Velotha’s Flock: Making a Character

One of the things that we often forget to do when we design games is to really put some of the mechanics through a practical run, and sometimes we design it without really giving voice to why we do things and stuff gets thrown in and kept even after its intended purpose is done.

With velotha’s flock, I wanted to do a quick overview of what makes a character unique and interesting with a character system that may, on its surface, seem to lead toward similar characters.

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Managing the Workload

I’ve been really bad about doing anything resembling a sane workload in the past, so I’ve been working on improving my schedule and getting stuff done. Right now I’m working full-time and trying to get everything booted up, so there are a few things that I’m doing to really keep disciplined and get writing done.

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March Status Update

I’ve been meaning to get better about blog communication stuff, and this will be the place I do so. I’ve got a number of projects underway right now, and some I’ve got brewing in my head and I may or may not start once I get stuff done.

Before I get started, I’d like to point out that working on multiple projects is a good thing for me right now; I write whenever I have a good idea or inspiration for design, which means that individual projects grow a little more slowly, but mechanics get more polish and I have much greater net productivity.

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Street Rats Alpha 3 Released

Street Rats is now in Alpha 3! This update isn’t the largest update ever in Street Rats’ history, but it has some of the largest reaching effects on gameplay and is a marked improvement. There’s not much in the way of new features, but play has been improved significantly. Since you’re probably already privvy to the changelog if you own it on DriveThruRPG, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to you if you don’t yet, since it’s pretty much simple improvement stuff going on.

For more commentary and explanations, read on after the break.

You can get the core rulebook over at DriveThruRPG: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/169540/Street-Rats-Alpha

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Revising Hacking in Street Rats

Street Rats has actually been seeing updates the past couple weeks, despite me not posting about them here. Part of the reason for this is because there haven’t been a whole ton of progress on bits that I consider particularly interesting, more just on things that have to get done to get a finished  game out. There have been some adjustments in plans. First, most of the setting is getting cut from the main book; some brief blurbs will be available, but Phoenix in the UAS will be the only setting place to get wide coverage. I want to keep Street Rats’ total running length below 300 pages, and something had to be cut.

One of the other things getting “cut” is the hacking rules as they stand. Right now they are not only bulky, but they’re too similar to other games on the market that have widespread problems on account of… their hacking systems. Hacking should be both a robust experience and a quick one, so it is getting new and exceptional mechanics; this puts it a little outside the rest of Street Rats, but when dealing with cyberspace such things are necessary.

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Street Rats Alpha 2.0 Released

Keeping on course with the weekly update schedule I’ve been attempting, Street Rats Alpha 2.0 has been released. If you’ve been playing Street Rats already, you might wind up having (or wanting) to remake your character, as there have been significant changes to the character creation process and some of the Duties have been tweaked and rebalanced. More after the break.

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Street Rats Alpha 1.1

Street Rats Alpha 1.1 has arrived. It’s been a frantic week, but we’ve been able to do some things, including setting up a nice new forum which should make us a little more open to people and have our own little corner of the web, but mostly revolving around a pretty nice changelog (if I may say so myself). A lot of the things that really cheesed me off about the state that I released Alpha 1.0 in have been fixed (note that I try to release something every December 24th, which is why it was released as it was.

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Street Rats: Alpha 1.0 Released!

Good morning/afternoon/evening, everyone! I am pleased to announce and officially publish the alpha version of Street Rats, a cyberpunk roleplaying game that I’ve been working on for the past few months.

The year is 2098. As humanity prepares to move into the 22nd century, it must come to terms with the horrors and splendors of the 21st century. Nuclear war, the creation of digital sentient “life”, international identification databases, and the rise of corporations and secret societies behind the scenes have shaped the tide of world events.

Street Rats uses a core mechanic with a d20 and margins of success and failure, combining rapid single-die play with a hybrid class-based and point-buy system and quick lifepath character creation: you can get ready to play in a matter of minutes!

Download links after the break.

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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.

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