What's under the hood?
A long time ago, in a galax.....well not really so long ago, and actually just in the Southwest U.S.. I began creating a really, bad, horrible attempt to create a homebrew set of rules that I wanted to use in place of AD&D, I guess that was a long time ago. I was not happy really with the rules or the mechanics. I was also influenced by playing in a friends homebrew rule system that was based on the Basic Role Playing game d100%. I enjoyed the flexibility of not needing classes and the choices that we had for skills. We also were able to create our own skills, and develop our own unique abilities, but this often took time away from exploring the "Prison".
I have been playing Table Top RPGs (TTRPGS for those who are new to the term) since 1977 with the white box, I was a hobbit for many of the adventures that were run by my best friends older brother. I still have the white box. From there we moved to the Red, Blue and Gold boxes, then 1st Edition AD&D. Then I moved. I was 15 when I started 2nd edition, and I loved it!!! I was also a player of Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, and Middle Earth RPG by I.C.E. So I cut my teeth on both THAC0 and D100% and loved them both.
Yet, there was something that I felt was lacking in both systems. So when I started playing Curtis Maddy's home-brew game, I was enthralled with the classless, skill focused system based on BRP. The rules, however, were to fluid not set and changed, while this was irritating, we took it all in stride, we never felt that the GM was railroading us or that we lacked "player agency" (I might explore that concept at a later date, and will likely make a lot of fellow gamers very angry....)
As with all good players, I decided that I wanted to take a shot at developing my own game system. I thought basing it on the d100% system was a great idea. So I took to writing the rules...I began my 1st Homebrew.
What's This Blog About?
In the spirit of the title, this blog is going to be where I share my thoughts, tips, tricks and concepts in developing Legends of Kralis, and ultimately the Talarius Gaming d100 System. I will branch out to discuss other mechanics and how they compare to what the TGS does. I hope to invite guest bloggers to input their thoughts about design mechanics as well as their concepts from their own designs. We are going to get "greasy", crunchy and look into the hows, whats, and whys of RPG Game Design, specifically within the TGS.
And Just Who The Hell Are You?
Why should you listen to me or even read this blog? You shouldn't, I would like you too, but ultimately this blog is for me to share my thoughts, a under the hood look at what drove and drives me to design the Talarius Gaming System. My name is Levi Davis and I am a designer, or more like a indy designer. I am also a very avid role playing gamer, a GM, and I have contributed to a few projects as a writer and designer ( I am by no means an artist), these are my thoughts and opinions on design mechanics in Role Playing Games, mostly about the TGS, that I have both loved and hated.
Creating and designing a game system, from scratch has not been easy. It is often frustrating, and cumbersome, but to quote Ricky Gervais "It's better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing & criticise others. Go create! Have fun :)" And I have.
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