I remember when we had a lot of "great ideas" and put them into pnp tabletop rpg rules based on The Witcher's world. Everything looked super awesome on paper, but after several turns of playtesting we streamlined half of the rules, got rid of third of them, and generally speaking - changed stuff a lot. Original draft was just too complicated in the wrong fields - turns took AGES to finish because you had to follow the "How much condition points I have left before I'm getting tired?", "What modifiers I get for losing condition points" etc. Actually, 2nd draft with all the changes after playtesting proved to be terrible too - Half of the players really disliked the "pyramid" health system other guys in our group came up with. Designing playable Tabletop game, both miniature one or just an RPG is a huge endevour, and it's far from easy.
Great reality check. Rules, any large project really, takes a lot of time and brain power. Play testing is key, for sure. Great episode.
I remember when we had a lot of "great ideas" and put them into pnp tabletop rpg rules based on The Witcher's world. Everything looked super awesome on paper, but after several turns of playtesting we streamlined half of the rules, got rid of third of them, and generally speaking - changed stuff a lot. Original draft was just too complicated in the wrong fields - turns took AGES to finish because you had to follow the "How much condition points I have left before I'm getting tired?", "What modifiers I get for losing condition points" etc.
Actually, 2nd draft with all the changes after playtesting proved to be terrible too - Half of the players really disliked the "pyramid" health system other guys in our group came up with.
Designing playable Tabletop game, both miniature one or just an RPG is a huge endevour, and it's far from easy.
That’s sounds about right for how game development tends to go.