Game Design Methodology

Message:

Let’s look at the brass tacks. The OSR system is nice solo, the action is squarely on the player. Yet with six players there is a lag. That can improve with some practice. We should also be “shucking” which is my way of saying adding our story, say what each system inhabitants look like, adding connections that the game does not specifically include, adding a rivalry in our own interactions.

Are those just color, meaningless narratives. They don’t have to be. Yet realize there is no direct Task Resolution to find a roll of Success; no CRT D20 roll to exceed. That D20 high to do something is rather easy and powerful. Space Pyrates OSR has a dozen tables of outcomes, some of them even combat, but you still do not get the Choose Target + Roll to Hit Gygax stock rulez. Or choose Action, Roll Task Resolution. Both do require a GM and make co-op play tougher.

Assume you have an enemy ship. Attacking. We could each of us be rolling a chance to fire guns, avoid enemy damage, maneuver for dice additions. All that could be happening simultaneously. In D20 that would be the norm. Enemy ship roll initiative. For structure we might ask each player what his character does. But it would be a collective Enemy minus x damage to its shields or such. That would be Gygax OSR. Each part of the ship would have HPs, and all the attacks would strike off area points. Classic limitation being Roll to hit can suffer from Power Creep and Excessive time to resolve.

In Space Pyrates OSR as we have here, we are collectively doing the same but one action at a time. It too may have some Power Creep; ship armament is rather nice. But the time required to resolve is not significant.

Let’s look at a classic scenario. Guy tells us to go take Fed-*X cargo to Alpha Centuari. Along the way, pyrates want that stopped. D20 we would fight enemy ship, perhaps board to grab more loot. Any victory XP would be split. We would all move up together. We’d make it to the endgame or not. Often we do, since Referee wants to reach there as much as the players.

Space Pyrates OSR you could have the same goal. The preliminary ship to ship are Battle Stations. Killing the pyrates on the ship is To the Death. Losing is Fate Unknown. Characters will die. They just do not have this happen like a body on the water – all up or down with tide (of dice). The action is asymmetric with some getting ahead while others (Rusty) struggles to get out of the gate.

If you want the Gygax experience, that’s okay. But to me, spending a couple hours rolling D20 to hit and doing a few points of damage every seventh time I roll, simply to get past level one is a Been There, Done That.

That’s the design methodology to Space Pyrates OSR as an overview.


Yours,