Birth of an RPG

I'm going to talk more about Little Colony (LC). I've been pretty much living and breathing these rules since my play test two weeks ago. I do have plans for more play testing next week and I am feeling confident about those. Little Colony was born out of a few things. I guess that it started with JP Coovert. He is an RPG zine creator and cartoonist. I ran his campaign of Dragontown for two different groups using two different systems and both had a good time.

JP Coovert got me excited about zines. RPG zines are getting to be a popular retro thing these days. They harken back to the earliest editions of RPGs. Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller were both first produced as these little booklets. I've always been one to produce very concise works. It's not that I don't have the creative drive to write lengthier works. (I write here every day.) I just think that rules should be shorter, smaller, and easier to manage. I like the idea of RPG zines.

  

  

One of the groups that played through Dragontown, did it using my Five By Five rules. For that game I went back to my original version of the Five By Five rules and reformatted them into a zine. The new format is great and it's the version of Five By Five that I have linked to my sidebar on the right. (It's on the right if you are on a computer. I don't know how you get to it from a phone or tablet. Sigh.)

I even printed the zine for my friends and sent it to them. So, yeah. Excited about zines, and printing zines. This led me to learn about ZineQuest. ZineQuest is this thing where RPG designers like me produce a zine and then promote it on Kickstarter. It's a sort of "event" that will draw a lot of attention to your work. I got really excited about the idea of publishing a zine through ZineQuest. Having more people read and play my games would be really cool.

At first I thought that I'd just submit the zine that I had made of Five By Five. Then I found that the rules for the ZineQuest required that the submission be something new. I started working on a Monsters supplement for Five By Five that I could submit to ZineQuest. I could include the Five By Five rules along with the new supplement and I'd be good to go. (The Monsters supplement is currently in limbo, but I do plan to get back to it one day.)

I had been playing with different RPG ideas, and some of them were shared here. I really wanted to create something that stepped away from an emphasis on combat. Then I read Golden Sky Stories and my mind was blown. I wanted to do something like that. I started thinking about how I could create something in that same vein. The emphasis on making connections in Golden Sky Stories made me think about the Icon Relationships in 13th Age.

I love 13th Age. For a long time I told people (when asked) that 13th Age was my favorite RPG. I suppose that it still is, at least of the RPGs that I've actually played. That is in danger of changing. The problem is that Hasbro has left a sour taste in my mouth with regards to all things D&D. I still play D&D. I still enjoy it, but I don't want to. I feel guilty about it. There are so many great Indie RPG creators out there that deserve my attention and time at my game table.

The best things about 13th Age are Icon Relationships and One Unique Thing. I love the way that the Icon Relationships immerse the players in the game world from the very start. The way these relationships shape the game play and help the GM to cater the game to the players. One Unique Thing is just as awesome, allowing the players to put their own special mark on the game world and their character at the same time. Yet, for all this incredible innovation, 13th Age has one major drawback. The great ideas are then married to a game based on D&D, and the connection "feels" tacked on. There's nothing tying the D&D part of the game back to the 13th Age part of the game.

Before 13th Age, if someone asked me what my favorite RPG was, it was a toss up between Dream Park and the Marvel Superhero Adventure Game. I had already been playing around with making a game based on Marvel's SAGA system. I began asking myself, "What if 13th Age had been built by the folks who developed SAGA rather than those who worked on D&D?" Now a complete idea began to form. 13th Age + SAGA for system, with an approach in feel and flavor inspired by Golden Sky Stories.

(As for Dream Park, I just shared an RPG called 10 Cubed. It may not be obvious at first glance, but this game is greatly influenced by Dream Park.)

One of my most enjoyable recent RPG experiences has been a Numenera game run by my friend Dave. The game centered around a small colony and dealt with all kinds of politics and intrigue and had very little combat. It was so much fun and it provided me with the final piece of the puzzle. Changing from fantasy to sci-fi allowed me to create new icons that could feel completely different from the ones in 13th Age. The small colony feel worked well with the small town, slice of life ideas presented in Golden Sky Stories. (The name: Little Colony On The Big Moon is a play on the title: Little House In The Big Woods.)

  

  

That's how Little Colony was born. 

My version of the SAGA rules proved to be cumbersome at the table. It may be that trying to convert SAGA's Fate Deck to a standard deck of cards was just never going to work. From there I have since changed the cards from randomizers to resources and then changed them again. Now they are something that is both at the same time. I have added the random element back in (even after all the fuss that I raised) because I saw a way to do both that I really liked. (It's like having my cake and eating it too.)

Unlike 13th Age where the good ideas are just tacked on a D&D frame, LC is built around the good ideas. The mechanics are original and designed to work with the Icon Relationships (that I call Leader Connections.) By this time next week I should know if LC's new systems work. The first impressions from my players were very positive this time. So, that's a boon. I'm really happy with things as they stand right now. The rules are formatted, illustrated and complete. I can add more, but I wouldn't have to.

(In 13th Age's defense, it is still my favorite version of D&D. The characters are overpowered compared to other versions and can go on epic feeling adventures right at first level. I like that.)