Bienvenue dans le fil de discussion homebrew de juillet sur /tg/. This is part of my effort to get people discussing classic homebrew discussion and assist the board in general when it comes to their game design endeavors.
>Who is this namehomosexual?
I'm just a dude who writes games and likes the homebrew discussions on /tg/. I frequent a few threads, but I'm just here to facilitate discussion.
>Why should I homebrew?
/tg/ products are fairly unique in that it's actually pretty simple to make them these days, with a plethora of products to assist in making and playtesting your game. Making your own games helps understand why games are made the way they are, as well as being fun to do.
>What you should post
Ideas for games, games you're currently making, updates to your own games in broad strokes, and any homebrewing for existing products that don't get much attention. Discussion about the above is welcome. Post good, be good, and look over others products, they care if someone looks more than anything.
>Oh No! The Thread is Over!
Have no fear, the thread will resume at the first of every month. If you want to make another during the month, go for it. I can't, and won't, stop you. If you want to make a thread on your own game, go for it!
One suggestion: Don't add General to the name.
>Resources for the aspiring developer
>https://anydice.com/ (A fantastic resource for checking probabilities)
>https://miro.com/ (A online whiteboard with tools to help organize yourself)
>https://www.notion.so/ (Similar to the above, but in a bit cleaner format for those who work in larger teams)
>https://rolz.org/ (Impromptu playtesting at its finest)
>https://www.youtube.com/user/georgephillies/playlists (Game Design Lectures)
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 Tip Your Landlord Shirt $21.68 |
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Why doesn't your game have pointy wizard hats, anon?
I'm not a big fan of the aesthetic.
I guess you're not a big fan of living.
Because it's set in a modern setting without magic. Pointy wizard hats are peak aesthetic for fantasy, but less so when everyone is shooting machine guns.
I beg to differ.
That is cool as frick Anon
in my story witches have pointy hats in contrast to mage cylinder hats. pointy = more edgier
>mage cylinder hats
pasta la vista, baby
Because it’s cliche and generic.
Isn't that the point?
Pardon?
The point of what?
cliche and generic
K's autism update
today i finished the fluff on pyromancy, and did 4 of the 8 planned spells for it, as well as a few small changes, which amounted to like 3 pages of content, so, it was a productive day
desu, i started playing divinity original sin with a friend and i have wasted quite a bit of time on it, that could have been used for development
>Why doesn't your game have pointy wizard hats, anon?
hadnt seen this until now, pointy wizard hats are literaly armor against magic in mine
also hoods could give the same effect, but pointy hats are the aesthetic most expect
remember that some time ago i saw a reddit thread about that, the general message i got from it (which, i dont know how true it is) is that:
>free gives the most engagement and will get it the most known, but, naturally, will give you no revenue
>paid, even if you are only asking for 2 dolars, will give you the most profit of the 3 methods, but will nuke the popularity of your game, so it will be only know by a small (but paying) group of people most of the time
>PWYW is the middleground, even if you can get it for free, it wont get as many downloads as a proper free one (remember hearing something like "people feel bad about putting 0 in the price box"), but will still be known by more people than a paid game, while giving you some small profit (even if not anywhere as much as a proper $2 game), where free would give you nothing
i repeat, do not know how true any of that is
my personal opinion, if its only a once and done game for the jam that you dont plan to do anything more with, fixed price, if its something you want to keep working on, PWYW
>What are things mean girls do to other girls when they have them surrounded?
cutting their hair, like, if we talk about teen girls, thats top (non murdery) evil shit they can do to each other
ruining their clothes, stealing/smashing phones, stealing and hidding shoes, things like that
Well this was all the encouragement I needed
>pointy wizard hats are literaly armor against magic in mine
Some items in my game grant Ward which negates damage from non phyiscal sources like hexes or psychic damage. I imagined they'd be like talismans or necklaces but pointy wizard hats is a way better item for that.
>I imagined they'd be like talismans or necklaces
check onto Nazar's and "ojos de venado" (deer's eye) if you want some ideas for amulets against hexes
but yes, hats are better as "anti magic armor", as well as robes and similar wizard tunics are
man, thats too evil even for me
but yes, teen girls would do that and worse
captcha: W0RKG
I had this entire thing typed up and never hit post.
For some opening thread questions:
>Have you dedicated some time and effort into making DriveThruRPG's (excluding their recent issues) PocketQuest "thing?"
>Have you had to make any significant pivots in design? A situation or demand required you change direction or tone.
>What's your current page count looking out? Keeping thing lean, or adding in ALL the options?
>Is there any major design influences to your project which may be a bit odd? Referencing video games, other tabletop games, books, movies, etc?
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
>(RPG) How much does your system trust the players? Do you have a lot of savior mechanics, metacurrencies, etc? Or are you a purist?
>(Card) With your deck, do you have any odd terms or situations that you haven't seen before in a card game?
>(War) What's the absolute upper limit of "Dudes on the Table" do you think your game could handle before it breaks down? What is the absolute least number to still create a relatively viable force for play?
No
I was drinking when I started on my game. After going sober I ended up scrapping all but the very core design and starting over.
My notes are a jumbled mess, but I'm keeping things concise.
Monster Hunter played a heavy role in inspiring combat, so players need to be ready for adapting their weapon's elemental damage.
Reach a playable state. Slowly, at my current rate.
(RPG) No meta currency since I just have bad personal experiences with them. Overall my system does trust the players, possibly more than the DM.
I'd like to know more about how the metacurrencies were done poorly. I personally enjoy them, but then again I haven't had a truly bad experience with them either. Want to know because I like designing them, especially for my own game.
I was waiting for the questions! Glad to see 'em.
>Have you dedicated some time and effort into making DriveThruRPG's (excluding their recent issues) PocketQuest "thing?"
Yes. Saw it on their website when it was first announced and started working on a horror / slasher inspired game to go along with the "summer camp" theme. After a week or so of spinning my wheels and not feeling confident I could do something unique with the idea that would set it apart from other similar games, I switched to something else.
>Have you had to make any significant pivots in design? A situation or demand required you change direction or tone.
Yes. Switched to a game about a summer camp for knights-in-training that's loosely based on how Scouting works. Start as a Page, learn some skills and grow up, become a Squire, participate in the end of summer tournament and eventually become a full-fledged knight. Mechanic wise it uses 2d6 plus a small modifier to hit a target number, but you can "shift" to 2d4 or 2d8 if you're bad or good at specific skills.
>What's your current page count looking out? Keeping thing lean, or adding in ALL the options?
Trying to hit that 20 page max. Have some plans to cut it down as I'm realizing it's a lot of copy and I don't want to pad it with too much artwork just to hit the page count.
>Is there any major design influences to your project which may be a bit odd? Referencing video games, other tabletop games, books, movies, etc?
Trying to mix medieval manuscript style pages with a survival handbook design has been fun and challenging. Interesting mash-up of modern and medieval for the font / layout and I'm modifying old royalty free artwork for it.
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
Finish writing the copy and play-testing the game. Achieving goal 1 by sending it to a friend and goal 2 by asking some other friends to give it a whirl. Here's hoping it ends up being fun.
>Trying to mix medieval manuscript style pages with a survival handbook design has been fun and challenging. Interesting mash-up of modern and medieval for the font / layout and I'm modifying old royalty free artwork for it.
Just use interesting fonts for titles of stuff, try and find an ordinary font that can be easily read by most people.
That's the plan! Thanks for the advice. I've got a medieval font for the game and chapter titles, and everything else is a sans serif font. (I looked at the BSA style guide for inspiration, it was a big help.)
No comment on B but I do like idea A a lot. Having baselines for different strength levels and unit types that can be slotted together is nice and simple. Plus the idea of "use any model you want" is fun and at least to me really sells the idea of hiring random mercenaries / henchmen!
For finding information you can modify how Gumshoe works. Success gets you the clue / info you need to move the plot forward and degrees above it give you extra context or info that you'd otherwise find later.
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
Finishing the revised versions of crafting, settlement building, and equipment customization of the game.
Wasted Earth is a good system that I'm confident in the bones of, but some of the more esoteric bits could use more playtests yet. The core is 3d6 roll under with drop the lowest/highest being a core resolution mechanic.
Attached is the latest revision on the "simultaneous action" combat. (really it's more like post-decision initiative rolls, but I digress)
I got some good feedback on the earlier combat rules so this is more refined in that same vein.
I remember this! I see you took up the other anon's suggestion to make quick actions not require a roll and have them be done quickly. Did you get a chance to playtest the new changes yet?
Yeah it took a bit, but the once per turn for help/hinder was a good change, along with changing the triggers. I think the movement is a tiny bit weird still. The maths on changing a pool of dice vs. replacement of the 3 is a bit odd also.
Weird as in oddly constrictive? Weird as in it plays a different tune to what else is going around? I was the guy who suggested the flexibility with actions in the last thread, but looking back on it my suggestion would have been better if you resolved everything as a sequence of events rather than as a chaotic clusterfrick all at once.
I'll need to take another look at your packet, but it is also getting late. I'll try and see if I can't give some input tomorrow, but tomorrow is going to be hectic for me.
The odd thing is that you perhaps should be able to move at any point, but then it gets into more minute details where doing it in its own phase is mechanically very clean but not very "realistic" if you know what I mean
One question I have is about Movement and Zones.
For each zone a survivor has moved in combat, their major action takes -1d.
What if a survivor wishes to charge at another from across the zone? Would that change the above ruling, or is it still as written?
If I'm understanding the question, I think RAW it'd be movement within a zone and wouldn't incur any penalty
So if the survivor were to charge at a full on run into another zone, he would take a -1d penalty? That would make some sense given the distance he or she would have to cover, giving that much more room for things to get weird.
Would it be possible for major actions to be substituted out for a move action? Maybe also do the same with quick actions? While people are attacking, there are others trying to get away from the hubbub. I hope I'm making sense.
That does make sense. Currently you can make a "rush" as a quick action, which moves you up to 2 zones, so maybe I've already opened that can of worms.
My stance would be to put the option in anyways and playtest it. If it doesn't flow cleanly after that, then you'll know it wasn't the right thing to do, and maybe you'll run into something that works.
>How much does your system trust the players? Do you have a lot of savior mechanics, metacurrencies, etc? Or are you a purist?
I just added an "in fiction" metacurrency of the survivors having Resolve, and I think that doesn't feel off like bennies or boons or what have you. It's really a pool of bonuses that players can spend or the GM can attack. I hate most metacurrency, but of course when I do it, it's different.
Playtests are magic like that. You're right that I should keep in that worrisome part for the next test and see how the complications actually play out.
No idea what PocketQuest is.
My design changes every time I look at it. Sometimes even when I don't. Possibly because I have several games I'm making. Arguably because I have no games I'm making and just a mess of game mechanic ideas.
Maybe half a dozen pages of scrawled notes? Pretty much everything I've typed up is obsolete.
I'm influenced by lots of things a little bit. I'm not sure anything would stand out as unusual.
The solo wargame should scale down to one dude without totally breaking. Realistically 3-6 is probably going to be what works on the player side.
I have made a lot of significant pivots, yes. I made a whole list of feats, and one character was able to make himself into a javelin-chucking machine gun. It was all a bunch of good laughs and a good time, but it wasn't what I was looking for in a game so I scrapped it and made the feats in it very differently. I am much more pleased with how it is turning out.
I'm at 358 pages so far and counting, but it's all microsoft word standard formatting. Plenty more to go before I start trimming lots of fat.
I actually got my mother to help me make a part of the game. Just an optional Appearance Score system, and she's a major literature and English language buff so she got to help me come up with words that are the opposite of one another. "Appearance" is way too broad a term so I have Appearance organized in opposing pairs. When one side has a bonus, the other side has an equivalent malice. So if "Homely" is +3, then its counterpart "Comely" is -3. My mother convinced me that using Beauty/Ugly is too broad a term and refers to more than just appearance. My favorite one that she helped make as a potential appearance score pairing is "Crisp/Rumpled".
My current major goal right now is to finish my manuscript. While I write it I am playtesting the rules as written with my group. Currently running a dungeon crawl and it's as far as I know being very positively received by my players, or at least they keep coming back and engaging with the challenges before them. And memes relevant to the game and happenings in it are being posted in the discord. Lots of memes.
This is an RPG, and all of the metacurrencies are optional rules. The "Savior" mechanics lie in how a PC can take as many actions or reactions as they like (so long as if it fits within six seconds of time in a typical round) so they aren't sitting ducks between their turns. There is a lot for the GM to use and the GM gets a lot of power, but if you can't trust your GM, why are you playing with him?
K's autism update
im in the process of finishing magic.... well, i should be, the whole set of spellcasting rules has been updated and the 26 initial spells (and all their posible overchannel modifications and alterations) have already been planned out, but havent really worked on them since i spent the last few weeks trying to fix dozens of small mistakes so even if things are moving, nothing new is being created
>What's your current page count looking out? Keeping thing lean, or adding in ALL the options?
currently 209 pages, the original target was only 120 but feature creep and my autism forced me to go forward, but i finaly put a stop to that and i have a set stopping point now and im about to reach it
>Is there any major design influences to your project which may be a bit odd? Referencing video games, other tabletop games, books, movies, etc?
if we talk odd influences, ill mention metro and cyberpunk, like, before starting to do K's autism (name pending), i gave a try to convert the stupid CPRED version of interlock into a roll under game for metro since my players really wanted to play a metro themed rpg, dropped it very early on, but a lot of the mechanics (including the modified skill list i did for it) ended up being reused for my current game (which is a medieval game so it is indeed a very odd influence)
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
finish the already set spells, finish the 3 incomplete races and add more racial feats to the construct variants, fix balance, finish my backlog of corrections and get a (temporal) cover done to be able to publish and get at least a few dolars from it (like, i live in a 3rd world shithole so even a few dozen dolars a month from donations would make it economicaly viable)
also finally get a name for the game, its shamefull that its been almost a year and a half in development without a name
Space TTRPG anon here
>PocketQuest
Nah, I don't have much experience in the aesthetic they asked for.
