So I took a couple of days off work to join #GMTKjam this year. A day in I am bedridden with an aching back, who knows what I did.
The jam might be over for me, but my game dev journey isn't.
Every newish website has teething issues, yes my profile picture and banner seem to have absconded, but @bsky.app you're doing great 😅
The problem was that I didn't find myself causing them to lose bravery often AND they didn't seem challenged enough to use the features either.
Don't get me wrong though, the roleplay was great, but maybe a system so closely tied to roleplay doesn't work the way I thought it would.
What didn't work as well was the "health" system. Players had a pool of "Bravery" that reset each scene change. If anything bad happened to them they would lose a point, but they could also spend a point to use a feature related to the skill they chose as a strength.
Players had to pick from 5 skills choosing one as a strength and two weaknesses, then general gameplay involved rolling a D12 for checks against those skills and adding or removing a small bonus depending on their choices.
This actually kinda worked! But I might need to refine what those skills are
The as-yet-unnamed system, which I might put up somewhere for more feedback at a later date, was intended to give the vibe of media like IT or the first season of Stranger Things. Being about a group of kids who find themselves at the centre of a mystery involving a monster in a small town.
This year I challenged myself to write and run a rules-lite roleplay-first ttrpg system for a short Halloween special with my rpg group.
It was a lot of fun and I feel like I learnt a lot from the experience about game design and roleplay, but there was definitely room for improvement.
