend all of your game time investigating. Well, while The Company really would not benefit much from pre-written adventures, I feel that the book could seriously benefit from examples of some investigations, some corrupt departments, and just what makes the Company (the company, not the RPG) itself tick.

No, this doesn’t mean I’m going to force page after page of detailed setting material on everybody. This does mean that some page-long stories will likely be written and sprinkled through the book where their example proves useful. Also, more about the Company will be written, allowing the curious a better insight into managerial matters their characters would be fully aware of as a function of their job.

Nope, it’s not done yet. However, I am working on it, I think people will finally realize that I can write a good guide for more than just carebearish matters.

Heck, I even started work on the guide because as much as I like researching and manufacturing in Eve, there are tons of players who never show an interest in it. But everybody needs to understand their ships, Caldari is the most common race, and by golly I’m Caldari and know their ships pretty well.

When I finish the guide, not only will I have covered the important lingo (and all the attributes on their ship’s Show Info) and given a suggested starter setup for each ship, but I will have covered the “I’m new, what skills should I get?” question, and covered each of the Caldari’s three main weapon systems (Railguns, Missiles, and ECM) in a decent amount of detail. One thing I’m not covering is T2 ships though, since… well… it’s a newbie’s guide.

One thing I will ask of any of my Eve-playing readers, however, is to go over these various pieces of “lingo” I’m including and seeing if I’m forgetting any other terms that a new player may encounter and be confused by.

PDS (or PDU): Power Diagnostic System.
BCS (or BCU): Ballistic Control System.
MFS (or magstab): Magnetic Field Stabilizer
RCU: Reactor Control Unit.
WCS (or stab): Warp Core Stabilizer.
Nos: Nosferatu.
Webber: Stasis Webifier.
Jammer: One of the ECM modules.
Multispec: ECM - Multispectral Jammer.
Racial Jammer: Any of the other kinds of ECM modules.
SB (or booster): Shield booster (usually has a size clearly indicated).
Repper (or just rep, or rarely AR): Armor Repairer (usually has a size clearly indicated).
Invuln: Invulnerability Field.

Tackling: In PvP, using Warp Scramblers/Disruptors and Stasis Webifiers to prevent a target from escaping.

Tanking: Setting your ship up to be able to absorb large amounts of damage through resistances, pure HP, repairing/boosting capability, or a combination.

Named module: When an item is neither a manufacturable tech one item (a 125mm Railgun I, for instance) or a tech two item (a 125mm Railgun II), but an improved version of the tech one item (a 125mm ‘Scout’ I Accelerator Cannon). Distinguished from normally undesirable “Basic” modules by the inclusion of the “I” somewhere in the name.

I wouldn’t want to miss anything important.

Well, I am now one step closer to being able to honestly claim (with a straight face, even) that I am a roleplaying game designer. That isn’t to say that I haven’t worked on a couple dozen RPGs in the past few years, but this is the first one I have actually decided to finish, and that feels good.

Hopefully I will get a good turnout of playtesters from The Forge, and I’ll be able to move ahead with publishing and have something in print within a few months.

Speaking of getting The Company into print, I am somewhat worried about its short length. The relative simplicity of its mechanics, and the fact that there are only two different mechanics in the first place, combines with my naturally short prose to make something that would likely be only twelve digest-sized (roughly 6″x9″) pages. It would definitely be saddle-stitched if that were the case.

Anyway, once I get a green light from my playtesters I can begin worrying about such matters. I don’t expect there to be many problems on the primary conflict resolution mechanic, as that was a slow metamorphasis over the month of June from a dice-based system to the current diceless system, and I think I managed to catch all of the kinks except for something that I will name the Strain Cycle (a term I just coined to describe when both sides refuse to stop bidding and at least one refuses to bid anything but Strain tokens). That one I’m not too worried about, since it basically gives the other side a “win a conflict of your choosing free” card later on.

Well, I just figured it would be a good idea to get this one out there. This will definitely not be the last anybody who checks this blog out will hear about The Company. I look forward to dealing with the problem of my low page count. Though I have my own ideas on how to deal with that (or whether it is even an issue), I would certainly welcome any well-intended advice.