>Significant design pivots
I cannot remember how many times I've written, scrapped, redrafted, polished, and scrapped my rules for tech and cyberspace computer hacky stuff. It inevitably falls into the shadowrun problem of "it's the decker's turn, time to go for a beer run"
>Page Count
Just shy of 100
>Design influences
Mostly the stuff you'd expect for a Sci-fi space RPG. Star Trek and Star Wars, Mass Effect, System Shock, Deus Ex, Dead Space, Shadowrun, Firefly/Serenity.
>Current Goal
I'M GONNA HAVE A PLAYTESTABLE SYSTEM TONIGHT. Will post when out of the oven
And ay, frick metacurrencies.
B seems cool, I really like it. If you can keep the calculations simple, I can see it being a nice lever for foisting decisions on players. They seem to like that, but not too much.
A, I don't really understand. The player has a 'commander' unit with a class, and a bunch of henchmen, constructed from "type + level" like intermediate human etc. I guess it neatens up process of building a war band.
The simultaneous 'variable initiative' from lowest to highest is neat for simulating the chaos of combat, I do wonder how much it slows down on the table to determine the effects of the resolution phase. Seems like it might bog down a bit
It's me, Space RPG dude from
I ended up not posting, but still having a playtest. Some kinks showed up regarding psionics out of combat (namely that doing cool shit meant that the psychic had little "mana" left when we got to combat, and as a heavy psychic, they resultingly had few options)
Kinda like DnD Wizards blowing their spell slots on out of combat utility spells and being empty when combat starts.
The player said it felt shitty, but I feel like managing your character's stamina, slightly mathier spell slots, leads to consequential decisions, and this particular player simply didn't think ahead, and also built a one trick pony.
I'll be redrafting this month, and will 100% share next thread
>Have you had to make any significant pivots in design? A situation or demand required you change direction or tone
We have been really pushing to streamline our RPG system. Decreased the amount of skills in the list, we streamlined how to use secondary advantages/disadvantages dice results for combat (much more freeform and less book keeping), killed some darling game mechanics that just weren't working out (goodbye Push It To The Limit Dice).
>What's your current page count looking out? Keeping thing lean, or adding in ALL the options?
The 'core' rule book is 50 pages. It's JUST rules. There's also a 'content pack' of player facing stuff that's about half the size.
>Is there any major design influences to your project which may be a bit odd?
Tarantino and Coen Brothers films, in the sense that it's 'heightened reality' with a real sense that things 'just go sideways sometimes'
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
We want to get a 'playtest packet' out. We have the makings of one, but we need more sample enemies and npcs to fill out our bestiary to make it more plug-and-play
>(RPG) How much does your system trust the players? Do you have a lot of savior mechanics, metacurrencies, etc? Or are you a purist?
The game really leans into everyone at the table being invested in the narrative, players and GM, so it really trusts the players and encourages them to contribute to the game. We use a pretty limited Meta currency (three total, get back one each in game day) where players can introduce key details, NPCs, 'well actually' moments, etc. It really cuts down on 'begging' and 'mother may I' because if a player 'wants' something they can spend a benny to get it and when it runs dry, it runs dry. The whole system already depends on a really flexible and dynamic GM so it fits.
If you'd like to check it out, click the link below or scan the QR code
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_6LIS5pNmsUW9GE4poleOmNLudZ3PKNh?usp=sharing
I can't really call myself an expert on your system, but just how did "Push It To The Limit Dice" just not work out?
>I can't really call myself an expert on your system, but just how did "Push It To The Limit Dice" just not work out?
Now that's an interesting story. The 'Limit' Die was something that was around since some of the earliest iterations of the project. The central dice mechanics were inspired by FFG's Star Wars/Genesys and Don't Rest Your Head, in equal parts. DRYH had the idea that certain dice in your pool work towards 'success' while also having the chance of rolling sideways, and FFG had us thinking "what if you had the upgraded player die but instead of a Triumph it had a Despair".
The Limit Die was an optional visually distinctive die you could throw into your pool when you rolled. It could score Hits like a normal die, but if it rolled a 6 then it triggered a 'Complication' that added something really chaotic or unwelcome to the scene. The die either edges you closer to success or blows up in your face.
We could never quite figure out how to make it 'feel right'. What if it only triggers if you also pass the check? Or maybe another die in your pool has to match the Limit Die. On and on trying to get the risk-reward just right. As we try to get that to work, we also thought 'but what if a situation is inherently dangerous but without choice'? First it was, swap out a normal die for a limit die, that doesn't change the dice pool. Then we thought, decouple it from the check, if a situation is inherently dangerous, roll a d10 off to the side and if it rolls a 1/2/3 (the numbers that generate Hits), then a Complication occurs. We start using the design space quite a bit in the greater game.
As we streamlined the game, we realized, we didn't NEED the Limit Die. Instead of a one-off dice type, a player can instead add a normal die to their pool and then the check becomes Dangerous. It's the same thing, really, just using design space already being used. Limit Dice got replaced by a mechanic they helped inspire. Circle of life, in a way.
So the Limit Die were just an extra die to throw into the mix when you needed a boost that had the potential to really bite your ass on a 16.67% chance.
I suppose asking for more of those Limit Die could be nasty too because we'll see diminishing returns with it too. Sounds like the problem I think old World of Darkness had with their d10 die with "1" always being a failure. Beyond 5d10 in that system you see serious diminishing returns.
But in your system, it is the rolls of "1, 2, and 3" that are king for getting "Hits" while the highest rolled number on the challenge or skill side conveys advantage or disadvantage (unless I'm mistaken).
But your streamlining solution sounds to be much more pretty, and I'm glad you found your way around it. I can't figure out a solution for the old way!
What's the next step in SATTAR's development?
Hey, you got it exactly right, friend. Our next step is content creation, specifically enemy and NPC design. We have a small collection in the one setting document, but really we need tons more, so anyone who wants to pick up the playtest doesn't need to make any of their own content. More gear and magic stuff would be good, and we have a few more talents in mind. After that, maybe a pre-made module and some pre-gen characters?
I, and the whole team, really appreciates your interest in the project. If you want to read through it, offer feedback, hit us up at [email protected]
What we're looking for at the moment is people to read, and in short time, people to play. Do you have a project in thread? What are you working on?
Enemy and NPC design always winds up being a lot more intensive than it is intended to be. I'm willing to bet you're better at that part than I am, but I do think that the pre-made module and characters are very much essential. But I also think that character creation is a great way to learn the ins and outs of what your character is good at and not good at, even if they don't immediately get the system.
I mostly just read through the first few pages of the core mechanics and I think where you listed the Limit Die stuff (page 41 I think?) enough to get an idea before I check what the next anon has in store. In a game design general, I have to be general too. Notepad Anon can't do all of the work!
I look forward to your next posting which, if all works out, has the NPC and enemy creation. What is essential and what is superfluous.
I alluded to my project in Notepad anon's question, but I don't have anything I feel is worth presenting to /tg/ (It's 358 pages long and counting. Lots of fat to be trimmed in the end). But it does use a single d20 with modifiers to add to it. The modifiers are highly modular too so one can take sources or two out of the equation as needed. But I think my biggest point is its action system.
I'll post about it in my next post. Character limit.
In my game one can take as many actions and reactions in any shape or form as he likes so long as what he is intending sounds possible. However if one were to...
- Take four actions
- Take two actions that call for a check (the roll of the d20 + modifiers)
- Take one full-turn-action
Then their turns become complex. After the resolution of the action that made the turn complex, they take a CAP (Complex Action Penalty). All that a CAP does is penalize all checks a character makes by -5.
Furthermore, each action taken past the limit no matter its nature grants one more CAP on top of the initial one. This stacks pretty quickly.
There are points where being reckless works out, especially if your foe is accruing CAPs as fast as you are. You don't want four CAPs (-20 penalty) while surrounded by angry orcs.
You're encouraged to weigh whether you should try to defend yourself actively (Like parrying or dodging) or just hope your passive defense sees you through or just eat the hit.
I'm playtesting this in a dungeon crawl, and on my end it's doing the resource management pretty well and my players are giving good feedback on it I feel.
there's always the "you're one success short, you can add a complication to succeed" option but that may remove tension.
Huh, that's an option. I'll bring it up with the other devs. I like how straightforward it is, even if it removes some tension. Maybe instead of adding a die to roll, it's declare that you are "taking extra risk." After rolling either discard the highest die rolled, or change it to a Hit and trigger a Complication. The mandatory loss of the highest die is to prevent spamming.
So I talked it over with the team, and we are going to keep it how it is, but keep your suggestions in our back pocket. Having an extra dice vs adding the needed success, commit to it pre roll vs post resolution, could still fail vs force a win at cost, changes it from gamble to mitigation, and we want to keep that tension and risk of the gamble. Either way, thank you for the feedback, it prompted a really good discussion on our end!
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
I have to redo my character sheet since I asked in /tg/ what they thought about it and they gave me some pretty cool criticism, but the problem is, I lost the InDesign file when my PC got bricked, so I have to start everything from the ground up, and I kinda am dreading it
pdf is the character sheet in question
>Have you dedicated some time and effort into making DriveThruRPG's (excluding their recent issues) PocketQuest "thing?"
Not interested in making paid content. If people wanna give me money they can buy me a coffee over on ko-fi, but I'm a believer in f2p TTRPGs.
>Have you had to make any significant pivots in design? A situation or demand required you change direction or tone.
Turns out, capping stats at 6 (3 at chargen) leads to really weak characters when all rolls are a pool of d6s of stat + Skill + modifiers. Doubled the caps and increased cap to one stat and one skill at 5, the rest 4 or less at chargen, going to work with the test players to tweak their characters to fit the changes tomorrow afternoon.
>What's your current page count looking out? Keeping thing lean, or adding in ALL the options?
109 pages all in all. Includes a GM section + Variant Rules + All the player stuff at the front end + cover + Credits + changelog in a google doc. All in all, 106 pages of actual content in the core doc + around another 20-30 between the two extra documents.
>Is there any major design influences to your project which may be a bit odd? Referencing video games, other tabletop games, books, movies, etc?
It's a sonic ttrpg, so obviously the games - mainly the DS RPG actually as well as the other games - but mechanically it's a bit similar to Exalted in how pools are calculated (but not much else).
>What's the current major goal, and how are you going to reach it?
Get the numbers in a good place and ensure all the Classes are functional and balanced. Biggest concern is Momentum Points, basically like Action Points in Fallout 1/2 and you spend them to do stuff in all the three types of gameplay, a character with 12 Luck, Speed, and Willpower has 36 Momentum Points, which is a ton. I might have it be a fixed amount that scales with level and has a bonus equal to your Speed Stat/2 as a solution if it looks like things are getting crazy.
>What's your current page count looking out? Keeping thing lean, or adding in ALL the options?
Right now it is coming up on 40 pages, although a good bit of that is not actually filled with information, and is acting as placeholder space for bits I have not bothered to write yet. I expect this to be a decent monster when it is finished. How else will I fill it with all of the stupid garbage I like?
>Is there any major design influences to your project which may be a bit odd? Referencing video games, other tabletop games, books, movies, etc?
1700s era surgical practices is likely the most "out there" thing, where combat leads to injuries and failing to treat them properly will lead to much trouble down the line, eventually leading to amputation in a setting without any anaesthesia. Other than that, I just took bits from a plethora of media I like or anything that sounds interesting to me.
Right now I am cleaning up some things to a vaguely readable and functional state so I can run some playtests, and see what player builds are horribly, horribly broken.
It is good to see this thread open when I finally decided to bother working on my system again, I last posted about it some bit ago!
>Have you dedicated some time and effort into making DriveThruRPG's (excluding their recent issues) PocketQuest "thing?"
Huh? Whats this?
currently in the rapid prototyping to see if my game idea is moronic. it's based off monster hunter
>boss battler that's app assisted, where the app takes control of the monster
>players start off with 5 cards, each able to do movement or attack, and 2 inventory one use cards, potions, traps, etc.
>players can play as many cards as they want, but can only take one card from the used pile per turn, or rest and take three back
this next idea, im not so sure about
>some attacks require "charging" (not using any other card afterwards) until the next round, and some can charge for three rounds
>players are required to play their turn within 30 seconds to mitigate time between turns, which is also helped by the app doing most of the monster stuff for less down time
>monsters and players all move a couple of hext tiles
What can the app do that a GM can't? Or is it more like a board game?
it is more like a board game. I was thinking of Making a flow chart and status tables for each monsters for a GM, but the app is really to reduce down time. The GM would need to keep up with randomizing attack patterns, updating different status aliments and resistant done to the monsters, and change each monsters attack based on its conditions (normal, tired, angry) in a consistent way to allow players to "read" how a monsters acts. and there would be multiple monsters on the field at one time. The GM would also only have 30 seconds. I didn't think it would be much fun for a GM
Charging seems a really high price to pay, given that each charging turn is the equivalent of three cards not taken.
Otherwise, everything else seems like a good start. Give it a try
Each turn lost would have to be a little more efficient than a standard turn, at least by the end
you would need to not get interrupted between turns and it would have to actually land the hit. which is why I was thinking it was gonna be exponential damage base off the weapons stats, every charge is to the power the based weapon stats
>axe charge = 3
>no charge = 1D6 damage
>1 charge = 3D6
>2 charge = 9D6
>3 charge = 27D6
I'm currently jumping back and forth between two projects I have fun working on. I'd like to get some feedbacks on key mechanics for a skirmish game.
a)
During the initial creation of the warband, the player can pick heroes from a pool of fairly generic profiles (warrior, caster, support, ...), choose skills and equip them to give every player the same starting profiles but everyone will be able to customize them.
The henchmen are picked randomly (because you hire the people who are currently at the mercenary guild/tavern for example, you don't get to choose). They are grouped by type and quality. You have "Human, Animal, Monster, Construct, ..." and "Weak, Intermediate, Advanced" meaning you could recruit a Weak Animal or an advanced construct. Each of these combinations would be associated with a statline.
