And here we go, day 3 and going strong! Tho I am failing in one aspect, I promised I would write this during my work hours and I ended up not writing during work, I am writing just after. I know, my betrayal is unforgivable, but, for what its worth, I did spend about an hour doing drawing practice instead of anything even remotely useful or productive for the day job. This one's for you, comrades.
Also, soon I will be able to draw goblins. SOON.
Probably not soon.
Anyway, here we are, and I don't even remember most of what we talked about yesterday- the 3GiaT Universal RPG? So, let's see. We want to create some kind of universal system in which you can effectively play a group of trenchcoat-bound goblins in any kind of general genre. Western, space, medieval, sci-fi, modern day, etc. And, of course, to mix and match them as desired, so that goblins from different settings can still be, technically, compatible.
And, as much as possible, it should rely on the basic mechanics already established in the game: roll a d6, you have two stats: Cheating and Lying (and Health), position in trenchcoat or various goblinoid aspects modify the rolls. It's a badly broken and barely usable system and that is purposeful.
Here's the thing: 3GiaT was written as a joke, and as an actual system, is not particularly good- but it is funny as fuck because of how broken it is and the things it enables. A goblin with the right kind of setup might be able to never ever fail a Lying roll, for example, and this is, as is written in the books, meant to be on purpose, a punishment for playing the game, because I hate you, I guess?
Look, it's a brand.
It's the brand for 3GiaT anyway and so it's staying.
But it's going to need more than that, if we actually want it to be flexible enough to be 'universal', while at the same time remaining a relatively simplistic (and purposefully broken) system.
Mostly tho this is an excuse to write up all kinds of weird-ass and overpowered trenchcoats and goblin abilities, tho, innit? Yeah, yeah it is, and that is perfectly ok. I don't want this thing to become a huge project, I want to do something silly but still somewhat audacious, more of a reach than what I'd done before, you know? Also it'll serve as a bit of a palate cleanser before I inevitably dive back into my long term obsession with the Last Library world and the next game in that series, the Cities. Because, you see, I'm really excited about getting to go into the Cities. They are technically the 'bad guys', because they're causing the issues that you fight against in Seeker's Call, but they're just people, too, doing new and cool and exciting things that improve the lives of everyone in the cities. It's an awesome world and place to live and play and adventure and yet everything that enables that is hurting the heart of magic in the world- can a way be found to prevent that hurt? Heal it? Can the Wizards do anything about it? They can do anything, right? Why haven't they?
Lots of questions to explore in the next one... not to mention some rewrites, a revisit, a 1.1 version of Seeker's Call before we go there, tho, to make certain things more explicit, like the fact that the Cities are the real cause, even if the PC's don't know that in-character. Seed some more links, and then jump and build on that for the Cities. I need to find a proper name for it, too. I want it to have Cities in the name, though, but have to find the right terms to balance the wonder of it with the price of it.
It'll come to me, sooner or later.
As I said, I'm excited to jump into that, but I know myself, and I know that I need to take a palate cleanser first, work on something else to properly let the rest of it simmer and bubble in the back of my head. My creative process is less of a "strike while the iron's hot" approach, and more of a "toss a bunch of things into the pot and let it simmer for a long time and occasionally check in and see what we've got" thing. Hopefully it leads to something tasty.
Are you enjoying this bullshit? You are, aren't you? Hot diggity! Well, did you know you can encourage Dan to do more of whatever the hell this is by joining the Uncivil Union over on ko-fi? It's true! Not only is this a signal to Dan that people want more of this, but you'll also get immediate access to The Vault, where you can pick up free copies of every single game he's written, and exclusive access to the in-progress docs for upcoming games.
