Rachel, Spencer, Matt
1ST ITERATION (2/1/24):
During our first meeting, we spent some time understanding the assignment fully. Spencer and I were not very familiar with table top role playing games, as we had not played them before. The gameplay of a TTRG, as we realized, is unlike any traditional board game, so we had a difficult time wrapping our heads around it. Thankfully, Matt was able to answer our questions regarding TTRG, and after some discussion, we had a better idea of what we had to do. We decided to break and think independently about world ideas for our TTRG, in order to let each person flourish creatively before trading feedback as a group.
In the following days, we brainstormed ideas for our world. I first thought about interesting worlds I’ve seen before like ones from Harry Potter and Mad Max and tried to build off of them. Matt and Spencer went back to previous projects they’ve completed and games they’ve played for inspiration. Spencer and I also did more research into TTRGs by watching information videos and live gameplay. I found that watching live gameplay was really helpful for rounding out my knowledge of TTRGs, as it filled in any gaps in my understanding of how they worked.
In our next meeting, we shared our ideas for worlds. Spencer shared a world based on an idea from his creative writing final. The world is a planet called Rust, where the characters are in the middle of a Civil War between Humankind and the Rust people, called the War of the Ferric. We all thought the world had a lot of potential for interesting narratives, so we decided to go with it. We ended the meeting by dividing up tasks. We agreed to meet again later in the day to go over more ideas for the world and characters.
In our final meeting, we shared our final world and character ideas. Matt had the idea of an allegiance and temperance chart, which would sort characters by their loyalty to the Rust, humankind, or to the Polar factions as well as their hunger for conflict between the factions, which took on five values: pacifistic, docile, neutral, aggressive, warlike. We also talked about the language of the Rust world. Spencer had the idea of the Rust having two languages: one ancient and one modern. The ancient language would be one with ties to their rich religious history, while the other would be utilized more on the day to day.
2ND ITERATION (2/8/24):
In our second iteration, we made sure to address the feedback we got during our playtest. Namely, we worked on making our game more unique, as a lot of the feedback we got was about how we should lean into the qualities that separates Rust from other TTRPGs. We did this by implementing more Rust-specific rules that extend beyond the GURPS model we were using. Further, we decided to simplify our character sheet, using some elements from the GURPS model while incorporating new information specific to Rust’s world/gameplay. We also finalized our characters and fleshed out our world more to create a more immersive playing experience.
