#fwxb1101

[joshuaboydfutureworks-blog]

Crazy newton-era of enlightenment

You play as Galileo, fighting newton on what is the world

the main mechanic being the level has a gravity well in the center, at the start of each level the players/or the AI will place destructible obstacles in the arena to block incoming projectiles, destroying obstacles rewards the player with cash which they can use to either buy more characters or buy obstacles for the next level.

Each player starts on the poles of the worlds and has to either prioritize destroying obstacles to gather cash easier or focus on destroying the enemy on the other side, this would be on a 3D environment as a 2D environment would be quite bland and would restrict some game functions. 

The story would follow the player fighting against newton as Galileo, for changing the way gravity was taught and making him seem like a minor part in how gravity was theorized.

Each character would have special ability based on the scientific theory or other such creations, such as Newtons cannon where if a cannon was fired from a very high mountain it could perfectly loop around the earth using gravity/the earths gravitational pull, another would see galileo fire two projectiles one orbiting around the other in a bolas fashion.

[matthew-william-rimington-blog]

Reflective Journal

This is my reflective journal following the creation of “High School Romance”. I knew from the very start I wanted to do something fun. Something that was alternative and easy for new players to enjoy.

 I love playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons with my friends and after over a decade of playing various table top games I found it rather easy to understand and jump right in with very little explanation. This is not the case for a majority of people when it comes to game such as this. I found plenty of people are intimidated by games such as this with multiple editions, large rules books and multiple army codices with games like Warhammer 40k.

 So, I wanted the story to be fun and crazy to show of my own sense of creative flair and simple in design, so a first-time player can hop right in without 100 spells and character traits to learn. I respect this could seem as a cop out and deemed a simple way to make life easier. If that how it is understood I won’t argue as it is. This game was not challenging for myself to design as I knew what I wanted and knew how to do it. Whether I was to design a game of equal complexity to Warhammer or dungeons & dragons or something as simple but fun as cards against humanity, the high school theme would have remained, and the games focus on clichés to.

 Now with knowing what I want this game to be I began by examining every cliché I know and from a variety of cliché breaking clichés such as lollypop chainsaw massacre. I wanted a Japanese setting and anime was my go to for these clichés. With such a rich assortment of clichés to pick from it didn’t take me long to decide on the biggest and most common.

 With this in mind I began working on the main goal of the game and how the players would interact with the obstacles. I used a simplified version of the dungeons & dragons statistic system for players to get use to games of this nature and added my own “flirt” mechanic. This system while simple lets players design a character they want and if they so please drawn images and use pre-existing characters from their favorite shows and movies as their own.  

 I was skeptical on some of the enemy characters as I want this game to be fun and poke fun at clichés, but I have no interest of offending people needlessly. So, after a few characters too far I settled on the 8 I have currently. But I wanted to leave it open for the “dean” aka dungeon & master to create their own cliché characters and test the waters for themselves.

 I knew I couldn’t just copy another games system, so I went about working on the main mechanic of the game which also relates to the title. The Flirt mechanic is the games special statistic players use to enhance themselves while with the people they flirt with. This flirting will eventually turn into love which has a negative impact as well as a productive one. Players will need to be careful not to over do the flirting as if they do fall in love and are separated, then this love turns sour and causes negative multiplies. It again is simple enough for new players to understand, but complex enough for experienced players to manage the flirt numbers and fall in love when it is required.

 High School Romance is a game designed to be awkward and uncomfortable for players in a way. So long as the “dean” is sober then it is an ideal game to play with friends while having a few drinks. The game can also be as mature or youth friendly as the “dean” decides. They could add horrible gore ridden monsters or cute kitties with an adorable attack.

 In truth the game came together rather simply. I do not know if this is because I made it to simple though my play testers aged 19-45 found it reasonable or because of my own personal experience with a wide variety of these sort of games. But I have enjoyed going away from high fantasy and intense futuristic warfare. Designing a game focused around love and how it comes and go’s so easily when your young was a very interesting thing.

[julianafutureworks-blog]

XB1101 - Player Handbook - Reflective Diary post #3

Second Play Test

 The second play test consisted of polishing out weapon requirements and removing a character pre-set.

