A post by Ashley, Bruno, Mia, Nicole, & Steele
The Idea:
The central idea for our TTRPG was a road trip, with a physical car as a game piece to be moved around, and the player characters encountering different events along the way. We all agreed on this idea quickly, but struggled a little coming up with additional theming, thinking a long time about the player characters and setting. Ultimately, however, we decided that the player characters would each represent a different race of monster/mythical creature, each hailing from their own country with its own developed culture. We are also still working on the way goals will be treated within the gameplay experience, and how personal goals for each player character will intersect with a potential group goal. Our group hopes that this idea will create a game that captures the thrill of exploration, and offer unique experiences both in encounters and in learning about the different mythical cultures.
The Collaborative Process:
We met once to discuss the initial idea after class on Tuesday, and then a second time on Friday after thinking more deeply about the theming and setting. After these meetings, we as a team were able to decide on the central goals and characterizations of each playable race, and divided into individual work for the weekend—Nicole developing the culture and sociopolitical structure of every country, Bruno creating the character sheets, Steele creating the encounterable events and map, Mia creating art assets, and Ashley fleshing out the decided goals, powers, and weakness of each playable race. We then met on Monday to playtest the game and found that while the car driving mechanic was both fun and functional, we still needed to incorporate both individual and group stats into the encounters. The pre-playtest on Monday for our Tuesday’s playtest allowed us to iron out some loose threads and hanging details that come with synthesizing asynchronous work.
Achievements:
Our greatest achievements as a team have been in aspects of collaborative world building and design. Within the span of one week, we already have written more than eight pages (16 double spaced) on the world itself that is filled with descriptions of each country, race, and encounters/locations that act as prompts for further exploration of the world of Soex. With coming up with the various monster/mythical creatures that would be playable in our game we decided to have a mix between monsters typically found in western culture and monsters or creatures from other cultures to have a good variety of creatures. Therefore, the current creatures we have are Eastern dragons, Western dragons, Oni, Djinn, Werewolves, Vampires, and Cyborgs. With fleshing out the goals and attributes of each playable race, we did research into myths and folklore surrounding certain creatures that would be incorporated into their abilities and weaknesses. For abilities and weaknesses, we wanted there to be a diverse range of abilities specific to each creature. Alongside the writing that has been done, Mia has created some great concept art pieces that really capture the aesthetic and personality of the characters of this world that we are creating. The core mechanic of getting to “drive” your car as our form of movement has been a success thus far as everyone seems to find it really fun and engaging. Overall, our greatest accomplishment has been crafting this world that we are excited for players to dive into. We want to create a light tone based around the true comradery of a road trip, and we hope the baselines we have created for the world and events just spur further creativity in where these player’s stories can go.
Challenges:
Our greatest challenge within this project so far has been balancing a tabletop role playing game to have the right amount of world building and structure without railroading our players. We want to create interesting mechanics and lore that help to aid a player’s creativity in role playing, not hinder it. We have found it tricky at some points to come up with concrete rules or regulations for how the game should be played, for we seek to “yes and” and not “no but” a player and their creativity. The creation of all these countries has also been a huge time sink as all need a backstory, relationship with each other, and places for the player to explore. By having six countries and not making it so you are not required to visit all of them, we have made a world that is quite expansive; thus, we have only been able to finish four of the six countries as each takes at least 1000-1500 words of additional content. We do intend to have all six available and reachable for the final game.
