What was the first game you authored as an RPG, if you haven't what was your first game you loved (not ju bought)?
My very first game was cross worlds, where five different universes colide, letting fantasy characters play beside super hero and other style characters. It is admittedly an awful system and concept, but I was ten... Ish... Like 18 and didn't study how to write.
The first game I wrote and which had enough written about it to consider it a full game was Starfire. I wrote it in 1987 or so and continued tinkering with it until the early 90s. It was a space opera RPG. At the time I was heavily influenced by Star Wars d6 1e and GURPS. It was clear that I wanted to just copy d6, but for some reason I went with a 3d6 roll under skill mechanic (despite not liking roll under mechanics). I ran a couple of campaigns with the ruleset, and even had someone else use it to run a game. I was never happy with how wounds were handled and how vehicles worked. Those were the two parts of the system I was always changing.
About a decade ago I looked at the giant notebook full of the handwritten pages, and decided there was no chance I was going to run the game or work on it anymore. I tossed it. Sometimes I regret that decision. I've sometimes thought about recreating the game in a new image. I imagine if I did it now, it would look more like the houseruled version of Mekton 2 I run.
Probably the first game I really loved was the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set. I was at the height of my Marvel Comics love at the time. The way the rules were written made them seem like they were just for me. The Advanced Set provided just enough crunch to make things interesting. I played and ran it well into the 90s, up until the chart driven nature of the game and some of the system quirks finally made me want to quit playing it.
The first roleplaying game I wrote was StarCluster, published in 2002. It's still around, now in its third edition, and I am starting work on the 4th edition. It was originally a percentile game, a take on Traveller, but from other directions. Rather than H. Beam Piper and Asimov, StarCluster was grounded in Niven, Cherryh, and Brin. It has changed a lot. Now it uses slot in mechanics of various kinds, and I rarely play with the percentile version.
The first game I ever loved was Traveller, then brand spanking new in 1977. I rarely got to run it, as my then-play group only wanted to play D&D. I still have my LBBs, including Striker, but I haven't used them in at least 30 years.
-clash
This one below:
Goreblade was the first RPG I finished. It won the Game Design Prize at PolyCon several years ago, and I've been tinkering with it ever since. The playtesters had great fun, but it's never been "right enough" for me to publish, but I accept that's probably more about me than the game.
I don't know if Goreblade will ever be published, since I've torn apart the game and shoved parts into two different RPGs that I am considering finishing as their own. Slowly, I am becoming happier about the final product because I absolutely need to feel the game is streamlined to achieve the combat experience I really want to achieve.
....yeah, madness.
Redwald: A Role-Playing game of Outlaw Scum In an Anglo-Saxon World is the first one I've written. Currently it's only available in the TFT clone Heroes & Other Worlds version, but I'm working on the OSR/TSR D&D version (which might go under a different name).
The first game I loved was Tunnels & Trolls 5th ed, and I still love it. I also love OSR/TSR D&D, Chaosium's RQ 2e, Bushido Blade, Golden Heroes, and GURPS 3e, and am newly in love with DCC RPG. Also quite fond of Savage Worlds and TRoS.
In 6th grade, I staued the night over a friend's house wherein his older brother gave us some pregens and ran us through a diceless game of DnD. I loved it, but thought adding dice would make a better game.
So, I invented my own ttrpg without ever seeing rules for a ttrpg. It was based heavily on Narnia. Interesting thinking back to some of the design decisions my little self came up with. Sadly, I never got anyone to play it.
Quote from: Old One Eye;825452So, I invented my own ttrpg without ever seeing rules for a ttrpg. It was based heavily on Narnia. Interesting thinking back to some of the design decisions my little self came up with. Sadly, I never got anyone to play it.
Anything specific? Do you think it was playable or just a bunch of dice chucking?
I ask because I came up with some pretty abstract and unplayable stuff in the early years between the time I was introduced to D&D and MSH. I remember I worked on a Superhero game. It's inspirations were D&D and Universe by SPI. So I made up lots of charts and equations involving squares and cube roots.
When I was a kid, a buddy and I wrote up a D&D hack of a Transformers game:)
Several years ago, when I had a new family and zero money and zero social life, I created a simple solitaire rpg that was diceless. One day I might get back to it.
Quote from: RunningLaser;825464When I was a kid, a buddy and I wrote up a D&D hack of a Transformers game:)
Oh, hell yeah. Did you use those little stat cards for the Transformers?
I was really too old when Transformers came out to have been playing with them, but I did anyway. Me and a friend created this quasi miniatures/RPG/wargame. We would get all our Transformers, pick teams, and wage war.
I remember we had some kind of system. The tech spec cards were the character sheets.
I don't remember the mechanics. I think we used a mix of d10s and d6s. I recall skill was your attack, speed was your evasion. Lots of things caused saving throws against Courage.
