Obsidian: Homebrew Roleplaying Game

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat May 21, 2011 6:58 am

Hello, Gaming Den.

I've been out for a while, but I've been cooking up my RPG. Right now, I have a first finish and I'd like you guys to go over it in order to rate and hate and all that (I'm going to guess "hate" will come first).

From the outset, I've been told that my writing communication skills are a failure, and I'm working to clarify shit that doesn't make sense all over the place. Please tell me about places in the text that you can't seem to understand, and I'll re-write them.

Also, I'm really more interested in the mass combat section than just about anything else in the game, so please tell me your opinion on that. Here's the mediafire link: http://www.mediafire.com/?1s0fa195k0l47j0

Don't hesitate to tell me I'm a failure, and I hope you enjoy Obsidian!

v1.1 18 May 2011

I made significant formatting changes, and added a title page, a page of artwork at the beginning, and then a page of "this is the primary author and the people who I'd like to thank". Here's the old link to v1.1: http://www.mediafire.com/?d157u7dwjatr5wa

v1.0 20 May 2011

Old Obsidian, mostly single-column with a transition during Chapter 7 to landscape. With criticism from TarkisFlux, I changed it to full landscape, all 2 columns. Old link is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ij7vkjl5euocabv

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sat May 21, 2011 3:35 pm

First impression - nicely formatted, but you need a splash page at the start.

The landscape formatting change in the Techniques section is also a bit jarring.

It does look interesting though.

echo

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat May 21, 2011 6:54 pm

Yeah, without landscape-style formatting on the techinques page, I run 4 techniques/page instead of 6, which makes for a bazillion more pages and murders trees (I'm printing 3 copies of this book in total.... lots of pages)

Also, what is a splash page?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat May 21, 2011 10:02 pm

A splash page is a single piece of full-page artwork.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sun May 22, 2011 12:11 am

I see, so like a picture of somebody stabbing something?

I can do that... though I'm thinking deviantart is going to be my source.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sun May 22, 2011 2:46 am

The orientation change is not cool. Seriously. I haven't looked through the rules, but a portrait to landscape shift in the middle of a book would make me put the book back on the shelf and leave it in the store. Not doing a consistent layout is a fairly serious issue that suggests you can't be assed to do it right. If you need landscape for one section of the book, do it for the whole book. Most of the stuff in it looks like it would benefit from a 2 or 3-column landscape approach anyway, because there is a lot of dead page space here. More generally, landscape oriented RPG books are totally fine. They look more like coffee table books, which means they sit out and people pick them up and you magically wind up with new players when people visit. A friend of mine has done this with the Alpha Omega RPG book, and it's working well for him so far.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sun May 22, 2011 4:10 am

Eep, that big of a deterrant, huh?

Let's see... when I do that, it jumps from 91 pages to 128. Then making everything two-column puts the count down to 96.

Cool beans, I like it that way. Thank you, sir!

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sun May 22, 2011 5:23 am

FINALLY got the thing into a .pdf, and uploaded it to Mediafire. Thank you for your help!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun May 22, 2011 10:15 pm

Going through the pdf, I don't know what is going on. Ever. It takes several pages of reading to come to the understanding that this is a fantasy heartbreaker with dice pools, but I couldn't really tell you any more than that. Readers are not psychic, they seriously don't know what you know until you tell them.

The level chart is whipped out without once telling us what the tiers of power actually are. How can we know if 30 levels of advancement goes by too slowly if we don't know what being tier 3 entails? Then we are treated to the incomprehensible attribute by action matrix. And one of the entries on the action side of the chart is "action", leaving us to wonder what the fuck the rest of the options are. But the big winner here as far as incomprehensibility goes is the whole "Fate" thing. I don't know what Fate is or does or represents or is for in your system. It's just listed under Spirit as a thing that happens and then you move on.

There are fantasy heartbreaker settings in which people fly around and shoot chi blasts at each other and fantasy heartbreaker settings where dirty people cling to the dirt and stab orcs with rusty knives. And I have no idea which your game takes place in.

RPG elements don't exist in a vacuum. The mechanics are there to resolve issues of contention in the cooperative story. But if you don't tell people what the story prompts are, then everything is an issue. Reading through this, I'm like "What if I decide to turn a tree into a dragon-tree with my tree magic?" You know, crazy out-there shit because when you hand someone a blank piece of paper and tell them to start writing, they go off script immediately.

Also: your weapon charts are illegible. You need a way to convey information that doesn't look anything like that.

-Username17

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sun May 22, 2011 11:50 pm

A splash page doesn't have to be artwork. The function it serves is similar to that of a cover sheet in a resume or academic work - a single page which holds the title of your system or subject and is otherwise blank. Most modern RPG sourcebooks combine this with some branding artwork.

