"You might be asking yourself - what Character Class do I want to play? This is one of the most important decisions a player makes, and one of the most personal. A character’s class is the role the character will play in the game, so choose a class you will enjoy playing. Anything is possible, and anything you can imagine can be fun to play.
When thinking about your design, remember strong classes are linked to Factions and conflicts in the Game World - and should sup- port the Theme. Character Classes are not just generic states of action, like “fighter,” “commando,” “spy,” or “spacer.”
No Character Class exists in a “vacuum,” as the job has to exist in the Game World for a specific reason. For example, a world full of savage medieval arenas and vicious gladiatorial combat should have Pit Fighters, Gladiators and Beast Trainers."
This came from the class design chapter, and it was a really cool system. In SBRPG, players designed their classes. One of the ground rules was "no one of a kind classes." If you designed it, it was in the world, and many of them existed. In fact, the classes the players designed became the focus of the world.
If your world was full of cyborg gangsters and alien SWAT teams, that's what you designed, and that's what you played. The focus of the game world became "cyborg gangsters versus alien SWAT teams", and you ran with it. Hey, you could always create another game later if this one didn't work out, no loss, the rules encouraged experimentation and free thinking.
Another thing you will notice in the quote is that we forced players to narrow down their designs. It wasn't good enough to design a "superspy" for an espionage game set in the 1960's. You needed to think, and design a "infiltration specialist", "disguise expert", or even a "surveillance master" for your game. Then again, if the players designed those three classes - those roles became the focus of the game world. The referee shifted the focus of the action towards infiltration, disguise, and snooping on others. Other superspy-related activities such as military assaults, microdot transcription, and other unrelated themes were demphasized, so the players could enjoy the creations they worked so hard on. It's not to say these types of activities were banned, the focus of the game remained on the set of classes the players came up with.
More on Class Design soon, as it was the heart of the SBRPG game.
Wow. This brings back memories. It was a sad day for me when the original SBRPG site went down. You may not remember me much but I went by the Handle Tythorin back on you guys original forums. I created a couple pdfs with custom power lists and the like back then, and we even got a chance to play a Space Pirate based campaign for a few sessions at one point.
ReplyDeleteEven though I still don't play many SBRPG games these days,(Lack of players :( ) your book is one of the few I dragged off to college with me. Since after the site went down I was afraid I wouldn't be able to replace is. (Its a very tattered and highlight text now.)
Anyways, So happy that I stumbled over this blod today. Really love what you guys haave made, and very excited to see where this all goes.
Tythorin! Welcome back, and yes, we remember you as well. Great to have you back. Yeah, we are back, and we want to get a shiny new version published, and hopefully make the v1.0 game free-to-play. We have a fantasy miniatures game in the works as well, which George is taking the lead on (and he needs a blog haha).
ReplyDeleteWe have came a long way since the first edition as well, building QA departments for two companies, becoming big names in the world of 3d graphics, and coming back to the things we love - our games and fans. I almost got hired at Wizards too! Pretty cool stuff. Check out our crazy related projects as well, like Uncharted Regions and other works-in-progress.
We need to get the PDF out there, for sure, and start the clean-up work on a 2.0 version. There is a lot we need to clean up, and publishing parts of the book on the blog lets us spread the word and change the game again. There has been nothing like SBRPG, and I'm not sure there ever will be. Here's to doing your own thing, and thanks for coming back.
Hey good to hear from you again!
ReplyDeleteYes I am working on a blog about my/our other obsession. Hak gets after me a lot. Haha.
We are have a development session this friday as we get project#2 all playtested internally before public beta. Its very alpha right now.
I love hearing you got a ragged eared version still kicking around, I am touched we could bring you so much fun :)
By all means we are going to republish our work! We're still kicking around ideas though.