I definitely recall Dirge (second wave F-15) had an ability that if he flew over the battlefield everyone had to make a Courage save.
Bombshell had a thing where he could shoot someone in the head and if they failed a save, then he got to control them. The person with the controlled Transformer would then continue playing, but Bombshell's player could countermand any order or have the character go do something else.
Jetfire, Shockwave, and Megatron were fucking lords of the battlefield.
The first game I wrote was called Monsters & Magic when I was about 10 back in 1982. I recently found some of the rules in a box in the loft! It seems to be some sort of D&D clone. It never got completed or played, so not sure that counts...
Then I ran a diceless and rule-less freeform roleplaying session back in '89, but as that was rule-less I don't think you can say it was authored. Anyway, it was a complete disaster!
Quote from: Gabriel2;825460Anything specific? Do you think it was playable or just a bunch of dice chucking?
I ask because I came up with some pretty abstract and unplayable stuff in the early years between the time I was introduced to D&D and MSH. I remember I worked on a Superhero game. It's inspirations were D&D and Universe by SPI. So I made up lots of charts and equations involving squares and cube roots.
It was based on Narnia, with the races directly lifted from it. The whole game system boiled down to choosing race and equipment. There was no character progression.
Some races had special abilities. Frogmen were the best because I liked them the best from the stories.
Combat was the only portion with any detail. Each weapon had a dice pool of d6es (only die type I knew at the time) based on how awesome I thought the weapon was (axes were the top). Combatants would roll their dice polls against each other, highest roll cuts the other guy's head off.
Quote from: Old One Eye;825474It was based on Narnia...
Hehheh. Awesome. :D
I bet if you had played it you would have come up with a middle ground for your combat system pretty quick. Sounds like Tunnels and Trolls.
Quote from: flyingmice;825315Rather than H. Beam Piper and Asimov, StarCluster was grounded in Niven, Cherryh, and Brin.
And just like that I'm suddenly really interested.
Never designed an RPG, probably never will.
There's so many decent RPGs out there that fill my needs.
As you first RPG I played and loved. Probably ADnD wayback when I was 16.
Way back in the 80's when I had far too much free time, I wrote a bunch of notes for an rpg call Kung-fu Fighter. The game was meant to emulate action from classic kung-fu movies.
I had recently gotten a d30 so I made the game d30 based. Critical hits were defined as echo strikes and had a chance to leave a purple bruise.
It was fun and silly but I never got around to finishing it. Perhaps when I retire.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;825760And just like that I'm suddenly really interested.
PM, Shipyard Locked.
If we're talking about first non-professional games, it was when I was 12 or 13, and wrote a 50-page long RPG as part of a school project. It was basically a super-house-ruled D&D (B/X mostly, though it had some stuff from AD&D 1e stuff in it, plus some original stuff), with a ridiculous mix of classes and races and such.
Sadly, it is lost to the ages now.
I put together a heavily VD&D homebrew in the late 70s, which turned out to be popular enough -- god knows why, because looking back it was a clunky sonuvabitch -- for at least three other GMs to run it, using photocopies. I ditched it for TFT (having contemplated doing so for a couple years) in 1982, when I had the opportunity to write TFT products for Gamelords.
I've never had the hankering to write one since, others with more talent than I having done a pretty good job of it.
I've had a number of scenario and gamebooks published, but never an out-and-out RPG.
I've never authored an entire game. Though I almost became a developer on a couple of games but had to drop out due to financial concerns.
I have the framework for a system that is my generic heartbreaker... I figure I'll get around to it at some point.
I've authored a bunch of features for Dragon, did some work with Mike Mearls, did some stuff with Goodman Games and Paizo then I dropped out gaming design work and writing because of an illness.
At one time in the prehistoric past I almost started a magazine for World of Darkness specifically (circa Vampire 1e) but eventually they decided to take it in-house and do their features in White Wolf magazine. Just as well, as my partner at the time ended up blitzing out on heroin and died...
Currently - in what little spare time I have, I'm working on a project that shall remain nameless, as the publisher posts here and I've not been given any leave to speak about it. /shrug. It'll happen when it happens. We're slow cooking it due to our other professional demands.
From a purely writing perspective - I'm working on my own fiction and I moonlight doing developmental editing for new novelists with my wife who is one of the best editors in this half of the galaxy.
After writing this... I've come to realize how weird this hobby is. What other hobby drives people to do this?
If we're talking my first "pro" game (in a very loose sense), it would be "Forward... to Adventure (http://www.flyingmice.com/FTA.html)!".
Interestingly enough, I don't think I did any actual writing of a full RPG between that school assignment and this product. Lots of campaign-design, homebrew settings, house rules, etc. but not an actual full-blown RPG.