My suggestion would be to make the first page of the PDF a full-page image of somebody performing a common action in the game, and paste the title of your system on top of it.

echo

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon May 23, 2011 5:55 am

well, but that there definition, I kinda have 3 splash pages. The first is an F&K-style intro with Cambria big font, the next is a color picture of a battle against a big undead monster, and the third is a page like in aWoD (page 2) where I list the people who I used for a lot of information.

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Mon May 23, 2011 7:22 am

This may be the fault of my environment (linux, need it for coding), but the first page is blank and the second only has a little bit of text.

You really need to put some information about the world at the beginning of the book. If all I know is class names and joke quotes in section headers, that tells me basically nothing about your themes.

You should probably add a bunch of classes to the top two tiers - there should be at least 2 reasonable options for the new class. Therans, white-robed priests, and berserkers who aren't going for overlord don't really have anything that makes sense at the next level up.

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:00 pm

It's not a problem with your OS. On my end, I see exactly the same thing. The "F&K-style intro with Cambria big font" does not appear at all - page 1 is entirely blank.

Also, the first version, upon which my comments were based, started with the ToC.

echo

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue May 24, 2011 12:14 am

Ohhh damn, I see that too. All right, I'll re-do that bit.

Sorry, echo, I meant to put a sentence that said "With your criticisms, I've made an update. Now I have 3 splash pages..." Sorry for being vague.

Also, moving the world up to Chapter 1? All right, I suppose that works, but I've never seen that done in an RPG before. Final Fantasy d6 and Super Console both do world-stuff after all the crunch (classes, combat, abilities)... is adding the world first a good idea? I PROPOSE A VOTE!

Annnnd for the expansion of classes, which I'm totally up for. I'll throw out some ideas, please tell me what you like best:
Advancing From Theran (Advanced-Expert):

Dopplenganger/Mimic--Turn into ANYTHING... this would be hard to explain in simpel terms.
Master of Many Forms--Passive "turn into ANYBODY!" ability, combined with some sort of special weapon-forming abilities, and possible being able to engage two fighting styles? I don't know what powers I could really toss in here.

Advancing from white-robed Priests (Basic-Advanced):

Alchemist--not really affiliated... I honestly don't see how I could play off this theme more, but there's magic and I could tie it in with the [Conjuration] tag of the techniques the Priest gets. It's not really white-robe-exclusive, though.
Curator/Judge/Something--weighing the scales of judgment to decide your fate. Sounds cool, and could also lead into the Cosmic (Expert). Abilities could be some sort of personal buffs and [Holy] techniques. I could do this.

Advancing from Berserker (Advanced-Expert):

Ummm.... scarier berserker? I honestly have no clue what to do here.

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Tue May 24, 2011 6:34 am

I wasn't saying that all the setting stuff needed to be frontloaded, but you do need enough high-level setting info for someone to have a general feel for the power and tech levels involved when they go into the classes section. Not moving the whole countries and regions description, just telling me the broad themes explicitly in advance. Ideally you'd have a sentence that conveys the overall goal and feel of the game, and a paragraph or two that fleshes it out. For example, Spirit of the Century is "a pulp pickup roleplaying game", After Sundown "tells stories in the realm of horror", and shadowrun is about cyberpunk fantasy heists. Your Chapter One, or even your splash page/cover, should give me enough to figure one of these out - SotC's exploding zeppelin and gorilla flying a biplane really do make it easier to tell what's going on.

I'd say a doppelganger and/or mimic for one theran advancement, and a sort of rage-werewolf combat monster for the other. This second one could even be a path for the berserker.

Post by **fbmf** » Tue May 24, 2011 3:23 pm

...You Lost Me wrote: Also, moving the world up to Chapter 1? All right, I suppose that works, but I've never seen that done in an RPG before. Final Fantasy d6 and Super Console both do world-stuff after all the crunch (classes, combat, abilities)... is adding the world first a good idea? I PROPOSE A VOTE!

I haven't the first clue what Super Console is, but FInal Fantasy is allowed to get away with that because most gamers are already familiar with the Final Fantasy setting.

Game On,
fbmf

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Tue May 24, 2011 6:24 pm

fbmf wrote:
I haven't the first clue what Super Console is, but FInal Fantasy is allowed to get away with that because most gamers are already familiar with the Final Fantasy setting.

Game On,
fbmf

http://www.valentgames.com/console.shtml

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... _0_10130_0

Super Console.

I did a review of their free one, Console: Handheld.

Final fantasy d6

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=173958

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:08 am

Here's a free copy of Super Console: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15893432/Super-Console

All right, I can start up with a rage-werewolf style dude, but I honestly don't know how to do a mimic. I'm imagining "insta-weapon" and "read your mind, turn into your worst nightmare" like that one guy from The New Avengers or something... An expert class needs three tags, and that can be one of them, but what else is there?

All right, so at the beginning of my book, should I say Obsidian is a fantasy heartbreaker, aiming to provide an alternate experience for living and fighting in a fantasy world? Something like that?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:16 pm

I think it's more, don't be zombocom. Talk about some specific stories or settings your system will do well.