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Has anyone tried making your own tabletop games? Whether it be something from scratch that never left the workbench to rewrite/tweaking of the currently existing systems?

I'm just rather curious if me and a couple of friends are the only ones who goes about doing this. We've been scratching away at making a tabletop game of our own for a couple of years just for fun. Nothing too serious. Just trying to make a system that works and is enjoyable (and have fun while making it). Its just a couple of us were kinda feeling boned when BFG went offline for good and there was something about Firestorm Armada that wasn't as satisfactory (mostly the lack of players in our area) so we just randomly decided to spend time to make a space-battle tabletop.

So tell us about your experiences! And if you have any advice-bones to throw at us (like playtest your games huehueGWhuehue) go ahead, I'll appreciate them.

I do this with Warwick Kinrade...

http://ironfistpublishing.com/

Its likely more commerical than you mean, but the basics of game design are the same.

The one bit of advice I would give is two-fold.

The first is to playtest for along time before ever releasing something. I think for Battlegroup Kursk we ran 18 months of playtests before release... and this was on top of modifying a system that had five years of previous testing...

Then after playtests, find a group to blind test it, as in they have never seen the rules draft before. Let them see if they can play a game from what you have written. A blind test allows players to try the game with no prior knowledge or assumptions. Its amazing how simple things that are missed, can be picked up from such tests.

Also have someone with no interest in gaming read your rules. If they can understand the basic concepts and mechanics correctly as written, with no explanation, then you are onto a good thing. Clear and concise explanations are key. But even then, be prepared to have a means of communicating with your player base to answer queries etc as these will inevitably crop up... No rules survive first contact with gamers! A forum or such is a great tool to answer queries and recieve feedback.

Finally, accept the criticism and feedback regardless... Dont argue with people over it. Rules are a very personal thing, and some people just wont like what you do. Dont take it personally as its just personal taste.

Do that, and you will at least have something playable, or at least you hope you will! Making it popular is another thing altogether...

I've made quite a few rulesets for myself over the years. a 1/72 scale WW2 combat game, a pen-and-paper D20 RPG with the emphasis on simplicity, and 2 Star Wars rulesets, one for space combat and one for 50mm ground skirmishes. On top of that, I've done a complete Supplement for LotR, and a fair few House Rules for Deadzone.

The tips, other than what is mentioned above:

- Know what you want to do with the ruleset. If you want to publish and sell it, then playtest the crap out of it, have it proof-read and edited, and make it as clear, concise and professional as you can. If, on the other hand, you want something to just pass round your local gaming scene to give you all something new to do, then don't necessarily sweat all that. Still do the best you can, but don't lose sleep over the wording of one rule when the only people that will ever see it are the people that wrote it in the first place, and therefore know what it means.

- Be prepared to make changes. Add rules, scrap them or completely rewrite them even after a single playtest (example: In my SW Space rules, I had a rule that no Flight Path template could cross that of another ship. This just ended up completely limiting the movement in practice, so it got binned after one test)

- Don't be afraid to nick stull from other rulesets; some mechanics just work best for what you want, there's no need to reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. If you like the way BFG handles movement or Firestorm does damage, then just lift and tweak the relevant sections.

Above all, enjoy it. The last thing you want to do is get so bogged down in writing the rules for a game for yourself that you lose interest, as that utterly defeats the point. This is why I favour simplicity in my rules, the longest one (the RPG) is I think about 10-15 pages and that includes 2 appendices and an example character build

I've mainly worked on card/boardgames, but these could apply:

A lot of the time, you have to go back and destroy old, even seemingly key mechanics/rules as they end up not working. Don't be afraid to kill your favourites.

Also, keep it simple (or know how to reduce). When working on something, you have first hand experience of the rules and 'know' everything, but to someone new it could be a convoluted mess.

If something is rather fiddly and doesn't have much impact in-game, think about removing it as it may have become an unnecessary speed bump in playing.

I've been doing this with my game for a while.

My main tip to you is to get the game on the table as soon as possible. Keep a notepad on hand, and just try everything as it comes up. You don't need the rules all written out, just start playing.