Weapon requirements seemed unfair as a character would not need a maxed-out Strength stat to use a high tier dagger considering its weight doesn’t vary that much. Some commented on how weapon requirements encourage to stay behind and train instead of venturing with the rest of the squad. So as to make the gameplay more interactive and less grind focused, I removed weapon requirements except for Staffs, for similar reasons to the one’s I stated before, it would make Mages far too powerful considering armour doesn’t mitigate it.

A class that was also quite overpowered was my first pre-set character, Nox. He worked differently to the rest of characters, Nox himself was weak due to sacrificing his strength and faith to summon a spirit that now follows him everywhere he goes and obeys him. Essentially, the spirit was immortal but could be debilitated for a couple of turns, it also gained strength from Nox, meaning if he was in peril and died, so would the spirit.  

Overall, his character design was fairly problematic when it came to gameplay so I decided to stick to more conventional archetypes. 

[julianafutureworks-blog]

XB1101 - Player Handbook - Reflective Diary post #2

The early stages of my ideas for the game were fairly messy and disconnected, to fix this, many elements had to be made simpler or removed completely. One of the first problems I noticed is that I had far too many Stats involved for the players that they didn't really need, such as Sneak, Faith and ''Notorious-ness''. 

Once I tidied the stats, I play tested it with some friends, it ran fairly well, except in terms of number balancing. The first critique was that the damage scale for a Staff user was too high, at first it combined the player’s Staff damage, the damage from the Robes and their Atonement level, this combined with not being able to dodge magic, made it really frustrating to play against and far too easy to play as.

To fix these issues, I removed the Atonement scale in the damage output of the mage and also made magic to not be precise, now Staff users had to roll a twelve-sided dice and add their Atonement skill points and compete against the adversary dice result plus their Agility skill points.  Additionally, robes no longer granted armour aside from damage.

[julianafutureworks-blog]

XB1101 - Player Handbook - Reflective Diary post #1

For this assignment we had to create our own Role-Playing Game Handbook. In order to achieve experience in this genre we played a couple of games in class to get to know various combat systems, different story types (from intergalactic stories to classic medieval stories) and different character archetypes to draw inspiration from.

Additionally to playing different RPG’s, we also visited three different museums, all of them conveyed a possible game theme around their exhibitions. One of the museums being centred more around science and technology, while the other two were more focused around history, armour, weapons and taxidermy.

After exploring different possible themes, I chose to do a classic medieval focused RPG. 

[jakbishopfutureworksdegree-blog]

Tabletop RPG Assignment #3 Design and Testing

To create my rulebook and artwork for the game I primarily used Photoshop when assembling the title and background images. The process for creating these assets was fairly simple and not too taxing as I just borrowed assets from "Game-Icons.Net" and reduced the transparency to give a faded effect on the page. Then to create the actual background for the pages I created a block colour close to that of old paper and added noise to it to give the look of an old poster.

As for the actual assembly of the pieces I went into Openoffice Impress and created a slide for each page, giving each page a unique piece of background art similar to what you may find in a more professional tabletop rule book, then exported as a PDF to bring it all together.

When testing the game, several parts of the game were redesigned as it was either overpowered; slowed down pacing; or was irritating.

On the first test run: - The players quickly displayed that distance based combat similar to more complex tabletops was rather annoying when playing as one of the melee classes and as such this was quickly changed. - Rolling for damage as well made engagements slightly harder to understand and harder to keep track of for new to tabletop players and as such were tried with and without, players saying they preferred the roll for hit instead of roll for hit and damage. - Originally the "Execution" Mechanic never existed, but after a player made me laugh with the over the top way of putting down his opponent, I decided to Implement it.

On the Second test run: - Questions about bonus actions were raised and how actions in turns worked, so I created a rule similar to D&D wherein a player can attack and do a single none combat action in a turn. - The idea was brought up about the original Score system "Poker Chips" not being rewarding enough, this was later changed to Dollars so that players could outdo each other by being underhanded.

