[Cube: The Descent]: a tabletop pseudo-roguelike
Sir Fungus:
Hello!
I've been working on a game with a friend of mine for quite some time now, and we've recently been able to release a skeletal rulebook on our site. The formatting is probably very awkward, there's no illustration (yet), and its contents were simply drawn from what we already have online. On the other hand, we've managed to have two GMs playtest it successfully for the past two months, and the campaigns are still going on. Our content is disorganized, but I'm in the process of taking care of that as we continue to approach a real release.
The idea behind Cube is that I've wanted to make a tabletop fantasy game with as little clutter as possible. The entire game world is based off cubes. Characters take minutes to create instead of hours, and all rolls are done with d6 dice. Instead of long lists of very specific (yet similar) monsters, the GM bases them off templates. The same goes for items.
Now, my one problem so far has been distinguishing our game. We clearly have two things going for us: the cubes (from which we derive the name) and the templates. My question is, how far can we run with the cube idea? What else can we do with the cubes? What do you see in the system that can be further reduced into templates?
Callan S.:
Hi SF,
Have you decided how far you need to go with the cube idea to be happy with it all? I'm assuming somethings missing in being happy with it. Or if your happy with it now - what's stopping you from deciding it's done already?
In terms of distinguishing, I think a game with a complete procedure (ie, what to do from start to end of a session) will show off what it is. While those with incomplete procedures tend to be all the same because people simply make the missing parts the same as the way they always play. One missing part in traditional designs is when to bring in monsters, how many, how often, etc. And I don't mean guidelines - people take guidelines and then play the way they have always played/guidelines make your game non distinguishable from others.
I like your layout. For some reason it's quite nice on the eye? Or atleast my eye...
Ar Kayon:
Length, width, and height can be used to represent 3 individual, yet complementary aspects of a skill, character, class, or power.
Jason J. Patterson:
Seems a good suggestion. I personally am not seeing a particularly strong cube theme here except where you literally say "cube" in the text of your document. Either you've seamlessly integrated the idea into your document so well that it is indistinguishable, or you're building a system around a gimmick you're not actually using - those are just my first blush impressions - I'm just not getting a cube vibe; it's seems pretty bog standard.
I know it's a rough draft, but maybe if you formatted the PDF to spread out the rules a bit more, add more whitespace and set the sections and rules and main ideas apart (races, stats, etc), it would help make it less laborious to go through - it is not necessarily complicated, but it does look very cluttered, in my opinion.
Again, I'd offer additional suggestions related to your cube idea but I can't see where it's been implemented (and this may simply be my own failing), so I don't really understand your meaning or what you're looking for.
Chris_Chinn:
Hi SF,
I'm not clear on the use of roguelike here. Is it roguelike in that there's a dungeon with monsters? or is there more to it?
From my understanding, one of the big appeals of roguelike games is the sorts of strategies that come up from very specific rules intersecting ("Damn! I picked up cursed armor! I'll transmogrify myself into a rust monster, and eat the armor, then transform back.") - which seems to be the opposite of the approach you're taking here.
Is there something I'm missing? There's a sizable audience for roguelike games, so if you hit the game experience in any way, you might be able to highlight that.
Chris
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