The point is to allow the player to use any model they want. Weak animal could be any small dog or wolf model they have laying around. No need for WYSIWIG even tough it's visually better on the table.
b)
Magic corrupts. There's no good or bad magic, just the influence of it affects more or less the user. The more you go against the rules of nature, the faster you get corrupted. Redirecting the flow of a stream will have less impact than reviving a fallen ally with necromancy. This corruption would be tracked on the warband sheet and by reaching specific thresholds, you could unlock bonuses/maluses in a high risk high reward approach.
Non caster heroes would get corruption by making choices during the campaign. Example : you get prisonners after the battle, you can free them for a ransom (get x gold) or kill them to get favors from a dark goddess ( but you get x corruption)
Is it complete shit ?
>it takes ages to come up with all these ideas for classes, subclasses and specializations
>but it's also fun
The goal is not the goal itself, I guess.
Is there anything you want out of a system with classes that you can't get out of a system without them?
Classes certainly have their use, and classless systems aren't universally better by default. Classes can make it easier for games to have a more streamlined and compact character creation, for instance for ye good old dungeon crawlers where you are expected to come up with a new character quickly. Classes have the advantage of giving players an easy archetype to fall back to and guiding them into playing a role that fits the setting. Some games may want really tightly designed classes to fit a certain tone and enforce a certain style of game.
Another thing that classes do is safeguarding a niche. The system I'm working on is a weird class-based-half-open attempt at having classes but giving players lots of freedom to build around them. Any character can pick up spellcasting, it isn't even difficult, as much as an investment as increasing any other skill. But only the spellcasting classes have access to some unique abilities that make sure that they are the dedicated spellcasters in the group. They have their identity, their niche isn't threatened by other characters, the classes and subclasses can be flavorful and add some to the world-building.
All of that is true, but at least in my case I once obsessed over all of the character classes that could be made only to realize that classes themselves were holding back the potential of what I really wanted out of my game, which was to be flexible for any setting and style and not to any specific one.
Nevertheless I felt this was necessary to ask because if it were me, I would be making a plethora of classes, subclasses, and specializations in order to try and encompass everything out there in the world.
There's a Korean proverb I like that says something like, "Don't try to fit the whole of the sky into the palm of your hand". If the goal is to give the whole of the sky, then my suggestion would be to give the whole of the sky, and guide other players into how to fit what they want from the sky into the palm of their hands.
But if as you said it is to enforce a certain style of game or theme or feel, then I agree with you that classes have their place. In which case, the question becomes, "What feel are you trying to convey with your game? Does what you have made convey it well?"
Finished a demobuild of the prototype wargame I'm working on. Literally 1.1 beta but I need to test my theories on balance and interactions before I assign point values. It's just a demo scenario the core rules and two prefab lists for now.
Working on futzing with TTS to make a module so I can playtest it more frequently with my buddies and let randos frick around with it if they care to.
Was working on my wacky racers tank game but hit a hard wall, partially due to losing several documents.
So when I had my internet destroyed ( I live in the sticks) for a week I made this system based off of some ideas I've had about how to model a protracted firefight that was more about positioning and morale than lethality.
Point values aren't in yet because that will come from testing, just general ideas about evaluation in each mess-sheet, but 3 faction rosters and armories are "done" of the 5 and one is 60% done.
It's about cassette-punk hardsuit warfare in my bro and I's scifi pulp rpg setting.
D12 based medium sized wargame with universal ongoing deployment, a sideboard, and segmented alternate activations.
There is no pitched battle or tabling, it's objective warfare centered around reducing action output of enemies.
>prototype rules:
>dropbox com/s/jijvdn6sp67cb7l/PROTOTYPE1.txt?dl=0
If you wanna take a look or frick around with it.
I've been using a 6x4 munda terrain setup to design and test so far, game assumes medium-dense terrain.
And a third faction, not in the demo scenario but could be used in place of either faction, has the least testing done on it so I don't have a balanced test list for them yet.
Despite the theme, they are not a "horde" faction, so TM probably outnumber them on the table and they probably outnumber HotR by a bit.
Again I live in the fricking sticks so I have to demo with friends visiting or play against myself.
TTS is a b***h to wrangle but I'm dreaming of using the infinity boards. since the scale is 25-50mm hardsuits. Been jam-packing my Bolt Action terrain like a Day of Defeat Source map to get the feel.
>Rusting Hulks Prototype
dropbox com/s/n09w6ktbgq86jcl/RuHuList.txt?dl=0
And yes, they are a giant C&C reference.
How are the magic users going to work?
Is it another kind of shooting Attack?
It is an AP costed ability to cast.
1 AP gets you 1 d12, you can burn as much ap as you want per spell, you roll to meet the psychic stress level of the spell.
There are two types of casts, basically buffs and curses, the casters have access to either or both.
The target must have a shock threshold to be cursed, it cashes out shock tokens to get the effect, the more cashed the more powerful.
The recipient of the buff instead just takes shock and gets the buff.
Either can be cast on allies or enemies, and they have a unit that are just little braintanks on spiderlegs that move morale around.
Things outside of cast range can be conduited, which wounds a conduit unit to use them as sighting and casting point of the spell.
So a seaple caster with dogshit range can ameliorate that issue by using humans as the conduit and blowing up part of their unit to manifest the spell from them, which the faction has units and monsters that get benefits from being at high shock, so sometimes it's the most efficient play if they share the division activation.
Their buffs are backhanded , and their hexes are mild and actually CASH OUT some shock, but can also deal direct damage or make others able to deal more damage, so they can be useful for beating up things you can never conventionally break, as well as turning your own boys into living bombs should a chaff squad outlive its usefulness.
First time posting here.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/187TTpdaO-f_J9L7IzgXhA8Duxb8DOBpC/view?usp=sharing
My game is a Sci-Fi DMC and metal inspired d20 game that uses a soft class and soft level system for extreme character customization.
You can quad wield rocket launchers on a skateboard while fighting a time stopping robot based on a Dio song.
I clicked this and was like "wow, this thing is huge" but saw that you made the font and typeset super readable. It's nicely laid out, easy on the eyes. At the risk of sounding sappy, I wanted to say how much I love and adore the hand drawn illustrations. It really shows a labor of love, and adds a cool style to the document. I'll see if I can read through it in the future, but keep it up.
I barely understand graphic design so the readability was a happy accident, but thanks. I have no intention of stopping.
Hey all, Smug here. I've done it. I've put together a Sonic the Hedgehog TTRPG which I've started playtesting with a couple of friends and a rando from /vg/ every other saturday. First playtest was last week, went well, managed to glean a lot of good info. Numbers are always the hardest part but leaving behind terminology from previous versions or ideas I forget to expand on is a token of my work process so if any of you guys would be up to giving the documents a read please do and leave comments letting me know about my frickups.
Also if you notice any problems with the Google Sheets let me know so I can find out what I fricked up and fix it.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/126XiBUz_12oowW1xa8x7bxZIRmrd9Pr6?usp=sharing
If anyone is interested in joining the playtests (they alternate every other saturday morning at 9 AM US Central/UTC-6 time, plug it into a converter to get your own zone from 9 to around 12/1 PM) reply and if I get a few interested people I can throw up links to the setting primer to see if you can vibe with my cherrypicked homebrew version of the sonic setting or if your tism' is too strong and a small google forms application to see if you're a good fit for the group or not.
In other news, Pax Cybertronia (my transformers system) will - eventually - probably - see some tweaks to pricing of spaceship parts or starting currency using the Counted Currency variant rule (or whatever I call it). I also want to add in structured rules for owning multiple weapons and pricing for all weapon components. Otherwise it's looking pretty solid as a system.
As is Rising Heroes, my Kamen Rider system, though odds are certain things are going to see tweaks, be it increasing check difficulty or adjusting the costs of certain Powers. I also want to implement a more structured way for earning powers as well as a similar system for my Bleach TTRPG, Death and the Dice since I had someone run it and it worked alright (but could use tweaks).
I'd love to join but that time would be a tad early for me (7:00 AM my time), but I wouldn't suppose anyone made Sonichu for your system yet would they?
Missed opportunity on my end, should have made him the example character but no thank god.
Someone will do it I'm sure, but I can't imagine it's too late to do at least as an easter egg at the end of the book or something. Good luck with your game though!
I'll probably describe a yellow hedgehog jobbing at some point as a little wink-nod via NPC.
>"You could say.... he got slapped to the extreme."
*Looks wistfully into the middle distance while fiddling with corncob pipe.*
So here, got to talking about advancement with my players while reworking the sheets. Ran some numbers, changed it so that it works as follows:
>Players get level 2 after session 1
>Get level 3 after session 3
>Get levels 4-10 every 3 sessions
>5 XP at the end of every session instead of 3
>Raising stats cost half the new value rounded up
>Raising skills costs half the current value rounded down
>Going from 0 to 1 cost 1 XP
>Powers now cost 1,3,or5 XP instead of 1/3/6
>Game should end with players having 125 XP, meaning they get a full session to fight the final boss with their 10th level powers
>New Variant Rule for playing beyond 10th; they can now go to 20th, and every 3 levels beyond 10th (13/16/19) they get +1 to a Derived Stat of their choice. 20th gives them a +1 to all Derived Stats instead
Otherwise, we're all sorted out. I just need to tweak the math and Data on the google sheets.
Does Sonic the Hedgehog need levels though? Sonic blasts through all challenges with all the skill he ever had, aside from maybe some odd gear finds and how close he is to his goal.
The only RPG sonic's been in has levels, Sonic Origins, and in a turn-based TTRPG (which Origins also is) I think levels work well and also show a clear progression of power while also dividing characters into clear archetypes (ala heroes).
There are General Powers that rely on your stats, skills, and species to pick out at chargen (you get 3 freebies you qualify for of your choice) or buy with XP. Items such as weapons, armor, and power-ups are also locked behind XP walls.
Furthermore, Sonic has a clear progression; in 1 he can't even spin dash, in 2 he can't do the air shield, in 3 he can't super peel out, in CD he can't homing attack, in Adventure and 2 he needs a power up to lightspeed dash and can't boost, in Unleashed he can now sidestep as well as boost and lightspeed dashes are just part of his repritoire. In Lost World he can homing attack a single foe multiple times by charging up. In Forces, he could Double Boost with the Avatar, a new enhanced Boost ability. He clearly gains new abilities all the time, and it looks like this will continue (and also have a progression system) in Frontiers.
King Cringe of Autist Mountain, aka
here. Playtest 2 just wrapped up, decided to tweak how NPCs calculate their stats (basing it on the Players and changing how strong they are based on tier of difficulty), rework Class Features (no longer limited to the three Stage Types, they simply have different costs and some are reworked), and Chaos Mage has had its available Chaos Points increased to 5/10/15/20 at levels 1-3/4-6/7-9/10 respectively.
Also, a guy from one of my other regular groups joined up as said Chaos Mage and we've having fun even with the jank.
Back again again, this time with more tweaks.
>Class Powers are no longer tied to stages outside of specific language, generally reworked to be more all-around useful
>Some classes - Support, Leader, and Chaos Mage - got major buffs
>Some Species Powers got minor buffs to be more generally applicable
>Google Sheet updated and tweaked
How do games with degrees of success handle checks for information or traps
give trap information out in tiers according to how many sucesses were rolled
Hey guy, started my pet project again
May I introduce you to TRAUMA.
I'm currently making the weapons list, putting 4 weapons per Weapon Category to add some variety.
I have at the point maybe 70 character perks (just things like Ugly, Optimistic or some general character flavor with some mechanical implication) and maybe some 70 combat related skills, but I think that I can get it to 100 just to satisfy my autism.
Just putting it out here, there is a lot of work to be done, but in my current schedule things will speed up from here.
Just a quick tldr of the game
>What is it?
A homebrew Cyberpunk TTRPG inspired in Project Moon series of games, novels and comics, specially Library of Ruina and Distortion Detective. It also draws inspiration from SCP
>What it is about?
Humanity, after a series of catastrophes known as The 10 Incidents now survive in a hand few of Megacities, called the Archologies, with each one housing millions of people. These mega cities are marked by the conflict of the multiple factions present there, such as GovCorps, the Judicatures, Gangs, Fixer Offices, Labor Unions and other factions that fight for power and influence in those cities.
>Why TRAUMA?
The Archologies are threatened by Anomalies, unnatural manifestations of human psyche and other supernatural entities that threaten the survival of the whole Archology if left unchecked. Anomalies leave behind TRAUMAs, mysterious artifacts that are as dangerous as they are powerful, which can easily shift the balance of power between factions.
>What is the setting?
Low to medium cyberpunk, communication technologies are stuck on the 2000s, internet is still an unexplored frontier but prosthesis and other technologies are quite advance.
>What the players play as?
The game gives the players and the DM the freedom to choose which sort of campaign they wound like. Play as Fixers taking Requests for money in order to grow in fame and riches, gang members trying to go up the criminal world, operatives from one of the Agencies, fighting to suppress Anomalies or recover TRAUMAs. The setting attempts to create a solid background from which both players and GM can built up their own Archologies, Factions, Anomalies and TRAUMAs
>What is the dice system?
Scaling dice similar to SWADE, the higher your attribute the higher the dice you use for it
amateur game design?
more like amateur GAY design!
That was last month. We're hetero again
rewrote some of the rules after getting feedback from playtesting with some anons on /vm/
give me feedback
When a cow barfs, you get your feed back.
instert joke about your dear mother in here
if a tile is just broken, the arm is still conected to the body
if that armor tile is hit again the robot just loses that limb
if the robot loses all limbs it cannot atack nor move so its considered destroyed
The stacking thing is pretty cool, and I'd wonder what the scale is of those little orange things and the card on which it's placed for the fat fingered and sweaty handed.
Are components getting removed or disconnected, like if the armor gets 3 sword hits what happens if it's the base of my arm?
Overall I think this has the fantasy of robot building and fighting down. I wonder if there's an optimal strategy that emerges, like if damage is always drafted hardest, what range is best for the game board size and movement rates, and whether swords are useful enough to use beyond a last resort.
I'm making only war in wfrp 4e
It's more work to wrangle the system in place than I expected
Just take out the fantasy and roleplay
wouldn't be better dark heresy but with WFRP 4e rules?
