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ARCTYPE: Making YOUR games

9 min read

If you think ARC’s Doom, skill or magic system seems interesting but…

  • you want to play a different genre. Sci-fi, slice of life, precolonial investigation mystery….
  • you want to expand character options. What if heroes had lifepaths? Or started as gods?
  • you want to play it under wholly new contexts. ARC for LARP? Heck yes.

AND you feel inspired to go beyond making customizations in your private games and towards making your own, honest-to-goodness game to share with others….

You can, and build it off ARC’s foundation…to create your own ARCTYPE.

Building an ARCTYPE #

Creating an ARCTYPE is all about combining ARC’s core with additions and customizations so your ARCTYPE can tell new stories—your stories.

These core elements might’ve been what attracted you to ARC in the first place! And the changes you envisioned might’ve come from other games, experiences, or just your fruitful imagination. But it’s possible that things you thought were essential are actually customizable—just as the exciting new feature you want to add may not actually work so well with the rest of ARC.

That’s why it’s important to figure out what you should change with ARC’s core system before it stops feeling like…well, ARCtypal.

What you shouldn’t change #

Principles that explain why how ARC was designed, written, or even drawn in certain ways.
  1. Heroes aren’t necessarily so-called because they dominate the setting; it’s because they can and want to make the difference for something that matters to them and the world. Everyone should even be incentivized to imagine unusual, creative ideas to get around tough constraints that a game or setting might provide.
  2. Choices, however, have consequence. An unorthodox solution may seem like an easy win now but it can come at a later cost.
  3. Time is precious. Tensions should build towards a climax—energy should build up for a definitive end.
Signature rules that carry an important role in reinforcing the principles
  1. There must be a Doomsday Clock made up of Moments, which are consumed in real-time. The Doom is triggered when the Moments run out. Only one Doom at a time per campaign or subcampaign—like an arc, yes.
  2. Relatively small numbers and simple individual components. Instead, the priority is on combining game mechanics to build richer interactions, and encouraging the player and the Guide to act even on simple ideas and follow through with in-story consequences.

ARC has time as a hard restraint. Therefore, everything else becomes a seamless enabler so players and the Guide can feel free to be creative without adding complexity on top of a difficult constraint.

  1. Players should have various options to make the situation easier, somehow, when things get really tense—either upgrading a critical roll, returning from death, or even choosing to undo the Doom—but this needs to come at a consequence that is meaningful to the player’s interaction with the world.

Maybe it makes things riskier later, like losing 3 Blood. Or it punishes someone the characters like. …or someone they love.

  1. Skill Checks are essentially the mix of “things you can’t measure with a test” (e.g. how careful you are in life) and “things you can probably measure on a test” (e.g. maximum kilograms you can lift). Approaches and Skills should have this soft/hard duality.

What you can experiment with—alter and change! #

This is absolutely non-exhaustive. But this short list may just spark some ideas. If it does, you are free to publish your ARCTYPE under the ARC Creators License.

What Doom, Moments and Omens conceptually mean in your ARCTYPE.

This is ideally one of the first things you think about—what do they mean in your ARCTYPE, and how do they relate to its motif or stories? ARC keeps “Doom” a little generic and it can be anything…but being a little more specific in your ARCTYPE can be a good decision to keep its identity distinct.

"My game's Doom will always be about Sauron rising to power." 
"When Doom is triggered, that means the investigation failed." 
"If a Moment is consumed, that symbolizes another faction defected to the enemy kingdom."
Stats, Skills, Inventory

These three should always be considered together, as their combination strongly enforces the flavor for your ARCTYPE. In fact, if the bare minimum you need is to shift ARC’s genre from Fantasy to something else, you can simply change these three and you’re 80% done.

But maybe you need a more conceptual change. Perhaps you have an Inventory that’s actually collectible friends in pocket form. Or your game has twelve Skills, standing in for the Western Zodiac. 

All investigators must start with 6 Bullets and 6 Reputation instead of Blood and Guts.
Approaches to seed “default” problem-solving mindsets for your ARCTYPE.

Approaches’ main purpose is to give players enough flexibility so they can apply different problem-solving mindsets—and they can also be used to reinforce your ARCTYPE’s motif through evocative labels and deciding what and even how many Approaches to use.

You should, however, make sure the Approaches are as distinct from each other as you can. If two or more Approaches feel like they fulfill the same thing most of the time, then you may need a better solution. 

Chivalry, Romance and Nobility. Rescue a prince with Chivalry and vanquish enemies—use Romance to spark love and attraction—then Nobility to tenuously navigate the court and politically conquer the kingdom with them by your side.
Magic System, Creatures, and Everything Else

You can go hog wild. You can even create new kinds of magic (though it’s strongly recommended to use the Complexity Rating scheme). You can add completely new or edit existing game rules, keeping in mind the principles and mechanics that make ARC feel like ARC. Note that this means you can do something as radical as remove Rituals entirely or add new hero options. So long as the core principles and signature rules are retained, then it’s your ARCTYPE.

You’ve built an ARCTYPE! #

The last step is publishing it—this page can guide you.

Do note, if you need to reference ARC rules please refer your readers or buyers to the ARCANUM SRD; don’t copy-paste entire sections on your work! Our lawyer will be mad. Better yet, encourage them to buy or download an official copy to cheer us up 👍

P.S. Please visit the ARCANUM SRD in a few weeks—I’ll publish a secret Part 2 for optional visual templates.

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