The most fun but also most timeconsuming aspect of making a new game is testing it. I do that currently by having a semi-open table that meets up regularly to explore the lands of southern Kar. And after each session, I tweak things. In the best case, I just rewrite the rules to be more readable and coherent. In the worst case, I have to throw out a whole subsystem and replace it completely, because things didn’t work out as planned.

(At this point I really need to give mad respect to my players, who not only give me enthusiastic feedback, but also suffer that their characters abilities sometimes wildly shift when the rules suddently change…)

One side effect is that I realise that what was supposed to be a streamlined simple rules system has evolved into me needing friggin’ flowcharts to really understand how many dice someone has to roll for an attack.

And this flowchart is only the preparation for a combat round. And to be fair to myself – this is to explore all the possibilities, not what each character has to check thoroughly each round. But it shows me where the problems might be, what kind of tweaks the system might need.

Another thing I notice is that I probably want to provide “Skill cards” to my players, so they don’t have to look up all the details from the things their characters can do in the admittedly absolutely non-formatted and non-userfriendly rulebook.

And to add insult to injury: The rules are getting big enough that they start to contradict themselves across the 100-some pages. I realy need to invest time and effort into a system to make this more manageable, to highligh dependencies to myself, and to make sure that I edit in any particular change in all relevant places.

Lastly, I need to think about the “feel” of the game. Right now, it is very combat heavy. My players relish attacking everything in sight, instead of trying to come up with different approaches. What I don’t know is: Is this something that I promote in the way I present the dungeons? Is it just what these particular people love to do? Or is it inherent in the ruleset, as the rules don’t really provide skills or spells that deal with creative non-combative problem solving?

Still, the basic premise seems to work well: I have a very good time preparing the dungeons, building props and terrain. My players really love seeing the results on the table, and interact with them in the game. And the sessions end with a satisfied feeling all around, even if someones character died.

My previous game relied on an existing ruleset, hacking the very lightweight Into the Odd. There the focus of my writing was on presenting the setting and the numerous random tables to create scenarios and flavour. Here the focus is definitely on the ruleset, and the world sort of emerges from the rules and mechanics. It is a very different approach, but I find that I like it immensely.

And I do hope that you’ll like the result too!