I mean I could do that, but Only War has just enough optional stuff that I can challenge myself with making the conversion feel good.
Besides, now WFRP has decent mass combat rules and an actual war campaign seems viable
Remember to read the sourcebooks, some got extra rules (and I want a dark heresy game but with 4e rules so I can have less janks and play with my friends)
Absolutely. I'm trying to make it "only war but smoother," instead of just "wfrp but reskinned."
One of the the things I've been wondering about is how necessary certain autistic parts of the system are. For example, the differences between Fixed/Hull/Pintle/Turret/Sponson mounts on weapons. They were obviously added to the game to have parity with the wargame because hey, that's how they worked in the wargame and the game was balanced around that.
However, I'm not certain how much it adds to the game to say "this thing is a hull mounted weapon, and therefore can only turn 22.5° left or right from the side it's on." It means that minis or a VTT are basically needed for the game, and that you're going to need a 45° cone template on hand (even though most people that played 7e just played with a 90° arc on hull-mounted stuff).
DESU, I never played only war (only read the corebook a time ago) I like the concept but you can turn down the autism a few cranks since I remember a friend that played it and didn't liked it because of well, the extra autism. (it's no very useful if you are not a hardcore W40k)
Bump, not at PC and need to post my stuff don't die you b***h.
Inspired by /osrg/ and /srpgg/
still going strong
>pre-alpha
I don't want to typeset this in MS Word because I've done this on my 11 USD computer (including the monitor) on Lubuntu, but LibreOffice Writer fricks up when I try to switch between single- and two-column layouts.
Any other ideas, besides typesetting it as an e-pub or on gitbook?
For example, tables get funky with no way between switching single- and two-column layouts.
Are googledocs out of question in the meanwhile?
If it allows me to do both single-and two-column layouts in the same page, of course it is a good idea!
I just did it, so yes it can do single, double, and triple columns on the same page. It's still relatively barebones, but still.
you dont have LaTeX?
Is it bad if this is my favorite tabletop game?
Something about the way the rules are written and work out I really like. I'm unsure exactly how to port the system into a different thing- any thoughts?
I feel like it could be a lot shorter, like a microgame
I like the voice; it's charmingly edgy, and suitable to the tone of the "game."
However, I hate all the "GM-may-I" bullshit, the heavy bias in favor of the GM, and all the vague and vacuous abstractions.
Bampu
What would be some downsides gameplay-wise from attached a bayonet to a flintlock rifle? Aside from the obvious "it costs more money"
Reload mishap chance from goobing your hand up?
Reload speed hit from trying not to stab yourself packing the barrel?
Penalty to accuracy from the extra weight on the end of the barrel, and bayonet attacks are objectively a downgrade from just using a melee weapon
I'm doing it, lads, I'm nearly there. Another bit of work and this board game will be playtestable. I've got some friends who have agreed to help, too.
Frick yeah king!
Good luck on the test.
Does anyone have any resources on designing or balancing classes for characters?
I don't, but I would ask yourself what you mean by "balance". Do you just want to make sure a class feels and plays a certain way, or do you want to make sure that each class can take one another on in a one-on-one fight? If you're going cooperative, you only need to make sure each class has an area where it shines and plays well with the rest of the group. If competitive, make sure the numbers and values match.
The main secret does boil down to "Do the Classes fulfill their role?"
Recently I did a video on an OSR game called Flying Swordsman, one of the larger issues were that the Shaman (Cleric) lost a lot of their off-fighter utility, as wearing armor is bad, everyone received a sprinkling of bonus AC, their spells scaled terribly with no assistance, and everyone also had a free heal. Shaman's were 'Imbalanced" as they could no longer do their role compared to others.
A Class System gives each Character a specific goal and role in the group, if they aren't doing that, then ask what they are doing? When you're dealing with things such as multiple flavors of Fighter (Swordsman, Knight, and Mercenary for example), each one should do something the other wants or trades out. The Swordsman trades out the heavier armor of the Knight for better reliable damage, but doesn't have the Mercenaries Skills.
>tl:dr
Everyone does their thing, make sure they do their thing.
It's hard to calculate "fun" as everyone has a different idea. If you want a Sci-Fi Adventure, then playing Traveler is going to be more fun than playing Paleomythic.
In more hard factors, look the other direction. "Are people getting frustrated, annoyed, or ignoring aspects of the game?" Recently, some playtesters were getting annoyed that melee damage in this mech game is a bit wonky, so I'm making some changes to it to remove that, thereby making it "More Fun."
Honestly it really fricking depends on how your game is balanced in the first place
The considerations you would make for old school d&d vs modern d&d when balancing a home brew class are somewhat different
I'm making a more advanced version of lasers and feelings.
I can't decide which way this main mechanic would go. I would have done a handful of play test games. But finding players who willing to play something else besides The Usual Suspects besides being a 5e zombie is demoralizing.
The two different ways I can do this core mechanic are as follow.
Emotional=1=2=3=4=5=6= Mechanical
>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<
The players will draw a dividing line between E an M.
That is how much E you have versus how much M.
1. You what divide your starting dice pull between E and M. (along with your Six other sub stats. Strength vs Endurance. Reflexes vs Dexterity. Seduction vs Intimidation.)
2. You withdraw your dividing line. And then divide your dice pull between your four Core stats. Intelligence, Muscle, Agility, Charisma. (edited)
[6:25 AM]
Also, I can't decide Should I stick with d6's or go to d10s.
How do you know if your game is actually *fun* though?
Playtest it. Is it fun?
didnt do much this past few days since i had to go to the ranch, but refined a bit more the modifications to the parry system
out of that, not much else, still procrastinating on the magic thing
>fun
When your friends are the ones who want to GM the playtest.
Thought up a modification to Risus to make certain mechanics more compatable when I play other systems pre-made adventures/modules on the fly.
Basically two sliders representing physical and mental status.
Both have 5 states.
At the highest state is Boosted, which represents a state of health beyond baseline. It has the gameplay effect of giving (+1) to relevent rolls against target number, and advantage on rolls against other rolls (constested rolls). This state can also be sacraficed to pump a roll to represent exerting one's self at the sacrifice of ether their body or mind.
Below boosted is Normal. No modification to rolls. Can also sacrifice this state to pump a roll.
Below that is tired. Can sacrifice to pump rolls.
And below that is Exhausted, which has a (-1) to tolls against target number and disadvantage on contested rolls.
Last state below that is Critical, which is basically downed until the scene or whatever is finished and a winner has been declared who then says what happens to the downed PC as is normal.
"Damage" is normally accounted for and acumalated by subtracting from clichés. But with this system damage can be done to the body and mind. This also gives the option of absorbing damage ether with a cliché or with the body/mind.
Resting allows for the mind and body to recover towards normal.
I mainly came up with this mod when test playing really trap heavy modules for other game systems and started to run out of narrative explanations for cliché depletion without getting into the effects on the body.
Also I needed something that could work as a sanity system since I want to try out some CoC modules but don't actually want to play the full system.
While I have been playtesting it solo I wanted to see if anyone had feedback on it before I subject other players to it.
Mainly worried about how to make the explanation of it as simple and easy to understand as possible.
The explanation and ideas seem simple enough to follow through with, arguably the hardest part would be the raw legwork of "when, why, and how" each state can be recovered or lowered.
Despair, Agony, Suffering if you will. Had my computer explode on me before, I was lucky that most everything was on GDocs, but I know that feel.
That does sound fairly similar, but you're working with a Dice Ladder (or Dice Tower, Stacking Dice, etc there's like four terms for it).
What do you mean by "Changing the spread of success/failure on a dice?" As in the value its rolling, or do each die have a different Success/Failure?
Arguably taking a look at Tenra Bansho Zero wouldn't be a terrible idea, as its "Strain" is built into the system in the form of Aiki, Kiai, and Karma. Different idea and it isn't a Dice Ladder, but may be useful to gleam some information off of.
Magical Girls are quickly becoming a White Whale, because no one has a clear understanding of what they want regarding what is the "Accepted Genre Norms." Toku is pretty easy to adapt over, replacing RIDER KICK with MAGICAL BLAST KICK. A strict Magical Girl game though? That's a hard one.
It's great! Send Help!
> arguably the hardest part would be the raw legwork of "when, why, and how" each state can be recovered or lowered.
Besides boosted, it's just a stamina system. So stealing a informal short rest/long rest type thing has worked for my solo games. I think I would be able to GM it fine and anyone who has played a game other then risus would be somewhat acclimatized with resting to recover.
It is actually less finicky then recovering cliche die.
Since my understanding of risus is that it's a super streamlined system, maybe having two different stamina bars is redundant.
Have you tried testing using just one to represent both body and mind?
Like a overall stamina bar?
Keeping things simple is a big part of risus after all.
>What do you mean by "Changing the spread of success/failure on a dice?" As in the value its rolling, or do each die have a different Success/Failure?
Both depending on the player choice. When players roll a skill they have a set dice and by using the gate mechanic they can either modify the spread of results on their current dice or change their dice. The average character will ever only be rolling a D12 in one or two skills with a D20 natural roll being incredibly rare so the gate mechanic will need to be used most of the time I hope. I'm planning to come up with some basic characters this week so I can do a playtest of the mechanics before I go further.
I'm don't feel convincend of the whole "no result" die roll, feels a bit like another failure but with less impact to it.
I get that but the way I'm developing combat is that rather than traditional HP you're seeking to build enough successes and enemy failures to outright kill your enemy. Say you're in combat with a random ashigaru which at the moment has a poise modifier of five.
>Ashigaru rolls three D8's to hit, 2 (Failure), 5 (No Result), 7 (Success)
>PC rolls 4 D10s, 5 (No Result), 10 (Critical Success), 6 (Partial Success), 3 (Failure)
>The PC rolled 4 total successes (Three from Crit and 1 from partial) but can use the failure of the Ashigaru to match the poise value and kill him.
A No Result is the equivalent of a feint or successful block or dodge. It doesn't actively benefit you but it doesn't hinder you either. However for a normal skill roll it is more like a failure since it won't actively benefit what you're doing so I do get what you mean.
So, the system work with a dice pool? I want to know what is the "median" the players got (that's its what you expect the standard stats of a player would be in early-mid game).
At the beginning of the game the median dice for characteristics for their skill rolls would be 3 with a character unable to raise any above 4. Absolute maximum for any characteristic would be 6 so that's the most dice any character could roll for a skill.
>finally got started on doing layout for my project
>desktop dies after six years of use
>have to wait for a SATA to USB cable to arrive so I can transfer my stuff over
>I know that feel, I went out of my way to try and push it a bit. Hopefully this Psyconauts-esque thing pans out.
It is pretty crazy that DTRPG didn't really do the best job advertising it. Got lucky seeing it on the site and clicking on to their blog post. And I am looking forward to seeing that Psychonauts style project, sounds cool!
>Hell, I may do a "Jam" in this thread at one point, if only a "Shut Up and Write the 1 Page Variant of Your Rules"
I like this idea a lot. A mini-jam to do a stripped down version of a project would be fun. I'd try and give it a whirl for sure.
I'm currently developing a system for my fantasy Ninja RPG. My system is based around skills with each represented by a dice (D6,D8,D10,D12,D20) with varying outcomes on the roll. The lower the dice value for a skill the more likely you are to fail critically. Players can generate strain to modify their role by either changing the spread of success/failure on a dice or by upgrading their dice for the role however their is a limit to how often players can do this with increasing drawbacks up to death. I'm currently working on the bounds for each dice but has anyone done anything similar previously? I'm wondering if players would actually engage with the gambling nature of modifying dice rolls if there's a definite drawback to doing so.
Do you think instead of running a plain magical girl campaign
It would be better and easier to cross genres with tokusatsu?
Since I’ve looked in a lot of places and there seems to be a lot of struggles and hazards especially genre wise with making and running a magical girl campaign
you mean a campaing or a system? (and what system exactly in case of a campaing)
I did both at one point using the same system with different mechanics for each as a playtest and it went well. Kamen Rider x Symphogear, the bad guys for the playtest were a rider using a Relic and a gear user whose relic fragment was a piece of the Amadam from Kuuga.
Whats a game that devides combat into a "tactics" phase and a "action phase?" Like, you can first determine HOW you want to do something, place modifiers and the like, and then you actually preform an action in the action round?
Dominion rules is one.
I like the idea of maybe saying you will go second in order to get a to hit bonus. or maybe you strike harder, but lower your ac. something that facilitates and encourages HOW you do something just as much as WHAT you do.
That ironically seems like it would help mitigate modifier checking because you'd be declaring when you'd be applying them rather than checking all of them every time. All without having a complicated action system too.
Maybe with a number line to track initiative that you can move backwards on the track to manually enhance the modifiers by a gradient.
Sounds like a crunchier ADND simultaneous initiative system without much added overhead which keeps the speed of play up.
potentially. though im no stary eyed. I know when you add shit like this it can grind momentum and speed to a hault. but yes, there is some really appealing things in the general concept. (and to be honest I think it speaks better to the FEEL of an engagement).
>doesnt song of swords
I think ive heard something like that, but never been as big a fan of dice pool due to its problems with micro managing intrementality. but will check out.
K's autism update
havent advanced at all and only filled even more my backlog of corrections with new things i have found that are wrong and need fixing or that i might want to add
on other matters, i talked on the server that i might reuse the discarded alchemy system i had originaly made for my game and turn it into an hyperautistic TCG, maybe a digital one for streamlining my autism
but it might be months if not years until i get myself to actually do something with it
the basic concept is that you have components and formulas, components have a matter afinity (salt, sulfur or mercury), and you have to organize them in your cauldron, which is a triangular chart that is definetively not the copypasted pathologic 2 diagnostic chart, the matter afinities determine where you can put them, which limits what and how you can combine stuff
in each turn you can perform one of the 7 steps of alchemy with your cauldron or your already created formulas to perform combat
its a dumb and overcomplicated concept but it could work, also im explaining it in the less acqurate way possible
>Whats a game that devides combat into a "tactics" phase and a "action phase?" Like, you can first determine HOW you want to do something, place modifiers and the like, and then you actually preform an action in the action round?
doesnt song of swords do something like that but with a dicepool instead of AC and to hit bonuses
>Its going to take ages to complete my from scratch homebrew system, maybe even ten thousand years
nah, maybe only a few hundred years
also, the captcha has been fricking anoying out of late
I think this have been a month with little updates huh? I tend to happens to me a lot.
