Daddy's Little Heartbreaker

RPG Dreamer

Over the years as a roleplayer when I've not been dreaming about actually playing RPGs, I've dreamed about creating one. I had a few on the go as a teen; there was Exorcist and Nosferatu! The Game of the Undead, both pretty much the same game, aimed at emphasising specialty character classes like the titular ghost-botherer as well as Grave Robber (this was years before Tomb Raider arrived as a media-friendly title). After that came Mystic Woods, which was literally a dream RPG, being the product of an early-morning waking idea in my head of Eighties-type slashers in remote locations combined with magical artefacts and portals to other worlds. memories of playing the rather gruesome Splatterhouse arcade game may have infiltrated my subconscious, there.  Finally, there was Gloriana, set in an alternative Elizabethan Age inspired by the works of Spencer, Pope, Marlowe and Shakespeare, where the Virgin Queen's reign was both aided and beset by powers foreign and supernatural, and the players were adventurers in this world of fairies, witches, demons, ghosts, alchemists, warlocks, astrologers and Spaniards. I still think that one has legs, but the trouble with all of these game ideas was the same one that beset a lot of early D&D adaptations: they never strove too far from the source mechanics of Gygax and Arneson's Dungeons and Dragons. In my defence, this was understandable, as I don't have the head for game design. I don't feel bad that all of these ideas faltered before I seriously put pen to paper - why reinvent the wheel?

Heartbreakers

I'm told that I'm hardly alone, and that there's a long tradition of what's been termed the 'heartbreaker' game, where a devotee of RPGs goes out to create their own system, investing time, passion and probably funds only to see it plummet to the remainder bins or merely wither on the vine. Kickstarters can be a useful filter for those keen to take the plunge, but for myself I would say that at least half of the ideas above, any game system I could devise could just as well have been reshaped as a D&D campaign and left it as that. Even Gloriana wouldn't need a lot of changing, the idea itself being based around character types, creatures, politics and skill sets - all surface detail rather than mechanics.

The House Wins

So, then, to the present day, where I've recently found loose pages of ideas from playing over the years. There's a mix of material here - ideas for character templates, variant races, honing character classes and creatures to 'fit' literary archetypes from Chaucer to Tolkien, and module ideas in which to plonk them. Plus of course there's Gnomes - of course there are Gnomes. One of my bigger self-made modules Barbigazl had Gnomes and not Dwarves as its  central race, so they've never been far away. I've decided then to attempt to put these ideas together with traits and playing styles discovered and adopted by me and my fellow players since we began, under a set of House Rules (for want of a better term.) I might call it Redcastle, after the home we first played D&D in, and see where it goes.

This may end up as yet another occasional series on Jetsam and go no further - common sense suggests that it does, but if you're interested at all, I'd love to hear what you think!