Boy howdy, have I ever been busy since my last post. Up until now, my blog posts have been a little behind the actual amount of progress I have made. I had written them more or less in sync with the work as it was completed but wasn't ready to post until recently. In fact, by the time this post is up, it will probably be a little behind as well.

Because a lot has been going on, I have decided to break this up into several sections instead of one coherent topic.

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Recap

To start, let’s recap everything that has been done so far.

• published a website with Netlify

• set up some deployment automation (CI/CD for the software devs out there)

• put together some branding

• started writing the actual system

• set up a blog

Overall, I'm having a blast writing with this project. My day job rarely ever provides the opportunity to work on anything front-end related (granted, I don’t go out of my way to look either). I might have jumped the gun a bit putting together some brand material, but I want to have some semblance of a brand if I am going to put this out there. The site and blog have turned out well enough, but I’m going to have to combine them into one soon to avoid some SEO issues down the road. Now that we are all caught up, let’s move on to some other topics I want to address.

What is an MVP?

I was nervous initially when I made my first post, but the community has been supportive, and the feedback, while critical at times, has been constructive. At the very least, it has given me food for thought. One thing I have noticed though is that there is a difference of opinion in what a minimum viable product (MVP) is. Let’s start with a definition:

An early, basic version of a product (typically a computer program or piece of technology) that meets the minimum necessary requirements for use but can be adapted and improved in the future, especially after customer feedback. wikipedia

I get that this is not a software project, but I can at least apply my own interpretation to what this would mean. My TTRPG interpretation of an MVP is a basic starter kit. It would include core mechanics and some world building. A polished starter kit in my opinion will give me a clear idea if it is worth expanding that product. A fully featured product by comparison would be a two-hundred page rulebook/campaign setting with all the bells and whistles. I would rather write fifty pages worth of content, find out no one is interested in this, figure out why, and either pivot or shelve the idea.

Getting Organized

Looking at the recap above, it should be of no surprise that I haven't been exactly focused on my approach. I would spend one evening just dumping random rules into markdown files, another evening organizing the site, and the night after setting up a mailing list, etc. There hasn't been any method to my madness, and that changes now.

I need to apply a little time management. My first iteration of that is going to be:

Another question I keep getting is whether the blog is cutting into precious development time of the TTRPG itself. It is a little bit; however, not as much as you would think. The benefits I get from writing it far outweigh what I would get from spending a little extra time writing content. It allows me to organize my thoughts about the game, get immediate feedback from the community, and spread the word about what I am doing. From what I’ve read since then, it seems like it is a crucial part of marketing in preparation of a Kickstarter campaign. There is a recurring blog/site that keeps recommendations on this topic. I never got around to clicking it and can no longer find the reddit posts that have it. If someone reading this thinks they know what the post is, can you share it with me? I’ll update this post to link to it.

Next Steps

I spoke about time management, but what am I doing with that time? Well buckle up, because here it is! Before anything else, if my MVP for this is going to be a starter kit, then I’d better start researching how other TTRPGS put together theirs. Some starter kits on my list: D&D, Fallout, City of Mist, and Call of Cthulhu. I got this list from some random blog post (sorry to whoever wrote it, I wasn’t thinking or I would have saved it!). The list said they were the best starter kits (it seemed a bit arbitrary to me). Arbitrary or not, it’s as good as anything I have to go off of. I think the real winners of this are my friends because now I’m going to buy and GM at minimum 4 different systems for them.

At this point, some of you may be asking why I’m choosing D&D if I have already played that system for years. My reasoning is I will to use that as my baseline in which I’ll compare the rest of the systems to.

Because it will take time and money to go through those systems, I’ll have to keep myself busy with other tasks as well. I noticed the last time I looked at the site there are some mistakes in formatting. That should be an easy fix and it will help me take inventory of what I have so far.

After that, I’d like to rename the Introduction to Game Rules and write an actual introduction for people new to the system. It should outline what it is and what the expected flow of the game looks like, as well as any expectations for the players and GMs of the game.

Finally, I’d like to actually start fleshing out the roles. I’m in a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario here. One of my roles should be tightly coupled space travel and combat, but it’s really challenging to design a system that translates to tabletop that is fun and engaging. So, I’m just going to kick that space can farther down the road and pick two roles not explicitly tied to it.

I could add more to my to-do list here and expand on my thoughts for the intent of the game, but, truthfully, this feels long enough already and seems like enough work for now. This still doesn't seem super focused, but it is a huge upgrade from what I was doing before (nothing).

