I have been not promoting or posting much on social media
over the past few weeks, as I have been experiencing some sort of intense desire
to get the game done. It is surely a good thing, as I finally have the rough
drafts for 3 of the 6 chapters complete. In the process, I have consolidated
and eliminated 5 file folders of ideas and two 3-inch binders of paper
cluttering my life.
In this same spirit, I wanted to kind of do a kind of consolidation
of my purposes for writing the game. As of late, I have been fatigued by the onslaught
of a-dozen-a-day new RPG Kickstarter projects crowding the net. It has soured
me to the thought of crowdsourcing and made me review my focus and purpose for
continuing this project. As I reviewed my various blog entries, I noticed that
I have peppered my points with bits and pieces of my intents, desires, and
reasons for continuing to write the HiBRiD™ game rules. As I am currently
consolidating the rules themselves, I thought it would be a great time to take
a minute to reflect and also consolidate and clarify my own (selfish) purposes
for writing the game. This might provide insight for any of you who recently
started reading my blog but have no desire to dig for the answers to the unstated and overarching question
of “Why create HiBRiD™?”
At First…
I’m not writing the game to take over the market, make
money, or even to be the next best thing since sliced bread. I have said this much
before.
At the lowest level, I want to directly demonstrate to players the level of simplicity I like and the very core mechanic I prefer to use when I play a roleplaying game. I want to share my preference for the d20, a simplified mechanic to cover all situations, the separation of skills from attributes, and the simplification of supernatural abilities into a single system.
At the next level, I want to show my aesthetics of what I like to reflect in a roleplaying system. For example, I love the metric system and the integration of the trades, the arts, and the natural sciences into the skill system. I love defining a character’s attributes in a way that allows them to be used as easy uniform handles for the game mechanics to reflect BOTH physical and metaphysical abilities.
But Then…
As the years have gone on and I have brought others into
the HiBRiD fold, I noticed something else. Players get an intuitive feel for
how the game works, even without ever having ever seen a ruleset! Those who
come back to the game, whether at my house or at the various conventions again
and again intuitively have a feel for how I like to play the game and we share
that aesthetic sense. The rules, regardless of the level of crunch, have always
come second to the tasks they want their characters to accomplish. This style
of gameplay, as I have observed its development over the years, in combination
with this sense of urgency I have recently begun feeling has led me to a higher
goal of bringing players to intuitively understand the specific style of play I
just mentioned.
Finally...
Intuition, however, is difficult to teach. With this in
mind, I want to, at the most basic level, codify the situations in which I use
a rule and those when I choose not to use a rule. This will enable experienced players
coming from mechanics-heavy games to begin the process of weaning themselves
from the fears, uncertainties, and doubts of not having a crunchy mechanic for
every situation. It will also provide a simple structure for using the Ité Gaming
Engine in a balanced way to prevent those coming from more freeform games from feeling
inhibited. For beginning players, I want to bring them into the fold into this
style of play as soon as they sit down to play.
Ultimately (and ideally), as players continue to play the
game, they will begin to develop the intuitive sense of how I play the game and
carry that sense to their own games.
