Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Oups! Realizing you're working on something that has already been done.

Hello everyone. Today I decided to write about something that has probably happened to everyone at some point in his life: discovering that something you had put a variable amount of effort into, a "creation" of some sort, (comic book, novel, game system, boardgame...) has already been done by someone else.
Is this a pointless rant? Maybe. But I guess a blog can be a good place for a rant. Now, why this blog? Because this kind of dreaded, unforeseen, discouraging trend has applied to three (THREE!) of my ideas in the last few months. Let's see:

  1. I had been working on a Pathfinder adventure that pitched the heroes against a horde of hobgoblins, bugbears and mercenaries. It was meant to be structured as a military campaign, featuring battles happening following a timeline. The PCs would have had a chance to slow and eventually stop the menace of the invading horde. The title on the first draft was: The Black Horde. The hobgoblins would have a distinctive look, kind of a samurai-based armor, to match their belligerent but still lawful nature. And then I got to know that:
    - A D&D 3.5 adventure from James Jacobs (which humorously enough works on Pathfinder) and Richard Baker, The Red Hand of Doom, features an horde of invading hobgoblins, with a timeline of events happening in strategic locations in the Elsir Vale.
    - There's a region in Golarion, called Kaoling, that is ruled by eastern-looking hobgoblins. It's part of the Tian Xia continent.
    ... Hell yeah, not only the whole concept for the adventure was now redundant, I even got to throw away a dozen nice ideas on samurai hobgoblins. NICE.
  2. I happen to know some Star Wars - crazy geeks, and they happen to be my friends, and we all happen to like roleplaying. Since I honestly couldn't adjust Pathfinder to work with George Lucas' narrative universe, I developed a quick and slim rule system, using d6s only, that allowed for heavy roleplay and "theatre of the mind" situations, without any grids or movement or anything like that. To further implement a narrative element, I had 1s and 6s on d6s represent aces and troubles, which canceled each other and, if any remained, would allow for bad and good things to happen in addition to the you fail/you succeed dichotomy. The whole character generation took about 15 minutes and the system looked smooth. I had of course no intention to sell something like this (it's Star Wars, so it's subject to copyright) but the system on its own looked nice, and that was my brainchild... until Star Wars: Edge of the Empire came out, and I watched a couple of videos on youtube, and damn. Although the dice system is different, the advantage/threat rules strongly resemble my concept. The fact that it's Star Wars related makes me think that, when confronted with that kind of universe and given the already available RPG sources on it, creative minds come to similar solutions. Which, if you're the one hired by Fantasy Flight Games, is great. On the other hand, if you're the one sitting in front of his computer killing his eyes after a full afternoon of study, things are quite grim.
  3. Last but not least, being the tinkering little bastard that I am, in my "spare" time (which is to say, while not working on the other two things) I was throwing down some ideas for a skirmish-size miniatures game. I had been playing Okamiden (stunning game) and thought "all right, I'd love to see some minis with a strong japanese feel. Not anime-like, really, I was thinking about Hokusai. I checked the internet to avoid, you know what? Working on an already existing concept. I found nothing. I was overjoyed. Had I found a little, empty niche for an hypothetical product?
    I worked on it, got the rules ready for playtest, built some characters... and then, while on coolminiornot, I stumbled upon Bushido: New Dawn, an existing game that had the EXACT SAME THEME AND BATTLE SIZE AND CONCEPTS. The rules were different in many ways, but the whole atmosphere was there.
So, you could still say this is a rant. It probably is. But it comes from someone that already has lots of stuff to do, and still can't restrain himself from game design. I understand (really!) that at the same time, different people in different parts of the world can come up with the same idea. It's natural. It happened with some of the greatest scientific discoveries, so why should the tabletop market be any different? Still, when you have to throw away a whole lot of work because of this kind of conjunction, it makes you angry. And then you go on your blogger page and write a stupid rant. Hell.

... When this kind of thing happens, you risk immobilism. I'll try to fight that (I always do), but honestly, three in a row? Holy crap.

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