Friday, March 10, 2017

Who's Driving Your Plane?

Vehicles.
It can be a tricky mechanic to tackle, no matter the game system.  I've brainstormed, come up with some potential rules, and even run through a few test scenarios.  All of this led me to scrap it and start over again.  The main issue I kept running into, was that the mechanics became overly cumbersome and complicated.  It's hard to pitch a simple game system when one of the mechanics isn't.

As a result, I've kind of avoided the vehicles section for a while now, focusing on other parts of the game.  I ran another playtest, gathered some feedback, implemented some rules, and moved on.  The problem wasn't going to go away, but I had no real answer.  In the meantime, I watched a few of my favorite movies/TV shows for inspiration, and wouldn't you know it...I got inspired.

In many movies and shows, the ship itself IS a character.  It has personality, charm, and a soul (sometimes literally).  Why not stat out a vehicle the same way a character is built?  Use the same attributes, skills, and so on, but on a different scale.  It seemed a little too simplistic, but I tried it out.  The results thus far are very encouraging.  I'm really looking forward to test driving (ha ha) these rules in the next playtest, and getting some feedback.

I hope you've been enjoying my ramblings so far, and would like to hear back from you.  What would you like to see in the future?  Sound off below, and let me know what you think!