This month I'm going to be studying and talking about open game engines. I want to discuss some of the resources out there for someone who would like to design a game, but doesn't quite know where to start and I will be talking about the two role playing games I'm currently developing.
Along the way I will try my best to discuss intellectual property and why it's murky water when it comes to open game design.
Obviously, I can't cover every engine. But, I will be covering the d20 and OSR engines, talking a little more about Powered by the Apocalypse, discussing Mark of the Odd, as well as Forged in the Dark, Fate Core, Open d6, Open Legend, and the GLOG.
I hope to introduce my own open engine by the end of year.
Also, I will try to review some games that serve as examples of those various engines.
Cool. You know Mazerats started out as an Into the Odd variant?
ReplyDeleteI'm stuck with the roll high d20 paradigm right now, as my players are noobs and I want them to be able to transition to 5th D$D later if they want, but the 2d6 of PbtA is neat.
I need to go check out GLOG again.
Funny story about that: I bought Knave on itch.io when it first came out w/o a registered account. I read it and liked it. Afterwards, my old tablet (a beautiful NVIDIA Shield tablet) literally burnt out from a catalyzed LiPo battery. I never backed Knave up, much to my chagrin, and could not download it again b/c I lacked a registered Itch account.
DeleteWhen I wanted to review Knave, I scoured my devices and found and reviewed an older copy... And so my review was for vers 0.31, the last ItO version. I got a lot of head-scratching responses.
So, I had to go buy it again, this time I registered for Itch. And rewrote the review.
Lesson learned.
I enjoy Ben's channel & newsletter so much that I paid double asking both times.
Lol. Yeah. That was me. :-)
DeleteLooking forward to your take on the GLoG.
ReplyDeleteThe short version is that the game we got doesn't live up to Arnold Kemp's actual laws. I would love to play a game that does. In the mean time, the game we've got is not bad, and the community around it is awesome.
DeleteHuh - thanks for that - I must go back and read the original laws again, I had mostly been looking at later versions.
DeleteHey I wanted to point out another open source, Knave, is coming up on a 2nd edition. Also, it looks like Runehammer is about to put out a master edition or some such for his ICRPG.
ReplyDeleteFun times to be alive!
I hadn't heard about Knave, but that is great news!
DeleteICRPG Core Master Edition is an interesting upgrade to the system. Some of the changes, like a reshuffle of the Effort Dice and a tweak to character generation are great. But, at the same time, Hankerin Ferinale has also made classes way more important, including non-gear upgrades to the character. It feels like an adulteration of his ideas.
Anyone who bought the PDF already has a new, pared-down ICRPG ME corebook added to their DTRPG library. Good on HF for keeping up with his future - proofing philosophy.