Tabletop Report · 9:33pm Jan 31st, 2018
So, in the last few months I've mentioned here and there that I was spending my spare time getting a tabletop campaign ready to go. My first time being a game master, and as you're about to find out, also running a custom tabletop rule system completely of my own design.
Yup. I couldn't find a good system for what I wanted to do, so instead ... I made one. Over a good six-seven month period. And, as of January, I have taken on the role of DM in my DnD group and have been running a campaign playtest. I've noticed that other authors have put up their tabletop experiences for fans to read, and since I've been posting these on a Reddit sub dedicated to the universe the campaign takes place in anyway, it's only a little more work to post these here for the enjoyment of those of you that play tabletop.
Now, before we get any further, I have a quick disclaimer: The universe that this tabletop is set in is the Gears of War universe, which is owned by Microsoft. I do not own Gears of War or make any claims to that effect. That's wholly Microsoft. I'm using the setting for my game because, well, first you can't copyright imagination and second, Gears of War is one of my favorite universes of all time.
I do, however, own the tabletop system we are using for the campaign, as it is 100% my own creation. See, despite a small demand over the years for a Gears of War tabletop system, or at least something that could work, nothing has ever been made or worked. There's been no official tabletop release, and attempts to modify other well-known tabletop systems such as actual DnD, GURPS, Pathfinder, or any number of others into the universe has just led to a system that, well, wasn't Gears. Failures, in other words. Knowing and having read accounts of these attempts, I knew when I volunteered to run the group's next campaign that I was going to need to build a system myself. New rules, new stats, new everything. And though it is built to bring out the cover-heavy flavor of Gears, it could just as easily be adapted for any other cover-specific game, like X-Com for example (and come to think of it ...).
Basically, Gears is owned by Microsoft, and I'm not claiming any ownership there. This homemade rulekit, character sheet set, and everything else? Totally mine.
Honestly? Based on what I read from your summary, it sounds like Andrew, 'the cool NPC' did all the work, outclassing the PC's and literally driving them around while they got to do the exciting job of ... loading the truck? Which doesn't strike me as very fun.
Again, I wasn't there, so if your players had fun, good on you. Still, it's easy to fall into a GMing trap of 'this is how the adventure plays out and my super awesome NPC character will make sure it happens.' A big thing to remember is that, in a good game, the Player Characters should be the most important people in the story. Let THEM do the cool stuff, or go off in random directions, or whatever.
But hey, if you and your players are enjoying it, keep on going.
4786288
You didn't read the report very closely, did you? He was the "tutorial guide," and I pointed out as such in the report. He was there so that the party didn't die to enemies that they couldn't face at the moment and to demonstrate the combat for unfamiliar players. He also left the party at the end of that session, taking the truck with him.
Edit: I also mentioned we've been going for several weeks now. Not "one session."
Hm, this does sound interesting even if it is a little light on details (although that may have more to do with this being the tutorial than anything else), so I'll definitely keep reading if you keep posting these.
Also, that rollplaying system you cooked up sounds interesting even if my own terrible luck with this kind of stuff (I've made something like a dozen characters for games that never got off the ground over the years, and the one that did get going was a mess for a lot of reasons) means I probably wouldn't play it myself. You should probably use this game and maybe a few more with different people to fine tune it and especially work with that min-maxer to find and close ugly exploits, and once that is done you should look into getting it published and making you money one way or another because it's definitely something a lot of people can use in a lot of ways which go far beyond what you mentioned. After all, real combat centers heavily on the use of cover and concealment (something you should probably add if you haven't already), so your system should be much better suited to any gun-based setting than just about anything else out there. You might also want to experiment with quick test sessions to see how it handles in something like WWII or Vietnam and possibly refine how you deal with integrating heavy equipment like vehicles and aircraft to make it more generalizable.
Interesting stuff. Might even be better for handling tactical gunplay than D20 Modern (which is my group's goto for that sort of thing). I'd certainly be interested in learning the system.
And the after-action report was cool, too.
4786919
Hmm ... well, that's based on 3.5 so ... Yes. All the yes.
4786986
Based on 3.0, actually, which doesn't exactly change your answer.
4786919
Well, there's proof that there's a market for this, and unlike your novels this sounds to me like something that could really take off and make you big money so you don't have to keep working crappy jobs to make ends meet.
4787602
Well ow, that was damning with faint praise.
As with everything, marketing is key. Hence pitching it at Microsoft as an official Gears ruleset.
4787630
Eh, not really. That's not an insult to you, just an honest assessment of the fiction market these days. There's just a ton more supply than demand these days, and you've told us what that translates to in terms of your income even with your most successful works.
That said, using this to get in with Microsoft would be great, especially since it would give you a platform to possibly leverage your other work into something larger (a game story in particular would be a strong possibility since you doing really good writing can easily turn a generic, safe game into a smash hit) or write officially for some of their IPs if you wanted to. It would probably also open up the possibility of jumping to other IPs that mesh well with your system under their umbrella, and with their resources backing you up you could probably expand the system to cover much broader subjects and try to take market share from things like D&D (it really wouldn't be hard to do a better simulation of melee combat than them after all).
4787651
Ah, gotcha. Aimed at the market, not at me. Though, the more people talk about me, the better I do ...
Actually, after I write Hunter/Hunted, my next planned project is an actual Halo novel, to be submitted to their publishers. If they don't pick it up, I'll probably just throw it on a fanfic site somewhere, but let's be honest: if you've read Colony, you know I could do a Halo novel.
4787655
Yeah, miscommunications happen sometimes, no big deal.
Also, good luck with that Halo novel, although I stopped caring about that setting years ago after Bungie stopped caring about anything but the multiplayer. The way they rushed the story of Halo 3 was enormously disappointing (although things picked back up with ODST and Wars), and to this day I think Reach was Bungie deliberately sabotaging the setting before they lost control of it. I was hoping 343 would turn things around with 4, but the chain of stupidity in that campaign was the final nail in the coffin for me which is really sad considering I used to be into it enough to buy the box set of the first three novels. I might still read it anyways because I trust you to do a good job, but I don't know what is going on in that setting at this point or even how many main games they have released so I'm not sure if it would even make sense to me.
4787655
I just had a really interesting thought that ties to this conversation and your earlier posts about the problems with publishers and amazon's system I wanted to toss your way.
If you wind up getting an in with Microsoft, you might be able to talk them into stepping into the gap and becoming the new publishing titan by embracing the indie book market. They certainly have the clout to take on the existing publishers without fear (a quick check on Wikipedia shows that Microsoft is substantially larger than all the big five's parent companies combined), it wouldn't be that hard (or expensive by their standards) for them to build a really good site to make it easy to find good books (fimfic is a good site to pull ideas from for finding other stories, although there are some obvious improvements to be made like allowing the featured box to be filtered by a more robust tag system), and with the rates you have mentioned sites like Amazon charging it wouldn't be hard to undercut them to encourage authors to jump ship. The whole thing seems like an easy win to me because even if the big-name publishers try to go after them there's really not much they can do to Microsoft, and even advertising costs will be low because when a company as big as Microsoft makes a major move like that it draws a lot of media attention which they can use to push the important details of lower royalties and excellent navigation to draw in a user base without paying for many ads.