Plato and Aristotle discuss if our purpose is revealed in the heavens or on earth, from The School of Athens by Raphael (1511)

Fleas fighting

Stee Dee

My advice to all people trying to get started in RPG design is to start small. And keep coming back to small. RPGs can be giant hardcover books but you can also do a huge amount with a few tiny touches. All the games in this series were produced in one hour flat, using the GAMES system. You can find them all and that system on the Tin Star Games page and watch us making one on youtube. If you use our method and/or make a game in an hour, please link to the site and let us host a link to your game!

Fleas and Fighting was done live in front of a big group which meant we couldn’t go back and change things - the artist had already put them into the art! When we do those (like In the Arena) things often end up a bit messier so we should work on a system to deal with that. The major issue is that the system is very stark: you tend to critically succeed almost always except when you tag a weakness and then you might get killed. The plus side of this is it encourages people not to draw their swords because the outcome is usually deadly but it does mean that it might be impossible for GMs to challenge players at all without totally murdering them. For a fix I might change it to counting successes with the table being the number of 3+s rolled: 0,1,2 or 3. That shifts things more into the middle, and also you can then allow +1s and -1s to the dice for situational things as well.I also think one potion each per adventure is better. Meanwhile the hook is amazing and the idea of turning your house into the fantasy world is just incredible.

You can get the PDF HERE

This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network's blog series. The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of the IGDN or its members.