Weekly Links #210

Hey, everyone. Now and then there's a week when no gaming news catch my eye. It just can't be helped. In my defense, I promise not to make it a habit, and there are exciting developments right here at No Time To Play. Let's get going!

For one thing, it's been my dream for a while now to publish an RPG rule system designed specifically for computer games. That's because most existing titles fall into one of two extremes:

• tabletop RPGs that translate poorly to a computer, being designed with the assumption that a human game master will be there live to improvise as needed;
• anonymous one-off systems where the most interesting decisions boil down to, "what precise combination of armor pieces improves the critical hit chance by one percent more for this particular class build".

Rare exceptions like the SPECIAL system used in the Fallout games only make the situation more obvious. And SPECIAL is notoriously clunky.

That's why I spent the past week writing the first 4000 words of a new RPG system called Battles&Balances, aimed at computer games first while still being playable in a tabletop setting (because reasons). Based on my latest roguelike and its direct predecessor, the system provably works already, and while not all the moving parts have been tested together yet, there's little reason for worry. Well, except for the setting I have to put in as a foundation for the magic system.

You see, it turns out that my few fantasy games and stories so far fit together on a common backdrop, that deserves to be more clearly defined. And I just happen to have this storygame called The Unwanted Hero that floundered twice already, mostly for lack of a clear vision. Third time might just be the charm, as it will bring together the aforementioned setting (tentatively called the Wishing World), a new iteration of my game engine Adventure Prompt, and my scripting language Lunar Logo, that I created a while ago and sadly underused.

So as of yesterday I've also been working on a story game prototype that blends gamebooks and text adventures into a novel form, taking inspiration from titles that are as little imitated as they are popular, strangely enough. What will come out of it remains to be seen, but wish me luck, and see you around, hopefully with more gamedev news from around the web.