Dusting this blog off after a long time. I won't go into the boring details of where I've been and what I've been up to. Every month will have a progress report here. I don't plan on going super in depth for things (obvious reasons) but I do want to keep a blog/log of my overall progress. So without further delay, let me talk about this game!
This game is set in a dystopian future, where humanity semi-survived a catastrophic event. While humans discovered new information about this new world of ours, new abilities were discovered. As warring factions rose in the struggle of power, the planet evolved. Going to stop here with the background because I want to keep some of this still a hush-hush kind of thing. What I plan on doing now is going over what I've experienced so far in developing this game.
Since this has been a passion-driven game idea since 2010, things have slowly grown into something way more. I've got a bunch of ideas that have been scribbled on paper, most of them being stored in a plastic binder. Bear with me while I figure out what kind of format I want for my dev blog posts. Obviously the initial post (this one) is going to be messy and all over the place, but I just need to get my words out. So yay word vomit!
As of this post, I have created 17 weekly entries for my Bestiary and more. Originally, my plan was to do creature-only entries, but that quickly became not possible. I've got supporters who can help inspire NPCs and creatures alike, as well as discussing the setting of the adventure my playtesters are in. You can follow these over at my Patreon and Kofi. Along with that, I have recently decided to include my weekly posts in my Discord directly, albeit it is just the Kofi post itself. I have scheduled and played 10 sessions between 2 groups, with the last 2 session for the initial testing phase at the end of May. Once those are done, players will be heading back to the Central Hub where they can sell their wares, purchase new items, and I get to mix up the players into new groups before heading back out on the next adventure. Pretty cool, huh.
Moving on to the juicy parts. So I've got 0 experience creating a TTRPG. I do have experience (a BA actually) in Computer Game Design and Development. Eventually, this TTRPG will transform into a video game, but I really need to get it pretty grounded in everything before I even touch that idea. In the meantime, I'm actually learning how to make my own Game System and Modules in FoundryVTT. I originally thought it was pretty easy and stuff, but nope. I was wrong. It is a lot harder than what I originally thought. That's where these dev blogs come in. I want to share my experiences in creating this game, the stuff for FoundryVTT, and just more on the world as we get closer to reveal.
First issue I ran into was creating a Loot module for my players. The idea was for me, the DM, to click on a player and generate loot. The mathematical part of my loot system that was on paper had 3 levels to it: what tier is the item rolled, where is the player located, and are there any location modifiers. Originally, I had my players roll dice and I would compare to my numerous loot tables to what the results were, which took a lot of time. So I made it digital, which sped this process up a million times faster. Only issue I now had was the fact that I could generate the loot once and only once. After that, it turned my players into loot bags. Turns out it was a coding issue in like, 4 places. Fixed it and now everything works fine. I even have it so that I can upload .csv files for my location loot tables to pull from.
Second issue was creating inventory for my player's character sheets. Creating the sheets wasn't hard at all. There are several tutorials online that one can reference to get that down easy. My issue was getting my Loot module to talk to my Game System to take what loot was rolled and put it into my player's inventory. On top of that, my players couldn't enter in loot manually and have it saved. Sometimes it even deleted items. After searching for about 2.5 weeks, I found the issue. The persistent save wasn't actually saving and my array was limiting itself. It actually would overwrite items. Fixed those and everything is working.
Next up on this journey is to start working on my class skills. I have a total of 27 classes (I know, that is a LOT but it makes sense once you see what they are) and currently there are no duplicates amongst my playtesters. Before I can even go into that, I need to introduce the class entries in FoundryVTT first. I have entries in the Compendium, but they're blank. Obviously I need to change that. I plan on having it linked to parts on my player's character sheets. After that, THEN can I work on the class skills. This probably won't be completed by the next 2 sessions per group in May, but that's okay. The class skills need to be tested in a more open area and currently, my players are inside a small mall.
Check back next month for where things went right and where things went wrong. You can always check my weekly posts on my Patreon and Kofi, or follow me over on Mastodon for daily blurbs.