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[Arulan]

First of all, No Truce With The Furies is

a short form isometric role-playing game set in a fictional mid-20th century world. You explore Martinaise, a coastal district of the Revachol metropolitan area where some decades before a failed revolution dethroned the Monarchy, but left the city and its people susceptible to the self-serving influence of the international community and free-market capitalism.

The game is set in a time of cold war in a world that never was. Replace the futuristic science elements in sci-fi with modernity and you get.... Modernopunk? A world of Bauhaus and Dada, neo-grotesk fonts and transistors, communists and fascists and boring old democracies. Off the coast you can occasionally spot airbound coalition warships keeping the peace. They are kept afloat with magnetic levitation. Further beyond the horizon there is the Pale that divides the continents.!

But, my reason for this thread was this fantastic developer update:

THE DESIGN ETHOS OF OUR ROLE PLAYING SYSTEM

I’ve spent most of my adult life tinkering on this system. (Most sounded better than all.) It used to be huge and unwieldy, meant to span several books. Originally we wanted to build a set of tabletop rulebooks inseparable from it’s setting. An end-all, include-all sourcebook / setting for tabletop role playing. Over the years we’ve cut it down to fit on a napkin.

For “No Truce With The Furies” we adapted those same pen and paper rules for an isometric RPG. I firmly believe it was the right choice.

The years have seen a lot of critique of our own system and even more learning from others. We’ve followed the debates around J. Sawyer’s design for Pillars of Eternity, rated editions of D&D and even played Temple of Elemental Evil for it’s turn based engine. We’ve done our time, so to say. Today I want to share some of our main beliefs as designers of role playing systems. These are not the “pillars of our design”, just some reasoning behind our rule system. The list is meant to show where we’re coming from to fellow designers and RPG enthusiasts.

1) ONLY ONE

We make one system, one world – and that’s it. Everything goes into this one structure. All our ability for systematic thinking, all our knowledge of history. We iterate upon these rules until they are just right, the best numerical foundation for experiencing our world. And we make the world as complete and total as we can. And then we’re done. Wrap it up and send it into the future, New Testament style. We will never make a steampunk cyberpunk spyworld, Owls versus Foxes, Yarn Boy rule system.

3) UNSYMMETRICAL IS SYMMETRICAL

It’s good to have almost useless things and seemingly overpowered things. A good composition is not all equal parts. A good composition is equal experiences. There is great symmetrical tension and effect in a seemingly useless abilities that you try to use for the sake of cool. Pull off Spook, Shocking Grasp and Spell Thrust in Baldur’s Gate and you’re a wizard. All builds should not be viable, but all builds should be interesting. Some skills only pop up one or two times — they will be all the more special for it. While other’s buzz around as often as possible. (Empathy always tells you what people are feeling but when Shivers comes in, it’s a special moment.)

4) FIT ON A NAPKIN OR FIT IN THE TRASH BIN

After a while, we want you to be able to draw the entire system on a napkin from your head. That’s how elegant and self contained we want it to be. There are four stats and everything folds back into their value. We only use six sided dice. We prefer the Babylonian system of sixes to the Roman system of tens. (Six is a more comprehensible number, ten is too vague and philosophical and includes a zero). If we have a number in the rules – 4, 3 or 6 – we will reuse it as often as possible. All numbers fold back into themselves, everything is it’s own cap, never multiply, never produce long formulas.

 

[SaylorMan]

Been following this game for a little bit now and man is it shaping out to be great. Can't wait to see all of this in action.

 

[KC Denton]

That's a pretty interesting article on RPG systems. Their currently developing series of articles on C# and handling input in Unity seems to be something to keep an eye on too, if you're looking for an example of how to handle gameplay input in Unity.

 

[Exentryk]

Good read. Especially like number 3.

 

[Labadal]

They really can talk the talk. I hope they can deliver something good.

 

[DotProduct]

(Six is a more comprehensible number, ten is too vague and philosophical and includes a zero).

While most of it seems quite earnest, this sounds like satire.

 

[Arulan]

They really can talk the talk. I hope they can deliver something good.

Ditto that.

 

[Cocaloch]

While most of it seems quite earnest, this sounds like satire.

6 gradients probably map onto a lot of conceptions of success better than 10, and especially 20, gradients do.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

It’s good to have almost useless things and seemingly overpowered things. A good composition is not all equal parts. A good composition is equal experiences. There is great symmetrical tension and effect in a seemingly useless abilities that you try to use for the sake of cool. Pull off Spook, Shocking Grasp and Spell Thrust in Baldur’s Gate and you’re a wizard. All builds should not be viable, but all builds should be interesting. Some skills only pop up one or two times — they will be all the more special for it. While other’s buzz around as often as possible. (Empathy always tells you what people are feeling but when Shivers comes in, it’s a special moment.)

You had my attention, but now you have my interest. Balance in Imbalance is a core tenant of game design and finding a dev who knows of it and does not flinch in misplaced fear is a great good thing.

 

[show me your skeleton]

everything i read about this game pulls me in closer. anyone know if an osx version is in development?

 

[kswiston]

Sounds interesting. Privided WOM is decent, I will check this out when you release it.

I read the title with an extra R in furies though. I blame NeoGAF corruption.

Edit: looked at the other thread you linked. Love the visuals.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

Sounds pretty interesting. Seems like they have a handle on some good design philosophy.

I read the title with an extra R in furies though. I blame NeoGAF corruption.

Thank goodness I'm not alone.