Tag Archives: neverwhere

Neverwhere 3rd Edition – Development Diary

Posted by grimachu on

System
The idea behind imploding/exploding 1s and 6s is that they can account of the occasional bout of good or bad luck without over-dominating as criticals can in other systems, like Cyberpunk 2020. A professional, competent character can expect to succeed even if they roll a one, at least at a usual task, it’ll take a string of bad luck to make them screw up and 6s allow anyone to – occasionally – have that string of heroic luck that makes all the difference. How this might work in practice could be:

Example One:
Sutter the Crouch Ender is trying to scramble away from one of The Shepherds who is pursuing him after a failed raid on the Shepherds to free one of the groups friends. Sutter tries to escape by wriggling through a sewer grate that he knows is too small for the Shepherd to follow. Normally the Games Master would let this just go ahead, but since he’s being pursued and is under duress the GM demands a roll. Sutter is ‘Small’ and ‘Wriggly’ and is a ‘Professional Tunnel Rat’. This gives him a bidding total of 5. The grate is ‘Small’ and ”Rusty’ and ‘Stinks’, giving it a bidding total of 3. Sutter rolls a 6, another 6 (explodes) and a three. This gives him a roll total of 7 (6, +1 for the extra six, nothing for the three). The grate rolls 5. Sutter’s total is 12, the grate’s total is 8. Sutter’s through the grate and away by a considerable margin.

Example Two:
Bork is a Bravo, he finds himself facing down a guard from Earl’s Court. Bork is a ‘Professional Bravo’ and is ‘Wiry’, ”Lithe’ and ‘Deadly’. That gives him a bidding total of six. The Earl’s Court Guard is a ‘Professional Man at Arms’ and it ‘Tough as old boots’ and ‘Experienced’. He’s also ‘Old’ which Bork bids against him. The Guard has a bidding total of 4. Bork rolls 1, 1 again and then six. This gives him a roll+bid total of 6, He scores one for his initial roll, takes away the 1 from the second and discards the six. The Earl’s Court Guard rolls 4, getting a total of 8. Enough to beat Bork who’s had a hard time of it in this fight so far.

Neverwhere 3rd Edition – Development Diary

Posted by grimachu on

Well, I just re-read through Neverwhere 2nd Edition to see what I had and where I need to go and I’ve laid out the skeleton of the new book. Basically that’s what I do with any project, I start by outlining the chapters, sections, headings and subheadings that I predict are going to be there and create a skeleton upon which to hang the rest of the writing. Then, when I’m actually writing the piece, I go back and I fill in the gaps with material, bit by bit. It helps break up an otherwise daunting task into a lot of smaller, more managable jobs.

Frankly though, I’m in awe of myself seven years ago, the 2nd Edition of Neverwhere is bursting with creativity and, while it’s rough around the edges and not necessarily clear enough in some places that creativity shines through. Kudos younger me, kudos! What definitely does need attention however, is the system.

Currently in the second edition a character is made up of a description of five adjectives and three skill levels, when you approach a task you tap into appropriate adjectives, apply a skill if appropriate, roll a d10 and add it on comparing against a difficulty/enemy to see if you win. That’s pretty much the complete extent of it.

I want to change this a little and here’s some of the rules changes I think I’ll make.

  • Characters are still defined by five adjectives and three skill levels but I’m going to account for adverbs and change the description of the skill levels. Adverbs describe multiples or strong traits, eg: ‘Very strong’ for two and something else like ‘extremely’ for three. Skills will come in Novice, Professional and Master capabilities and will be quite broad, more like professions I think.
  • The dice will change to a d6 – being more accessible and 6s and 1s will ‘implode’ or ‘explode’. If you roll a ‘1’ you take that away from your total and roll again, continuing to roll and take away if you continue to get 1s. Sixes will go the other way, adding 6 each time (or possibly only adding one). This allows for consistency in characters that are really good at things, occasional nasty botches and also wild, luck-fuelled success.
  • There’ll be victory consequences and however much you beat a difficulty by lets you buy consequences. EG you might negate someone’s traits by injuring or humiliating them, or give them new negative traits that can count against them.
  • Characters will be able to take negative or ‘mixed’ traits at character creation.
  • Static challenges will also be governed by words. EG: A wall might be ‘Slippery’ and ‘smooth’ and ‘very tall’.

Let me know what you think.

Neverwhere – And so it begins…

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Here we are then…

The push got a grand total of 176 new followers spread across Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and Livejournal which is pretty healthy going I reckon! I’m now committed to producing a new edition of Neverwhere and commissioning some additional art (Raven, I’ll be in touch soonish about that when I have a more definite plan for the book).

I’d like to keep this communication and rapport going between the people who’ve decided to follow me and who want to see the new edition come about. I want your suggestions – not that I’ll necessarily use them – things you’d like to see, features of London that you think I missed, streets and stations that would make good features of London Below, maybe ideas from your own games that worked well. I’ve already slightly altered the title (see above) based on the negative feedback from the previous post, but try and make any comments a little more helpful and directing, eh? ‘It sucks’ doesn’t much help me out.