You will quickly find that ideas you had that you stressed over weren't that much of an issue, but other ideas you thought were cool end up being a pain or not intuitive. You can waste a lot of time writing only to find out that nothing worked.

You, luckily, have a group of friends that will playtest with you. Sadly, I don't. But if you do find other groups that will playtest, you should consider driving out to meet them as playing in person is a big deal.

Iv tried. its still in progress but i got busy burned out

I haven't but I'm gonna take this from the perspective of a gaming noob.

Get your very basic core mechanics mapped out first. How do people/planes/tanks move, and interact what is the turn order and how is it decided and how is combat/whatever else resolved.

Start with that Because if that isn't nailed down then your game falls apart.

I started playing x wing at Christmas and the starter rules are heavily stripped down, no actions, no upgrades just the very basics but it'd still fun. Sure it would probably get old quickly but the core mechanics being simple and fun made me instantly want to learn more. Pages of complex interactions and special moves would have been meaningless if that first interaction was too complex or just plain boring.

Thanks for all the advice! I'll be sure to keep these in mind when progressing with the project. We've actually just recently began to heavily edit some of the older rules in favor of streamlining them a bit and making the wordings more clear so that'll require some play-testing to figure out.

 Vertrucio wrote:

You, luckily, have a group of friends that will playtest with you. Sadly, I don't. But if you do find other groups that will playtest, you should consider driving out to meet them as playing in person is a big deal.

Ah, well most of us have sort of gone our separate ways now in terms of locations but we are still working on it through online. So not quite a group of friends who can playtest together anymore.

My specialty is incremental improvements: taking ideas and running with them.
Napoleonics, we have been having fun making rules like units seeing too much combat get winded, this to prevent deathstars, or at least give a means of defeating them.
My friend is a ideas out of nowhere guy so some stuff he thinks of are insane to implement.
I want to make an X-com game with elements from space hulk...
We heavily modified rules for FullThrust....
In our area is Hot lead, many people make their own games for that event.

I've built a few things (linked to in my signature), but I don't have a group that wants to playtest them so they're going slowly.

I've developed games pretty much as long as I have been gaming. I've made a semi-professional go at it before, and now I've actually started a proper company and invested far too much money into it. But professional or not, I have been writing rules for a long time.

I enjoy it immensely. Game design is very fun, but getting down to a genuinely working product takes a great deal of dedication. You pretty much have to accept the fact that things aren't going to be perfect (because they aren't), and that you aren't going to make everybody happy.

The smaller your intended audience is, the easier it is to design game rules. It is going to be a tough go if you are looking to put something together for wide distribution. If you are writing rules for you and your buddies they can be slipshod in execution, hazy in clarification, limited in scope, etc. "We all know what that means" is a perfectly fine way to handle something if you are going to be face to face with everyone playing the game.

Once you set out to develop a working product for the market, it is a different ball game, not the least because you have to consider the lifespan of your product. How much room for expansion is there? How much replay value does it have? When does the system begin to break down?

I believe it was Rick Priestly who said "kill your babies." Maybe it was Allessio Cavatore. Whoever it was, that's some of the best advice when it comes to game design. Never be afraid to kill your babies. If there's a rule or a system you absolutely love, don't be afraid to kill it if it isn't working. You can piss away a lot of time and effort trying to make something functional when the better course of action would be to scrap the offending concept and try something different.

I find that writing game rules is sort of like trying to escape after accidentally falling through the surface of a frozen lake. It is a wild, passionate struggle for survival, especially at first. There's an immediate, terrifying shock, then panicked, frenzied activity, then the penetrating, enervating chill begins to set in. It is here that most game development dies. The struggle is too much, the goal seems out of sight, your energy seems entirely spent... At that point you've got to power on with sheer force of will. Eventually, with a calm head and a strong heart you can break back through the ice and climb out, but you'll likely surface far from where you started. And you can't stop here either. You're still on the edge of death. You've got to keep your head, get a fire going, and carefully nurture life back into your body.

Also, math. Math, math, math, math. I hate math. You've got to know some math or get somebody to do the math for you. But if you are utilizing probabilities, you've got to know the math behind your mechanics.

