Hey, I'm Kenna and I haven't figured out what the title of my game is going to be! That's normal, though, titles usually don't come to me until I'm close to finishing writing something.

For this MFGJ I'm making a solo-TTRPG game - essentially, a storytelling exercise where the player takes on the role of a character, decides how they'll act in the circumstances presented to them in the game, with a game engine that resolves how the players' actions effect the world around them. Thus, the player and the engine work together to create a story.

I don't have much more than that.

Yet. I have some ideas of where I want to go with this game. I love the idea of the theme 'Cold' and since I made my last MFGJ game about one of my special interests (sad ghosts), I think I might make this game about one of my others - namely, Antarctica. I also know that a lot of solo-RPGs use journal-writing as a main mechanic and that's something I don't want to do, if I can help it (stopping to write a journal entry every ten minutes, for someone like me who can't shut up and write less than 100 words in a sitting, really breaks the game flow IMO). Also, while I'd love to use a unique or weird mechanic like tarot cards or custom dice, I'll probably just use a regular six-sided die with a 1-6 results engine  (Yes, but; No, and; etc)(I might decide to use a 12-sided die, or something similar that TTRPG players tend to already have, and not have much use for outside of the game).

My goal for tomorrow is to finalize a basic premise for the game idea, and work further on deciding how the engine itself will operate. 

hmm interesting i like that you've already come up with some limitations for yourself as far as the kind of game you'll be making this jam. i think imposing certain restrictions is a great way to really be creative. i'd love to hear more!

Day 2 - Mechanics update!

I spent the day thinking about how I wanted this game to run. I still don't have an exact idea of what the game is, but after contemplating a while I decided I wanted to use the basic 7-dice RPG set (instead of playing cards, or a tarot deck, etc). I also love games that have players try to roll low on the die, instead of high.

I've come up with a basic idea of how I want the die-rolling to work. In the game, the players will have some sort of resource, which they try to collect during gameplay and which they can spend to improve die-rolling chances (sort of how the Cypher System uses XP, which players can spend either to level up or decrease action difficulty). When the player must make a die roll, they can either do a normal check and roll a d20, or spend 1 resource to move down to a d12, or 2 to a d10, etc. The goal with the die roll is to roll below a certain number (perhaps an ability score chosen in character creation - a 1 for an ability that's practically impossible up to a 10 for an ability you rarely fail at).

I still need to calculate the probabilities of different die rolls - jumping from a d20 to d12 is a larger leap than d12 to d10, I don't want to make a d12 roll almost always succeed anymore than I want a d20 roll to feel impossible. I also need to figure out why the player is rolling dice - I could go the D&D route ("any time an action's results are in doubt") or the PBTA route (with a specific list of 'moves') but that'll partially be determined by the theme of the game.

Initially I thought of setting a story in Antarctica somehow, but without playing very fast and loose with reality (or having the player characters be wild animals) I'm not sure how to make that make sense. Another thought was a thievery game - I love thief stories, and this would allow the collectible resource to be something concrete like money (which the player then spends when they need to make a roll to buy/have bought gear that'll be useful for that roll).

Lastly, I decided I want the game to be one others could contribute and write their own 'campaigns' for. In other words, I will develop a story engine and a starter story type, leaving the mechanics free enough from that story to be applied to other stories (like how people use the D&D rules to play games set in their favorite books, or like how Apocalypse World spawned a whole game system used to run games in all different narrative genres - or how if you just change the two stat names in Lasers and Feelings you can make a game about practically anything).

Things to work on tomorrow:

• decide a general theme for the game (what type of story is being told, who the player character can be, etc)
• decide what causes the player to roll a die to begin with
• get some ideas for possible stats or abilities which the 1-10 scores can be applies to, as well as how those scores might be chosen (point buy? pre-set for backgrounds/'class'/etc?)

Day 4 mini update (missed Day 3, oops).

I threw together a quick chart to check result probability - the shift from d20 to d12 isn't actually as big as I'd feared, so I think I'm gonna go ahead with my initial idea of using all the dice (I also love the idea of throwing the d100 in there as an option, maybe there'll be an almost-guaranteed-fail roll). Also I've really set up my dice as a fail/success operator, which means the situations that call for dice rolls are going to have to be fail/success situations.

(Unless I set the target numbers as a range - eg. the PCs magic stat is a 2-6, if they roll higher they fail to cast the spell, if they roll in that range they cast the spell as expected, if they roll a 1 they 'crit' and get a secondary effect.)

I'm still working out what the situation of the game will be, mostly because I keep rolling different ideas around in my head. I'm leaning towards a fantasy game just to stick with what I and most gamers are familiar with (and any ideas I don't use I might end up implementing later - I wanted this to be variable game engine that can be used to write other games, anyways). I also definitely want there to be a win-state.

Day 5 Mega-Update: Story and play details!

Five days and I finally figured out what my game's about!

I'm adapting a Twine game I wrote a few years ago, called Harbinger, which makes this Harbinger: the Solo RPG. In Harbinger you play as a raven in a fantasy kingdom, trying to warn the townspeople of an impending doom only you know is coming. The game begins just as your Wizard, the man who raised and trained you, is killed attempting to harness the power of an otherworldly Demon. The Demon escapes, bent on consuming the lives of everyone in the kingdom, and it's your job to fly out and warn them before it can. Along the way you discover the raven's true destiny.

Game Map

In order to make the game more replayable, I think I'll have the player randomly generate the kingdom map on a 10x10 grid. The player rolls 2d100 to determine both the location of the Wizard's Tower (the game's starting point) as well as the Capitol/Castle City (if the demon is able to consume this square, it automatically wins. This means, theoretically, both locations could end up right next to each other, so I'll include some mechanic that forces the demon to build up power before it's able to go after the Castle City.

