The Mushroom Press Design Blog

Wow I've had my head into designing the PWYW for Tiang Shang....

Had a nice big thread on RPG.Net discussing the game, put my head together with the design teams and we're working on a 2-year business plan, and we also re-named the project, finally settling on Tian Shang: All Above Heaven.

So David's contacting artists, we're putting together a financial plan, a release schedule, project goals, etc. etc.

It's been a lot of work!

I've been designing and writing for the intro adventure and the core system. There has been a lot of effort to keep the core mechanics as lean as possible and to explain them thoroughly. That means writing, re-writing, editing, testing, re-re-writing, re-editing, adding examples, and then I had to write a tutorial on top of that. Did I mention that the tutorial doubles as the first act of the intro adventure? Haha, my eyes are bleeding!!

It's hard work to write something for an audience like that. Ultimately the result will be clear, comprehensible rules with a solid jumping-on point for new players, so it's very worth it. But man, it is tedious.

So yesterday I took a break and wrote THIS Awesome shoot 'em up system I call SHMUP V.1. It's based on my childhood love of games like contra. It's got an isometric map, and it's all about run n' gun, baby. The rough draft is a bit. Well. Rough. But it's a full, playable game with two pages of rules!

If you want to give her a test, leave some feedback! I might make it into something yet!