And once you know the math, forget about it and play the game. What does it feel like to play the game?

I was recently tinkering with a game of mine, and my probability curves at XD6 with success on a 5+ and a requirement for a variable number of successes gave pretty much exactly the probability curve I was looking for. But rolling for 5+ on a D6 doesn't feel as fun in the context of the game.

It doesn't feel right. If you are rolling 5D6 in combat you don't want to see 2/3 of your dice 'missing'. It feels sucky. Oh, I rolled one success...out of five dice... 4+ feels right because you get a good load of successes (but not too many). Combat rolls are opposed rolls, so you are rolling off against a defender and comparing number of successes. It feels better for both players to roll and count up several successes. "I rolled 3 successes...damn, I only rolled 2." Better than I rolled 1 success and you rolled none.

So combat is better with successes at 4+, but do I want to complicate the rules by having variable target numbers and variable difficulties? What do I do about that? I want my probability curves from 5+ successes on static tests because making static tests hard enough has required success numbers that get really weird. Difficulty 4? What if you only have a dice pool of 3? Errg.

I was chasing down a problem with needing to balance the game for maxed stats and it was causing a huge problem for tests with lower stats. Solution? Increase the stats. But that's a problem in itself because the stats do more than impact dice pools. Solution? Increase dice pools, but don't increase stats. But that causes an explanation problem in the rulebook. All rolls are 1D6 + 1D6/Attribute... No. That's not going to happen. Solution? Add a special die to every pool. Stats remain the same, the game already has a special die added to some dice pools. Add that special die to all dice pools. Rework some game effects to run off of that special die in order to make it more relevant.

Check the math, change the game, see how it feels, make changes as necessary. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat... Eventually you'll get to something that isn't perfect, but it plays well and, most importantly, it is fun.

I've done a 40k rewrite and a Necromunda rewrite, and an original space naval game, 15mm sci-fi game and a 40k racing game.

I consider myself an amateur game developer because I have not done any published work, beyond the limited scope of my country and that I still consider amateur by today's standards.

I have still developed several games in the past the small community here found enjoyable and made local "fixes" in games that to my surprise were the official solutions by the developers when the companies decided to tackle them.

I will agree with most of the above scope, guides, direction are really important, the struggle between math and feel is huge as is the mechanics and how they really feel, it is important that a rule feels intuitive and a selection that is less ideal but makes sense to the mind of the player is more important that a rule that is better but the player cannot "feel" or "visualize" it.

My most adamant belief though is the fluff of your game must be represented by the rules, if this is not possible change the fluff to fit the rules, or create rules that will fit the fluff, but never have rules and fluff mismatch.

Personally I am trying to refine my design philosophy at the moment and try many different ideas and try to better define my basis.

But no matter what path you choose the mantra of operation, for any game developer must be one "Fail Faster"

Don't wait to get it at a good shape, don't wait till its perfect, get it out fast and get it out raw, get ready to be bruised and demand brutally honest criticism, it will save you much time refine your ideas faster give you more exposure time to feedback.

Don't be afraid to fail, embrace it and base on it, repeated failures bring experience and excellence, the faster you fail the faster you learn lessons and get good at what you do.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I consider myself an amateur game developer because I have not done any published work, beyond the limited scope of my country and that I still consider amateur by today's standards.

I have still developed several games in the past the small community here found enjoyable and made local "fixes" in games that to my surprise were the official solutions by the developers when the companies decided to tackle them.

I will agree with most of the above scope, guides, direction are really important, the struggle between math and feel is huge as is the mechanics and how they really feel, it is important that a rule feels intuitive and a selection that is less ideal but makes sense to the mind of the player is more important that a rule that is better but the player cannot "feel" or "visualize" it.

My most adamant belief though is the fluff of your game must be represented by the rules, if this is not possible change the fluff to fit the rules, or create rules that will fit the fluff, but never have rules and fluff mismatch.

Personally I am trying to refine my design philosophy at the moment and try many different ideas and try to better define my basis.

