All three of us did not have any experience with TRPG’s, so we researched various game systems such as D&D, gumshoe, storytelling, and blades in the dark. We ultimately decided on the powered by apocalypse game system because we wanted to use dice, specifically the basic six sided dice as well. Based off of our character creations from class, we all agreed on having a girly, fantastical element, which is what we designed. We came up with a concept of a fantasy kingdom with creature species and characteristics the players can choose from including elf, human, fairy, mermaid, and vampire, and they have certain characteristics of strength, constitution, courage, speed, and intelligence. Each player can also choose elemental magic such from the elements of fire, water, earth, lightning, and metal. Depending on how the class game play goes, we are still tweaking on what the player gets to decide on versus what is given in the character sheet, such as if elements are already assigned to certain species- ex) mermaid and water. We were playing around with the idea that players an choose two of any element and the player can choose one of those elements (or both) to pursue the corresponding relic. Originally, we wanted to create a game just based off of princesses, as the title of our game means the Kingdom of the Princess, but to make it more interesting, we included a range of fantastical elements. Of course we have to come up with a goal for the game and we decided to have the character embark on an adventure where they have to find relics that powered the tree of life, which is the source of their powers. On their journey, they will come across conflicts, monsters, NPCs, and riddlers. The game includes many fantasy monsters such as dragons, sirens, and giants. We also decided that having a map would be important to us, as at least two of us in the group are artistic and visual people. One person in the group also created visual tokens to represent the different elemental kingdoms and player pieces.
In terms of the game mechanics, we read the Thirsty Sword Lesbians handbook and used the book to guide us in our player move process. This rule book is much more digestible than the daunting D&D handbook which honestly confused us even more. I think everyone in our group would agree that this handbook became the holy grail of our design process, as even the character sheets were much easier to understand and the girly visuals/colors made us excited to design the game. Our game focuses on dice rolls where the players can make general moves such as danger moves of fighting, getting out of a disaster, and harming the monsters. For example, if a player rolls under a 6, they can lose two BLOOD, but if they roll over a 10, they can take three BLOOD from the monster they are facing. There are also recovery moves and special moves for each character and we also created an extensive list of different level monsters and NPC’s the players will come across on their journey. This process was enlightening and difficult for all of us because through reading the handbook, we had to decipher how to write player moves and allow the player to proceed through the story. There are also many components to a TRPG such as the rule book, character sheets, and player moves. Initially, we wrote a background as well on the world and the relics the players would have to retrieve which guided our process in making game master and player moves. We have constantly made adjustments to the game while playing and will continue to do so when play testing during class. Like I stated previously, our lack of experience with TRPGs will allow us to utilize the class play time maybe more than our peers and add necessary refinements.
Updates: After playtesting in class, we made some slight but useful changes to the game. We realized that the map was actually restricting to the players and made the game slow down a lot because players were making small movements to each relic site. We also wanted to give more freedom to the players to choose and change relic location sites. There were recommendations from players to change our player stats to fit with the princess theme, such as replacing constitution with charisma. We are also going to add “experiences” to the characters where players can level up their character through “princess sparkles”. Overall, we realized the importance of the game master and how much they dictate the course of our game. We often only had interactions between monsters attacking and the players so we are getting more creative with the game master moves. In general, we want to give more choice and specificity in terms of elements to our players, such as giving two assigned moves and then giving freedom in the game other than that.
