I don’t actually talk about game design here a lot, because even though I’ve done it/am doing it, I still suffer from a fairly large case of imposter syndrome.

And… most of my game design ambitions revolve more around skinning things I already love like pbta (powered by the apocalypse) games, because I am far more of a setting nerd than a system nerd.

I like my systems like I like my… people…  Clean and relatively uncomplicated.  Or at the very least, easy to understand with a reasonable amount of effort on my part.

First, clean is not a moral judgement on any sort of person or game.  Mostly what I mean, is give me what you tell me you’re giving me.

If you tell me you’re giving me a pbta hack, then what I expect is a game with a relatively simple chargen and gaming mechanics.  An ideal convention game mechanics-wise if you will.

What I am not expecting, is a game with a 304 page player’s guide, and character gen system that makes no fucking sense, along with two other books.

Lookin’ at you City of Mist.

City of Mist is lovely, the books are very pretty.

However, referring to it as a pbta hack is false advertising.

But this post is not about City of Mist.  This post is about game design.

If you want a big, rules heavy, overblown game, make that.  Go for it.  If you like big, crunchy rules sets, you are not wrong or bad.  You just like big, crunchy rules sets.

But don’t make that, and then tell me that that isn’t what you’ve made.

Tell me what you’re giving me.

If you want a smaller, leaner rules set, cut away everything that isn’t that, and there you go.

I have waffled all over the place over whether or not I have a right to call Guns and Glamour a pbta game, because I added an extra step to character generation.

I am no longer waffling about that.

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Also, if you’d like to see what sort of fiction I write when left to my own devices, please feel free to check out my fiction Patreon, Nothing Nice Comes Out of My Head.