Hey Folks...
I'm kicking around some mechanics ideas for a (paper) miniatures game, but I always find that it helps if I have some basic background or setting material to sort of give me design direction for things like weapons, armor, and other assorted gear that an army might have.
The genre in question (for now) is sci-fi/space opera, though I hope the final mechanics will be generic enough to transpose to other settings/genres.
The process (as I envision) sort of goes like this...
- Create rules around basic setting.
- Extract rules.
- Plug rules into another setting, keeping track of tweaks needed to make system work for new setting.
- Address and refine tweaks to make the transition from one setting to another as transparent as possible.
- Lather, rinse, and repeat for other genres/settings until rules set is polished to a high sheen.
What I/we need at this point is some basic setting info with four to six basic factions/races to write mechanics to. I'll admit... I suck at window dressing, but I'm not bad at game mechanics.
So... any takers?
Thanks in advance, and...
peace... Dave
hmmm so more along the lines
hmmm so more along the lines of total faction purpose as a pose to the individualist ideas I went with.
So looking back at the first space concept I had you're looking more for like: The Elnithians are a space dwelling elven race, homeworld unknown they live in giant magic based land vessels, huge sections of earth held together by the roots of a single massive tree that powers the field around the land vessel. From outside the shit it would look as if a floating island, those onboard have an open and apparently uninterrupted view of space. How their technology functions is unknown and they are unwilling to cooperate with other races on technological trade making them targets of many greedy and curious explorers seeking fame and knowledge. Elnithians are very rare they appear to have no planets where they actually live and travel seemingly randomly through space. Their fighter style ship is a Gryphon shaped ship slow acceleration and low top speeds but the design of the wings gives in maneuverability and it has a tough hull. (represented in a table top game as sort of the pawn unit of this race you could say.) Small robots about the size of a baseball manipulate energy in the universe around them to do simple task like build and mine resources.
I've never really played warhammer or any table top strategy however I have thought about functionality of them every now and then including once making one with 2 chess boards a monopoly set jenga pieces a couple six sided die and some paper and pencils. I think it would help me a little to talk about the concept of these miniature table top games.
Alright... not bad...
What you have there isn't bad. In fact, for RPG aspects, the horror-aspected idea seems kind of cool.
What I am trying to build, however, is a set of rules for a table-top miniatures game where character and drama are not as important and racial motivation and technology level. Think more Warhammer 40,000, and you're not too far off from the type of game I'm looking at doing. =)
peace... RHManiac
ideas
not sure I got what your asking for right but basically you want generic settings to play with creating rules to a game that can be used in the various settings?
1. sci-fi space opera: Go Power Rangers in space with this one, giving people the option of the giant robot animal they are going to pilot through the game then the game can revolve around upgrading, repairing, maintaining, and battling as well as exploration in your platypus bot. Humans have spread far into the galaxy and met other races where the learned of the effectiveness of these robotic battling method, do to vast funding for rapid expansion but an inability to properly govern the new vastness of the human empire there are various kinds of miniature governments forming as well as large bandit factions. This would give players a wide pool of character bio potential, from classic "when I was a kid we were attack by bandits" or "I joined the Arenkar (bandits) not because I liked what they stood for but because the alternative was staying in this place for the rest of my life..."
2. A good horror idea for how this could transfer would emphasize on dramatic painful but powerful transformations, the transformed state being the equivalent to you robot in the other your focus would be getting stronger, controlling the monstrous desires of this form to maintain your humanity, this game would take place in a world that is dieing, creatures not unlike yourself are not uncommon along with zombies and other forms of scary things it's more "post" apocalyptic because people are starting to learn how to live with this and new small scale organized governments are forming, as well as tyrannical religious factions. Again this gives players a lot of room for personalized bios and direction to go in game.