Rounds

I'm thinking of having the game play in rounds, representing the actions of both the raven and the demon over a period of time (probably determined by the player while telling the story). There'll be a limited number of actions the player can take on their turn, and the demon's actions will be determined by both the player actions and random die rolls (eg. perhaps the demon's goal will be to chase after the bird. If the player can move three squares per turn, the demon will always move one square closer to it, then the player will roll a die to determine the demon's action on that square).

Fate, Random Events Table, and The Witch

I've determined the expendable resource I theorized in my opening posts will be Fate (representing how close the raven is to completing its destiny). I'm still nailing down this mechanic, but the idea so far is as the player successfully saves people from the demon, they'll accumulate Fate (not 'fate points', just Fate). Then, as I talked about earlier, in order to improve die rolls, the player can spend their Fate. There will be an incentive to save them though - in order to win the game, the player must locate The Witch, an unnamed character who holds the secret to the demon's defeat. The raven, it will turn out, is meant to be this witch's familiar, and the two of them together are able to work out how to defeat the demon. The more Fate the player accumulates, the higher the chance of locating the witch, and activating the win-state.

In order to facilitate this I'm including a random events table, a rollable d100 table (probably not with 100 results... but maybe!) that the player will roll on at the start (or end) of every round. This'll add some variety to the narrative of the story. The witch's location will start at the bottom of the table, and as the player gains more Fate she moves up the table (eg. if she starts at a 0 (unachievable) with 0 Fate, then a 10 with 1 Fate etc, then at 1 Fate all the player needs to do is roll 10 or lower. With 10 Fate, any roll will reveal the witch).

Locating the witch will involve another d100 roll on the 10x10 map (if that location was destroyed, the player can roll again, or narratively justify that she escaped and hides in the rubble, or some such). Once she's placed on the map, the raven knows where she is and can beeline for her, even if the player then spends more Fate.

Die Rolls

Like I mentioned earlier the die rolls are going to be 'roll under' stats (eg. if the stat is 10, the player must roll 10 or lower to succeed the roll). I'm still deciding between a list of moves or a list of character ability stats - if it's moves, then that means there's a limited set of actions the player can take on their turn. If it's ability stats, the player has narrative freedom to do anything they want to do, and I'll have to figure out some way to guide/limit the player actions manually (like, a "I roll to fly over and punch the demon" must automatically fail for some reason other than 'because the game writer said please don't')

To Do

• Determine what triggers die rolls
• Decide between character moves and character ability stats
• Determine an acceptable range of numbers for those roll difficulties
• Figure out if my map idea is too board-game and should be scrapped altogether
• Determine what information should be on a character sheet, and how many printed pages should be needed to play the game
• Figure out why no one but the raven character is doing anything about the threat

whooaaaa i love this story premise so much! all the design elements are really interesting against this specific narrative and totally make sense for a procedurally placed board.

Day 10 update!!

I have a few other huge projects that I've been working on the last few weeks so I haven't been able to dedicate as much time to this MFGJ as I would like - which is why my project scope was pretty narrow to begin with. But I do have some things to share!

I've done some playtesting and noticed some balance issues with certain aspects, and re-framed how certain aspects of the game are going to go.

Biggest changes:

• Adding a numbers to the 100-square grid map, to represent the people in the kingdom the player is potentially saving, or the demon 'consuming'.  When the player rolls successfully (for either the bird character or the Demon) that number gets reduced. If the player still has not succeeded by the time all the numbers go down to 0, the demon wins
• Writing a list of actions with priority ratings for the Demon. I don't want the player playing chess against themself, so every time its the demon's 'turn' there will be a set action the demon always takes first
• Added player character stats: Health, Speed, and Persuasion. At the start of the game the player can distribute a 2, 3, and 4 between each stat. (As it stands, this stat system will probably get reworked.)
• Persuasion: Roll under this number to reduce the number in the square by the number you rolled. A success also gives you a Fate. A failure docks your health by 1.
• Speed: The number of squares you may move in one turn (number of actions is not limited)
• Health: Number of times your health can go down before you must heal up.
• I'm also limiting the actions the player can take to 'Persuade', 'Heal', and 'Investigate' (I didn't want to do this, but I can't see any way to not let the game get out of hand without taking a lot more time to work through things).
• Investigating is a sort of new concept. Essentially, to win you must both discover the 'solution' to the demon threat, and the location of the Witch, and you and the Witch must deliver the 'solution' (I'm keeping it open-ended so players can flavor the story however they want). Before you find the Witch you can investigate around (research demon history, listening to what people say about demons, etc) but after you find the Witch doing so will become much easier.
• Changing the Fate system slightly - instead of spending Fate to change which die you roll, the die will change automatically depending on how much Fate you have. I'm still trying to find a way that'll let players gain Fate more easily
• Adding in Demon Power - a mirror of the player's Fate, the Demon gains power by successfully consuming people. Doing  so changes the die the player rolls to see if the Demon is successful. Once the demon's Power is full, it can go to consume the 'City', ending the game.
• Since the player isn't spending Fate to change their die anymore, I'm allowing the player to spend 5 Fate to lower the number they must roll for the demon's success (EG. it might start at 5, meaning any d6 roll is almost guaranteed to succeed. If the player gains 5 Fate to spend, then the 'demon' must roll a 4 or lower to succeed on the next consume roll).

That's most of it for now. There's other things I've been implementing or working with, but overall fairly decent progress. I think I can make it by Saturday!

nice progress! i like that the "solution" is kind of open ended--i know when my friends and i play some board games we like to add some flavor or background setting to it so i think it's cool to see a game that encourages that!