The Company playtest draft completed
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.