But no matter what path you choose the mantra of operation, for any game developer must be one "Fail Faster"

Don't wait to get it at a good shape, don't wait till its perfect, get it out fast and get it out raw, get ready to be bruised and demand brutally honest criticism, it will save you much time refine your ideas faster give you more exposure time to feedback.

Don't be afraid to fail, embrace it and base on it, repeated failures bring experience and excellence, the faster you fail the faster you learn lessons and get good at what you do.

There's definitely a balance between math and feel, but it absolutely helps to be conscious of the mathematical probabilities underlying your system. It is good to get a sense of what a given probability feels like when playing a game. What does a 30% chance of success feel like? That said, how your probabilities feel greatly depends on the surrounding context of the game. This is why you can't rely on math alone.

I think PsychoticStorm makes a great point in that playing a game is about an experience. At the end of the day, that's what you are selling. I think it is a good idea to have in mind what kind of experience you want the players of your game to have, and use that as a touchstone when developing the game.

Take a game like Pit as an example. That simple game is designed around a very specific experience, and it is good at creating that experience. The mechanics help to guide players into creating a certain atmosphere, although the game works best when you have players who are invested into creating that experience.

From an experiential point of view, fluff and artwork are very important. But good mechanics that serve the experience you are trying to create go a very long way towards serving your fluff. Take Pandemic as another example. Now that's a fun game, not the least of which because it feels like a global pandemic that you are barely one step ahead of at best. For me, a large part of how the game creates that experience is by being quick to play and difficult. Knowing that you might very easily lose helps to convey the sense that you are fighting an elusive enemy. The viruses move faster than you can move, they behave unpredictably. Pandemic lags when it becomes too easy or predictable because the experience is tarnished. ZMan games helped to ameliorate this by giving the players options with which to make the game more difficult. But Pandemic loses its charm when you get too good at it. Ostensibly, that's its lifespan. The mechanics stop creating the experience the game is intended to create.

In terms of serving the fluff, my view is that as long as your mechanics are providing the experience you are trying to create and which is consistent with your fluff you are on the right track, even if the mechanics don't 'represent' the fluff, per se. Zombicide is another example. Survivors can have two active items, which might be a chainsaw and a shotgun. Who the heck can fight with both a chainsaw and a shotgun and yet not wear a gas mask at the same time? Zombicide is fast, over the top, and pulpy. In that context, you don't need to worry about how many 'hands' it takes to use a weapon so long as you are tearing through hordes of zombies. Put zombies on the table, clear them off, put zombies on the table, clear them off. The better you are at clearing zombies off the table, the more zombies you are putting on the table. You want fast, devilishly simple mechanics for that, and Zombicide errs on the side of killing more zombies and killing them faster.

That's a darn sight different from a game like Last Night on Earth or Zombies!!!, even though they are all zombie games.

Ive dabbled in this stuff as well and have been considering finding a few interested people lately and possibly coming up with a fantasy based system. I guess some of those 9th rumors have me a bit worried lol.

I will tell you though that as stated multiple times playtesting is very important. And you dont have to wait till youve figured out all your rules or even play whole games.

Got your combat system figured out? roll out a few fights see how it feels. Its much better to find out early that something just isnt how you want it opposed to after you spent months working on the full ruleset and now have to go back to changing stuff once you played the first game.

I spend as much time tinkering with game design (if not more) as I do with painting and modeling. I usually focus on "skirmish" size games, ie..ones using between 20 and 30, usually because I enjoy small unit tactics and also find that when 30 models will complete an entire project it makes it much easier to get painting.

There are also a lot of miniatures lines out there with great models but accompanying rules sets that I could just never be bothered with. WHFB for example has always caught my eye but I never found any fun in massed battles. My friend agreed, so we set out to write a generic fantasy skirmish game using Warhammer models. So far it has really scratched an itch that I have had for a long, long time while simultaneously passing my expectations of playablity! (after several failing attempts of course).

Some of my friend's Elves


A few of my Orcs


Of course the primary requisite in having your own rule set is having some friends willing to go down the rabbit hole with you. I think most people will be hard pressed in showing up to the FLGS, pulling a crumpled piece of paper out of their pocket, and asking people to play their house rules because trust me it's really fun and not complicated at all....

