Genesis

It all started in 2003, I used to attend an Italian forum of RPG players and got the idea to start to draw a setting done with my features: a strong religious framework, a new magic system and a new world where myths and lore brought to these features.

Then it came to my mind that there was something more to add, something that in traditional fantasy RPGs is often latent (this doesn't mean it is absent!): it was necessary to start from the baseline and build a culture which brings also values and principles. At those time, we were living the boom of the D&D 3rd Edition... a great game but based on game mechanics and nothing more.

So I started thinking to many ideas which should factor in a "new approach": as I said, religion was a milestone, therefore it was necessary to build a sound hagiography. Along with that I felt the need to have a deeper concept of magic, it was not enough to have a good number of spells; paradoxically I didn't care (and still I don't!) about the spells... it was important to build why magic exists and how it does work.

I didn't find a great support by the fellows of the forum except for 2 friends, Anto and Madmax who tried to follow me in this crazy idea. So time passed and I found in 2006 where I had to attend an extremely boring 2-day working meeting and in that occasion I wrote nearly 10 pages (handwritten) of the story of the genesis of my world.

I was very proud of it, so proud that the story has nearly unchanged since then and it is the backbone of the setting I have in mind. Weird...

I dropped the project in 2008 and took it back in 2011... I wrote some more ideas and good points and started to write a set of rules: I didn't want to "borrow" a system for something I felt intimately mine. I stopped the following year with half of a rule book (written in Italian too!).

In 2020 I had the chance to remove two inches of dust from my folder where I stored all my stuff and started again: this time in English and with a stronger motivation than in the past... You will know soon if I achieved the first target of a very wide project.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The concept of KUP RPG (part 1)

As promised, let us focus on an oustanding detail of my project: the KUP RPG.  Several years ago I started thinking of a game model where only the GM uses the dice and makes any action required to determine the events of the game. I talked about this idea with a friend who convinced me that this would have been a failure for sure in terms of interest and playability. I must admit that the discussion didn't last so much: the explanation he gave was solid... Gamers want to toss dice and ideally make 20! That's one of the keys for the success of the RPGs! I then set aside this idea and tried to elaborate something different which brings to the same result and found a solution that now I call KUP: Keep Uneducated Players. Before any further detail I need to explain the reasons that led me to rethink the current game model: one (and it is not the only!) aspect I dislike is the complete disclosure of any detail of the game mechanics to the players. First of all if you look at a moder...
Follow the white rabbit...

The concept of KUP RPG (part 2)

Once it is clear the background, my vision and the main idea, let us try to figure out some more details of the KUP model. The first main feature is that the rules are for GMs only. They need to learn and use them: I wrote "use" and not "apply"; despite the fact that in the majority of the traditional RPGs the "rule 0" is invoked (i.e. the rules in the book are subject to changes upon decision of the GM), I have tried to leave the rules open to the application of the GM (whenever it is possible of course). Therefore the GM has to learn the rules and then define how he wants to use them. The players do not need (or better have not to) read the rules, in particular those referred to the game mechanics. The second main feature is that some rules work on pieces of information that are known to the GM only; among these you can find that even some PC stats are not known to the players, they do not need to know these info (I called these unknown stats US, the acr...
Follow the white rabbit...

Core Rules: what is under the hood

After some days spent on DriveThru in order to understand how tricky is the preparation of a title over there, I am back to the real matter, the game. Let me only say: yes, I will likely put on DriveThru my stuff and as soon as the Core Rules will be ready, I will start a communication campaign. Now, what is in the rulebook: this book has 9 chapters, I will provide you with a summary of each of them here below. Ch.I - Introduction to the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG game; here you will read what is the KUP concept, what is the underlying rationale and how the rulebook is built. Let me add a detail: for this book I decided to write the rules in a (hopefully) easy to read way; short explanations, some examples and many many links to other related or recalled rules; in order to help the reader I outlined keyword or concepts in bold (now, with the formatting, I lost this feature but I will insert it in the printed version).  Ch.II - Character's definition: in this chapter all the main stats ...
Follow the white rabbit...