it's alright, just a genericization of UESRPG 3e since I really like what they've done but I don't like the setting and prefer not to rebuild it from the brp building blocks and rather reverse engineer it into something else entirely
I've made a core mechanic that I like, but I'm grappling with the question of whether to base the system on 0-10 or 0-100 scale. Mostly it comes down to my like of d100 versus the simplicity of being able to phrase things in dots. After that, it's skill trees.
Fully playable with a great character sheet, but I still have nothing resembling a sharable document.
Share the character sheet.
That`s my system too.
Everyone uses two dice at the start of the round to choose their moves in secret and then everyone reveals it at the same time and the turn is resolved simultaneously. There are 6 "approaches" (attack, defense, counter, probe, feint, maneuver), with 5 attack moves, 3 moves each for the rest and 1 for maneuver, totaling 18.
Every approach has a bonus/debonus against the other approaches. IE, counter has bonus against attack, feint has bonus against defense, etc.
This sounds super interesting, hope you can finish it and share with us. I think the only TTRPG I've played that had simultaneous resolution was Pendragon but it was just a simple versus test without any tactical options like yours.
This one is a char sheet for the Fallout hack based on the homebrew. You pick two attributes as your main ones. And one attribute as the weak one. Each combination of attributes influence two skills.
You form a dice pool from: 1 default die, 1 die for the first attribute, 1 die for the second attribute, 1 if you have the skill, and one if you have advantage/assistance.
This one is a char sheet for the Fallout hack based on the homebrew. You pick two attributes as your main ones. And one attribute as the weak one. Each combination of attributes influence two skills.
You form a dice pool from: 1 default die, 1 die for the first attribute, 1 die for the second attribute, 1 if you have the skill, and one if you have advantage/assistance.
I was going to say something similar (in a less antagonistic way) but noticed that he's got some Cyrillic-type text in there. I moved past the spelling mistakes as English is likely not his primary language.
Plus what he's done looks great.
This one is a char sheet for the Fallout hack based on the homebrew. You pick two attributes as your main ones. And one attribute as the weak one. Each combination of attributes influence two skills.
You form a dice pool from: 1 default die, 1 die for the first attribute, 1 die for the second attribute, 1 if you have the skill, and one if you have advantage/assistance.
Strenght should be Strength
Emphaty should be Empathy
Perfomance should be Performance
Rethorics should be Rhetorics
Along the vertical axis you have Intelligenc (it's missing the 'e' on the end).
Otherwise it looks great. If you can translate the non-English words it would be even better.
I was going to say something similar (in a less antagonistic way) but noticed that he's got some Cyrillic-type text in there. I moved past the spelling mistakes as English is likely not his primary language.
Plus what he's done looks great.
[...]
Strenght should be Strength
Emphaty should be Empathy
Perfomance should be Performance
Rethorics should be Rhetorics
Along the vertical axis you have Intelligenc (it's missing the 'e' on the end).
Otherwise it looks great. If you can translate the non-English words it would be even better.
Maybe for the Endurance/Endurance ability, call it something like "Resilience". For the Agility/Agility ability, give it a name like "speed". Condensing the descriptive names into something of only a single word, gives it some punch. Then explain the abmnsjwility in the rules.
And this one is the same but MtG inspired. There are cardinal colors for different skill check types, but every color can contribute to a skill check depending on the context. It is not finished.
I've done so much work on it, but it just never seems to be finished. The core mechanics were easy and rewarding to work with, making martial combat interesting wasn't a problem, but the magic systems are a relentless slog. Trying to create a system that is mechanically well-defined, balanced, makes sense in-setting and still allows magic to be used creatively, rather than having each spell be a solution to a specific problem, and especially doing all of this while keeping the rules comprehensible and easy enough to remember, is hell.
>Trying to create a system that is mechanically well-defined, balanced, makes sense in-setting and still allows magic to be used creatively, is hell.
Well, we can help with that.
How's magic in your setting?
What's (roughly) your base resolution mechanism?
I'm not so sure how doable that is, but I'll take any excuse to discuss my homebrew.
I partially described it in this post:
>What kind of magic system are you doing ? Does it use elements or schools, or is it more open ?
There are three different ones. Divine magic consists of a small handful of miracles, whose effects and resource cost increase the higher you roll on your channelling check - this was by far the easiest to write. The second, folk magic, is a collection of distinct magical effects most similar to DnD - these effects are limited and clearly defined, or they depend on the environment, such as turning different base terrains into different kinds of difficult or harmful terrain, or causing nearby objects to attack a target. The last one is metaphysics, which is a faux-scientific type of magic that involves picking an effect and then defining its area and duration.