Maybe we should start an official "play test my house rules" thread on Dakka. Kinda a swap shop for testing rules. Could lead to something fun.

That would be an interesting idea, is there a sufficiently big community of game designers (amateur, professional, aspiring ectr) to make such an effort worthwhile?

or

Is there a big enough pool of players that are interested/ wanting to play such games and provide feedback to make it worth it?

I would be quite happy if either was true.

I have posted most of my stuff here on Dakka at some point or another, and got some feedback of varying quality. For the LotR project and the RPG it was mostly positive and helpful, while the feedback on the SW space rules largely came down to 'play X-wing'. (tough crowd, that FFG lot ).

I do like the idea of a a general playtest thread (that could spawn relevant individual threads if need be).

@Strombones: fancy sharing your rules? Fantasy Skirmish is a genre I'm really into at the moment.

If you enjoy writing rules then pick up a pen and get started. If you want anyone else to play them however then there's a big question that you have to ask yourself...

What is my game going to do better than other rulesets?

This requires reading alot of other rulesets and really being honest with whether you can really do better than they have. Writing for yourself is one thing, but if you're doing it for others it should really be better than what's available. I've seen lots of "help me with my rules" topics on Dakka that were basically someone who had only played one or two games wanting help when they hadn't done their homework. I've also seen various posts basically saying "if only there was a game you could use any minis with" when there are already many such games.

I used to think about writing my own rules and even did it once.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/373240.page
However, I've played dozens of rulesets and have come to the conclusion that in all cases (so far) there's already a better ruleset written than what I could do.

Sorry if this is a bit of a downer. My point isn't really "don't write" . Great things can come from homebrew systems. I recently played a friend's sci-fi skirmish game that was an impressive group of mechanics largely drawn from many of the games he had played over the years but assembled in a unique way. I wouldn't discourage anyone from writing a game, rather, my suggestion is to "do your homework". If you know what's out there you'll be much less likely to write a mediocre game and much more likely to learn something that will help you in your own game development.

Problem with small games is that without widspread attention it is hard to get a game outside of a meta.

I dabbled with a few as a kid using a giant gridded world on the back of some wallpaper and using prince august cast models.

A mate and I thought about something but the selling point for all of these games ends up being the miniatures not the rules. Exception being warhammer/40k since the rules are terrible.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

My most adamant belief though is the fluff of your game must be represented by the rules, if this is not possible change the fluff to fit the rules, or create rules that will fit the fluff, but never have rules and fluff mismatch.

I'd actually disagree a bit. First off, fluff is not necessary for a fun game. It's really only necessary when you want to sell miniatures with your game. Many of the games I play have no fluff, minimal fluff or optional fluff. Tomorrow's War, Song of Blades and Heroes, Open Combat, Full Thrust, etc. The focus should be on the gameplay and the game experience. Fluff -if you choose to have any- can come later. An excellent set of rules can stand on it's own feet.

Of course if you're designing a set of rules for a given period you have to reflect that period, but for fantasy and sci-fi games fluff can follow function.

If you try too hard to make the rules match the fluff you end up with terribly rules-heavy games like 40k or WHFB which are needlessly weighed down by special rules and old mechanics that can't be dropped because they have become so fused to the universe the designers have created.

 Paradigm wrote:
I have posted most of my stuff here on Dakka at some point or another, and got some feedback of varying quality. For the LotR project and the RPG it was mostly positive and helpful, while the feedback on the SW space rules largely came down to 'play X-wing'. (tough crowd, that FFG lot ).

I do like the idea of a a general playtest thread (that could spawn relevant individual threads if need be).

@Strombones: fancy sharing your rules? Fantasy Skirmish is a genre I'm really into at the moment.

Yeah man I'd be thrilled to share it with you. I planned on starting a thread about here soon anyway. I'm gonna go through the rules and clarify anew things as some of it is written with a lot of assumptions in mind but there are only two pages so shouldn't take but a minute. Once this rain clears up I'll get some good pictures of the entire project including models, terrain, rules, and tentative fluff (very generic).

Where would be the best place to put it? A P&M blog or WHFB proposed rules?