As usual, if you like what you are reading and want to follow along with me as I make progress on it please subscribe or follow me on Twitter / Reddit. If you want to check out the progress of System Theory I have a draft of the site deployed here!

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1. I commit a minimum 15 minutes/day (with Saturdays off). I find that if I start writing I tend to spend a lot more than 15 minutes, but this helps me avoid procrastinating.

2. I potentially do more than this, but I want to dedicate 1-2 hours of intentional engagement. I try not to count a quick reply I made while standing in line waiting to pay for something in this case. When I started doing this, it was just to find some communities where others were doing the same thing as me and hold myself accountable to stick with the project.

3. This could easily eat up a ton of my time if I go down this rabbit hole. It’s familiar and fun to do (for me anyway). If I didn’t time box this, I would be fooling myself that I am moving the project forward when in actuality I am playing around with another site generator.

Let's go back to the placeholder name; I liked it for two reasons, the obvious one being it refers to a gravitational singularity—perfectly in line with the space themes and all that jazz. Not very original but it evoked the feeling I wanted. The second reason I liked it is it doubled as a reference to the technological singularity and a society that is living in a trans-human era. Regardless, this name is out of the question, so no use dwelling on it.

I took a course on UX years ago and it touched on branding a little bit. For some reason it was the only thing that really stuck with me from that course (I'm sure other aspects of it has as well, but the rest of the course content probably blended in with my day-to-day work more than branding). This course outlined three different types of brand names: Evocative, Descriptive, and Whimsical. Evocative brand names are meant to evoke a certain feeling when you think of them and imply its values/personality without explicitly referring to it. Nike and Patagonia are two brand names that fit this perfectly.  Descriptive brand names contain clues to as to what it is. Examples that come to mind would be Cyberpunk, Dungeons & Dragons, and PayPal. Lastly, whimsical is playful, fun, and has no obvious meaning. Starbucks and Oreo, for instance.

With those points in mind, what do I want the themes of this universe I'm building to be? I want the tone, I think, to be overall serious and a little dark. I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, but I feel it is a lot easier to transpose comedy on a dark setting than the inverse. As I mentioned above, this ideally takes place in a somewhat trans-human world. Cyberpunk really captures that aspect and makes it a focal point of that setting in a way that I don't want to use. I want it to be present but so integrated into humanity that it's used less as a means of self-expression and nihilism and more as a tool in everyday life. I want it to have a heavy focus on politics and economics. The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov is one of my favourite sci-fi books, and I really would love to capture the essence of what he did there. Lastly, I really want to impart the feeling that the network of relationships of this setting means something. From the individual friendships and rivalries to the intrigue between nations and empires.

Having said all that, I did what anyone would do if they were casually writing a TTRPG whenever they get a few minutes of free time. I did some light searching on Google (unrelated: I'm thinking of switching to Duck Duck Go). I figured I'd start by seeing if there was some sort of similar concept to ‘singularity’ I can use that fits in with enough of the themes I outlined above. Initially, nothing really stood out. Anything with quantum or relativity either felt clumsy or too obvious. Skimming through mathematical singularities had a lot of interesting topics but was too far removed. Then I found it; Systems Theory:

Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e., cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function, and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" by expressing synergy or emergent behaviour.

Quickly reading up on it, a singularity in the context of Systems Theory could be defined as an arbitrarily small change that is commonly unpredictable and may lead to arbitrarily large effects. Based on my fifteen minutes of reading on the topic, it seems too perfect. Systems Theory is interdisciplinary and can be applied to many different topics, and the way it expresses social systems really captures the heart of what I mentioned above. What I lose by not being able to use Singularity explicitly as the name of the TTRPG I gain so much more by using System Theory.

I also manage to dip into both evocative and descriptive branding. I get the word association between different types of systems in space as well as evoking a science fiction feeling. The book I am making is also a game system; therefore, I am also giving clues to what is inside. With some subtle artwork, it should be relatively easy to convey what type of game I'm publishing.

I'm probably butchering what System Theory is supposed to be, but frankly I don’t care because I like the sound of it and I'm the one writing this. Besides, I can always change it later, but for now I am calling this game System Theory. I chose System over systems because, again, I like the sound of it, and it gives me a subtle differentiation from the actual discipline.

If you like the idea of this and want to follow along with me as I make progress on it, follow me on Twitter / Reddit for updates. If you want to check out the progress of System Theory I have a draft of the site deployed here!