Also, about the alchemy system, I feel that's a whole game by itself, why don't you go by a simpler thing? (and if you don't want to murder your darlings welp, you can save it for a game that it's all about that).
>I feel that's a whole game by itself
thats what i was saying, i took it out of the RPG bc it was WAY too complex (and the version i described here is already simplified from what it originally was), and im planning into turning it into a card game (TCG), or something like that
im in the process of doing a simpler alchemy system that is way more straight forward for my RPG, but its not much of a priority for now
>doesnt song of swords do something like that but with a dicepool instead of AC and to hit bonuses
I think so? but ive personally never liked the lack of incrementality in dice pool.
Its going to take ages to complete my from scratch homebrew system, maybe even ten thousand years
At least you'll be released by Tyrande Whisperwind at the end of that time
Hey! it's a thousand year less than mine so up your game a bit.
i've decided that actual teleportation though cool might cause a few hassles as a rare psionic power
what is cooler in my option is within a few split seconds the psychic can compress their space to the size of a tennis ball move to a specific point then decompress their size and return to normal dimensions
since this power is most likely going to be used by non player characters first observant players could be able to figure out the true nature of this ability
I had a very small idea from when playing with a few multicolored die.
Has anyone made a system with opposing roll BUT with a third "situation" die in the middle? Something like a blue, red, and yellow die- blue is a player roll, red is an enemy/opposing roll, but the yellow is a vague third situation or random chance die. Manipulating these die are a part of the core game.
For example, if your dice gets a 4 and the enemy dice gets a 5 you'd normally take a point of damage/fail the roll/whatever- but if the situation roll was a 6, you could swap your dice with the situation die under specific conditions. Like if you swap then you get the benefit of the higher middle roll, but then you have to be put back in the game universe or take a negative benny/lose a Fate point or whatever else.
An example would be something like; you are getting attacked by goblin archers; you can't get to them before they shoot at you (you lost the roll), but you can use the situation die to jump behind a pillar- so now you didn't take damage BUT you're pinned down or you dropped an item, or something like that.
I think I understand what you are talking about but unsure if it will work.
All I can say is play test it and see how it plays in a simple system. If it seems to work there then you can try it with additional complexity and play situations that are literally to cause edge cases.
Can't say I've seen it but I'm using a tricolor die game right now and people seem to really gravitate the concept of colored dice doing different things, as simple as it is
I feel the whole concept is quite a gimmick, the thing sounds a bit like the "you succeded but/you failed but..." that some games got, but rather than being a TN being representative of a die and a chance die.
There's been a few games with a "Special" Die, never a Tricolor one though. I know the new Marvel System had its gimmicky D616 System, which wouldn't hurt to look into if you're committed to this.
Technically my latest project is . . . sorta like that. Mostly building up your stats and skills based on fostering a relationship with certain characters. But that's not quite what you're aiming for. Most BRP (and adjacent) games do the "Natural Growth" of Skills and such.
I think there was one which required you to do things to get certain abilities, but I can't for the life of me remember which one.
Easiest answer is Affinity, but if you're desperate LibreOffice Design has quite a few (free) options for basic design work. Don't forget you can adjust the size of the Google Doc Sheet as well, as well as the margins.
It's not a bad thing, arguably it's pretty good to simply disincentivize it right off the bad. It wouldn't hurt to put in a "Opposed Actions with Other Players" system, but that shouldn't be too difficult unless you're dealing with some Noumenon bullshit.
Games have been chosen and the Vampire Glowies RPG is quickly shaping up. Everything is in place and it's now a task of pulling it all together.
That's how you know to run em through with a stake, they glow in the dark
Silly question: Is there a game or has anyone worked on a game where character progression is largely based on what your character does and what happens to him during the game itself?
Yeah.
I mean one could argue that's exactly how EXP systems work, but if you mean more literal- I was once writing up a RPG where the players had no classes or levels and only got more powerful based on Stat growth. Towns and villages could grow your stats up to a human maximum (DnD stats here- so you pay a soldier to teach you weightlifting for Strength until you get to 18 or w/e) BUT you could also get permanent stats by interacting with things in the dungeon. Magical fountains that permanently increased a stat, blessing from the Gods, magic items, or curses that did positive things and negative things at the same time (Curse that turns your bones into jelly- you lose maximum HP but gain dexterity too and can slip through cracks, etc.)
I have some ideas for that for my game. Basically you get skill-specific XP when you succeed by a large margin on tasks that are difficult for your skill level. The problems are making it not a pain in the arse to track and not easily gameable.
I use something similar to what was used in Burning Wheel, I believe. Whenever you perform a difficult test with a particular skill, you put a checkmark next to it. Once you have accumulated enough marks, the skill becomes eligible for an upgrade. I count challenges/scenes as equal to a test, so you get one mark for your melee skill for a bout of combat, not a number equal to however many attacks you have made.
It is quick and does not require much bookkeeping. The number of tests required are low enough that you can trust the player to keep track accurately enough, because you still have a good sense when something is off.
Call of Cthulhu does this with skills, you roll to try and improve skills you've failed at during the session. If you fail this roll, you gain more skill. For a more narrative version of the concept, FATE also does it based on story events and arcs your character completes.
k's autism update, finished one of the 4 sets of spells, and i should be able to finish another today
nothing else to update
im pretty sure in CoC it was to the opposite, you roll the skills you did succed during the game and then if you fail that roll you increase it by 1d10
>Marvel System had its gimmicky D616 System
the frick?, like, 6d100 + 2d8 or some shit like that?
My buddy and I are trying to throw together a pdf of our shitbrew to share with the masses.
I'm doing the writing, buddy is doing the art.
I would love some advice about what software to use for this joint effort.
I typically write in Word or a Google Doc, but leads to formatting issues when text runs into the next page.
I've also considered using Adobe to plan out the pamphlet. This involves adding text boxes to otherwise empty pages. My buddy would then insert the art after the layout is laid out. I'm running into issues making the text boxes clean and easily visible.
Part of me wants to just make a frickload of jpgs then add the text to those, then stitch the files together as a pdf.
Any advice from someone who has done this before would be greatly appreciated.
Affinity editing/publishing stuff is alright. Some folks can do magic with just Word, but that's a skill on itself.
Thanks, I'll check out Affinity. Word is a real hassle but I can resort to it if I have to.
Tabletop Q
I have a pick up and deliver that lets you take a special action when you arrive at the pickup/drop-off spot. But I can't pinpoint which order of operations I should go with
A: Take Special Action THEN Pickup/Drop off
+Lets other players start their turns sooner (pick-up is solitary)
-But can't use the Rewards from the drop-off for the Special Action (which is personal peeve of mine)
B: Pickup/Drop THEN Take Special Action
+Can strategize when to drop-off to best maximize the Special Action
-Makes the turns feel extra long because it's effectively 2 separate actions
I was originally using B but have been trying to trim down the game length significantly, since it's still edging over 1.5 hrs for a medium-weight game
As for option C: make the actions separate and don't combine them
I've mulled over that and the problem is the threat of a time limit makes every stop feel really important, so a [Special Action] spot has to be really worthwhile. On it's own, the Special Action auto-activates your tableau for you so you don't have to spend an action doing it yourself. But of course if your tableau sucks you'd never bother with it.
So it being combined with the pick-up/drop-off space was to benefit players who were more mindful about their tableau building over those who just zipped around going the brute-force route. Making a player stop on a separate space THEN drop-off is just too much of downside
So there is something about the special action that makes it not solitary?
Not really. It's just the 'cost' of stopping to activate it feels too expensive.
I'm probably going with option (B) and just making the action straightforward and simpler, that way even if it's "two" actions it feels more like a rewarding 1.5
A game like DnD has a way for players to fight other players, but if a game lacks that is that a bad thing? I don't really envision my game being about players fighting each other so is that a system I should worry about?
I cant figure out what kind of dice to base my system on
I'm split between d10's and d12's, leaning more towards the d10's. but I'm open to other suggestions still too.
I'm used to playing with a 1d10+stat+skill system, with a max result of 30, and an average skill check target being 15 obviously. But I also think a target number dice pool system, where you get an extra die at set intervals in a skills progression, and picking the one closest to the target number would be cool.
I know I want to have merits and flaws in the system, thats a big feature I want to include. I want the games to be relatively low level, no superhero characters, where combat can be very deadly if you're overwhelmed or unprepared, and is best for the players to avoid. I want the players to be able to accomplish things that are logical to their background without much issue, but also be able to eek out a "good enough" result in basic untrained skills. Much in the same way irl an accountant can probably figure out how to replace a broken wall socket in his house, and a janitor can still do his taxes every year. But advanced things I want them to fail almost every time, like if the accountant had to replace a timing belt on his car he'd probably frick it up, or the janitor would just make things worse if he decided to represent himself in court. I also recognize the fun in having wild results of a 1 or a nat 20 in highly important moments (the player trying to keep his grasp on the cliff edge that's keeping the whole party from falling into the bottomless pit), and how much it takes you out of the moment when you get either of those in a mundane moment (the 30 year experienced electrician getting a 1 while changing a light bulb).
the ultimate goal is to make the system fit a modern occult detective setting (like a mashup of CoC, WoD, Xfiles, and Unknown Armies), but I also want to make a western and cyberpunk setting that use the same lore and system as supplements.
d12 is scientifically the most fun die to roll and hold
you have the far ends for fumble-crit and a ten point spread within for easy percentile based checks
by Allah, even shifting them around in your hand feels satisfying
I have come to this same conclusion and am currently ripping the guts out of my wargame in order to work with a D12 system instead of a D6. Does it mean I have to restat EVERY unit and weapon?
Yes
Is it worth it?
Yes
Did the same hoss.
Also there is a more satisfying gradient to the statistical differences.
That dude who hits on 6s feels way better than that nerd who hits on 7s, poltroon that he is.
Opposed checks feel more thrilling too.
And from a component standpoint, d12s just look great and can simulate d3/d4/d6 just fine
>I'm split between d10's and d12's
D10s are a joke; they aren't even platonic solids. D12s have cute pentagonal sides and 12 is a great number to work with.
d12's just feel nice
they are round like d20's, but without the absurd swinginess, they are more reliable, easier to read, and cuter
unfortunately generally underutilized
i spent a lot of time thinking on it and decided i like d12's more afterall. being able to divide by 2/3/4/6 and get whole numbers will probably be useful somewhere.
im still slightly split between die+stat+skill, or a pool system but im leaning more toward a pass/fail pool of dice. i could make it be 10/11/12 passes which means you could sub for rolling a 4 on a 1d4 if you dont have enough d12's
initial thoughts are gaining an extra die for every 3 points in a skill, plus an extra when you max out a skill tied to your profession, and 1 die for every 4 levels in a stat, with 12 being the max level for both stats and skills, though i might cut that back to a max of 6 levels, idk
i also had an idea of like making your targets for success be fractional of your pool. like 1/4 of your dice must be a success, so if you have 8 die in your pool then 2 of them have to be a passing roll, and if you have less than 4 dice in your pool then only ome has to be a passing role. and for instances where you have an amount not divisible by the fraction, like a target of 1/2 your pool is 3d12, then you can exclude the lowest die result.
but im still just spitballing rn.
WELCOME TO THE PENTAGON PANTHEON BOYO
I too have been experimenting with pools for a metal slug style TTRPG to simulate ammo and dodging.
Like how you have to balance magdumping and evading the boss patterns, and how you waste whole groups of dudes at a time.
There's something in there that's got me by the thinkmeats.
I'm curious, how many d12 system do you know? Since I wanted to see system that apply that die to see it a bit in action.
today i noticed something silly, technically, a torch would deal less-lethal fire damage with how the rules are written, but a sconce would be proper lethal fire damage, its kinda dumb
>I'm curious, how many d12 system do you know? Since I wanted to see system that apply that die to see it a bit in action.
only APANTS, the nier agaku one, d12 roll under, stat and skill, one determines size of dice pool and the other determines target number
i know there is at least one other i have seen, but i cannot remember which one it was
So the D12 system I've worked out for my wargame is pretty straightforward. Target number is always 10, you roll your D12, add your skill modifier, subtract any penalties, and if the final result equals ten or greater, it's a success.
So, say a conscript unit has a skill value of three, so they need a seven or better on a D12 to succeed on a skill check (shooting action, morale, close combat, etc)
I find that the simpler the core, the better and more flavorful shit you can tack onto it.
All mechanical flavor is iterative and limited by the core conceit, if that core is nice and simple there is less spagooter-code rules wise.
Not only is it more digestible, it has the most room for slotting new stuff on top of it.
I've decided I'm using a d12, with stats and skills being a rank of 0-6
As of now I'm planning on it being a dice pool system using the top quarter (10,11, 12) of a d12 being a success, with difficulty being determined by fractions of your pool being required, ie 1/4 of your pool must be a success, 1/2 pool, 3/4 pool, etc.
I do feel like having it be the top 25% of your die is a little harsh, I'm hoping that by giving players more die it will kind of balance out so that 1/4 of your pool can be the average difficulty. I like that pools of d12's can be swapped for d4's in a pinch, but I might go top 1/3rd instead to make it a bit easier on the players at the downside of making the only substitution die being those funky game science barrel d3 dice things.
you will have "career skills" that grant you an extra die for those rules, and may also lower difficulty challenges by 1 step, not quite sure yet.
