So, let’s get started!
But where?
Usually, I would jump straight into designing mechanics, relying on the vague idea of a game I have in my head to carry me through some sort of ok-ish mechanics that more or less do something approximately approaching what I kind of want.
Notice the oh-so certain certainty in the last paragraph? Me neither.
This is something I’m still struggling quite a lot those days, even after years and years of trpg design, the mechanism, or even the whole game system should be at the service of its universe, or rather its thematic.
It is actually the first point in the Songs and Sagas SRD.
Mechanics are tools to support the themes you want your game to reinforce.
What does it mean? It means that the first objective is to find a vision, or a flavor, that you want your game to be all about. What do you want your table (players and GM) to experience while playing, what are the feeling you want to encourage?
If you’ll allow me an analogy, we want to have the colors for our painting on our palette and a vague idea of what we want to paint, but not much more.
So let’s put on the side the exploration of the depth of game mechanics to explore a bit more the first layer and find out more about our premise.
To be fair, I admit to cheating, just a tiny bit though.
The setting and premise I want to try out for this Game Jam is something that I’m working on already for a few months on my own project, so I will be re-using quite a lot of ideas from here, and in addition, I already wrote down on my previous devlog a flavor text that will serve as a starting point for my research.
Helldrake from the charming universe of Warhammer 40k
So… Dragon coming from outer space, huh?
Yes.