Revisions

I started working on my game system over a year and a half ago.  I am on the fourth session of the campaign created to test it.  This last was the first time it felt like the system was working against me.  There was a lot of holes that suddenly popped up, and a question came to me in the middle of all that: Is this what I wanted this game to be.

The game, the campaign itself is fine.  The players all assure me that even though the session was exposition heavy it was still great.  No one had any complaints about the system, except me.  I know I was not seeing things that were not there.  My notes do not lie nor do they allow me to hide from what happened.  Looking back at notes from other sessions confirmed it as well.  

What to do?  

My response has been to take in what I have learned and look back at my original goals for the game- the biggest being that I wanted a system that helped me tell my games' stories.  The moment I felt the game trying to break its reins, I knew there was an issue.  

Today was spent looking at a completely new dice system.  It is one I developed for an attempted Pick-Up game system.  I am not going to dump it on my players, obliterating the game as is.  My plan is to use it in a one-shot in a few weeks, see how it works and if they would be willing to convert.  If not, well, the players' fun is what is really important.

At my latest count, this game has caused me to write over 290 pages of text and over 100k words.  This does not include hand written notes or the work I have done on the campaign.  With all that it is probably closer to 200K words.  One day it will be done, or I will be so sick of working on it that I will know the time has come to unleash it on the world.  Here is to that day coming sooner rather than later.