Metaphysics is the one I'm still struggling with, because it doesn't produce clean mechanical effects like 'target is prone', but rather does thing like conjure physical matter with properties depending on your power level, change the laws of physics in a target area (speeding up time, increasing air drag, changing the direction of gravity, etc). Sorting out the actual rules for this is not a problem in itself, but doing so concisely and without confusing the reader, while keeping the spells intuitively usable and balanced is turning out to be a massive problem.
. Metaphysics is the only kind of magic that isn't finished, and the part I'm still working on are the spell effects. The basic resolution mechanism is 2d10+modifiers (gentle bell curve, but otherwise similar enough to DnD). Attacker always rolls, even in the case of traps and other hazards. There are no saving throws.
For metaphysics, your spells have a range in meters equal to your check result, an area of one square meter, and last until the beginning of your next turn. Range, area of effect and duration can be extended after rolling, by expending additional stamina.
Metaphysics is divided into four fields (of study): matter, energy, time and space, and each field has a list of effects associated with it. Mages gain additional fields as they get stronger - there is some overlap between spell effects, though, so the power boost isn't that extreme.
The sample doesn't give me enough for me to even begin to understand your system. It also sounds like there is going to be a lot of cross-referencing going on so one will need their tables handy.
>I keep getting stuck and having to restart.
Beware of the "Good Idea Fairy":
When you are nearly done with your creative work and *BOOM* comes a brilliant idea which leads you to start over.
Stick to your current idea and push it through. You'll learn 10x more by pushing an alpha version and playtesting it than with literal years of theoretical meditation.
Trust me, I'm a triple platinum regular customer of the Good Idea Fairy.
Holy shit you aren't wrong. Between that and the stupid internal monologue constantly telling me it isn't good enough or won't work, it's a surprise I'm even able to write anything down at all!
Pain. Nothing but suffering and pain. Because I have 2 classes and 5 archetypes each, as well as 21 perks per Species for like 10 more species as well as art for like almost all of the ones I've got, and then a ton of other shit.
It's mostly just having to do so much mandatory work and meet the standards I've set for myself. I'm nearly done with the Species Perks (I think I have like 6 more species/races to do perks/feats for) but then I need to sit down and draw the artwork. And one of the races/species is centaur, which means I have to draw like 90% of a horse at least once.
Some of the Species are hard to come up with stuff for, like I was struggling with Harpies for a while and ended up giving them the egg shooting ability (described as "egg-like projectiles") as a perk-based natural weapon because I am a hopeless nostalgia prostitute and grew up with banjo-kazooie as a kid so having the bird race shoot eggs (from their hands to avoid making it be any weirder than it is) was a good call.
It's just a whole lot of work and very repetitive and tedious is all. Once it's done though I'm sure I'll be glad I did it, because I'll have a functional alternative that I fully enjoy to 3.5/4e/5e/PF1/2e with a nice modern fantasy twist.
I am happy with some of the stuff I have, the Martial Artist (Monk) gets a John Wick inspired Gun Monk archetype for example, and there's an entire class that turns you into the Engineer from TF2 with a sentry pet that gets upgrades/modifications based on what archetype you choose.
I got out of some writer's block and I'm back to work on mine. It's going to be a bear to get the core rules to make sense for the average stranger though.
It feels like I'm about 1% through, but in reality it is probably closer to 60%. Like with most heartbreakers, this will be one of those "always in development" projects. I've been working on it for a couple of years now and it has gone through several iterations of both format and structure (though the core rules haven't budged, which is a nice sign).
I'm at 250+ pages so far with some smoothing out of rules, the entirety of the menagerie and the final parts of the setting.
There's a BIG file here if you're interested: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SoilkgTdXl1lVzDhZA7xHKhbM_qjxFoF. It's downloaded straight out of the Homebrewery and it's not optimised or anything, hence the size of the thing being so large.
Reading your work. The first thing that I have noticed is that there is no proper introduction in your book giviving you some taste of what the game is about and making you want to play. I wish I knew the exact word for this. But grab any White Wolf book and you will understand what I mean (you don't need to be as dramatic as they are or fill your book with dramatic passages, but you do need SOME flavor).
Yeah, I have to bulk out the intro a fair bit. It is very jarring jumping from where it is to the next chapter. I used to have part of the setting in there, but figured it was better to keep that all together.