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That said, I still didn't have a topic. In terms of non-fiction, anything I could write about has already been written to death. I've recently started working a lot with Machine Learning, but I'm too new to the field to contribute anything worthwhile. Plus, I wanted it to be fun to write, and even though I find the topic interesting I could easily burn out on it between that and my day job.
Okay, what about fiction? A novel was out. I didn't want that to be my first writing project. Short Stories? I don't really read them, so that was out too. As I was thinking about it one day, I happened to look over at the core rule book for Cyberpunk, and Ding! Ding! Ding! That's it! A tabletop RPG (TTRPG)! I've played Dungeons and Dragons on and off since I was a teenager and lately started branching out into other systems. This felt like the perfect project for me, and because I'd be designing a system in addition to writing some fiction, this presented even more like a software project. Perfect.

Next up, what was it going to be about? I'd grown bored of fantasy settings for the most part, and the market was already pretty saturated. I loved cyberpunk settings, but Cyberpunk Red was fantastic and already scratched that itch. That left space. I was sure there were already space-based TTRPGs out there, but I hadn't looked for any and was blissfully ignorant of what was already out there, so I could approach this with completely fresh eyes.

So, once I knew what I was going to write about, I needed to decide on the criteria for a minimum viable product (MVP). I wanted:

• to outline the setting.

• for it to be structured in a way I could add more content easily.

• a basic combat and skill system.

• a complementary system for spaceships.

• 5 distinct roles that characters could play.

• a single shot adventure.

• it to be no more than fifty pages.

• a name that would be remembered.

Let's go into this in a little more detail. I want to outline a campaign setting, and at its core I'll probably design it around what I like and what I think my friends will like. As of right now, I don't really believe this will take off, so at the very least I should consider my play group my core audience. I also don't want to go in-depth with it to start. I plan to get the bare minimum published and leave plenty of opportunity to iterate and expand later.

That leads into the next point; I want it to be structured in a way where I can easily distinguish between core rules and supplements later on. I have a vague idea how to package them together in what I'm loosely calling modules at the moment, but I will be thinking hard about this as I go on.

A basic combat and skill system is the meat and potatoes of any TTRPG; we need a way to do things. This might change by the time I publish a first draft, but I'm entertaining the idea of using a d100 system (using two 10-sided die.) My gut is telling me that this will make it easy to play around with balancing the mechanics, where it is essentially raw percentages. As part of this system, I really want to focus on politics and relationships. One of my favourite aspects of sci-fi as a genre is its ability to extract facets of society or the human condition and explore it through the lens of the world the author crafted.

I intend to develop a complementary system for spacecrafts. When I think of space sci-fi TTRPGs, I think of one thing: spaceships battling it out in space. This is the whole reason I settled on space as the platform. It also feels like it will be the hardest thing to capture in a tabletop game.

I am fashioning the system and gameplay as a single shot adventure. I would like a lot of my world building captured in this to start out.

For character building, I chose five distinct roles, because that is how many pre-made characters I want for the included adventure.

I want to keep this all around fifty pages of material to start simply because this is already a ton of work. If I structure this correctly, I should be able to expand it into a core rule book relatively easily. Or at least I feel that is the case. I'll probably get a dose of reality later on, but that's future Jake's problem, not mine.

Lastly, I need a name. Right now, I've given this project a code name: Singularity. It broadly captures what I want the feel of this game to be. Singularities have a few different meanings depending on the context, with the most obvious being a gravity singularity. In terms of technological singularity, I think it also loosely captures a cyberpunk feel to the game, which I want it to have but not be the dominant theme. While writing this post, I did a bit of searching, and to absolutely no one's surprise, a TTRPG game system already exists under that name. So, Singularity will remain a code name for the project and I will hopefully have settled on a permanent name before my next post.

As a bonus challenge, I want to see if I can come up with a progression system that doesn't focus around improving a character via leveling up. If this proves impossible, that's fine, but constraint breeds creativity, and I might get something good out of it.
Even for an MVP, that still seems like a lot. Especially considering I don't have much writing experience. As part of this project, I'm going to do my best to document my thoughts along the way.

If you like the idea of this and want to follow along with me as I make progress on it, follow me on Twitter / Reddit for updates. I made add more socials in later, but those I plan on being the most active on for now.If you want to check out the progress of System Theory I have a draft of the site deployed here. As of now it only shows the latest version but I hope to add a way to check different revisions eventually.

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