Nothing physical or programmed.
It's a game in a sense. To explain, there is a geek culture out there of roleplayers, which takes place in many forms, the one I do is the kind that actively roleplay in MMORPG's (perhaps think "less socialable LARPers), or at least, I play Final Fantasy XIV and run a roleplaying community there, I did so on a whim, never roleplayed, never ran a guild on an MMO, but thought, "this is something I gotta try" and threw myself in the deep-end and have found it a LOT of fun. The idea is you create your own character, give them a personality and story, you play the game as these characters - to me, it brings two of my biggest loves together, writing and gaming. I have about 8 different characters I roleplay, the group follows a pirating, crime and black market theme. You essentially interact with the game's world and lore. It is very geeky, but awesome.
This kind of thing stems from the old tabletop roleplays, like Dungeons and Dragons. What I am looking to do is create a roleplaying system that enhances roleplay, makes a game of it, like you would with Dungeons and Dragons. So, you make an action, role a die (or some dice) which helps determine the result of said action. I proposed the idea to my community, they like the idea and would love to try it out.
So I figure for NaGaCreMo, I will look to create a game that can be integrated with our roleplay.
As an example, this is the roleplay I tested the water with. One of my characters, X'hayu, got into an argument with a pirate called Amelia. It escalated into a fight, so they agreed to meet at a specific place to fight it out.
What I did was have an action, so "X'hayu swings her sword at Amelia, if it connects, blood will be drawn" and then have the reaction "Amelia jumps to the side to dodge X'hayu's attack." How we did on that occasion, because we were only testing the water, is flip a coin to see if the action is successful or not and play the fight out until the odds decline in somebody's favour...in that instance, I lost the fight.
[Warning: There is an offensive comment in the chat log, hence the picture sits in a link]
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y173/seppuku05/ameliavsxhayu_zps59935685.png
The idea is to have a system where a fight like that can be done less randomly. We decided they were evenly matched, so flipping a coin was good for this test. But of course things like Dungeons and Dragons run off of difference rules and principles to the game and rely on character sheets as well and so on. So the idea is to make something that works with our roleplaying.
To my mind, this makes roleplay a little more unpredictable and exciting and also avoids what's called "godmodding", where somebody deflects every attack. Perhaps like playing a multiplayer game and somebody has god mode switched on. For example, the above roleplay, X'hayu and Amelia are exceptional fighters, unchallenged and unbeaten by many, this is an excuse some roleplayers will use to say "my character wins" and it can spoil it for all if you get into a fight with somebody who makes themselves unbeatable. It is generally considered bad roleplay, because realistically speaking, you aren't unstoppable, nobody can be Chuck Norris except Chuck Norris, I'm afraid and he lost to Bruce Lee, anyway.
The good news here is that I already have some systems in play from RPG's I've tried coding before, so I can use some of the calculations and systems and put them to paper and mould them around FFXIV. I wish to use something simple, easy to follow and remember that's effective and fun to play. Hence I am not reading D&D manuals to do this, because a system that indepth couldn't be done in a month and wouldn't benefit us, because we'd be roleplaying with a manual by our side.
But it's not all fights and battles though, just one element. What I run is very plot focused, so it follows a story and various characters who play a part in it and have stories of their own. With it, I even write stuff for characters - like short stories. For example, as pirates, we aren't looked to positively on by a group in the game called the Maelstrom, who are essentially the navy of city state called Limsa Lominsa, one of their corrupt officials sought to blackmail my character, Captain Saefinn, who, instead of being black mailed, decided to go to war with him, because he's very headstrung and protective of his crew. In this, a series of back & forth happened, until he came to this realisation, he was a liability on his crew and felt the best thing to do was turn himself in so that his crew could be safe. Because of the horrible crimes he's committed (and they're not very pleasant) it meant the death penalty. Well, for it I decided to write a short story of his confession:
Click me to read. Which basically sat between 2 roleplays, one where he tells a character called Rose he's turning himself in and passing his reigns to her and the the follow up RP where everybody clubs their heads together to come up with a plan to break the Captain free and stop him from swinging from a noose. Stuff like this can be quite exciting when you get into the flow of things.
Coding wise, I think I would program any calculators, perhaps using ASP.NET so they can be put to web use, some already exist for the MMORPG's stat system, like
this calculator I use when choosing what gear to upgrade on my healer. Something similar could be done with stats from a character sheet.
Of course now, you can see me for the sad git I am.
I've been running this since FFXIV: A Realm Reborn was in BETA, our group used to have a really good reputation on the Gilgamesh server, but since we transferred to Balmung, we've done less to make a name of ourselves - but I am looking to change that (sadly, we had some drama issues after moving servers and that took a lot of my attention)
