A Cautious Sniff [Pugmire]

Realms of Pugmire

(The image attached to the post is what I got when I searched for “dog armor” on Wikipedia Commons, as there isn’t any art for Pugmire yet. Consider it “inspirational” rather than an actual art direction.)

Waaaaaay back in August, Rich and I announced Pugmire for the first time at GenCon. It’s a new creator-owned fantasy game (specifically, owned by my company, Pugsteady) that’s being created in collaboration with Onyx Path Publishing. Which is a really fancy way of saying that Rich and I decided to do a game about dogs.

Well, okay. It’s more complicated than that. Here’s something from the current design bible I’m working on for the game to help explain.

Pugmire is a fantasy world with evolved Dogs (capital “D”; lowercase “d” refers to unevolved dogs or dogs as we understand them now) as the main characters. These Dogs have learned to use tools and language, living in the ruins of the world of Man. They (along with other races of animals) have rebuilt the world left to them in their image. The kingdom of Pugmire, named after the family of one of the greatest Dog heroes, is a center of civilization.

Dogs strive to learn about Man, deifying them as examples all people should strive to emulate. Other nations, such as the Cats, have different perspectives on Man, but all of them recognize that there was a world before this one, and it is now populated with mysteries and dangers. Some people have learned how to use the magic and relics left by Man. These are the rare and unusual magic items, spells, and enchantments of genre fantasy, as well as a very literal exploration of Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Pugmire juxtaposes the tropes of high fantasy with our relationship with domestic dogs. Dogs adventure to uncover the lost ruins of Man in search of relics, knowledge, and danger. Dogs have access to magic that they master through faith or academic study, while Cats have access to their own similar yet completely incompatible kind of magic. They have enemies who can either be monstrous, or simply other misunderstood people. They have a moral code that classifies some people as “good” and others as “bad” (although not “evil”—that’s reserved for insane monsters that only seek destruction and chaos). And they fall into callings that determine their role in society and in their parties.

That’s the core of the game right there. It’s genre fantasy, but with some sci-fi. It’s adventure, but with a little morality. It’s a fantasy game about dogs, but with lots of room for dramatic potential. It’s what you expect, but it’s not quite what you expect. Which makes it sometimes hard to explain when people ask me what the game is about. (Although I’ve been told someone on tumblr was talking about how hipster Social Justice Warriors are ruining RPGs, “like this Pugmire shit!” I don’t have a link to the post, but it sounds like at least one person has already decided what my game is going to be about.)

Right now there isn’t a lot to talk about. As I mentioned, I have a bible, all of which is so preliminary and early in design that a document full of outright lies might be more accurate. From that, I’m building an outline and a “vertical slice” of the game engine. For those who don’t know, a vertical slice is a working demonstration of all components of a game’s design — it’s not complete, but it’s comprehensive. I am looking into some third-party RPG system licensing options, but I also have a pretty specific list of system needs, so odds are I’ll want something I can hack into shape for what I need the system to do. Rich and I also considered a custom system, including using some version of Storyteller/Storytelling system, but we decided that this project needed something different, which I can go into in more detail once we decide on that system.

So, that’s where things are at — it’s a cautious sniff in the direction of something potentially playable (like, super-early, bleeding-edge, probably-not-understandable-by-humans-who-are-not-me alpha) by the beginning of next year. From there I hope to create something that we can share more widely, so people can see a little more what the game will actually look like. In the meantime, I plan to blog at least once a month about bits and pieces of the game, and give progress reports where I can.

Go forth, canine warriors! Defend your kingdom!