I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently regarding good writing and game development practices and I’m starting to apply this to our development efforts. At the moment, ARPS (for anyone coming late to the party, ARPS = A Role-Playing System and I’ve been working on it [read: fiddling with it since I'm never satisfied] for nigh unto 16 years or so) stands at about 300 pages of system; a number of ongoing discussion and summary documents handling bugfixes, enhancements, and ideas; and, some unknown number of written notes, most of which are long-since obsolete, but contain a lot of setting material I haven’t worked on in recent years.
Since I’ve been treating the game as more of a hobby than a real effort toward a finished product, I haven’t really put in the effort to use reasonable good practices. For the most part, I’ve been treating it as a software development project, attempting to version the “code,” keep everything in version control (Subversion, in this case), and put in appropriate feature freezes and bugfix releases of the main rules. This has worked to a point, but writing anything, especially an RPG, isn’t a software project. Still, you default to what you know.
As I said above, I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently. One of the best practices I’m planning on putting into place is finding not only a place where I can write undisturbed (with an appropriately motivating soundtrack), but also establishing writing goals in the form of (self-imposed) deadlines and/or writing goals (not necessarily word counts, but something that fulfills that requirement). A thing that’s been plaguing recent play-testing has been the lack of an updated Rulebook. Primarily, this hasn’t been done for two simple reasons: the amount of changes are rather large and the effort to roll it all in seems daunting, at best (not to mention that we’re still working on the revisions a good part of it).
Additionally, I’m looking at how I want to present the material at this stage, as well. I already know that the main Rulebook is large and will likely need to be broken up a bit (the massive tomes that are Pathfinder or HERO notwithstanding). I will also need to decide what material makes the Core Rulebook and which things will be relegated to supplements like the ARPS Grimoire or the ARPS Bestiary. My recent reading also tells me that I’m going to need to spend some time editing and cutting out a lot of cruft from the system. I’m OK with that. It’s long since overdue. Cruft-removal also means I’m going to need to spend some time with the development team to try to distill the current batch of (rule) crunch into something more accessible. Things are, right now, pretty writing- and rules-heavy and we need to trim it a bit for final presentation and streamlining.
As I’ve been dusting off old materials (for the play-test game I’m going to run Tuesday nights), I’m also starting to look at what it will take to complete my Mythgar game setting. This is a setting I’ve spent a lot of time working on and researching which means there’s a great deal of background information and detail. As a RPG setting, though, this obviously needs to be more directed and the essence of the world needs to be presented. The background information (such as linguistic relationships, cultural migrations, and ecological treatises) needs to become part of the greater tapestry and drive consistency. It cannot be the primary presentation.
Because the world is so detailed, my goal here is to split the setting down into modules (not necessarily of the adventure type, that’s not really my bag) for each kingdom or political unit, allowing each setting module to focus on one area of the world. This allows me to treat the region in enough detail to make it compelling and allow a GM or player the ability to focus on only the areas they find desirable. With the final batch of regional modules I will likely include some background modules to tie things together and do things like handle economy, equipment, the map, and other supporting things to make a game go.
Good writing practices, primarily writing goals, will make this all happen (I hope). A first step to setting goals is figuring out what the final products will be (or at least, a working list). All necessary when you’re acting as editor, producer, art director, game developer, and writer. Not a good way out of it when you’re self-publishing. Of course, I could simply take a few irons out of the fire and do something less ambitious, but what fun would that be? Reality will drop that critical hit on me eventually if it’s unsustainable.
