A Way of Approaching RPG Design

Once you are confident you have established your dream for planning, what reality you want to make available to your players, to seize and personalize this world through their characters, you have your initial steps to designing a game that is not just "playable" but is a true interaction and activity, with respect to and for the players themselves.

How then is the best way to allow this, while retaining useful but non-invasive structure which serves to accompany as a subtle, contributing guide, acknowledging the heroism and greatness of the characters but also the players themselves, and which provides an opportunity for players to push their characters from already accomplished and satisfactory heroes as envisioned by players, and rise to new levels not even considered by the players, to excel in a way only possible through in-play decisions and significant choices pregnant with potential.

Narratives, step dice, ladder structures of values, linked attributes, freeform details and embellishments all are possible, and can be made to form themselves int a vision, if only interpreted and fixed with finesse and grace by the designer. Only you can know your vision for the basic complexity, and if, for example, you want to provide freedom to players without needing a lengthy document, so considering the various existing short approaches known to you and available to study, as well as related or derived similar methods, and also the very real possibility of completely new ideas of operation, would seem to be the step you're at.

Having started on this path, now you face the challenge of imparting this easily and making this approach to play appealing to players - what will make them WANT to do it, to learn and play by your framework - what can you offer to them, what is important to them, what will make not just the characters but the players *great*?

Interview: FATAL RPG Primary Contributor, Part One (audio)

Hi all, I just wanted to share this link to an interview with James Hausler, who is all but in name a co-author of the second edition of Byron Hall's FATAL RPG. The audio is scratchy because I'm an idiot, but it's interesting to hear different takes and some surprisingly reasonable answers to some questions. This is part one of a nearly four hour interview, so I'll probably have to break it up into 6-10 "episodes". Thanks for your time.

MP3 Audio Files of the Interview (Twelve Parts Total):
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Parts Seven-Nine (one file, 38 MB, 41 minutes, added Feb 21, 2014)
Parts Ten-Twelve (one file, 48 MB, 51 minutes, added Feb 21, 2014)


More Info:

I originally did a 14 part video review of FATAL, and THAT plan is probably what needed the most questioning. My plan was just to go through the entire book and thoroughly examine it to see if it was completely without merit.

Mr. Hausler watched at least some of those videos and contacted me on Youtube/Facebook and just basically wanted to clarify a few things - it quickly became apparent that what he had to say was potentially much longer than a couple of comments, so we both decided to just do an interview so it was done. He obviously had a lot he wanted to vent, I more suffered from track-wreck syndrome, though also was curious to see, again, if there could possibly be any actually valid points or reasons for how things were done.

Basically, Mr. Hausler wanted to set things straight that FATAL 1e was NOT 2e, which he felt was more significantly influenced by him and is far and away the superior product, and should be considered two entirely different games. Your mileage may vary on whether or not there is any validity in that idea. The interview was done in two days/parts of roughly 3 hours each - the first 3 hour interview was really crappy audio, but luckily (well, if you consider anything about FATAL positive) I learned from that and the second 3 hours is quite clear, and I managed to trim out 2 hours worth of "um..." from both of us.

Also thanks to the posters for their discussion from RPG.NET and the brave souls that transcribed the interviews!
Link: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?716392-FATAL-RPG-Interview-%28audio%29-with-Primary-Contributor

Top Down RPG World Design, Part III: How To Create Random World Maps With GIMP in 36 Easy Steps

This may not be as vital a post as others, if you aren't interested in visually creating your own world map of landmasses,so I recommend those people look into more interesting avenues of text concerns, such as random name generators, for their continents and settlements, etc.

For those that are interested in a way to create your own overland campaign world maps quickly, easily and for free, the 36 items below are presented in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format that requires no artistic ability (with the exception of one step) or even more than basic familiarity with the GIMP application, which is a free image editing software, similar to Adobe Photoshop, but open source and free - my favorite price.

After you have created your continents or landmasses (and you may wind up doing this multiple times to generate various suitable continents, choosing the best one or two from each instance, to put together in one final world map), the next step will be deciding how and where to arrange your landmasses, and you will find a section addressing this point, directly after the steps given for creating random world maps.

SPECIAL BONUS!
For those that find this tutorial too long or unwieldly to read online, I've turned it into a simple, single PDF document you can download and read on your PC at your leisure. {DOWNLOAD}

ANOTHER BUT NO LESS SPECIAL BONUS!
I've also uploaded a shorter, simplified version (though it has a few errors) of this tutorial, with the steps reduced to 25, as a Youtube video. {WATCH YOUTUBE VIDEO}

Click "Read More" below to get into the full tutorial!

Top-Down RPG World Design Part II: Maps and Continents

Before we begin placing continents, we need to refamiliarize ourselves with the nature and features of maps.

Latitude or meridians are lines or bands that run east-west around the globe. There are generally 12 to 24 segments or squares of latitude on most maps, with the easternmost area of Asia sharing a square with the westernmost part of Alaska, in a wrap-around. The primary line of latitude is the Equator, which is located halfway between the north and south poles, at 0 degrees latitude, dividing the world up into the north and south hemispheres, extending from 0 degrees latitude at the Equator to 90 degrees north latitude at the top of the north pole, and 90 degrees south latitude at the part of the south pole nearest the bottom of the map. The Equator is an abstraction representing the halfway point of the rotation of the Earth on its axis.

Longitude or parallels, are north-south lines or bands from the north to south poles. There are generally 6-12 squares of longitude on most maps, with the "top squares" containing most of the north pole, and the "bottom squares" containing most of the south pole/Antarctica. The primary line of longitude is the Prime Meridian at 0 degrees longitude, dividing the world into west and east hemispheres, extending from 0 degrees longitude to 180 degrees south longitude in the southernmost part of the south pole, and 180 degrees north longitude in the northernmost section of the north pole.