Home of the Odd Duk

Gamer ADD and Raspberry Dreams

Joe Bloch talks about the infamous gamer add and lists progress on his ongoing projects. I wish my gamer add had a higher rate of quality and completion. 🙂

Like most folks afflicted with this dreaded disease, keeping a lot of things going fulfills the itch to develop new ideas while the blog allows for them to be organized to enable ongoing work on these ideas. I created this blog over three years ago and still have yet to reach 100 posts. I post more frequently now about a few OSR things like Tekumel, 2nd Edition D&D, and various retroclones.

Oddly enough, the most popular destination on my site references material for the Statis-Pro Football game that used to be made by Avalon Hill. (Yes, THAT Avalon Hill). After that, folks are either looking for the word anthroparion or a link to all the OpenD6 material.

Having said all that, here are the things that currently fuel my Gamer ADD:

    •  Andras - My attempt at a 2e-inspired clone, complete with various worlds including:
      • Tiezerakan - Fantasy amongst the stars. Not Spelljammer.
      • Dwaneyarda - Second Earth is a high fantasy setting.
      • Lorica - Mecha action in the far future!
      • Tanah Con-Rahn - Elements of Southeastern Asia featuring a unique (to the Andras rules) magic system and a non-European setting.
    • Shayakand - Over two years in development, this Nevermet Press project is a Savage Worlds setting best described as Hyborea meets the Vedas.
    • Statis-Pro Football teams, rules, and tweaks. Along with this, I am also recalibrating the tables used to build individual cards.
    • Open D6 including the Six-Sided Fantasy Reference Document. Recently, hereticalee from the WEG Fansite Forums has been creating the rtf and html versions of the OpenD6 books.
    • Knock and Durak card games. Knock is like Crazy Eights, Durak is a Russian card game that works like multi-player War.

That's enough to keep anyone going. As I said earlier, I hope to attain the quantity and quality of material produced by the Greyhawk Grognard.

In addition to Gamer ADD, sometimes a concept fires into the brain that is too large to finish in any reasonable time-frame. I guess you could call it the Meta Trap. It starts as a simple idea that then requires the entire reworking of a major feature of a game. For example, the classifier magic idea has evolved in my notes to be something like a Verb-Noun magic system found in Ars Magica. The difference is that instead of the five verbs and ten nouns, the idea has mushroomed into twelve verbs, thirty-five nouns and ten adjectives. That is a combination that could create up to 4200 spells. The idea would be that half of one percent of those spells would be cool, namely 210 spells, and could be made into a neat magic book. The problem is, who has time to generate 4200 spells?

Not me, that's for sure.

Despite this, it is still fun to dream. Next time, I hope to provide more details about Lorica, the mecha/tank game. Believe it or not, I have already created about forty different mecha for it and lots of weapons.

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3 Comments

  1. Ben.

    I’m curious what the other 7 verbs and 25 nouns are. I find just about everything I need for magic to be encapsulated within the current system, with a possible exception of Tempus. I’m particularly interested in the role played by adjectives.

    Yes, I play and write a lot of Ars Magica. 🙂

    -Ben.

    • John Payne

      Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the thoughts of someone that knows Ars Magica better than I do. I agree that Ars Magica has everything you need. The idea behind the multiple verbs and nouns is more of a cultural distinction rather than a utilitarian one.

      In other words, the current Ars Magica system does everything you need it to do. It is pretty much complete (though you would know better than me because you have played Ars Magic for longer). It is also characterized by a scientific almost taxonomic approach.Given that Latin is the language of science, using Latin give is the feel of a scholarly pursuit. It is one of the things I really like about it.

      The idea behind the Classifier system is based on a few Southeastern Asian languages. These languages are characterized by a classification of nouns. In a sense, I am thinking of each classifier as what Ars Magica would call a form. These languages range from about 8 classifiers to hundreds! I want to have forms that would go beyond the ten forms of Magica, but not too many. So I picked a smaller number from which I could pare them down later. For example, there is a classifier for animals, just like there is an animal form in Ars Magica. However, there is also a classifier for small objects with curves (rings, hooks, ball bearings), things that drip (water, blood, ink, dew) as well as things like fruit and people.

      Is it needed? Not really, but it provides a different sense to magic. To those outside of magical study, it appears arbitrary and even redundant. To those that know magic, however, it is just what learning the language of magic requires. In the same way, this classifier system can be what is difficult for folks learning, Malay, Korean or even Filipino.

      I will list them all if you like.

      • Ben.

        “I will list them all if you like.”

        Yes please. I’m curious about them, if only to consider for aspects of a nonHermetic tradition.

        -Ben.

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