Announcing a New Project - A Pigtown RPG

Alright, now that commission season is behind me, I've had some time to think on what sort of larger project I'd like to work on next, alongside the usual stories and things like that. A lot of my interest these days has been on more collaborative and interactive forms of storytelling--things like Twine, interactive stories and RP games and scenarios over on Discord, but one thing that I have always desired is a TTRPG system that I felt reflected to sort of worlds and characters and action that I would like to see. This has been on the back burner (so many back burners) for a few years now. I have some familiarity with a number of RPG systems, but most of my experience is with DnD, up to about 3.5 or so. I had some familiarity with hacking game engines and things like that, but there's a number of issues regarding copyright and stuff like that which held me back from that route. The only other option is making your own system from scratch, which is a nightmare all its own. Mostly, I've just been keeping my head up, looking around to see if something would appear to give me what I was missing--a lean, hackable RPG engine that I could adapt to my own setting and mechanics, that I wouldn't feel would put me at risk legally. 

And so, along came BOLT, which I found on Kickstarter here. (You can still back it if you want! I'd recommend it, it's a great engine!)

BOLT is pretty much exactly what I was looking for, in terms of an engine. It's fast and flexible, which means it can be run easily over chat. It encourages collaborative storytelling between the players and the GM. It is designed to be hacked, which means I can adapt the systems here for my own uses, in terms of roles, classes, backgrounds, and magic mechanics. Best of all, it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0, which means you can hack it all you want, and do whatever you want with the results, without having to worry about things like royalties etc. 

Now, this is the first time I've done this substantial of a hack on an engine, so this will be a learning process as I go, which I will be sharing here in a series of Devlogs, probably weekly. My goal, at the end of this, would be to have a functional player's handbook / GM guide written and edited, essentially giving you all the tools to run it yourselves, if you so desired. If this goes well, and doesn't crash and burn, I might adapt the engine to other settings (like City of Bears) and things like that--but I don't want to get too ahead of myself. 

My goals for this game would be as follows:

* The game should be designed to be NSFW, but sex should be a mechanic, rather than a distraction. All too often, I think, when sex gets worked into RPGs, it feels like a sidetrack, with no bearing on the action, character growth, or larger story. Of course, the setting here is in many ways all about sex, domination, and all that good stuff--I want to center that sort of content and make it key to how characters work and function. A common test for an engine is, if a player wants to punch someone in the face, how does your engine handle that? I think, for a NSFW engine like this, you also need to ask how your engine handles a player kissing the person as well.

* Something I want to incorporate is a bit of a rogue-lite mechanic into the story. In the BOLT engine, every encounter should feel dangerous, like there are real stakes to what is happening, but Pigtown can't really have those stakes be life or death--because Pigtown always wants you alive in one way or another. The real threat of Pigtown, then, is corruption. That each time your character succumbs to the men who reside there, your character should change accordingly, in a narratively interesting way. Character growth and development, then, isn't just about collecting EXP, building skills and gaining feats and magic--it's about managing your characters in the face of a place that wants to swallow them and warp them according to its own devices as well. The deeper you go, the more powerful you become...but there's also a risk that you'll lose yourself forever. 

* I want the setting to feel like something that the characters can impact and change over the course of a campaign, in a way that is somewhat quantifiable. As my own understanding of Pigtown has changed from being a single bar to an entire urban neighborhood, there should be spaces for factions to appear and fight for resources (that is, for the right to bring as many men as possible into their fold). Some of these factions oppose Pigtown, like Precinct 27. Others are formed from men who have surrendered to the power of the place, and are no longer entirely human at all, like the men who have formed their own society in the depths of the subways and sewers under the city. Lastly, there are men who have gained a bit of power from the place themselves, and used it to establish small enclaves of their own. These are the houses, run by Masters, served by boys and pups and slaves, all with an internal politics of their own. Players should be able to align with these forces, and should they succeed in growing more powerful, so should the characters as well.

* I want there to be opportunities for dungeoneering, open world combat, and any other sort of setting that a GM might want to set up. If a GM just wants to run a campaign within the bar complex itself, that should be possible. If the GM wants to run a campaign focusing on a battle between houses for power, set mostly in the streets and tunnels under the city, that should be possible. If the GM wants to drop Pigtown in the middle of a rural environment, with truckers, bikers, and small towns all pulled under its control, that should be possible too. All this to say, the engine and setting should feel flexible enough that the possibilities are numerous.

* Lastly, I'd like the game to be furry and anthro friendly. If you'd like to add a society of semi-feral dogmen running around the alleys of Pigtown, that should be possible. If you want there to be a union burly, amphibious dockworkers who spend their time fucking underneath the pier, that should be possible. If you want a house of cowmen being milked to feed their massively obese minotaur master, that should be possible. If you want everyone to be totally human? That's good too. 

For now, I'm focusing mostly on character creation elements and broader mechanics. I'm going to do my best to have a development blog on Wednesdays each week, to talk a bit more about what I've been working on and how the game is progressing. I'm also going to do my best to keep some stories, captions and interactives coming as well. All this, assuming the next couple of months don't precipitate a mass insurrection! What interesting times, right?

In the meantime, I would highly recommend that you check out the BOLT engine. You can back it on kickstarter, or purchase the current pre-release version on itch.io. There's also free copies available there, if you're not in a place to purchase it yourself.