HORIZON
January 8, 2012
Right there you’ve got my first stab at a logo for “HORIZON,” my next big game project. (It’s meant to be an ambigram – that is, to read the same upside down and right side up. I’m like a pervert for ambigrams.)
My goal for HORIZON is to design most of it in public. The first draft is up in two formats: Bare bones PDF and even more bare bones .txt file. It’s very early days, so I’m still beating on the mechanics with very large sticks, but my hope is to reduce the beating to smaller and smaller diameter bludgeons until it hardly needs to be struck at all. In coming days, I’m hoping to enlist the aid of some friends and colleagues on this project, but I am, and will remain, very open to the comments of any real person who’s interested in the rules-engine design and who does not try to sell me any pharmaceuticals or miraculously inexpensive computer hardware.
More on the setting and my goals presently.
-G.
gregstolze 
January 8, 2012 at 9:14 pm
First of the first!
(So what’s this all about anyway?)
January 8, 2012 at 9:15 pm
I like what you’ve done with the place.
January 8, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Greg told me to post “first” here.
I’m glad the 6-10 system found a home, it’s a nice alternative to the ORE. It was easier to explain the difference between speed and effectiveness to my friends, since it boils down to high numbers stronger, low numbers faster.
January 8, 2012 at 9:17 pm
I am of course very interested.
January 9, 2012 at 12:02 am
I see the word “horroh” in the above logo. But I also understand the allure of the ambigram.
I’m intrigued. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with this project.
January 9, 2012 at 1:33 am
Third… life just ain’t fair.
At least another game is coming up from Stolze.
Looking up for more!
January 9, 2012 at 2:03 am
I saw this back when the dice mechanic was first shown off on RPG.net’s forums, I think. It looked kind of sparse at the time, but skimming through the beefed up rules, I kind of like the direction it’s going. I’ll have to consider things in more detail to get an idea of how the game would really flow in actual play.
January 9, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Definitely interesting. The system seems kind of opaque to me, with regard to what it looks like in play. But I am always shopping for a good abstract system, since I am usually dissatisfied by them.
January 11, 2012 at 3:35 pm
I’m interested in the game. Tell us more about what sort ideas, Greg, and you want to implement them in the rules; you know, magic, advantages and flaws, something like Company rules, expanding Moods to cover social interactions and so forth.
January 11, 2012 at 4:46 pm
I am thinking about the system and I am concerned that the chances of a match increase the closer your skill and attribute match, and to a lesser extent, the more dice overall you have. I don’t know how to do all the math, but at some point, you are almost guaranteed a match, and you will have little ability to just discard inconvenient matches. As a result, you will be stuck making ugly pairings. Is it smoothly advantageous to have more dice?
January 11, 2012 at 6:41 pm
RJ: Having more dice is better. Having close parity between dice types is a smart way to finagle your character. I think people like rolling bigger pools, and the idea that a bigger pool = better is pretty firmly ingrained at this point. I’m aware that the success curve is very steep – I’m OK with that. But I don’t think the math forces you into unwanted matches, with their resultant disasters: If I have a 1d6/1d10 pool, both dice have to match to force a match. If I have 2d6/1d10 or 1d6/2d10, then ALL THREE have to match to force me into a match, and so on and so forth. True, I may have to endure a simple fail to escape the match, but I can still do it. My SUSPICION is that most of the matches that wind up occurring in actual play will be voluntary – a case of “Sure, I’ll look like an ass-clown now to get a free power-up forever.” But we’ll see, I guess.
-G.