Mistwardens

I've decided to resurrect this as my development blog for my current RPG project, tentatively titled Mistwardens. It's a pretty massive undertaking compared to anything I've done before.

As a starting point, it uses Clinton R. Nixon's Donjon for the basic rules mechanics. Specifically, it takes the following concepts from Mr. Nixon's game:
-1 success = 1 fact or 1 die.
-Wealth and Gear stats and the mechanics therein.
-Monster looting mechanics.
-Dungeon level mechanics.
-Monster skill creation.

From there, Mistwardens sort of goes in its own direction. To be honest, it's a bit of a Frankenstein's Monster of a game, blending player-narrative control with turn-based tactical combat on a gridded map. So far in playtesting, the blend of the two has worked out better than I'd hoped.

More importantly, though, is the inspiration that Donjon provided for me... Clinton R. Nixon designed that game not to emulate physics or any particular genre of fiction, but as a game that he'd want to run. That's how I'm approaching this game; as something I personally would like to run. When it's finished, I hope the rules to automate all the things about GMing RPG games that I find tedious, while leaving me to play with the things I enjoy. That's my primary goal.

A close second in terms of design goals is to have a game whose setting and rules mesh both logically and organically. A lot of the time, the in-world rules of a game aren't really compatible with the game mechanics, and while it works out okay in play the Fridge Logic creates problems. (e.g., If flight is a common ability for monsters to have, why would a medieval society rely on castles? If every chapel has a spellcasting cleric, wouldn't disease be a thing of the past? Etc., etc.)

Some other random questions that I hope to address with this game:


Why don't monsters wipe out civilization?

In a typical dungeon, there may be dozens – or even hundreds – of battle-hardened warrior humanoids, along with magical beasts and arcane resources. Sometimes these can be extremely powerful. Such a force would be a threat even to a city, but when it comes to a frontier town? The forces of civilization would stand no chance against an initial attack. So why don't dungeon denizens attack? Why do they just hide in their dungeon waiting for adventurers to wipe them out?

Mistwardens attempts to answer this in a couple ways. One, they do attack. It's a fact of life on the frontier that your town needs to be able to repel attacks. More importantly, though, dungeons are places of power – the farther away monsters get the weaker they become.

Why do PCs learn so fast?

In most XP systems, PCs learn really fast compared to the setting NPCs. From a gameplay perspective, this is a good thing, but it can strain believability. Sometimes the explanation given suggests that PCs learn so fast because they go through so much in such a short time. Yet the same argument could be made for NPC adventurers or soldiers, who still gain levels much slower than PCs.

This becomes even more pronounced when dealing with long-lived races; it may take an elf 400 years to reach 20th level in D&D, where it takes just a few years of gameplay for a human PC to reach that level. Sometimes the explanation offered is that short-lived races tend to learn faster, yet an elf PC will learn just as quickly.

Mistwardens writes it into the setting that PCs are special. Moreover, they're taking a learning shortcut – empowering their souls by collecting and refining Mistweave, which allows them to grow and develop over a short period of time whereas an NPC would have to learn the old-fashioned way. Mistweave (also known as experience points) is a physical thing that Wardens (PCs) have to go out and collect for the glory and protection of the Empire.


Anyway, I think that's enough for now. Right at the moment, all my notes added together gives a word count of 25,344 words, about 1200 of which was from today. It's hard to speculate how many words it's going to take before it's finished, but I know I've barely scratched the surface. The game is still very much in alpha stage.

Doing an alpha test tomorrow - my third. Mostly looking at character creation. Hoping it goes well!