[jakbishopfutureworksdegree-blog]

Tabletop RPG Assignment #2 Research

My idea for the Tabletop assignment was to create a setting I had never heard of before, pitting stereotypical Italiano Mobsters against the forces of hell.

This idea came to me however by complete chance due to a couple of factors, first among which came when we went on a Trip to several of the museums around Manchester. When looking at technology of the 1900's the Prohibition era caught my eye and I decided to expand on an Idea set around that time.

I first began research at the crash of Wall Street in 1929, noticing a common trend of Crime and murder in the years to follow (Eg the Valentines Day Massacre). It was while playing a session of Doom (2016) that I got the idea that Demons would probably be drawn to America by the copious amounts of sin around at the time.

Finally throw in a few silly references (Eg the city setting being called Zhivago in reference to the 1965 Film, Doctor Zhivago) and turning the Demons into a Rival Mob Family Called The "De-Mones" and Mobsters & Demons was Born.

Whilst creating the enemies the player would face I looked through demons and hell related stories from history, some of what I found would influence a lot of the content in my game. First among which was the Design of the Demons themselves, the traditional demon looks of Goat legged demon with red skin and a tail. Then there's their chief hub location, a Strip club aptly named "Canto 5," a reference to the section of Dante's Inferno where they pass through the Circle of Lust.

When thinking about actual design of the rule book my main point of reference was old Movie posters for the Noir Genre of film. More specifically my title card which I drew inspiration from an old poster of "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). As for the map in the rule book, I looked at reference images of the City of "Chicago's" Map as a starting point for how I would design it, then looked at how New York designed its city blocks to finalize the roads shown on the map.

[atom1405-posts-blog]

Reflective Journal

When first looking into tabletop RPGs I played Lazers and Feelings and the Dark Tower. When playing Lazers and Feelings i found that the game was a bit silly because of the fact that its set in space you have an unlimited amount to what you could create whether its a massive bomb with a shield that prevents you from being injured. This ruined the game for me as i felt like you could do literally anything, making it so that i lost interest in the game as i had too much freedom and felt no consequences to straying from the path of the game, as if you didn't want to follow the story given you could literally stray away and suffer no consequences as you could just go to an inhabited planet and live your life. Although the Dark Tower game I thought as there was a limit and consequences to your choices whilst everyone had their own specialties, this made me enjoy this game more as it was very simple to set up and play with the game play being very fun as there were limits to what I could do so I had to be careful on my decisions as it could mean that I would be taken out of the game which i really didn’t want showing how much I wanted to play the game. 

I really enjoyed the outcome of the GM’s control over the structure of the building; I felt this gave the game a different dynamic of mystery and intensity. More so, this encouraged a sense of teamwork and equity between players. 

Lazers and Feelings was particularly influential in making my game due to the humor; I’m happy this is a relevant construct in the game play, as it adds to the overall feel and focus, an important aspect in a tabletop role playing game. 

The more enjoyable elements of The Dark Tower also have a presence in my game.  

When I came up with the mechanics of the game I decided that I had to play test the game and see if there was anything that could be improved. After play testing the game i came to the realization that, the game was way too short, it could easily be completed in an hour which isn't what I wanted for the game and so I decided to try and extend the game by making it so that you had to do little preparation missions so that you can get your weapons and intel about the building which would help the team later on in the campaign whilst also extending the game play for the players. 

Also, when play testing the game I was told the good parts about the game such as the role of the GM is very fun as you are able to fully layout the building that the players will be entering having control over the obstacles and the reactions that will be made from the NPC’s. so they have good control over what will be happening to the players and whether or not they will have a better chance of succeeding or if they will have a tough time to complete their objectives but with this power the GM will be able to make the game much more fun for all the players. 

I went back and play tested my game one more time when I refined the game more and it made the game much more fun to play I was told by the players after as they found that the game was much more enjoyable as they could play for longer and have some feeling of achievement as they carried on through the game which also meant that they wanted to play the game again in the next week. 

Altogether the game was bad at first when i came up with the idea but with multiple game tests I was able to make the game better tailored to the wants and needs of the players, overall making better game play and a better increase in the players experiences within the game opening up a world of possibilities for the players as they keep on playing the game.