The desire to be a monster, or My Process Making Patchwork Garden
Writing RPGs is actually quite funny. I started out writing what would be a Bloodborne fangame because I thought the way that a lot people try to emulate the game on TTRPGs was bad, and I ended up with an RPG about how I believe that if you try to be happy by being what people who hate you want you to be, you'll hate yourself forever.
I started with celestial bodies as a base, is a Great Mech game and it has the Grid System one thing i tought would be great for a bloodborne inspired game, you are made of squares and if you break all the square of one part of your body, you get that part destroyed. And to make a game about the the "man and their relation with the beast" what would be better than a game that you can get dimembered and pickup the arm of the slain beast to attach to yourself, and all the consequences of that?
But something happen while writing, i discovered myselft as a trans person, and this changed a lot about what i wanted the game to be. I didn't want a game that had monstruosity as a flaw, because in some way i'm a monster too. "Monstrum" is a latin word that denotes ""strange or singular, contrary to the usual course of nature, by which the gods give notice of evil" (using the word definition because i was inspired by the lovely Weird writer, the creator of lost girls on making this post) and some people see me as the contrary to the usual course of nature, to then i'm a monster, and you know what? It feels fucking good to be one.
So i started making a game about being a monster, and finding your happiness only by accepting that, and a lot of games are close to that, one that is a big inspiration is Nechronica, yeah i know is problematic as shit with the necro-loli stuff, but you have a game about undead dolls that only find respite on other dolls helping them (it has a conversation roll that you need to make with another doll to keep yourself together for god sake) and that hits so close to home, even more if you see the necromancer as a kind of chaser on the more manipulative side.
I picked up apocalipse keys, i have a lot of problems with it, i think that is a game with a lot of holes that when i gm i need to patch myself, but it has "bones" that i could use, so Patchwork garden became a Fusion of the Grid-based system of celestial bodies with pbta based on apocalypse keys, and it was okay, i don't hate pbtas but i find it to be the "easy route" and i didn't want that for patchwork garden, and then i read fist that was a pbta with a little bit of osr-style on it.
so then i reformuled it again, the 2d8+point spent and partial success but without all the things that makes a pbta like moves and playbooks, you have unique things that give you benefits for being a little toxic with one another and the combat is celestial bodies based with you choosing parts that make your Patchwork Princess (a kind of doll in this world, made from the flesh of the dead, both human and beast) with a lot of parts that make you not be the beautyful in the eyes of the artisans that made you. A lot of this is based on my dreams, and because i'm a Blamefag, my dreams are kinda like that with infinite cities that i walk forever, and i'm trying to bring this with depthcrawl being a part of the system, very inspired by stygian library the Princesses roam the dreaming city hunting monsters to protect the humanity that hates them.
This one is not very organized as a post because i just wanted to put this for others to see, but i'm not a very organized person anyway.
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