Writing my Odd Game

Brief Intermission - Part 2

Amazing how much typing it out helps with finding solutions. Please indulge my notetaking, I am sure it will help.

Tomorrow, I play my first playtest. But the mind wanders to all places to go for this project.

STARTER ADVENTURE PACKAGE

As much as I do like my own adventure idea for the planned oneshot, I question if this - or any longer and bigger adventure really - is good enough for me to put on a final version. Again, don't get me wrong, I think it will go great and has great ideas, I just don't know how well my own experience translates into the world.

And I mean, the pointcrawl is to be made, right? If a readied map is given, the readied map will be played. That will require readied settlements, and pathways, and burrows.

And this will be the experience most people will ever have with cramOS, potentially. My mediocre adventure.

Maybe the truth here is a good burrow generator. Random tables and incrementing rooms leading to absurd structures that lose any sense of verssimilitude, but lean into the Weird and how alien the Creators are from both the Droids, but also the Players and what they assume from them.

Every other room needs a source of Scrap, locked behind a challenge or danger. Most need enemies, like phager droids, dimmed droids, and the abyssal dimmed (calling the droids dimmed the same as the big monsters has not been a good decision).

Every burrow has a dangerous problem to be solved to reach the bottom.

I think we are getting somewhere.

REWARDS

Another point of current pondering is the End of a Burrow. The cache, the pot of gold on the end of a rainbow.

My reflections on the True Mystery Table has pushed my path away from a predetermined series of clues and hints to a predetermined group of answers. So what was once "Everytime the players reach the bottom, give them a Truth from the table" is losing space to... well, to nothing at the moment.

The end of a burrow doesn't translate to the most precious thing a Droid wants, but what the human that dug that burrow was looking for. Droids want scrap, and better parts, and humans, as far as my concepts go, didn't dig brutalist machines into the depths of a near rock solid planet for having body parts in big chests.

So how do I aggregate;

So the answer is not a mystery or a clue. Possibly a diagetic upgrade like the big Arcanum from Into the Odd, lean into the Scifi for quasi-magic items. Or even a Bargain offered, some sort of change to the Droid. Leave the Dungeon Crawling and Survival behind, embrace the Weird. There is never enough Weird.

Or maybe the answer really is loads of scraps and body parts.

I started this train of thought with: "the end of a burrow doesn't translate to the most precious thing a Droid wants". Is that really the truth?

See. Typing this out did help.

MORE PLANET, MORE PEOPLE

More ideas to put down. Two different religions, classify the phaging groups as a Thing, direct the pointcrawl to a more clusterized map in order to have burrows that communicate for larger goals.

Clustered regions also make for a more lively planet. Desert plains cluster, mountainous cluster, the crater. Less of a huge net of points to all sides, more controlled experiences of narrative.

GAME LOOP

It's interesting to realize the respite limitation doesn't allow for megadungeoning unless the rule is broken by special chambers. The game really pushes for a swing between diving deep for resources but leaving it to use above the deep hells.

I feel the game could have a lot of fun with factions and more developed groups of Droids for surface conflicts if that's a vibe for a table. But the balance feels right with going down and up and down and up. Both should push you to the other, none should be able to have the entire game alone.

The principle of All Burrows are Droid Hell also got me pretty excited; if a Player ever enters a Burrow nonchalantly, the tone is off. Few should confortably walk up their gallows.

WHAT IS COMPLETED

COMBAT. As deep as it will be.

BODY PARTS. Immaculate. Final adjustment on how body parts can be used in combat made me very content (lower a condition dice to use it in combat and deal d12 always, but also requires a save to be effective, which in turn could be a second use of that part for one attack). Would you pay two conditions to deal a certainty D12?

SCRAP. I hope I don't have to balance loot amounts. The Departed help us.

CHARACTER CREATION. I have been feeling three body parts as starters is far too much. More than half of their slots? And bad stats start with four?! Two and three I am sure will be a fair amount.

PENDING RANDOM TABLES