Frayed Knights Dev Diary: Overheard At The Gaming Table
Much of game development is unfortunately not all that sexy. This week is an example - mainly butt-in-chair work to refine combat (and work on Apocalypse Cow). To make up for it, I've got some secrets as to the origin of the Frayed Knights idea you might find amusing.

Done this week
* Monsters now advance when the row in front of them has been wiped out. This had to occur visually, in the UI, and in the game logic. This was a bit more convoluted (and bug-prone) than I'd expected.
* Moved the target selection UI down to the "menu corner" so the player doesn't have to move the mouse so far to click on his selection.

Goal for next week
* Basic spell-usage
* Started feats functional
* Fix bug at end-of-combat that is not cleaning everything up properly
* Monster spawn locations working properly

After that, I'm going to move on to working on the fountain (from the first-five-minutes document) the following week.

The Secret Origin of Frayed Knights
Now that the reporting is out of the way, here's some fun stuff. At various points in our twenty-year-history of weekly gaming together (man, that is SCARY), members of our "dice-and-paper" role-playing game group (myself included) have taken it upon themselves to record certain things that we say during the game... and recite them (or email them) later to us for our immense amusement. Sometimes these things are only funny when taken in context. Sometimes, the things we say are far more funny taken terribly out of context.

This was the little germ of an idea that turned into Frayed Knights. It's also why I (and many, many other gamers) find comics like Knights of the Dinner Table and DM of the Rings so hysterically funny. The idea of the characters in the game making wisecracks and having good sitcom-style in-character dialog - such as we had in our "PnP" games - was just too personally amusing to me. I wanted to see if I could capture that in a game, somehow.

I doubt you'll find these nearly as funny as we do. But since our group had some of these quotes archived in a mailing list, I thought I'd share:


Overheard At The Gaming Table (or Gaming Living-Room Floor):

On the re-education of a genetically-engineered super-soldier:
Faris: So far, Sarge has learned about God, sex, and bowling
Jordan: That about covers it, don't you think?

On the nature of enduring friendship, after a narrow escape from a vampire's minion:
Faris: I can't forget that you threw up on me!
Jordan: I was hit by poison darts! Twice!
Faris: That doesn't change the fact that I'm WEARING your vomit.

Speaking of vomit: An expedition to buy cannons and powder for their ship ends in failure, but at least the innocent nature-priestess Bren learns something about the effects of heavy drinking... all over the princess:
Tristan (to the princess): Hey, you've got a Bren cannon!

On honoring an agreement:
Player 1: He can't have my body.
Player 2: No one wants your body.
Player 3: Hey, I'm negotiating here. If I give your body away it's gone, deal.

On dealing with potentially cursed artifacts:
Melissa: Let's go turn this in. Pass it off to someone with more hit points than us.

On alignments:
Fortunado: I'm not evil. I'm chaotic greedy.

On the nature of mortality:
Player: It's not whether you live or die...it's if your friends can resurrect you.

The real origin of Chloe's "snot golem" joke:
Wyle (attacking a golem): We'll beat the boogers out of it.
GM (me): This one's big.
Wyle: It has a lot of boogers in it.
GM (later): You guys are so gonna meet a booger golem.

On gamer lore:
GM: In the middle of the clearing there's a gazebo.
Party Members in unison: ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

On prioritizing of threats:
Jordan: Chloe, do you have wards against vampires around your home?
Chloe: Vampires? No, I have protection against fairies.

On the accessibility of RPG inventory:
Player 1: I pull out an everburning torch.
Player 2: Where do you keep that?
Player 1: In my pants.

On the superego:
Captain Smashing: I think our super-group should be named, "Captain Smashing and His Little Friends."

On a dragon's reaction after being denied a tasty paladin meal:
Demar: I didn't know a dragon's fingers could DO that...

Several Quotes on Yosef, a party member with more of a "shoot-first, ask questions later" attitude in a D20 Modern campaign:
Sandy: When you pulled out the shotgun on him, I thought you had a plan!
Yosef: The shotgun WAS the plan!

Lynn: You don't want to lower yourself to a common thug.
Yosef: I don't?

Sandy (after a messy gunfight instigated by you-know-who): We could have just followed him and got the license of his car.
Yosef: That would have been a good idea.

GM: *BOOM!*
Yosef: Oops.

Yosef (after an enemy has taken a lot of hits): How does this guy look?
GM: Pissed.
Yosef: Pissed is bad.

Tami (after another gunfight): Yosef has been taken off the talking-to-people list.

Yosef (after a frustrating encounter DIDN'T end in violence): I should have just shot him.

And some various one-liners:
"Anthropologists do it in the dirt."
"Sorry, we were waiting for Captain Kavorkian to come back downstairs."
"Are his boots safe to take?"
"I refuse to be part of Sandy's posse."
"Let me get my wand of BS."
"Wouldn't it be more successful if you destroyed the creature without getting shot at?"
"We could make this a bloodbath and pick up the pieces later."
"It's like...an evil Jigglypuff!"
"This is just so freaky wrong on so many levels."
"I apologize for my largeness."
"We're fighting Bunnicula?"
"I guarantee you something. No one looks cool in a cloak and jeans at the same time."
"Who is the pirate princess now? That's right, it's me!"
"If I make her head explode do I get an extra point?"
"Okay, we are not going to buy from Farmer Lucifer anymore."


(Vaguely) related odds & ends:
* Frayed Knights: First Five Minutes Walkthrough
* Frayed Knights: Background and High Concept
* Teenagers and D&D
* Spring and... D&D?
* When Magic Becomes Mundane in RPGs

Read and Post Favorite Gaming-Table Quotes in the Forum!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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