Bats in the Belfry
Bats in the Belfry
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!
You can download Bats in the Belfry HERE
Bats in the Belfry was the first one we did live on stream, on twitch and tiktok. In this case it was 90% me with comments from the few folks who wandered by. This one reminds me of the Mountain Goats song “You Were Cool” where the singer says he just used the same four chords so he could get the idea down: the system is just the Powered by the Apocalypse core, but my brain was pondering the idea of vampire victims as a setting, and I wanted to get it out. I love the sad vibe this gets across. It was also inspired by watching Kleo and Spy City. The attribute names might be tricky to adjudicate on the fly but I have a deep love for non-standard attributes especially in how they communicate tone. This is also where my personal addiction to random tables shines through again, as it does in many games. Adventure generators are great and will pop up again in other games. Of the one hour games, this is the one I most like to make characters for and most want to play.
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.