 Strombones wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
I have posted most of my stuff here on Dakka at some point or another, and got some feedback of varying quality. For the LotR project and the RPG it was mostly positive and helpful, while the feedback on the SW space rules largely came down to 'play X-wing'. (tough crowd, that FFG lot ).

I do like the idea of a a general playtest thread (that could spawn relevant individual threads if need be).

@Strombones: fancy sharing your rules? Fantasy Skirmish is a genre I'm really into at the moment.

Yeah man I'd be thrilled to share it with you. I planned on starting a thread about here soon anyway. I'm gonna go through the rules and clarify anew things as some of it is written with a lot of assumptions in mind but there are only two pages so shouldn't take but a minute. Once this rain clears up I'll get some good pictures of the entire project including models, terrain, rules, and tentative fluff (very generic).

Where would be the best place to put it? A P&M blog or WHFB proposed rules?

I imagine the best place would be in the Misc Minis Game subforum (at least, there's where most of these type of things end up). Sadly there's not much traffic down there as, say, WFB Proposed Rules, but throw a link in your sig and hopefully the people who would be interested will take a look. Or you could stick it in Dakka Discussions, worst that can happen is it gets moved to Misc Minis Games anyway!

I look forward to seeing it, as judging by the warbands you posted above, the rules are aimed at quite small skirmishes. LotR is a great ruleset for the 20-70 kind of mini range, and I use KoW beyond that, but something that is just a few minis a side would definitely pique my interest.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:


Is there a big enough pool of players that are interested/ wanting to play such games and provide feedback to make it worth it?

I would be quite happy if either was true.

That is a good question. Reading people's rules, setting up a game, and leaving feedback could be a chore. Maybe some kind of standardized peer review system? A part of me thinks that once such a thread gathered enough momentum that some really good games would get noticed and encourage participation. The other part of me thinks that if this were possible it probably would have happened already.

If it involved some sort of I'll play your rules if you play mine (and provide substantial feedback) it might work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Paradigm wrote:

 Strombones wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
I have posted most of my stuff here on Dakka at some point or another, and got some feedback of varying quality. For the LotR project and the RPG it was mostly positive and helpful, while the feedback on the SW space rules largely came down to 'play X-wing'. (tough crowd, that FFG lot ).

I do like the idea of a a general playtest thread (that could spawn relevant individual threads if need be).

@Strombones: fancy sharing your rules? Fantasy Skirmish is a genre I'm really into at the moment.

Yeah man I'd be thrilled to share it with you. I planned on starting a thread about here soon anyway. I'm gonna go through the rules and clarify anew things as some of it is written with a lot of assumptions in mind but there are only two pages so shouldn't take but a minute. Once this rain clears up I'll get some good pictures of the entire project including models, terrain, rules, and tentative fluff (very generic).

Where would be the best place to put it? A P&M blog or WHFB proposed rules?

I imagine the best place would be in the Misc Minis Game subforum (at least, there's where most of these type of things end up). Sadly there's not much traffic down there as, say, WFB Proposed Rules, but throw a link in your sig and hopefully the people who would be interested will take a look. Or you could stick it in Dakka Discussions, worst that can happen is it gets moved to Misc Minis Games anyway!

I look forward to seeing it, as judging by the warbands you posted above, the rules are aimed at quite small skirmishes. LotR is a great ruleset for the 20-70 kind of mini range, and I use KoW beyond that, but something that is just a few minis a side would definitely pique my interest.

Man I thought the historical sub forum was a dark corner of dakka, no idea a miscellaneous sub forum existed!

Im gonna post it in the misc thread because now I feel like some really secretive/weird/cool things go on in there

The warbands we use are around 30 models. I just took a picture of a few individuals as an example.

 Eilif wrote:
If you enjoy writing rules then pick up a pen and get started. If you want anyone else to play them however then there's a big question that you have to ask yourself...

What is my game going to do better than other rulesets?

This requires reading alot of other rulesets and really being honest with whether you can really do better than they have. Writing for yourself is one thing, but if you're doing it for others it should really be better than what's available. I've seen lots of "help me with my rules" topics on Dakka that were basically someone who had only played one or two games wanting help when they hadn't done their homework. I've also seen various posts basically saying "if only there was a game you could use any minis with" when there are already many such games.

