The Terminus Est RPG Project

When I design a game, or even write for a game, I typically write a brief design document that details what I’m trying to accomplish. Then, if I’m struggling between choices later on, I refer back to it. I try to make the choice that best compliments the original design thoughts. This adds a bit of purity in the design, and helps me make tough decisions.

So here’s the design document.

One year ago, it happened.

What happened? That depends on your troupe of players, and your personal choice. This game has four sample settings, but is open enough to play in any number of settings. What happened was, most of the world’s population died rather quickly. Depending on the specific setting, this could happen in any number of ways. We’ll get to that shortly.

Most importantly though, that wasn’t the end. It was the end of the world as we knew it, but humanity lived on. They lived, but things exist that wish to change that. These things might be demons. They might be aliens. We don’t really know. What’s important is, they don’t belong.

These monsters are beyond human power and reasoning. Your average person is nothing more than food for these beasts. But humanity has hope. Some of those killed didn’t stay dead. Some saw the fires of damnation, some saw the frigid absence of shelob. But now, they’re back. They’re back, and they’re tainted with the same power that fuels the scourges.

This game tells their stories. It tells the stories of those tainted by hell, but who take that power and use it to fight the forces of darkness.

This is a game of turning the darkness against itself.

There’s your basics.

I’m going to set the game in a generic “one year from now.” Now is defined as, “when and where you prefer.” The whole book will be written under the assumption that this apocalypse could have happened in any one of four times; The 1340s, 1918, 2010, and 2254. It also assumes that the GM can run the game whenever necessary, the four ‘default’ settings will be very barebones examples.

Four examples, you say? Why, yes.

Four is an important number. Four is the magic number. If I have to ask myself, “What’s going to be the number of X in the game?” I will assume that X = 4. There are four horsemen of the apocalypse. There are four sides on the die I’m using to run the game. There will probably be four main traits on a character. There will be four major PC types, and four major monster types. Why? It keeps things simple. It keeps important concepts in the front of players’ and GMs’ minds.

There’s the basic design document. I think it’ll help keep me on task for the rather small product I’m writing.

Thoughts?