I shall make some more notes as a better lead-in.
Thanks for your comments.
I've been playing around a combat system where I want to largely just have opposed rolls - if you win the combat roll you do damage (or have whatever effect you chose.) Different maneuvers give you different bonuses and penalties, a reckless attack might give you an advantage to hit but take far more damage if you fail, for example.
Anyway, I've come up on an issue - in 5e a frequent (that I've seen) criticism of Advantage/Disadvantage cancelling is that a fight in the dark has advantages and disadvantages cancel out, resulting in the same hit chance as if you were both in daylight. While it's a bummer that there's no difference at all, does it make sense that you'd hit less? The fact that the guy you're fighting can't see you and is going to have a harder time defending against stabs seems like it should make things more, not less lethal, to me.
It isn't; my development team is lazy and wastes time on /tg/ and Ganker.
Without any real experience or knowledge of fighting in any lighting conditions, I'd guess that darkness would make it easier to get a hit but harder to get a good hit, reducing the value of dodging but increasing the value of armour.
Everyone uses two dice at the start of the round to choose their moves in secret and then everyone reveals it at the same time and the turn is resolved simultaneously. There are 6 "approaches" (attack, defense, counter, probe, feint, maneuver), with 5 attack moves, 3 moves each for the rest and 1 for maneuver, totaling 18.
Every approach has a bonus/debonus against the other approaches. IE, counter has bonus against attack, feint has bonus against defense, etc.
I thought about something like that but I think it might end up being too RPS-y. Most opponents would probably just use 1 or 2 different moves/approaches, especially things like animals.
How do you deal with combat where one player is fighting same two enemies? In my case I'm just resolving it as two separate combats, but with a penalty to the outnumbered player
I'm making it so you lose a die for every additional opponent adjacent to you, and the actions are resolved normally but you have to choose who you are going to hit (if you are using attack or counter). If you want to hit more than one person in that turn, you lose another die or more (depends on your weapon, a saber would be just one, a maul would be three, etc).
For the most opponents only using a couple moves, I think that is actually a plus. Let's say your character is a hunter and you are fighting a dire tiger. After a successful test, he would know the tiger is very likely to circle around and maybe paw a little from a distance (probe) until it senses an opening to pounce on you and maul you (a charge attack). So he would be in an advantageous position based on his knowledge of tiger behavior because he pretty much has his attack patterns and statistics already revealed, while a random knight that has never seen a tiger might struggle more with it even if he has higher stats.
What happens if you don't choose to hit more than one person? Say a single PC fighting two goblins, but he only decides to attack the one. Does the other goblin just automatically succeed in his attack?
Also, how are you handling damage? Do you roll separately for it, or use the degree of success from the opposed roll?
Yeah he has zero defenses against that other goblin that he is not hitting, so if the goblin manages at least one success the attack has landed. The idea is that you don't want to ever fight more than one enemy at the time, using moves that allow you to move around your first opponent if successful to keep avoiding the second or third, using the environment, trying to assault in surprise or with a lot of aggression to quickly dispatch one before the other, etc.
As for damage, I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to make it as fast and streamlined as possible, so my first thought is to just use margin of success and bake things that would make you deal more damage on things like your attack pool being "BASE + STRENGTH", and heavier weapons having a bigger damage multiplier for the "STRONG ATTACK" move. But I need to test it a lot more to be sure that it can work this way.
Coding a battle simulator in Game Maker for my Nechronica homebrew.
I got profoundly stumped by this game's probability layout since any action can technically result in a recursive series of reactions, assists and hinders.
I've only scrached the surface of the math but already starting to think I'll either end up doing a full balance rewrite or give up entirely.
>+200 pages long >Redwall autism
Did a ton of test plays but I couldn't wrap my campaign up and had to cancel it due to scheduling issues.
Which is annoying because I felt like I was beginning to refine the atmosphere and tone of the game.
>Redwall
I like how when you are reading the books stoats seem like some kind of ogre or troll equivalent monster, but in real life they look like this
Stoats and such always felt like 'generic enemy dude' to me. It was the wolverines that felt like the troll equivalent. pic not very related, being sables. Luv me mustelids.
>Redwall
I like how when you are reading the books stoats seem like some kind of ogre or troll equivalent monster, but in real life they look like this
mustelids are friend shaped & I'm tired of seeing them depicted as evil. Ferrets are cute. Badgers are brave, wolverines are powerful! They are not frothing monsters! Save that shit for squirrels
>Badgers are brave
That is an understatement.