Characters will also have a number of perks/flaws that they buy at character creation, or are assigned to them in game through events and actions
Stats so far I've determined will be:
>Strength: health/lift/endurance
>Agility: movement/sneak
>Intelligence: perception/knowledge
>Charisma: Appearance/Social
>Control: Tech/Manipulation
>Luck: Reroll points/some crossover with Willpower
>Willpower: Derivative stat that mostly determines spiritual things.
which is 6 (and 1 derivative) stats that continues with my divisions of 12 theme I've coincidentally got going so far.
however I feel like I'm missing a stat or point of coverage, I'm skimming through other systems to see what things they've got in their stat blocks (and also for skill list fodder) but I'm still kinda getting that feeling in the back of my head. anyone see something i'm not?
Looking at your stats without more context I'm unsure about Control, it feels much more specific compared to your other stats which are seem much more broad in scope. I'd combine the tech aspect of it into Intelligence and the manipulation aspect into charisma personally. I always try and aim for as few stats as possible so ymmv.
Where did you post Monster Girl Adventures: Remonstered at? I'm eager to see how you overhauled it.
Any interesting approaches to magic that reads the future you guys have seen in games? I feel like the path of least resistance is rewarding the player with a meta currency whenever they allow themselves to be/play out being nudged towards the future they glimpsed, for good or bad, but I don't think that's satisfying enough. I'm trying to design a system that solely focuses on mages, and a lot of different kinds of them, so I want to give diviners some meaningful gameplay options that don't tread too close to pure fluff and a handshake from the GM like a lot of prophetic powers tend to be.
the only way to do future reading i can see is either the gm telling the player what he expects to happen to the players given where theyre heading, near future stuff like "you have a vision of walking into a room and a pit trap activating killing you" to avoid a trapped room which may or may not tell them which room they went into to have that happen, or the gm just outright telling the player campaign plans.
aside from the mechanical answer to that being to just let them reroll something in the future.
Something I just put in a point crawl were some cairn stones that let the players "pre-roll" one of the overland travel exploration dice. So, they investigated; got a perfect 100% true premonition of a hazard that would appear when their next encounter check is due.
The players have the option of re-rolling the encounter dice when that time comes (or by some other method of subverting the encounter) but Destiny Wraiths would attack them.
hello, my fellow anonymous game designers!
I require some external insight about a project I'm trying to develop, to see if the themes I want to work with make any sense to anyone else.
What do you think? How does the following ideas sound to you?
>urban setting
>horror themed
>dungeon delving
>game structure is divided in 'floors' of the dungeon, and each floor has several rooms.
>players get deeper with every floor they clear, and things get harder, and the layout more complex and difficult to navigate.
>the major conflict in the game is not against the players directly, but against the monsters prowling the dungeon.
>players alternate controlling the monsters, moving them around the rooms and deciding how they act, and against whom.
>the objective of the game is to survive long enough to be the last player standing.
>use of cards exclusively, even if players and enemies move freely in the dungeon as miniatures would, only restricted by the use of a rule to check distances.
>the Woking title is INFERUS, because the players will be constantly descending into the darkness and the dangers that lurk there.
should I pursue this project, or better try my luck with something else?
The logistics of each player's character being independent strikes me as awkward. Just about every dungeon crawl game I've played ends up with dismantling the start of the dungeon to fit later parts on the table, which you can't do if everyone is off on their own in different corners.
so, you want to do the backrooms TTRPG? welp as
says the players being that separated is quite akward, is quite micromanament hell for the GM so I don't feel that idea is very hot.
>TTRPG
it's basically a card game, not a RPG
having two separate players is giving me some trouble as well, but I'll eventually solve it
in fact, the dungeon space is finite, and it will be dismantled and reassembled differently each time players complete a floor, but they add a couple tiles more to make it bigger
>but there needs to be compelling reasons to move across the board instead of just running off
exploration is not the point of the game, so players can't wander off in different directions since the dungeon will not expand as they move
players may need to compete with each other to kill more monsters than the other (maybe) to collect treasure or resources that will help them in later floors, I haven't decided it yet
If the rooms are modular and arranged in a card array that shifts it might work.
Unless movement WITHIN a room matters.
Otherwise you could have a shifting card array with shitloads of rooms since they are in effect, one space, with litte tabletop footprint.
Since it's adversarial splitting isnt an issue, but there needs to be compelling reasons to move across the board instead of just running off, and a way to punish keepaway antics (which being able to manipulate the cardgrid is meant to do, but youd need other stuff as well)
Maybe something that destroys or removes rooms so that you can lure a monster into a room and remove the room.
Maybe a hidden card mechanic, where you get stuff from rooms and leave stuff in rooms.
With the cardrooms you could have the neat art of all the rooms and little flavor/effect text and have a frickload of them and the game would change every time.
You could have a room that follows you through the dungeon every few turns if you take its item, or a room that teleports you back to it if you use its item.
Rooms that steal your shit rooms that link to other rooms all kindsa shit.
Rooms that snap shut for X amount of turns on certain criteria that can be used to trap players or monsters. Rooms that have "health" costs or challenges to gain some benefit.
You could straight up go nuts with that kinda stuff.
Then have some general scavenging deck full of non room-specific cards that you can use as an ace in the whole sorta deal.
It would be a ton of work to make that many rooms with effects and a deck of compelling items but that's the fun part of designing.
I think it could work, but it would be a leviathan effort to have enough cards that an array would only use 1/2 to 2/3 of them.
There's enough art and memes to populate them visually though.
It seems like a solid idea. So how exactly are the cards going to be used?
>So how exactly are the cards going to be used?
I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. It's quite early to tell for sure
but I imagine each player has to have a deck of cards that represent the abilities of their character, including some equipment, with the option of adding additional objects and resources they may find on the dungeon. Ability cards are not discarded after being used, they may be returned to the bottom of the player's deck or they may become a "stance" the player may adopt again during the game
on the other hand, players may share the dungeon deck. That deck doesn't belong to a single player, and the card it contains are not decided by any player but a list established by a theme.
The dungeon deck contains obstacles and creatures of different difficulties that are revealed progressively to populate the floor. Revealing these cards spends "darkness" points the players obtain when performing actions in front of enemies or as an additional cost to play some cards.
that's what I have right about now
the circle at the bottom right represents the base of a creature or a character
cards allow to shuffle "miniatures" into a deck and deal them randomly while playing on a 2D plane
it may be a gimmick, I don't know it if it's a good enough mechanic to base a game around
I don't remember if I've mentioned it previously, but I've decided to make my system classless.
Every Hero (player character) will have a general Ability (set of active & passive Skills to use) and the "unarmed" Ability, which allows rudimentary fighting Skills that may be built up if desired. These 2 Abilities should be the bare minimum a Hero starts with, and I'll be balancing the enemies around parties of 3 Heroes, who each have 2 additional starting Abilities. Here are the starting Abilities, and a basic description for each:
>Cloak (Weapon Ability focused around aerial mobility & offensive reaction attacks)
>Divinity (Magic Ability focused on granting positive status effects to allies; offensive Spells destroy bony enemies)
>Hammer (Weapon Ability focused on blunting enemy spikes/breaking enemy blades)
>Mysticism (Magic Ability that's inherently very weak, but hard-counters Rage, which is utilized by the main opposing force)
> Ninjutsu (Magic Ability focused on granting negative status effects to enemies)
>Parma (Weapon Ability focused on negating & reducing damage; it can also be thrown like a discus/boomerang)
>Staff (Weapon Ability focused on stringing free attacks together & utilizing free attacks based on combinations of Skills used)
>Witchcraft (Magic Ability focused on dealing large amounts of damage, but is negated when hitting armor)
Each Ability will feature Skills/Spells that synergize with other known Abilities, though some will mesh better with others. The Cloak & Parma can create an impenetrable defensive force through evasion & blocking, Magic can Enchant weaponry, etc. There will also be "Advanced Abilities" which may be unlocked when knowing two specific Abilities; for instance, having a Hammer & Staff gives access to the Warhammer Ability, which may be utilized by linking a held Hammer to the head of a held Staff. Not all base Abilities will be part of an Advanced Ability, however.
More in a second...
Continued from ()
One thing I never updated these threads on is my attempt at integrating an action point system into the game. I found that trying to assign action points was a lot harder than using the action system I was using before. Another change I made was removing Spell Points altogether; this may make Magic seem overpowered, but there are other limitations in place to prevent abuse.
There are 5 kinds of Actions available to Heroes:
>Free (may be used any time its conditions are met, if the Hero is able to Act; these have significantly lower effectiveness than other Actions)
>Reflex (may use any number outside of Hero's Turn, unless the Hero fails a Reflex contest, which involves opposed rolls between the actor & reactor)
>Main (1 per Turn, Main Actions are typically Attacks & Spells; Spells may only be cast when at least 1 Hand has an associated Magic "prepared")
>Mobility (the number per Turn is decided by the Hero's Mobility Stat; mostly used for traveling across the grid, but Skills can sometimes spend Mobility instead or in conjunction with the Main Action)
>(drawing/sheathing Weapons & using consumable items will use some Mobility instead of the Main Action ("lighter" Weapons will cost less Mobility), whereas stronger Attack Skills will spend Mobility along with the Main Action in exchange for higher effectiveness)
>Special (1 per Turn, these are usually Magical in nature, or Magic-adjacent, & Preparing Magic in 1 Hand will always require a Special Action)
Some of Magic's limitations:
• Casting makes enemies aware of the user's presence immediately.
• Mysticism & Ninjutsu are each negated by certain types of armor, whereas Witchcraft is negated by all armor.
• Prepared Magic in Hand prevents that Hand from holding anything else & prevents use of Unarmed Attacks with that Hand.
• Spells can't be cast without the appropriate Prepared Magic.
• Spells have no Reflex Actions.
• Witchcraft Spells Dispel their Hand's Prepared Magic, meaning the Magic will need to be Prepared again if another Spell needs to be cast.
I'm looking into designing a TCG/CCG but I'm not an avid player of competitive card games myself. What are some essential games I should look into to get more in touch with gameplay dynamics and terminology? Besides obviosuly finally looking into how the Magic works, of course. Competitive card videogames are also welcome.
Yes, doing research is, in fact, a vital part of doing anything. You should definitely research TCGs and see which mechanics you like enough to replicate, if you're planning to make a TCG.
No, I'm not going to list specifics. Look into as many as you can.
This is the most purposefully unhelpful post I've ever read. Thanks for nothing.
Seemed pretty helpful to me.
>i don't know shit about tcg but i want to make one
>"Yo, look into TCG and learn about it, get a clear idea of what you want to do and why."
This isn't even a "read between the lines" sitch, this is straight up a "read at all" one.
Don't be a prick, explain yourself better if you expect in depth consultation.
I'm already doing research in my own, anon, saying "well then play some games :)" is not a helpful advice. I'm simply looking for recommendations in case there are fundamental design paradigms that I might be ignoring when getting into a type of game I'm not intimately familiar with. Don't be dense.
You literally say you dont know anything about card games in the opening post and provide no guidance toward what you are trying to do while demanding general instruction about the whole of the genre, a titanic amount of info to demand with no context.
Then you got mad and rude.
Then you offered up that you are doing "research" but you never mentioned this before or the nature of this "research" leading one to believe that THIS is said research from the fat load of nothing you've offered in terms of direction or ideation.
So I'll do you a sorely undeserved favor and tell you to go learn the 5 rings game and report back, one of the cleverest designs in the genre, too clever in fact, for it's own good.
And to watch this video by the lead moron on magic.
People here are generally happy to help and even hand you mechanics they devised but never used, but when you come in super vague and get c**ty when the favor is returned, you should rightfully be treated like a shitbag.
Now get to gettin and frick off.
>tl;dr
>check out 5 rings
>check this video
thanks mister I did not read the rest of your post
that wasnt so hard now, was it?
Seems everything is hard for you.
I literally repeated the advice you cried at like the softshoe moron you are.
I venture you are far too dumb to tackle your ill-defined task.
good luck on your project too, anon!
Yeah yeah yeah cry me a river b***hbreasts.
So if you don't play card games, why on earth do you want to make one?
A freelance gig requires me to write up a game design pitch, so I need to outline the basics of the gameplay structure and draft some potential ideas here and there to use as a basis for a possible commercial project.
I do play card games from time to time (both physical and digital) so I'm not completely in the dark about it, I simply don't play them as often and I've never gotten into hyper popular card games like MtG and YGO.
>do my job for me
LMAOOOOOOOOOOO
homie I literally just asked for game recommendations. Asking people "what are some cool card games" is hardly asking others to do my job.
No you didn't and you threw a pissy little tantrum that enough of your own job wasn't done FOR you.
You're a mess and that bid is fricked.
It's alpo season for you moron.
You seemed to have misread the title of the thread parasite-kun.
I finally got around to working on my adventure setting for B/X. It's called Children of the Sun.
The short synopsis of the story is that a once prosperous human and elven kingdom fell to an evil necromancer once they discovered an ancient relic built in their once lush and green kingdom called "The golden sun", which has the power to control the weather.
This evil necromancer sought to use the golden sun for his own nefarious plans, so he disguised his skeletal army as traders from a nearby kingdom via the use of powerful magic - and successfully snuck into the capital where he slaughtered all the commoners and all the mages and used their life energy to overcharge the golden sun, causing a catastrophe that forced the sun to remain constantly in the sky, heating everything up for 300 years before everything turned to dust.
Now the place is a barren wasteland controlled by the evil necromancer with the occasional hiding spot of resistance from the old elven and half-elven denizens.
The goal of this adventure setting is for the players to find three different parts of a stone sun scattered around the map which open the way up to the pyramid built by the necromancer in the capital, where they can claim vast riches and his life.
I've made tables for the weather, and I'm now in the process of making tables for random encounters, which is slightly more difficult but still doable. I've made a mechanic that replaces regular rations with water rations - as I figured water is more important in the desert than dry food. Also optional mechanics for heavy armor heating up and acting a small furnace during the harsh sunshine (which will be 90% of the time considering the sun never sets) which causes individuals with such armor (plate or chain) to consume an additional water ration per day.
Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the month. I just have to sit down and actually draw some dungeons and the map of the region itself. Soon enough though.
Thoughts?
Sound neat, anon. Look into Dark Sun if you want to steal bits and pieces off of it, and the latest Glorantha (RuneQuest) book for a decent source of not!sumerian content for your worldbuilding.
