Gosling
Gosling
One Hour RPG
Steve 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!
Goslings brings back a graphic artist, this time Matt Roberts, so they stop looking so ugly. We give our artists one hour to make things look pretty after one hour of design, and when I do it, I need all of that, but Matt makes this look gorgeous with lots of time to spare. It is also a good example of how much art can sell your setting, with the Gustav Dore image and the fonts doing half the work. We spent a lot of time in this one figuring out what the setting was (people were shy about calling things out) which meant the system is very faintly drawn and doesn’t do a lot to distinguish between characters. Also, much like Bats in the Belfry it isn’t always clear when to use which attribute, and we should have only had 7 points to put in attributes, not 10. That said, we made a bunch of characters up after we finished designing, and one contributor wrote up a whole bunch of setting notes, and that’s really all you need these games to do: inspire more. We leave them as they are after an hour, but they can be thought of as first drafts, and we encourage everyone to play them and adapt them. Second editions are most welcome!
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.