I haven’t posted anything for a while about the Kalyr RPG, the Fudge-based vaguely Vancian science-fantasy game I’ve been working on. I have been making slow and steady progress, to the point where the first draft is now substantially written. At times I’ve found it quite difficult to boil down something that’s been in my headspace for more that fifteen years into something coherent enough to be worth publishing, especially trying to seperate out the core elements of the setting from the specific detail of the games I’ve been running in it.
Here’s a summary of the chapters I’ve written; it more or less follows the outline I posted a few month’s back.
- Introduction – This is very short (just three pages) consisting of a brief summary of the setting plus a glossary of RPG terms.
- Character Generation – The first rules-heavy chapter, which I’ve knocked into reasonable first draft shape, although the rules themselves do need playtesting. Because I’m using a template-based system there’s actually quite a bit of world background buried in the text.
- Game Mechanics – This has proved to be the most troublesome chapter. It’s already undergone one complete rewrite and several further revisions. It’s now essentially complete, but still quite rough. It really needs some FtF playtesting.
- Psionics – The third rules-heavy chapter, but I’m much happier with the overall shape of the first draft. Still needs playtesting, of course.
- Equipment and Technology – Most of the text is there, but some things (such as weapons) need some game stats.
- Culture – This is the first of three chapters covering the world background. This one details culture, religions, and the political and legal systems. It’s mostly complete, but there are a couple of pure colour sections (stuff like food) that could do with expanding.
- Organisations – The second world background chapter covers the major organisations and guilds of Kalyr to which player characters are likely to belong. I’ve largely created this by pulling together and re-editing a lot of pre-existing notes. The section on The Legions needs expanding to the same level of detail as the two major guilds, and the whole thing needs a final edit.
- Nations – The first draft is more or less complete; like the previous chapter this one’s largely pulled together from existing notes, but I’ve written quite a bit of additional text covering things like adventure possibilities.
- Beastiary – Covers both minor races and animals. This one still needs a lot more work. Many of the entries (especially the animals) need fleshing out, and the whole thing lacks any game statistics.
- Campaigns – A lot of semi-random GM musings. Still needs quite a bit of editing.
There’s still quite a bit to do; most important is to give the thing a snappy name. “The World of Kalyr” is not going to cut it.