I do have one question though, why do you have weather tables in a setting where the weather is canonically left in stasis? How does that play out?
Weather tables consist of mostly things which are harsher than the regular sun or better than the regular sun.
Lower rolls result in sandstorms which last 2d4 hours and cause the party to have an increased chance of getting lost in the desert, while somewhat higher rolls cause harsh eastern winds (from the desert) which stir up the sand, making it a little harder to get lost.
Rolls from 13 onward make it a bit easier to travel overland - causing a cool westerly wind to blow (from the nearby kingdom and mountains) which allows the players to travel 1 additional hex per day. The second stage is overcast weather which hides the sun for a bit, allowing the players 2 additional hexes per day because the sun is not heating everything up so much.
On a 19-20 a light, local sandy rain occurs which lasts for a couple of minutes which can allow the players to refill their water rations on the fly if they manage to find a creative way of catching it without eating too much sand.
Is that all too much or does that sound okay? I have checked out dark sun as well, but dark sun's just a wee bit too post-apocalyptic for my taste. This is just a region where nobody fricking enters because magic's all wonky causing the sun to stay up in the damn sky 24/7
Here's the screenshot of the actual table, I think I explained it a bit poorly.
Is this the place to discuss card game design?
>That's an odd one chief. If I saw it in movement I could give you some better feedback regarding it.
Yeah I'm planning to do an initial playtest in a few weeks. Having not done one previously what exactly would I need? I was thinking I would need to come up with a basic scenario and a few pregenned characters that players could use to fully test the dice mechanics?
Do like everybody do: play a small campaing with friends (advisable with the powergames type) or at least some people with interest and see when thingd work and when things break.
Depending on the scale and state of the game, a One-Shot or Small Campaign isn't remiss. If you're looking at a "Does this work" a small One-Shot to determine if it works is often enough. The big thing to consider is to ask yourself "what are you looking for?"
Make sure to ask players questions after the session as well, not "was this fun" or "did you enjoy it" because they're with you, so of course it's fun. But "Did you think the core resolution worked well?" or "I noticed you guys weren't using X Ability, why?"
Good questions find good results.
DriveThruRPG is hosting a "Game Jam" which they have 0 marketing for outside a bit here and there. The theme is summer camp, it has to be under 20 pages, and you now have two weeks.
Though I may do a threadly "Game Jam" which may just devolve into "Post Something Vaguely Cool If You Feel Like It"
I tend to do
>Preface (What is this?)
>How to Play
>Character Creation
>Core Mechanics
>Exterior Mechanics
>Stuff
I use Google Docs for everything, but as long as it has the correct flow it'll work for you. Obviously have things inform the future. So if you say "add your Strength to the roll" before that you should have a rudimentary explanation of what those stats are and what they look like.
The truest expression of humanity is the desire to create something we may feel is ultimately pointless. It's something you obviously put some thought into. Ask yourself what you want to do with it though.
>QUADS!
I put most everything as PWYW because there is a perception of a "Lower Quality" but I'm also a single butthole with Affinity Publisher and insomnia. I'd rather have a game in someone's hands than not, because I've read enough games that are pretty baller, but rest assured no one is going to pay for it.
Go with your gut. There seriously does need to be some kind of better method for this stuff. Maybe those WebRPGs the Japs make have the right idea.
>I'm also a single butthole with Affinity Publisher and insomnia.
You just described me as well! And it looks like all the feedback I've gotten is PWYW, so I'm certainly going with that option.
>Maybe those WebRPGs the Japs make have the right idea.
Curious about this, I've never heard of it. What do they do differently?
How do you feel about Discord? You can use the site Disboard to look up servers dedicated to game design or LFG. Chat with the communities a bit and ask if people would want to playtest. Maybe even offer a "game for a game" kinda thing; they test your game, you test theirs.
do you think is possible, or even advisable, to use oversized mtg cards 3.5" x 5" (9 x 12.5 cm) as tiles of a dungeon, and safely place miniatures on top?
I'm afraid the cards would move when touched and it's making me slightly paranoid
if they dont need to be shuffled, you could magtape or whatever the border of the back of the oversized sleeve so that they grip and stick in place
cards are fine for dungeon tiles, theres even something about that in this thread
Bump (somebody gonna be mad)
I would have bumped the thread myself, if anyone had expressed any interest in what I posted; but frick engagement in a thread devoted to game design.
Yeah post-election /tg/ is useless for feedback.
Sorry, what was your post? I tend to check the thread since is monthly only and I like the ideas that are thrown here (they give some inspiration from time to time) but sometimes I don't feel like I'm the best person to answer the doubts some people got in design.
>feel like designing
>add mechanics
>realize I have no idea how they feel and how they're supposed to be used
>do research
>find a lot of different systems with mechanics that sound good
>read through all of the systems
>...
>realize I still have no idea how they feel and how they're supposed to be used
Give em a spin by playing with them in mockup scenarios.
Get all up in them guts damie.
You mean like play solo? How will I know if there's something key about its usage that I'm missing? I don't want to dismiss things due to ignorance.
If you know it well enough to play it through alone with minimal speedbumpin, you'll know it well enough to guage the taste.
Mechanics are usually not in isolation anyways, their individual weight and focal cost ties into the flavor of the gameplay experience as a whole.
That balance will dictate, through its emphasis and abstraction, the flavor of the game as a whole and the importance of any given mechanic.
Let's say you misunderstand the rule, and totally biff it's execution in context of your test.
Does it matter? You now know what you like about your interpretation, and what you would change.
Because you tasted the flow and felt the individual weights of the interlocking parts.
You could even misinterpret EVERY one of those interlocking parts, and from that you'll have vision of the synergistic relation typical of mechanics, and most importantly, what you'd change.
It isn't about learning the language of any individual design, it's about learning the language of mechanical design.
Playing shit wrong or playing dogshit is actually usually more valuable.
Because you can wordlessly internalize whole cloth, concepts and taboos, which will now cut down on mental overhead when constructing the idealized image.
The separation of the fantasy of a system and you experience with it will be the wisdom you gain, you will literally TELL YOURSELF what should be done from this exercise.
Getting it wrong actually helps here, because that right there is a green flag for something you'd do different, and if you don't like the outcome, another.
>Playing shit wrong or playing dogshit is actually usually more valuable.
Based on that I could change the mechanics, like you say, or I could even remove them completely and look for something different.
But what I fear is that the design was good from the start, and I'm just cutting off healthy branches. And it can easily happen because I'm a blindass and uncreative.
For example if I saw an abstract spellcasting subsystem that was lauded, and I wanted to adapt something in that vein to my system. In my testing, let's say I fall back on spell stereotypes and fail to utilize the strength of the subsystem (its flexibility and openness). I end up unfairly disliking it and that could lead to unjustified scrapping.
Meanwhile with guidance I could have realized its potential.
That's what playtests are for dude.
I'm almost done with my PocketQuest game for DriveThruRPG. It's looking to be about 15 pages total, with 12 pages of content and the remainder being the front / back covers and the table of contents page. I've never published anything before, so my question is: should I charge a small price for it (let's say $2) or put it up as pay what you want? There's some discussion in the DTRPG discord server about the benefits and drawbacks of both methods, but I'd like to hear what you guys think about it. There's also a suggestion to give the game a set price, but set the free preview as the entire PDF which seems interesting as well.
As others have said, playtest! And don't worry about using all of those mechanics in one game. Keep all the ideas written down, test them out when you can, and use them as you like. That way you can have ideas for multiple mechanics / games going at a time. Also, what are your mechanic ideas? Maybe typing them out for others to read can help you figure them out a little easier.
There's a pretty good free system called Dominion Rules that uses d12, you can take a look at that for inspiration. As for your idea, I like everything being a division of 12, even if was unintentional to start! Your attributes seem good to me as well, doesn't seem like anything is missing to me. For more skills, you could use the idea of a "Wild Card" from Cinematic Unisystem to start. Basically, if it's not on the list and already and different enough, you just write it down and put it under the appropriate attribute. As you playtest you can see if people gravitate towards adding specific skills and add that to the game as a default, that could also help you see if you're missing an attribute as well.
Feels to me like PWYW is worse as a monetization model, but flat cost has a much lower reach in the market.
Thank you both for your feedback!
>if its something you want to keep working on, PWYW
This is what I'm going to go with. As far as the rules of the jam go, the game can be max 20 pages and can't be expanded after the fact. You can update it to clean things up, fix mistakes, etc. but that's about it. So I'll keep the original game jam version as a PDF only "lite" title with a PWYW of $1 or $2 and clean it up as necessary after getting feedback. Much later on I'll release an updated and extended "full" version as a separate paid title through POD and PDF. There are a lot of ideas I can't fit into the 20 pages that I would like to use. Plus, I'd have to redo all the formatting for POD since the template provided wasn't built for that.
You've already got some great feedback on how to organize it, so I'll suggest some methods for where to type it up. If you use Google, go with Docs. Easy to set up with headings that will automatically create an outline so people can jump to different sections. You can also set it so people can leave comments on the document if you need feedback. From there people can download it as a docx, pdf, txt, or whatever else easily. If you don't want to use Google, there's Dropbox and their Paper editor. Pretty much does all the same stuff I mentioned above.
So I'm working on a homebrew system thing, I have everything (core mechanic, stats, rudimentary gear and skills list etc) written down on paper but how do I go about compiling it into a pdf or something that's readable?
I just looked at how other systems structure their rules.
Break it down into chunks that explains the ins and outs of one section or set of mechanics. Something like having a section for explaining the stats, a section for skills, a section for equipment, a section for combat rules, and so on.
Within each section, you can break it down further into having subsections for specific aspects of that topic, like having a subsection in your combat rules about fighting underwater.
The main thing you want is for the information to be easily found, so that if somebody needs to look up a rule or mechanic they cannot quite remember, they can just find the section and look through the subheaders in that section for whatever they need.
Or at least, that is how I have been doing it.
Thanks for the answers, I have begun writing it down in google docs at the moment.
I also have a different question: most dnd-likes allow diagonal movement and attack targeting on a square grid, but tactics games like FF Tactics and Fire Emblem it's only in cardinal directions. Is there any particular reason for this (besides possibly hardware limitations back in the day)? At a glance I can see that ranged attacks can go way farther in the former but not the latter.
Been trying to figure out a system for magic
We already have the lore reasons behind how Magic would work, but we're still lacking a concise system.
This is what we got so far
>Choose a Mage Origin at Chargen
>Get basic Essences AKA Cantrips
>Get your Major Element
>Element determines what spells you have access to
>After chargen the Spell progression looks somewhat like a perk tree.
It sounds like all you have to do is start thinking about what spells to put on which trees. I'm not going to be much help on that front, as simultaneously I hate linear/linear pathed progression and am hilariously bad at designing it.
The most important thing I can tell you is to make sure your choices are balanced enough that no particular field is outclassed by another or entirely worthless, but not so balanced that there's no meaningful difference between the functionality of the options. Also make sure to know where everything is going on your "trees" before you try to make them look pretty.
As I said, this probably isn't going to be super helpful, because my own magic system relies on picking whatever you want when you level up, and is fluid based on other weapon/magic abilities you've unlocked so far.
If I know that I'm too lazy design cards for my game
And I know I won't be assed to playtest them
Why do I still want to make a game?
It is human nature to want to create.
I know that feel anon. I've had the idea of a LCG game based around running a hostess club. Players would build a deck of hostesses, staff, random events and rooms in the club. When playing a game they would also build a deck of customers and when playing against another player both players would combine their customer decks and then compete to entice these customers to their club. Unfortunately I don't have the patience to sit and plan out every card on my own so it's sitting in the mind bank until further notice.
I've been working very hard on the Kitsune Magical Summercamp but it hit a wall. What are things mean girls do to other girls when they have them surrounded? By that I mean appropriate to put in a game that is fit for public consumption.
So far I got:
>Ice down the shirt
>Douse them in hogs blood
>pulling down their skirts
>Shiving or some for of battery
That's all I got. I got the psychological torture and intimidation in other chapters.
Stealing their first kiss.
So, the game is about playing the bullies or the bullies are main "enemies" your find in the summer camp game?
This is my latest wargame project - built around a loose theme of sci-fi mech fights.
Goals/Features:
>action point bidding system to create interesting and flexible ways to use your models
> reaction system and quick resolution to combat action so you are always in the game instead of waiting for your turn
> Shielding and Reaction Fire makes it less of a 'shoot the other guy off the board' game
I have a complete TTS mod I use for playtesting. Needs a bit of updating right now but it's fully functional.
And here are the unit stalines. It's a skirmish game, full sized around 8-9 models each side.
Problems I'm facing right now:
>rolling to hit with rapid fire ranged weapons doesn't feel very kinesthetic and has problems with obstruction system, brainstorming alternatives
>TTS games take too long thus far, not sure if that is a familiarity issue or I need to make the game go faster mechanically.
are these too many post apoc armour types?
or since the players will only have access to a select few of them at any given time, is the amount here perfectly appropriate?
I don't want to have to lookup which armors give me resistance against X, I just want to look at the armor in front of me and what I have on and decide which is better for the situation. Why do you want to have names for specific combinations that I will have to remember or lookup?
I think the quantity may not be the right question.
Got around to designing my weapons. 4 weapons per category for a total of 15 categories seem to be a good amount. This stuff + the MOD section will make the right amount of weapon customization.
>15 Weapon Categories
Dude over here designing Monster Hunter-tier weapons to pose on my shitty equipment lists. What kind of weapons are we working with, or are they pretty standard assortment?
He speaks the tru-tru.
Though I would add a #4, being "Never Obsess Over Your Project," because that game may be your baby and you love it, never releasing it or never changing anything about it makes a terrible little combination.
Often its used when HP isn't strictly based on anything else or has other values. For example, WFRP's HP is tied pretty heavily to the Critical Hits as well as reinforcing a central idea of "Your Character is Fragile." So the Toughness Attribute allows you to mitigate some of that instant harm.
I can't remember the name of it, but there was one game where HP was static across the board, so having a stat like that WAS the way to determine how strong / tough you were.
