Q&A for How to Write Rules for Your Own RPG

It's all up to you. There are websites that allow you to design a map yourself, and you can then print it out (as long as your printer has colored ink. If you don't have colored ink, or you have only black, you can always go to Google images for graph paper, and print that out). You can also draw it yourself. It's your RPG, you make the rules and the setup.

You can find them at most comic and gaming shops quite inexpensively, as well as online. If you know any people who play tabletop RPGs you could ask one of them to borrow or buy one; gamers nearly always have spare dice.

You'd be surprised as to the lack of difference between girls and boys. I'm a woman, but I've always loved video games, RPGs, and other "boy" things. Make a game with cool content that is presented clearly, but make sure to treat female characters with the same consideration and dignity that you would give male characters. Avoid using girls as plot devices or rewards, such as a damsel in distress or a princess to marry, and make sure that female characters can shine as much as male ones in all aspects of the game. In short, be respectful, and you should be fine.

You can, though you should get in contact with whoever owns the story or concept before you start selling it to ask for permission, as you can get in a lot of trouble if you sell something based on what another person made. If you can get in touch, you'll likely find yourself in long negotiations that may require a lawyer. If you can't get in contact, just keep it to yourself and your friends and enjoy playing it on your own.

You could try making another RPG that's more focused on things your friends enjoy, like sci-fi, for example. You could also try playing your RPG with people online who may be more interested in it.

That depends on how many rules you have. Try keeping it short and sweet. You can always add more rules later on if you need to.

I would think planning out rules for terrain would be simple, like a warp gate lets you teleport somewhere within 20 spaces of the gate, or a steep hill gives modifiers depending on how they interact with the hill. It really is all up to you, however.

Yes. You can and should make many, varied enemies with different abilities and difficulties to keep the game from getting repetitive or boring. Even varying the amount of damage an enemy can deal or withstand can make a game much more interesting. Just avoid presenting them all at once, especially if your players are lower level.

Develop the world, create your enemies and characters, a combat system, and come up with rules. Then, just play. Don't let anyone else join.

If it is an RPG between you and your friends, it would be easier to write it in a notebook. Although, if you plan to publish it and sell it to people, you should type it out.

Not really. The point of a tabletop roleplaying game is for people to create characters and control their actions. While from the GM's perspective it may be pointless, it may make sense from the player's perspective, or something done to enhance the player's fun of the game. If you have a problem with a player's actions, talk to the player outside of the session.

Usually you'll want a DM or moderator and a player. This makes the game more immersive, because the player doesn't know everything. If you tried, though, you might come up with something.

Perhaps you could make the players answer questions about history if they do specific actions, such as casting a spell, attacking someone, etc. As they answer questions they move along the board to get to some kind of historical-themed goal at the end.

It can be anything you like, but some are more interesting with fictional creatures.

It's all up to you. There are websites that allow you to design a map yourself, and you can then print it out, as long as your printer has colored ink. If you don't have colored ink, or you have only black, you can always go to Google images for graph paper, and print that out. You can also draw it yourself. It's your RPG, you make the rules and the setup.

Typically, you'll want to order them from most to least basic. Information about the world at large, how to move about and fight, and basic mechanics like healing or what happens upon death should come first. Then comes more in-depth things like skills, character classes and races, and abilities. Anything more complicated should come after that.

There are thousands of RPGs out there, most of which have some manner of character sheet. The character sheets, if custom-designed for the game, will also be included in the copyright as game accessories.

You can do two things: Have technology and magic in a kind of arms/space race, where something created or enabled by one is always balanced by the other. For example, if there are, say, cars created by technology, then magic should have an answer, such as creatures that enable their rider to travel at 60+ mph. The second thing you can do is have magic augmenting technology, or vice versa. Back to our car/creature example, maybe there are cars, but instead of running on internal combustion, it's fueled by magic. Or maybe wizard scientists have genetically engineered a fast transport creature. As long as you're consistent and establish the way it works, you can do almost anything.

Look up pictures and look up things that go on character sheets. For example, look up what a character sheet looks like, then modified it to your needs. The looking up and modifying your favorites tends to work best of all, as then you can tailor it to what you most need and like. Once you've done this, keep the template copy for future copy-making.

Just grab a piece of paper and make one section for equipment, base information (Name, Class, Level), and base stats. Get creative, I love D&D so I used something that they had but wasn't important, the class symbols.

It can be any way you want. These are steps on how to make your game. If you don't want tokens, you don't need them. Try to make it s that they don't gain tokens. In the rule book you would make it where there is a paragraph explaining this.

Ask them what they would want in a game. Then add that in your game. You may also be giving them too much or too little freedom.