Alright, pretty sure there isn’t going to be a sudden swarm of thirteen votes coming to add to one of the outer extremes - so I’m going to close the first poll and say that “some mechanics, but generally-lightweight mechanics” seems to be the general consensus. The two responses with the most votes both fall within that scope, and only disagree on the total number included.
So now I need some additional input, because one of the reasons I’ve been spinning my wheels on this is because I keep trying to make a “one size fits all” system that covers all possible settings and… well, they don’t work that well. Frankly, in trying to cover all use-cases they wind up being pretty fucking generic. By which I mean boring. The more I’ve delved into explorations of other solo roleplaying systems, the more I’ve found that systems made for specific use-cases just wind up playing better. A game system built for science fiction does a better job of presenting sci-fi concepts than any other, a game system designed for dungeon-crawling just does dungeon-crawling better, and so on and so forth.
After trying and failing to make “the perfect general-purpose solo RPG” for the last few months, I’ve decided it’s actually going to make for better games if I just stop doing that and make smaller-scope systems which fit specific genres really well. I’m still going to leave the actual fetishes in-game up to the player to define, because THAT is so uniquely-defined as to be individual, but I’m going to focus on a specific setting in a specific genre to get that nice and polished instead of trying to make something that “lets you play anyone, doing anything, anywhere” in a bland, generic way.
That said, I need to know what setting you want me to focus on first. Hence this next poll:
- Fantastical Modern
- Traditional RPG Fantasy
- Science Fiction
- Post-Apocalyptic
- Something Else (Please comment below!)
A brief breakdown of the settings presented, so you understand my thoughts on them:
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Fantastical Modern - It’s basically modern-day times, but with magic and/or science that is advanced enough to be magic. For examples of games which use this setting, see Big Aspirations and Super Fatty Office Administrator Simulator.
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Traditional RPG Fantasy - Your traditional fantasy table-top (or video game RPG) setting. Basically what anime/manga keeps isekaing people into, or the default setting of RPGmaker games. For examples of games which use this setting, see NPC Simulator and Eat the Dungeon.
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Science Fiction - The future. Technology is now capable of taking us beyond currently-understood limitations of physics, and people are living in massive cyberpunk cities or space-stations. For examples of games which use this setting, see Research Station M-00 and Spacethumper.
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Post-Apocalyptic - The future sucks. Civilization has mostly fallen, vast parts of the world are uninhabitable by humans, and day-to-day life is more about scraping out survival than taking advantage of any technological advancements which may have happened. Hell, they’re probably hostile to people anyways. For examples of games which use this setting, see Surviving and Apocalypse XL.
Let me know what you think, and thanks for the input!