More on Trekker: what inspired me.

In my last post, I told you all about my game, Trekker. But today I wanted to go more in depth with what it is as a system and my goals in making it.

To begin answering the question of what Trekker is, I would like to first go over the origins of the concept for it. When I decided that I had wanted to create an RPG, I did quite a bit of polling and research, as well as some soul searching. All this was to decide what I wanted the meat and potatoes of my game to be. After I spent some time thinking, I decided on a Divine Comedy inspired, almost-western, almost-fantasy, action RPG. And you may very well be asking “Is that what Trekker is?” No; Trekker is the grandchild of that game after some time spent on really thinking through what I wanted to add to the RPG community. And eventually I decided that there were enough weird west RPGs for my taste (no hate it’s just not exactly what I wanted to make).

So that leads us to the conception of Trekker. I want to take some time to describe in better detail what the end goal of Trekker is. When I started this project, I had decided that I wanted to create a system that would really prioritize the relationship the player characters have with the world they inhabit, games like The Wildsea were great points of inspiration for me. But fantasy is not what I wanted to write either, so after some more polling and research I decided on making a semi-historical system. Trekker unlike some other games, does not have a set setting which is certainly nothing groundbreaking, but is a concept that was important in this stage of development.

So, in Trekker, the rules to create a mountain and the area surrounding it are a significant part of the early stages of a campaign. I wanted the storyteller to feel like they are also a player, just playing a huge, ancient rock. But lets take a look at the players and characters that they will inhabit. Mountaineers are what players, play as. Character creation is pretty light, it really is composed of a few things at this point. Naming your character, then rolling for their stamina. I am aware it seems pretty lack luster, but the breadth of choice comes during the preparation phase of a campaign where I intend to have player develop skills alongside their character. That is about where I have ended in terms of concepts really put into something real, there are a couple pages of unfinished work. But those are not yet something that I feel are deserving of showcasing.

Thank you all again for reading, I really appreciate any input or ideas you have. And if you would like to keep hearing about what we are doing here at Bellhost, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when we post.