I used to think about writing my own rules and even did it once.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/373240.page
However, I've played dozens of rulesets and have come to the conclusion that in all cases (so far) there's already a better ruleset written than what I could do.

Sorry if this is a bit of a downer. My point isn't really "don't write" . Great things can come from homebrew systems. I recently played a friend's sci-fi skirmish game that was an impressive group of mechanics largely drawn from many of the games he had played over the years but assembled in a unique way. I wouldn't discourage anyone from writing a game, rather, my suggestion is to "do your homework". If you know what's out there you'll be much less likely to write a mediocre game and much more likely to learn something that will help you in your own game development.

Lol. I totally forgot to mention this. Elif makes some awesome points here. I tend to take it for granted that those looking to write rules have found extant rulesets wanting.

That's always been my motivation to write rules; I want something that I can't find off the shelf. I'm looking for an experience that I'm not getting from other games. But you do need to go out and play a lot of games if you are thinking of designing your own system.

As for fluff, I think a game's fluff is best served through gameplay experience. So in this sense, your game rules should serve your fluff if you intend your game to have fluff. But it should be examined from a holistic perspective as opposed to getting sunk into the details. You can make a good game and make fluff to go with it later, but if you have fluff and the type of experience your game offers is out of sync with that, you've got problems.

In my opinion 40k and fantasy makes a terrible transition of fluff to rules.

I am not saying make rules a slave to fluff I did mention change fluff to fit rules and vice versa, the point with fluff is we all have it at the back of our heads, we all have an idea of what an armed warrior with an axe should hit you like, or what a rifle should be doing to a tank.

It doesn't have to be a grandiose tome of background, but some basic background information of the game exists (not counting abstracts) or even in "backgroundless" game systems, the player has some concept of how things would work. it is in these cases I say the rules must fit the fluff, even if it is more convenient to do something odd it will feel disjointed to the players, in other cases where fluff is established (but fictional, no work around in historical games) if the fluff makes rules go nuts, change the fluff.

I guess I fell too in that sin, to omit the obvious, collect games and play games, look online for players playing games, read about games played, disregard if you like or not the game read and play, the experience gathered is tremendous, never disregard a game because you dislike it if you want to be a game designer.

I've made a few things in my time. I did a Transformers game, which was kinda silly but also really fun. Not terribly balanced either.

A lot of the time, you have to go back and destroy old, even seemingly key mechanics/rules as they end up not working. Don't be afraid to kill your favourites.

This is so true. We had an entire damage system worked out where each bot had battletech like damage areas. Pretty colour techspecs and all, as well as rules for translating the damage between forms. Then we looked at expanding to things like dinobots- things that had 2 heads or multiple arm sets (damn you Grimlock) and realised the whole system needed a redesign. Improved it overall though.

Really though the best advice I can give is not to be dissuaded by the number of roadblocks you will hit, for there will be many.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
That would be an interesting idea, is there a sufficiently big community of game designers (amateur, professional, aspiring ectr) to make such an effort worthwhile?

or

Is there a big enough pool of players that are interested/ wanting to play such games and provide feedback to make it worth it?

I would be quite happy if either was true.

This would actually be pretty awesome.

I consider myself (at least an amateur) game designer.
I've written 6 individual wargames (which I've abandoned due to the difficulty in making ranges of miniatures)
I've also written at least 12 complete and original RPGs, the two most recent of which have fully fledged design teams.
My current project is a Horror Sci Fi RPG called Lachrimae.

If you want to create games, do it because you want to create games. Don't make games for anyone else but yourself.

Also to pile on what others said:
1. Don't reinvent the wheel. If you like a mechanic..... Use it.
2. You must exposure yourself to many, many games.
3. Start with what you want the experience of playing to feel like.
4. Use a standardized core to your rules. Do not change from opposed success rolls, to target numbers, to charts through the course of the game.
5. Make sure your game always gives the players choices and trade offs to make
6. If the glove don't fit, you must acquit. If it is not working or too complex then scrap it.