Two RPG Ideas I Had
Catchy title, right? Just a casual post today discussing two ideas for some tabletop games I've had recently.
My first idea came a while ago. Spurred on by playing Dragon Ball Fighterz, I was wondering about how possible it might be to translate the themes and mechanics from classic fighting games into a tabletop format.
Obviously something like this would take a lot of work and creativity. Plus, fighting games are typically 1v1 matches, would that be something you include somehow or throw away? Combo's are certainly a no-go, who wants to sit around and wait while one person lists off the moves they pull off in sequence? Maybe you could simulate real-time by having a counter incrementing every turn, and introduce attack startup and recovery like that? Also, woud something like this even be fun? A lot of the fun in fighting games comes from their competitive, adversarial nature. Would you have to pit the GM against the players?
For a while this idea didn't go much further than idle thoughts like this, but recently I decided to actuallly do some research into if anyone had actually tried anything like this before. I quickly found "Fight!", a fairly recent RPG attempting this exact thing. In fact, the kickstarted 2nd edition released towards the end of last year. There's even a free quickstart document, which I really appreciate a lot. Based on what I've seen, the book seems great. I especially like how customizable the system seems, with player's able to construct their own special moves and super moves with modular keywords. There's even beat-em-up style rules for fighting a gang of mooks to complement the duels. A really solid-looking RPG. Well that's my first idea scuppered then, no point making something that's already been done better than I would. After all, Fight! has been developed and refined since 1996.
The second idea is less wild, but still something I want to explore in the future. Going in a very different direction to fighting games, I was thinking about creating an RPG system incorporating themes from lighthearted "saturday morning cartoon" stories and mechanics from classic JRPGs like Final Fantasy. Predictably, my inspiration here also came from video games. The idea initially came while playing Cosmic Star Heroine, a wonderful RPG that's fairly unique, but it really came to a head when playing Dragon Quest 11. I thought a light and flexible turn based combat system might be fun in the form of a tabletop game, and when I was looking through reviews for the game I came across someone lamenting the silly "saturday morning cartoon" feel of the plot. And to that my only possible response was "well cartoons are fun". And so the concept of Saturday Morning Adventure was born. I have decided not to really research if anyone has tried something like this before making any progress myself, mostly because I'm confident someone has.
My elevator pitch is the following:
My first idea came a while ago. Spurred on by playing Dragon Ball Fighterz, I was wondering about how possible it might be to translate the themes and mechanics from classic fighting games into a tabletop format.
Obviously something like this would take a lot of work and creativity. Plus, fighting games are typically 1v1 matches, would that be something you include somehow or throw away? Combo's are certainly a no-go, who wants to sit around and wait while one person lists off the moves they pull off in sequence? Maybe you could simulate real-time by having a counter incrementing every turn, and introduce attack startup and recovery like that? Also, woud something like this even be fun? A lot of the fun in fighting games comes from their competitive, adversarial nature. Would you have to pit the GM against the players?
For a while this idea didn't go much further than idle thoughts like this, but recently I decided to actuallly do some research into if anyone had actually tried anything like this before. I quickly found "Fight!", a fairly recent RPG attempting this exact thing. In fact, the kickstarted 2nd edition released towards the end of last year. There's even a free quickstart document, which I really appreciate a lot. Based on what I've seen, the book seems great. I especially like how customizable the system seems, with player's able to construct their own special moves and super moves with modular keywords. There's even beat-em-up style rules for fighting a gang of mooks to complement the duels. A really solid-looking RPG. Well that's my first idea scuppered then, no point making something that's already been done better than I would. After all, Fight! has been developed and refined since 1996.
The second idea is less wild, but still something I want to explore in the future. Going in a very different direction to fighting games, I was thinking about creating an RPG system incorporating themes from lighthearted "saturday morning cartoon" stories and mechanics from classic JRPGs like Final Fantasy. Predictably, my inspiration here also came from video games. The idea initially came while playing Cosmic Star Heroine, a wonderful RPG that's fairly unique, but it really came to a head when playing Dragon Quest 11. I thought a light and flexible turn based combat system might be fun in the form of a tabletop game, and when I was looking through reviews for the game I came across someone lamenting the silly "saturday morning cartoon" feel of the plot. And to that my only possible response was "well cartoons are fun". And so the concept of Saturday Morning Adventure was born. I have decided not to really research if anyone has tried something like this before making any progress myself, mostly because I'm confident someone has.
My elevator pitch is the following:
- A simple turn-based battle system that strongly encourages teamwork and without worrying much about distance.
- Modular character building using skill trees.
- A fairly hard line between combat and adventuring.
- Resources that make creating your own content easy.
- A "lite" version of the rules that can be played entirely with d6's, so if you're like I was when I was 12 years old and looking for something you can play with your friends without needing to order in special dice you can still access the game. The lite version's mechanics will be more inspired by the unique take on combat and resources in Cosmic Star Heroine than a more traditional RPG.
Now for anyone reading who is worried that this idea is going to cut into my progress with the Modern Manual, there's no need for concern. This idea is definitely a backburner project at the minute. It'll probably be my next big project once the Modern Manual is completed but I'm not going to be spending much time on it until that is done. And honestly, there's every chance I drop this idea down the line if it just seems infeasible or unfun once I've started work on it.
Thanks for reading. Let me know in the comments how you feel about this sort of post or if you have any comments regarding the Saturday Morning Adventure idea. I'm trying to branch out a little right now to avoid burning myself out on modern content.
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