Kinda want to start a game. Unsure whether I'd be able to grab enough time for it, but I have several ideas and am not sure which one to do, and they all have issues.
Mekkendo, A Game of Gladiatorial Mecha Combat, in which the players are a Mekkendo team and try to make their way into the big leagues without getting curbstomped by the more...ruthless competitors. Background basically consists of establishing that Mekkendo is like a combination of an Olympic-level sporting event, game/reality show, and military simulator, and is also the way nations resolve their disputes instead of war. Major unique bits would be that there is no reactor in your mech; you have batteries, and they need to be recharged at The Rails, which are basically the only indestructible things in the Arenas, and also allow you to move faster on them, creating routes and crosszones, making mines useful, Rail Rider Rockets, and etc., meaning they're rather important to tactics and strategy in Mekkendo. It'd probably use a slightly adjusted version of my ship combat rules, if I went for more complex(which I'm leaning against, since I've noticed complexity=death if you don't have a GM like Ross who can truly dedicate themselves), and probably a custom-built system if I went for less.
FOREWARNING: My mechs are not Gundam-sized, and in a lot of ways not Gundam-styled, either. The largest in this game would probably top out at 5, maybe 6 meters tall, with the smallest that are still able to be called mecha being around 2.5-3 meters
In order to do this, though, I'd need to finish up(read: start) the numerical balancing (which still probably wouldn't be all that great and the first players would have to be okay with it being a rather shoddy test run, rather than a good game), decide the level of complexity I'm going for, and figure out/find some sort of image creation/editing software I can use that would let the maps (and hopefully cinematic 'screenshots' of the combat, though that might result in players with their image ideas of their mecha destroyed) look good, considering I don't have a drawing tablet thing(though if there's one that can be applied to touch screen laptops that might work if I can get a stylus for it...), and a good schedule so I can make sure it's both quality and on-time. I'm not gonna do a game if I can't commit to it; I've done that a lot in the past and I'm sick of it.
Actually fucking start Final Fantasy Tactics B12. I still have all my plot notes, I would just need to get a good map/image software thing that can display height and isometric bits. Probably with layers, but there's also the issue of making the maps look nice, rather than copy pasting tile info; to me, that's a rather large point of the series. I'd probably go back and play Advance and A2: GotR(never played the original, since I wasn't a console gamer) so I could be enthusiastic about it again. Really, the issue for most of these is graphics; my games need to look good for me to get invested in them, if I'm the one GMing and there's a reason to have a map. I would also need to commission someone to do sprites for me(haha don't have the money for that!), set aside 3-4 hours a week to do them (haha don't have the willpower for that!), or mooch off someone (haha don't have the selfishness to do that!).
My second idea, really, but I needed to get the Final Fantasy up in the first couple or it would be lost to the depths of nobody giving a shit, and I'd rather do that than this for several reasons. As for the idea: suggestion game. My first idea for it would be that we play as a Space Marine of the Sky Sentinels chapter(yay canonical stuff with ~0 stuff written about them!), for several reasons, one of the chief among which is that my inevitable lore fuckups and the corrections by watchers/players would help me learn more about the 40k setting so I could use it for writing a story if I wanted to. However, playing a single Space Marine as a suggestion game, especially if it's not where you're the one in charge, would be pretty damn boring, particularly if I don't have a plot to go with it(and thus it's not even the crappiest of suggestion games where I basically tell a story and pretend you all have a choice; it doesn't even have a story at all! Though to be fair those can still be quite fun, as sometimes the choice isn't the point). So I thought of having it be an RPG instead, but I don't really know how well that would work and it would probably be more fun for everyone if we just played a real RPG instead. Other ideas include playing as the commander of an army in the 40k universe, people pick which army/faction and the fluff behind it even maybe, trying to do an 'original' setting by rebooting one of my old suggestion games that never went anywhere because it started slow and I had only vague ideas for what to do(can you see a pattern here yet?), being the Grey Goo in a disaster scenario (inspired by the strategy game, but only in the sense that I hadn't heard of the Grey Goo disaster scenario before then; would probably be similar-ish to Akylon's Crystalline, though with worse maps and different background/goals/method), or any of the above with illustrations, which would all be probably rather bad since I have a terrible scanner and prefer doing stylistic art than detailed art, so the people looking at it can trick themselves into thinking it's better than it is. As you can see, the motivation for this is somewhat lacking, which makes up for the fact that I probably don't need to do art for it, though I would rather so I can pretend I'm not just doing this for my own amusement.
(Un)Holy Powers 2.0. If you were there for the first one, you know what I'm talking about; I think I could do better, now that I've seen Ye Gods and understand the need for both a regular update schedule and a concrete rules set. Difficulty is, lack of motivation, the knowledge that setting it up to be anywhere near as efficient as Kilojoule's game would require both effort and knowledge I don't have and am not willing to put in, and the knowledge that without that, it's doomed to death the same way the last one, and even Ye Gods, was; work-for-update overload.
Probably the easiest in some ways and the hardest in others. An actual RPG. Since I've been on a 40k binge lately, I kinda want to do Deathwatch or the like if I could get the rules, but I don't know them very well, and so I'd be better off doing Pathfinder or 3.5, both of which I am now much more familiar with, though I'd still probably fuck up a lot, with story and plot and maps and setting, in all likelihood, either from trying too hard or not trying hard enough. Blargh. I just haven't had much success as a GM, despite believing that's the role I want to be in. Plus, from what I do know, it's damn hard/time-consuming. Stat blocks alone take a shitton of time. Gets worse with spellcasters. Then maps, and not knowing maptools or anything well enough to consider myself capable of doing it via IRC, and the time restrictions I've got as for the sessions...play by post is well and good and all, but that allows for procrastination, which I'm prone to. I dunno. Blergh.
Criticism welcome.
Author
Topic: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block) (Read 417378 times)