So, the quickstart is progessing well.  I held the first draft in my hands last night.  I am excited.  Eventhough Clint is writing most of the quickstart, some of the text came from the base text of Mecha so I feel a sense of have created part of it.  Maybe that’s just my ego talking.

We also have an artist busy illustrating the Quickstart with art that should find its way into the actual game, so that’s even more exciting.  Once that starts to filter in, I’ll post some of it here so you can see what excitement lies within.

As far as the writing goes, Quickstarts are odd creatures.  They’re more than just adventures with pregens.  The Quickstart Clint is writing is incredibly tightly focused on one small encounter.  Even the rules are pared down so that only what you absolutely need to play a few episodes is presented with footnotes saying that this section or that section has more detail in the real version.

Not that I’m unhappy at all.  I think Clint managed to capture how video games do playable demoes where you are thrown into one mission or one level with characters that have leveled.  That way you get to do cool stuff and see how the game works, but once you buy the real deal, you have to start at Level 1, just like everyone else.

All in all, I think it’s going to be successful and I know it shows off what Mecha is good at.  I can hardly wait.

I am doing this to make it official: there will be a Quickstart of Mecha by GenCon.  Or else my name’s not Chris Perrin.  I’ve been playing around with the game for long enough, it’s time for everyone to get a look at it.  Well, everyone who stops by the booth and requests a copy.  Or asks me for one.

Now, you may ask, what’s a Quickstart?  Is it an ashcan?

Good question.  No.  I tend to use the Ashcan Front’s definition of an ashcan as being both 90% done and facing a design challenge I cannot solve without help.  Mecha is somewhere in the high 98% done (basically just editing and a bit more setting fluff) and it will be publishable.

The Quickstart will basically be like the Lite edition of an iPhone app or like what Wizards did with their intro 4th Ed adventure.  If you get a copy of the Quickstart, you will have everything you need to play Mecha in the Steel Gunner SRS (Setting Reference Schematic aka setting.)  You will have four pregens, an adventure, and a quick overview of the scene and combat rules.  So, you will have absolutely everything you need to enjoy Mecha and play any campaign you want except Chaacter Generation (sorry, can’t give it all away yet!)

So, if you’re going to GenCon, I’ll be announcing where you can pick up your copy for FREE and if you’re not, very shortly the PDF will be available for download.  Download it, play it, tell me if you like it, and we’ll go from there.

Thanks!

Perhaps if I write a great treastise on game design, that will be the title.

With Messiah, I did a very bad thing.  After talking with Paul Czege about Messiah, I came away with some very ambitious ideas.  (Incidentally, it should be stated that I don’t blame Paul.  Paul inspired me to really go for it with Messiah and I overreached.)  I wanted to write a game that modeled the world and then introduce a Messiah that would destroy the model.

I wanted to mechanically represent the ideas of a people and then show how the Messiah would swoop in and shatter them.  I had this idea of playing cards and deep moral and questions.  So I pretty much pitched the Game Chef version of Messiah into the trash and went about the business of creating this thing.

And then I had two disasterous playtests.

Did I mention they were diasterous?  I mean I played a game that really, really, truly, and horribly sucked.  I was shooting sacred cows right and left and getting bloody and it was just bad.  Even my wife said it was bad.  It was so bad that the dogs wouldn’t eat (which is my hallmark as a chef, by the way.  I’ve never made something the dogs won’t eat.)

So yesterday while waiting to pickup my son’s lunch I came to the conclusion that what I loved about Messiah was in the draft I threw away.  I had done a good job of laying down the infrastructure of the game I wanted to make, I just needed to chip away at what was good about it.

And so I’ve done that.

At least I’ve tried and I think I’ve got a pretty good start.

The basics follow sort of what I’ve been talking about.  Factions get four stats:

Resources: The ability to get things done
Infrastructure: The ability to ward off attack
Charisma: The ability to influence the people
Influence: The ability to influence the Messiah

There are five scenes available to players:
1.  Discipleship Scene (raises Charisma)
2.  Audience Scene (raises Influence)
3.  Recruitment Scene (steal another player’s personnel)
4.  Attack Scene (lower another player’s stats)
5.  Influence Scene (Ask the Messiah for a miracle)

Each of these scenes will hopefully have a good mechanical reason to happen.

I’m using a modified version of the Destiny Cube Fight! system (that’s the tongue-in-cheek name I’ve given the system for Mecha)  Attributes are rated in die steps (D4-D12)  Skills give you the number of dice you roll.  You roll against a success threshold of >=4.

You want more successes.

In the coming days I’ll talk about each scene and how they work.

I got to play In A Wicked Age with Matt Gandy, Ryan Macklin, and Lenny Balsera.  They let me come on board to play a quick one shot with them.

We started off with this set of strange Oracle: the gin, the anime episode, and the fedora.  I’m not entirely sure those are in the book.

But pretty much the game was derailed from the beginning…it wasn’t so much a one shot as it was an invitation to play in their ongoing game and it was just odd.

About 15 minutes into the game suddenly Matt breaks out “On what page are the intercept rules and how many D10s do I roll for them.”  I’m confused, intercept rules?

Then about halfway through Lenny starts handing out XP.  Apparently, Ryan hit his personal key of being an asshole (and wow was he…) and so for this Lenny decided to give him XP.  And for this apparently Ryan got enough XP to level up…and he took a prestige class?

Anyway, all in all, though I was invited back, I’m not entirely sure I’ll go back.  It was just strange.

Welcome to the Astral Beacon Blog.  My name is Chris Perrin and I will be your guide and host down this journey into the wild world of game design.  I am creating the Astral Beacon Blog for no other purpose than to have a place I can work out issues I am facing during my game design process.

A few things to note. 

1. I am a member of the Mastermines which is a venue I use for workshoping specific ideas, communicating with other designers, and getting feedback.  This blog will much more stream of conciousness, lists of things that are of interest only to me, and a place where I discuss problems and the resolution to those problems.
2. This is my attempt at Open Design.  Please read and comment.
3. The name of the blog comes from Astreal Beacon Games, which will be the name of my company when I publish a game.

Thanks and come back soon!

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