They'll stand up to anything; get bit by a snake? They sleep it off like a hangover. Bears? Screw bears, they'll scare a bear away even if it isn't their territory.
Most people don't understand the sheer power and energy of the badger.
Terribly. My OSR-adjacent shitbrew has been in the same state since November. >Incomplete spell list littered with spells in various states of completion >Only things on equipment lists are weapons and armour >Still haven't figured out how I'm using ability score modifiers for certain mechanics >Have a re-worked list of thief skills but haven't figured out the maths for them >Haven't figured out how to properly implement some class abilities >No monsters
I thought I was on the way to thundering out a "basic" book which could allow characters from level 1 to 9, but the more I look at it, the more I realize I haven't put in.
I just open the documents once a week and re-read what I've written down, take note of what I still need, then close it again.
Man, I just wanted to capture the wonder of those D&D parody episodes from 90's cartoons.
>I don't have a key to the gate barring me from the grapes, so I'll just complain about them being sour. >Rather than ask how to get the key or if there's a way around the gate, I'll sit here and say the grapes are too sour.
So it's a Zelda RPG taking inspiration from all the games in the serie. Some are grim like MM, TP, some are more joyful like WW and MC ; some are neutral on the question of death and treats it as any other fantasy game.
I wanted players and GMs to be able to chose : either go with permadeath like most other RPGs, or go with a "Knock Out" rule that still has some serious punishment and feels coherent, but is more of a "high fantasy" vibe.
Picrel is the description of what happen if you get knocked out. Basically, KO means you lose some of your points in various sstats. There are four scenarios, from left to right, in the upper part : >KO in a brawl type fight ; >KO in a no quarter type fight (= would mean perma death in other system) ; >KO from environment ; >KO from any other action or source (GM decides of the loss).
In all scenarios, the character : >loses between one to three heart container (if they have any),
The heart containers fall next to him on the ground. Other character (NPC or PC) can collect the containers if they want or keep it for when the PC will wake up... or have to flee without picking up the containers !
>loses permanently between one to three points in a random stat, from the "D8 table", which are hearts, stamina, movement, Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Perception and Magic (as MP, not a roll modifier). >loses permanently the stat(s) associated to the hit that put them down ("Tableau perte combat").
For exemple, a piercing weapon will deplet Dex by one (think of it like Dwarf Fortress, "a nerve has been severed by the attack !"). This can be cumulative, for exemple a sword of fire will deplet Cha by one, permanently deplet HP by 2 (1 heart = 2 HP) and burn wooden gears. >gets one or two fatigue point (it's a cumulative state you get when traveling without resting for too long), >gets scars and bruises.
It's basically "you can die 2 or 3 times before reroll gets necessary".
In the bottom right part you can also see what happens if everyone in the party gets down : >all lost heart containers are stolen or disappear, >everyone throws another D8 for a supplementary loss of stat, >each intelligent creature nearby steals 1D4-2 gear, >each creature nearby steals, eat or destroy 1D4-1 items,
For both of these, GM can chose to use randomness or pick the items stolen manually if it's complicated to do any convenient random pool. Either way, it has to feel punishing for a whole team being down. >ALL rupees are stolen, >Fatigue +1 again, >6D4 hours before waking up.
Depending on the place, the team can be ejected from the dungeon, helped, imprisoned... It can launch a new scenario for the characters, since the game is meant to be played in a sandbox style.
I consider the game finished and playable but plan to update it, hence this table (before this, GM simply had to choose some stats to deplet for each KO, but I realised it needed some guidelines to stay coherent from game to game).
I've done so much work on it, but it just never seems to be finished. The core mechanics were easy and rewarding to work with, making martial combat interesting wasn't a problem, but the magic systems are a relentless slog. Trying to create a system that is mechanically well-defined, balanced, makes sense in-setting and still allows magic to be used creatively, rather than having each spell be a solution to a specific problem, and especially doing all of this while keeping the rules comprehensible and easy enough to remember, is hell.
I feel you. Went through the exact same process on martial combat and magic. Still refining magic at the moment. What kind of magic system are you doing ? Does it use elements or schools, or is it more open ?
>What kind of magic system are you doing ? Does it use elements or schools, or is it more open ?
