Hyperlite is a Game in Development
Blog Posts:
This blog consists of a set of articles on games I have run and am running to develop my own role-playing adventure game. Hyperlite is heavily inspired and influenced by Classic Traveller '77 but I think I've deviated far enough from its rules-as-written to justify calling it my own game, and so I will.
Like Out of the Box before me, I believe '77 is a complete game, "out of the box." It is entirely playable without modifications or additions in multiple modes. Further, Traveller '77 encourages its players to add to and modify the game to suit the needs of their particular play group and its framework design makes this easy.
Those three little black books were a huge leap forward in adventure game design -- I think more than the role-playing game audience was ready for at the time. I think this is what led to Classic Traveller to be developed into a "hard sci fi" game of warships and conquest. I think after Kinunir Traveller development was a regression to full-wargaming that insisted on exacting detail and mathematical precision in pursuit of near-simulation levels of play. Detailed modeling of massive fleets and hi-tech troops would be Traveller's legacy.
Out of the Box showed me the Traveller I'd first met. I saw a game that promised that it could deliver a satisfying sci fi adventure in an evening's play. I wouldn't need a spreadsheet. I'd just need a pair of dice and a few index cards for notes, and a good pencil. Traveller was a social game. Traveller was a role-playing adventure game, and I was going to make a game that didn't require college Algebra or ballistics training to play.
Guided by this principle, I developed and ran a convention game based on Kinunir the very first adventure module published for Traveller, and winner of the 1979 HG Wells Award for Best Roleplaying Adventure. My goals were to feature character generation and a complete adventure from Kinunir (there are four in the module itself) in a three-hour session. We ran for about 3:20. I intended to run for 6, but I had 8 and it was one of the best games I've ever run. They asked me back for the next year.
That game was at ArcaneCon in Northampton, Massachusetts just a few weeks before I started this blog. It went even better this time, if you can believe it. I had 6, but was prepared for 8. We went 3:30 this year, and I started orienting players 15 minutes before start time. A few folks didn't make it to the table, and I'm sorry they missed it because we had an absolute blast.
In the next few articles I'm going to write about what I did, how I did it and why. I'll go into detail on my preparations and my design principles and cite my influences. I'll write about my club, and if I run Hyperlite there I'll write about that, too.