Various Discords usually have people more than willing to try some new things out. Not the best option, but "an option." Alternatively the Game Finders occasionally pop up when they aren't having a stroke.
Vampire Glowie Game is going, but JESUS frick something is wrong with it and it does not want to play nicely. Perhaps I dedicated a bit too much though in trying to emulate JTRPGs. Bah, there's an answer and I don't know what it is.
>Perhaps I dedicated a bit too much though in trying to emulate JTRPGs
Is it based on the Japanese SRS? Because that system is created by the same people who make RPG Maker.
>15 Weapon Categories
Dude over here designing Monster Hunter-tier weapons to pose on my shitty equipment lists. What kind of weapons are we working with, or are they pretty standard assortment?
Just normal rpg stuff.
4 weapons in the SWORD category, 4 weapons in the DAGGER category, 4 types of PISTOLS (revolvers included). Some skills only work on weapons of certain category, so a skill related to DAGGERS can be used with any weapon in the DAGGER category.
Important Reminders:
1. Run your game. All the theory craft in the world means jack shit if the final product isn't engaging to play.
2. Play your game. If your game is an RPG, which most of these are, your experiences behind the screen are not the same as the player's experience and you need to understand both for your game to ever be as good as you want it to be.
3. Play and Run other games. Your homebrew might be perfectly tailored for you and your group, and if so that's great. But by not branching out you are cutting yourself off from experiences that will make your game better.
words to live by
I agree with all of these but 3. If you compromise your vision then you'll just abandon your project. It should be a passion project first, and a way to make money last.
As for 2, it's near-impossible to get someone to GM for homebrew systems, and you can - if you know your goals - get an idea of what might be confusing for a player by seeing what players do and saying to yourself "they're doing it all wrong! They should be doing it like this, not that!"
First off, nowhere in
was money mentioned.
Secondly, there has never been a good single developer tabletop RPG ever made. If you want your game to be liked by anyone except the three-to-five people who playtested it, you will need to broaden your horizons. Even just adding new players to your group will fail if you don't have enough understanding of what people in general like about games.
Thirdly, you having poor communication skills and an inability to not backseat is a you problem that you need to get over.
What's the motivation for a 'toughness' stat that reduces damage in the same way as armor, rather than just increasing the relevant character's HP?
A toughness stat like you described can quickly become unbalanced due to the possibility of allowing the character to become invincible.
In this case I'm not particularly worried about someone becoming impossible to harm. I'm just confused about what the appeal is of such a stat. I want to use armor for damage reduction, but how does it make sense, mechanically or thematically, for an unarmored warrior to have intrinsic defense such that damage is reduced before even getting to his HP?
How does it make sense, mechanically or thematically, for shaolin monks in real life to be able to bend spears with the tips forced against their necks and to take kicks to the nuts without flinching?
How does it make sense, mechanically or thematically, for heroes in a fantasy setting to perform physical feats beyond the limits of even the toughest humans of our world?
Wasn't in this, but they are often equivalent -- within the bounds of their own system. This is assuming you use options like I'll mention later. Usually the only difference is in static vs rolled DR. Even using static+conditionally rolled DR runs faster than the always rolled soak stat, unless you have some static soak mechanic. At that latter point...it's literally the same.
The choice between the two would come down to how immersive players find avoidance roll specifically for damage -- in a perfect world. But you always have moar system that must meet other standards etc.
Anyway, freeze the mechanic and just believe in the fluff.
+10 Body Damage Reduction generalized:
>The Golden Bell: A monastic art that emphasizes breathing, posture, and muscle contractions to absorb subsonic kinetic force to reduce damage.
>The Iron Shirt Technique: A warrior's art involving years of graduated bruising to a given part of the body to toughen skin, bone, sinew and muscle against subsonic kinetic force.
>The Literal Iron Shirt: Metallurgy and smithing vs subsonic kinetic force, homie. What did you expect?
If the same mechanic having multiple fluffing irritates you...then add game-bits to differentiate methods -- the simpler the better. I.e:
>The Golden Bell: Subject to misfire under ambush conditions. Roll under Monsastic Rank to avoid misfire. Receive double damage on misfire. Armor only ablates from taking Intellectual Damage.
>The Iron Shirt Technique: Ablative under misfire. Subject to misfire upon reducing double the Body Damage Reduction value in a single turn. Roll under Warrior's Rank to avoid misfire. Lose 1 BDR from armor per misfire. Armor repair requires Medic treatment.
>Literal Iron Shirt: Not subject to misfire. Ablative. Loses 1 BDR from armor per 10 BDR it absorbs. Armor repair can be done using Technician and Scientist rolls.
You get the idea, I'm sure.
ok, reducing damage taken per hit is really good against taking many small hits, but does jackshit against taking one big hit
increasing HP does nothing against many small hits but will save you against big ones
also notepad mentioned that some games have static hp and their damage reduction is what determines how much they can take, i do that too, everyone has 30hp, and it seems to work well as of now
>for an unarmored warrior to have intrinsic defense such that damage is reduced before even getting to his HP
maybe have some dodge or parry mechanics, if you cannot make a proper mechanic for damage reduction to unarmored warriors
>30 HP
Hah!
My homebrew fantasy heartbreaker has HP based on a size stat and adult humans (being size 7, and 5 HP per point of size) have 35 HP.
K's autism update
finished the pyromancy spells and spell maneuvers
just need to finish the healing spells and apotropaic (protection) spells
then, just to do my corrections backlog (including the big ones to the lethality mechanic and parry system) and i start the final testing period, posibly will post very soon
now, my backlog of corrections is a 600 lines file + another 200 lines one, a few pages of written by hand ones, and some random ones written all around the manual
also gotta do a proper bestiary, even if it only has less than a dozen foes
that is curious, its fun to see when things in games do convergent evolution
size based health is a nice idea, remembers me BRP but less dumb than BRP one, i guess you can intentionally make your human character have more or less size stat
i choosed 30hp by deciding how many "full damage" strikes should an unarmored person should be able to take from diferent kinds of weapons and 30 felt like a nice number (and a few mechanics came by accident from it)
doesnt sound too complicated, im sure i have seen at least a few games that do that
but it makes sense, like, yeah, hitting your target with a weapon has almost nothing to do with strenght, being stronger doesnt make you more precise with your attacks, but will make the ones that hit be more lethal
also id add strength to bows damage if you want to be more "muh realistic", and leave crossbows and if they exist firearms either using dex for damage, or with higher base damage but no modifiers
maybe also have something like "heavy weapons use strength for both chance to hit and damage" if you want to create another separation in feel
but im no expert in medieval combat so dont pay me too much mind
>i choosed 30hp by deciding how many "full damage" strikes should an unarmored person should be able to take from diferent kinds of weapons and 30 felt like a nice number (and a few mechanics came by accident from it)
I reverse engineered my size stat because my game's damage system maxes out at 10d6, and its median roll is 35.
In hindsight I should have used 30, so a 12 lb cannonball would have a 50-50 chance of pasting an average unarmored character*, but I didn't. But my players are happy being a little more robust than mathematic averages.
* A character's defense is Health stat + armor worn, and the average stat are 4-6 across the board.
As for tuning your size up or down, I've not encountered that as an issue yet but I see no problem is allowing a character to a point higher or lower.
Size affects more than just your HP. It also affects what you can use as cover (important in a game that has guns), and how hard you are to hit with attacks.
Huh, damage based on weapon size for projectiles. That’s interesting
When determining damage for ranged weapons the first thing I look it as caliber, followed up by how fast it moves, then finally material density and weight.
How and where do I find playtesters if I'm friendless?
find internet friens!
>homosexual
Dexterity increase chance to land a blow
Strength increase the damage dealt for melee e throw weapons.
Too complex.
Strength increases Melee chance to hit
Dex increases Ranged chance to hit
making my first serious attempt at designing a new game in a loooong time. Name is basically just a placeholder for now.
loves me dark spire
loves me spooky dark fantasy
simple as
what do the skills look like so far?
about like this. I'm trying to give players freedom enough to create the character they want to play but also the ability to make a more typical fantasy rpg class if they wish (IE: big strong fighter with a sword and shield, not so strong thief with a cloak and dagger, etc)
Been having this need weighing on my brain while I work on my own project, hopefully yours will alleviate it.
You know how something sticks in your head until that itch is scratched, and I've been itching for something like this.
yeah I've been toying with the idea for a long time and now I'm finally getting somewhere with it. I'll keep posting updates as I continue my work
Here's what I managed to do for tonight
This is the most generic shit I've ever seen.
Keep updating us, I need to run a classical game or this fixation will consume me.
I'm to the point where I'm emulating wizardry just to claw at the itch.
What do you use to make PDFs?
Tell me your secrets traveler.
I am not that anon, but I personally use LibreOffice Writer. It has basically all of the functionality of Microsoft Word and has an Export to .PDF function.
It is also free to use.
Only office is good too if you’re use to google docs.
libreoffice lets you export as pdf
I forgot to add damage after 1d10 lol.
yeah it's 3d6. I'm basically just writing this as it comes to me, so a lot of this is out of order and not how it'll be explained in the final version. As for the 4d4+1, I just wanted to add additional randomness over 3d6 for the HP, though I may change that.
>wanted to add additional randomness
4d4 has a smaller deviation than 3d6. More dice are more reliable, not less.
Admittedly I can see why he wants low variation in HP. Makes math easier.
>I'm basically just writing this as it comes to me, so a lot of this is out of order and not how it'll be explained in the final version.
That's what I figured! I do the same when I write, hard to organize my notes sometimes.
>As for the 4d4+1, I just wanted to add additional randomness over 3d6 for the HP, though I may change that.
As the other anon mentioned, the 4d4 is better and less random. Maybe 2d10 instead? Or maybe characters with Athletics or Brawn (or both) roll more (and different) dice to represent their physical prowess? That way they have a higher chance of getting an an average of above result.
thats a cool start, its kinda generic but that isnt intrinsically bad at all
like, if you are doing a "low rules dark fantasy game thats not just another OSR shit", then it could be nice
havent played dark spire but seeing the art looks like with a proper artist it could be a nice aesthetic for dark fantasy game
ill just say:
>the second longsword in there looks like its obviously meant to be a greatsword
>change the "just take 2 pieces of armor" thing, since as it is, there is no reason to not just grab a set of plate and steel helmet, like, give armor some "cost or value" or some reason youd choose something that isnt just the best, also, since armor is refered with "+X to hit rating" , it gives the impresion that you are meant to stack layers of armor of diferent kinds, mention if its meant to be the case or not
>the only thing it mentions around leveling up is another specialization at lv5, what else you get in between levels?
also, seeing an Esotericism skill made me chuckle a bit bc when i added one to my game a friend who is into that sort of stuff spent the next 3 hours rambling about how it was not a correct terminology to just be a skill for "ghost and demon knowledge", but that isnt a correction or anything, just a little thing that it made me remember
Yeah, I wasn't really sure about how I set up the armor selection so I'll probably revise it. That's also why I chose to have some armor require Brawn so you can't just minmax and make some nonsensical character like a rogue wearing full plate armor.
I really like the simplicity and lethality of it! Being able to decapitate or bisect on a critical hit seems pretty awesome. 4d4+1 for starting HP is interesting as well, any reason why you chose that specifically? And the longsword mentions decapitation on a natural 18, but you don't mention anywhere what the standard roll is. Safe to assume with that number it's 3d6?
Grammatically those dashes should be colons. Typographically they're hyphens anyway which is even worse. With the bold text you don't really need anything.
Longsword has two entries.
Rolling a natural 18 on 1d10 seems very unlikely for the decapitation roll.
Table entries are inconsistent about ending in full stops or not.
Might be easier to read with separate columns for weapon damage and armour hit rating.
No game should require anyone to roll a d4, they're horrible.
If I had to guess this is part of a large system. Probably a 3d6 system. The d10 is likely for something else like damage
If you have to guess then it's not a well written rule.
I was considering using a 3d6 resolution system but not i’m thinking 2d10 for combat related checks and d% for skill checks. Stupid concept or is there something there?
One concept you could try to steal is something from Unknown Armies/ORE where your percentile roll IS your combat roll, or rather the sum of your percentile dice roll is related to combat in some way.
So for example if your fighting skill is 45 and you roll a 42, that means you rolled under and you hit- but the actual damage you deal is 4+2 for 6 damage. Certain attacks, like magic or gunshots, could use the percentage roll if opponents have percentile health- so a successful hit of 63 deals 63 damage on a hit or 6+3 on a miss. You could also throw on extra rules for doubles for some flavor; like if you get doubles on a roll you get to add a third dice depending on your class or whatever (warriors get to add an extra d10 die for attacks, rogues for sneaking, etc.)
Hear me out for a cover mechanic
Savage Worlds inspired system so it might make sense.
COVER is rated in levels going from 0 to 6.
COVER 0 don't do shit, so try not to get busted in the open
COVER 1 give a Target Number of 4, meaning RANGED ATTACKS must roll equal or higher to hit the target behind the cover. If the RANGED ATTACK rolls under the Target Number, the attack hits the wall/object/vehicle providing COVER. Damage is then rolled and applied to the COVER INTEGRITY. If damage depletes the Integrity, it is reduced to a COVER of a lower level.
This way:
COVER-1 TN-4 Int-5
COVER-2 TN-6 Int-10
COVER-3 TN-8 Int-10
COVER-4 TN-10 Int-10
COVER-5 TN-12 Int-20
COVER-6 TN-20 Int-20
While COVER doesn't affect MELEE ATTACKS, players can directly attack a piece of COVER with a MELEE ATTACK in order to reduce it.
Explosives and other effects deal bonus damage against COVER.
So, any thoughts?
Also TRAUMA-anon here, progress has been slow this week but I still manage to cover some holes.
Game is almost playable but the basic rules have been laid out.
I'm leaving more lore dump aspects of the worldbuilding for later, looking to finish the item and equipment list first.
Nice progress Anon
Love the idea of the cover system! Really simple to understand and I can see it working quickly and really well in practice. Reducing cover level seems like it could take a bit however with how high Integrity is.