Hobbies And Interests
Instructions
Think about a proper world for your game. Role-playing games allow players to create individual characters, who serve as the heroes in a free-form story. Your game needs to provide a background for those heroes: a universe, a setting, a notion of what kinds of stories they can become involved in and supporting characters (such as villains, sidekicks and neutral bystanders) with whom they can interact. Develop your world in as much detail as you can: its history, its geography, the kind of people who live there, the problems to overcome and pertinent non-player characters such as the rulers of nations or criminals who will come into contact with the players' characters.
Create a system of rules to govern your role-playing game. Rules are used to measure an individual character's traits and skills (a "strength" rating of 1 to 10, for example), to determine the probability of a given character succeeding at a given task (usually by rolling dice), and to determine the effectiveness of things like weapons and spells. Set up the basics of the system first, then develop it until it covers any given circumstances which might take place in the game.
Play-test your game system by running sessions with your friends and noting areas which seem "broken." That includes specific traits or skills that are too strong (a gun no one ever misses with, for instance), too weak or otherwise don't work within the system. Revise and polish the rules through play testing until you're satisfied that they work well. If you don't, your customers will find the broken elements and be forced to jury-rig their own rules in order to fix them.
Write up any advice you wish to provide for game masters--the "referees" who lead the other players through the story, play out the role of supporting figures, present threats and dangers to overcome and arbitrate rules disputes when they arise. A few pages helping them establish the right tone for the game and create great story ideas can help your final product immeasurably.
Organize your writing into specific chapters and lay it out on a printing program such as InDesign. You can simply type it up if you wish, but it looks much better with a more formal layout. You may want to hire an artist to draw a few pictures for the game that you can then insert on pertinent pages, and you can also use copyright-free spot art that fits the tone you're hoping to create.
Revise your game: spell-checking the text, polishing the prose, correcting any rules problems and cleaning up any last-minute mistakes.
Add a cover page, a title page and a table of contents at the beginning of your game and an index at the end of it.