2014 in Review, and Plans for 2015

It’s the end of 2014, and I’ve fallen behind on the blog (again) because of taking some teacher certification tests. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to everything I planned to do this year, though there are some exciting things I did get done as well as things that will be going on.

Continue reading “2014 in Review, and Plans for 2015”

Project Update: The Eve of Things to Come

I’ve been working on a few projects recently, and I figure that now’s as good a time as any to officially announce a couple of them, as well as give a status update. I’ve been doing a little bit of work on YMICAE, but I’m nowhere near where I had hoped to be; I basically got in a few hour’s coding, then schoolwork picked up, then I finally got around to doing a little more coding a few days ago. Like DiceLord, which also needs work, I’m probably going to rewrite at least a substantial part of the system. Continue reading “Project Update: The Eve of Things to Come”

1-800 Regime Change: Guts and Glory

Guts is a statistic that plays a key role in 1-800 Regime Change. If you’ve played a recent tabletop game you’ll probably have noticed that almost everything includes a mechanic that allows a player to reroll a bad roll. Guts is that, but on a per-die basis, meaning that instead of rerolling everything they may reroll one die (before explosions, if appropriate). Continue reading “1-800 Regime Change: Guts and Glory”

1-800 Regime Change: Full of Class

That’s something you never thought you would hear about a game that attempts to replicate stuff made for the lowest common denominator.

1-800 Regime Change, however, is class based, but not in the ways one would think. The Secret World is a major inspiration for my class system, despite itself having only cosmetic classes (called Decks). 1-800 RC uses a slightly more complex system and one that has two stages; Starter Classes and Professional Classes. Continue reading “1-800 Regime Change: Full of Class”

1-800 Regime Change: Reining In The Dice Regime

One gripe I have with certain tabletop games is that they entirely neglect any sense of the complexity of certain actions, or they make actually rolling for things impossible from the very start. I’m trying to avoid that entirely with 1-800 Regime Change, with a tree-based attribute/skill/specialization system. This allows me to make, say, assembling a gun different than sewing a ballistic plate into a vest, but have a shared skill so that it is not impossible to have some synergy. Continue reading “1-800 Regime Change: Reining In The Dice Regime”

1-800 Regime Change: Arming an Army Part 1: More Flexible Than A Champion Gymnast

1-800 Regime Change will rely on an incredibly complex system of firearms, so much so that guns will have their own character sheets (well, maybe two per page, but it’s up there).

To do this, guns are made from a number of components. A popular and recent video game that used this system is the Borderlands series, but they did more of a cosmetic-driven approach rather than a mechanics driven approach. Continue reading “1-800 Regime Change: Arming an Army Part 1: More Flexible Than A Champion Gymnast”

1-800 Regime Change: Birthing A Mercenary Part 1: Love, Drive, Fear

So I watched Commando yesterday (I’ve been buffing up on action movies to work on 1-800 Regime Change), and I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing I noticed was a long montage relating to Schwarzenegger’s character and, more importantly, his motivations. Immediately we saw Colonel Matrix’s drive when he was spending time looking after his daughter and doing things with her. Continue reading “1-800 Regime Change: Birthing A Mercenary Part 1: Love, Drive, Fear”

1-800 Regime Change: Thresholds are fun! Part 1: Damage and Stability

I’m currently working on 1-800 Regime Change, a game that attempts to emulate action movie fare in a mercenary setting where the players typically work to overthrow regimes, as the name may imply. It’s a tabletop game, which requires me to do a lot of design that is based around minimizing the difficulty of playing the game as well as creating a fun, balanced game. Continue reading “1-800 Regime Change: Thresholds are fun! Part 1: Damage and Stability”