The first thing I need to do, as I discussed, is to re-read and re-watch Neverwhere in its various original forms, book, TV Series and Graphic Novel as well as re-reading the old version of the game (something I’ve already done, wincing at the terrible presentation, something that will improve greatly I assure you.

I’ll keep you all updated here on a regular basis, but I can’t guarantee that being a daily occurance as it looks like I’m still going to have a lot of freelancing on my plate and I’ll have to squeeze Neverwhere in around that.

Some initial thoughts I have are:

  • Working The London Eye, The Millenium Dome and The Gherkin in, as well as any other developments in London that have come about since 1996 (ye gods I’m old) when the TV series first came along. This would include parts of the Jubilee Line Extension and the extensions of the Docklands Light Railway.
  • Adding in some adventure seeds and expanding many of the A-Z entries.
  • The system will remain largely the same, maybe a bit more finesse for the multiples/skill levels and better knack definitions. The major difference will be in (optional!) more codified consequences and working out negative adjectives and their implication. Basically I’m thinking that when you win a challenge you can dictate certain levels of outcome depending how much you beat the target by.

First things first though, reading! In depth reading at that!

Neverwhere 3rd Edition – Some development decisions

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0. Preparation
It’s obvious that I’ve hit the sufficient number of adds and followers that I wanted in order to meet the trigger to develop Neverwhere 3rd Edition, so between contracted work, that’ll be the thing I work on next. In preparation for that I intend to a) Re-read the book, b) Re-watch the series, c) Read the graphic novel version. I’ll also re-read the 2nd Edition of the game, it having been some years since we put it together.

1. Primarily for Laptop/Screen
Any form of print is going to result in direct profit for someone. So that’s right out. The game can only be developed for home-printing and for giving away electronically. This means it’s only going to be 72dpi – at least the elements that aren’t scalable – and optimised for landscape at proportions approximate to US Letter, so it could still be printed. It’ll be PDFed and, depending on time, interlinked/hotlinked between pages – may as well do that if it’s primarily going to be electronic access.

2. Expanded rules – but not TOO expanded.
We were ahead of the game by quote a few years when we wrote Neverwhere with systems like PDQ, FATE and HeroQuest now using these narrative, descriptive, non-statistical terms for character definition. Neverwhere has a certain purity to it though and it’s easy for non-gamers to get the idea of just describing characters. There’s a purity and simplicity here that I want to preserve, without all the complications and add ons that – to one degree or another – swallow up the advantage of the simplicity in these other systems. Neverwhere does need some more (optional!) hard and fast rules though for governing things like combat, consequences and so on.

3. Rewrite/Rework/Remodel
Neverwhere 2nd Edition is basically sound as a book, it just needs a lot better presentation and a good going over to make sure of everything. A reorganisation, a bit of updating, a few additions and an improved system.

4. Unified Art
All art will be done by Raven Morrison for this edition to give it a unified look and feel. I’ll be working on the layout etc to try and give it a ‘found object’ fanzine/manuscript look, in keeping with the background and idea of the book.

[Update] Spinning a Web – Neverwhere 3rd Edition hostageware.

Posted by grimachu on
Congratulations! We’ve reached the target and stand at 105 adds for the month with a week still to go!

This means that my next project, barring freelancing, will be Neverwhere 3rd Edition, before anything else. I’ll commission a little more art for it in the next week or two but if you can get me to 150 followers before the end of the month I’ll pump some more money in and get even more art. So, what you’re campaigning for now is an even shinier, even better Neverwhere 3rd edition than before!

Here’s the various social networks that count for this exercise:

TWITTER
FACEBOOK
MYSPACE

Spinning a Web

Posted by grimachu on
OK guys, here’s the deal. I have a lot of freelancing on at the moment which means I’m going to have a fair amount of spare cash at the end of it. This gives me the opportunity to do ‘stuff’ that I might not otherwise do. I have various personal projects lined up for after the freelancing hump but I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse…Social Networking is important to me as I like to engage with my audience – or potential audience and get feedback on what I’m doing. To date it has been hard to get that and I think the issue is somewhat down to audience size. It’s also an important part of my ‘process’ as a writer to get a lot of stimulation and ideas from what’s going on around me, in the news and on the net. Conversation works better than static information for that.

So, you get me contacts, followers, friends and other voyeurs to my creative process and I’ll get you a third edition of the free Neverwhere RPG, ahead of my other projects, for free. If I can get 100 followers across Twitter, Livejournal, Facebook and Myspace by the end of the month (June 30th 2009) that’ll be the next thing I work on. For every 50 followers over that I’ll commission some extra art to make this into a completely professional and lavish production as well as improving the rules and updating the information.

Seems like a good deal doesn’t it?

Here’s the various social networks that count for this exercise:

TWITTER
FACEBOOK
MYSPACE

I’ll keep count on Twitter/Facebook and if you don’t make it this month, we’ll try again later on.

Neverwhere

Posted by grimachu on

Way back in the mists of time I got permission from Red Hat on behalf of Mssrs Henry and Gaiman to make a non-profit version of an RPG based upon Neverwhere. This is the second version made and it will be replaced in due course with a third edition, but meanwhile, here’s the link to download the pdf.