Step One

After listening to many podcasts and hearing about all these wonderful indie RPGs I checked a few of them out at Origins this year and took Burning Wheel (with Jihad due to Fred Hicks' description of it) and Don't Rest Your Head (because I love that Dark City/Neil Gaiman feel in a game) home with me. They are amazing! I love the uniqueness of the concepts that make the players (and GM) jump out and take a risk with their characters. Since then I have ordered a few more from IPR (Dogs in the Vineyard, Blossoms are Falling and Agon). I guess they won't ship until after GenCon due to when I placed my order but I am thrilled to watch for that box in the post.

Now, to the point. Over the years I have had inspirations to create settings for other games such as D&D. However, after reading all these other game systems I am itching to just make my own game. The unique concepts have me coming up with ways to steal them, twist them and come up with new ones that work toward a specific feel to fit a setting. Over the last couple weeks I have been scribbling notes for rules I like and how I want to play around the gaming table.

With all the indie games that are out there and how impressive they are, where does one start? I have few setting ideas at the moment but I have piles of mechanics ideas. I used to come up with setting ideas all the time but at this point I don't want to just create another version of a different game that already exists. I don't want to rehash a setting by just adding a new set of rules to it. This dilemma could end up dropping a brick wall in my way.

I think I may go a slightly different direction with this blog and use it as a means to keep me working on the game design ideas I come up with. Please comment and let me know what you think.

Thanks for listening to me natter on.