There are three different ones. Divine magic consists of a small handful of miracles, whose effects and resource cost increase the higher you roll on your channelling check - this was by far the easiest to write. The second, folk magic, is a collection of distinct magical effects most similar to DnD - these effects are limited and clearly defined, or they depend on the environment, such as turning different base terrains into different kinds of difficult or harmful terrain, or causing nearby objects to attack a target. The last one is metaphysics, which is a faux-scientific type of magic that involves picking an effect and then defining its area and duration.
Metaphysics is the one I'm still struggling with, because it doesn't produce clean mechanical effects like 'target is prone', but rather does thing like conjure physical matter with properties depending on your power level, change the laws of physics in a target area (speeding up time, increasing air drag, changing the direction of gravity, etc). Sorting out the actual rules for this is not a problem in itself, but doing so concisely and without confusing the reader, while keeping the spells intuitively usable and balanced is turning out to be a massive problem.
Interesting. It seems like metaphysics magic is a bit overpowered from what you describe ; can the player come up with their own effects past a certain level ?
Balancing will certainly be hard with this. But it can gives very interesting outcomes.
The types are quite different. Divine magic always targets individuals, and can just make desirable or undesirable things happen to people, without the caster having to concern himself with how. Folk Magic can sometimes create larger and/or more complex effects, but has no capacity for customization. The weakness of metaphysics is that it can't just produce a desired outcome, but instead has to achieve its goals indirectly, and with simple forces. A mage picks an area and creates heat, or cold, or a strong gravitational force inside it, or conjures a temporary block of gold over someone's head to crush him. There's no 'protection from arrows' spell or anything like that - he'll have to conjure up some cover and start napalming the opposition. The strength of metaphysics is that mages are able to fine tune their stamina expenditure, and have the potential to create synergy between their own spells - you could, say, create a strong downward force to pin an enemy in place, then set him on fire. Increasing the duration of those two spell effects costs less than casting those spells multiple times. There's more to it, too, but explaining every nuance of the system would take so long that I haven't finished doing it in the actual rules document yet.
The types are quite different. Divine magic always targets individuals, and can just make desirable or undesirable things happen to people, without the caster having to concern himself with how. Folk Magic can sometimes create larger and/or more complex effects, but has no capacity for customization. The weakness of metaphysics is that it can't just produce a desired outcome, but instead has to achieve its goals indirectly, and with simple forces. A mage picks an area and creates heat, or cold, or a strong gravitational force inside it, or conjures a temporary block of gold over someone's head to crush him. There's no 'protection from arrows' spell or anything like that - he'll have to conjure up some cover and start napalming the opposition. The strength of metaphysics is that mages are able to fine tune their stamina expenditure, and have the potential to create synergy between their own spells - you could, say, create a strong downward force to pin an enemy in place, then set him on fire. Increasing the duration of those two spell effects costs less than casting those spells multiple times. There's more to it, too, but explaining every nuance of the system would take so long that I haven't finished doing it in the actual rules document yet.
Oh, I forgot. No, players can't come up with their own effects, at least I haven't written any rules for that yet. There's no real in-universe reason they couldn't, per se, it would just be even harder to balance.
Just started my first actual campaign in over a year, using what I hope is the final structural version. I think anything left in my game is just massaging the details.
Hammered down the format for race, class, weapons and armor. Next are the spells then npc services. I have an idea on how I want the combat to go but I keep hesitating and second-guessing what the smaller details should be. And I also got the hare-brained idea to structure the exploration and downtime like it's combat, in that you have a selection of actions you could do. For exploration it's stuff like Search, Ambush and Rest. For downtime it's stuff like Train, Transact and Research. It's kinda dumb but I think it's interesting to add structure to a usually-nebulous part of adventuring. Whether or not it'll work out will be a different matter entirely. At the very least the PCs aren't restricted from doing miscellaneous actions, the listed options are just what the character is primarily focusing on. Once I have the bare minimum of content I'll hold a playtest with my group that normally plays a different game, which should happen at the end of March.
Doing decent, but I'm struggling a bit with the combat system. Specically, I'm building the RPG around Yu-Gi-Oh's Shadow Games where you play a game with various stakes attached to it. My current struggle is being able to handle 1v1 combat encounters from a villain having their signature game being Chess or people are running with a standard card game format (System is being weirdly flexible because its using games as the combat system, so you can easily do jank like Yu-Gi-Oh plot but the game is Magic: the Gathering, or you could do a Pokemon adventure with the battles represented by the Pokemon TCG).
The specific trouble is: How do I set things up so that the players not involved in the 1v1 will want to pay attention to it? There's only so many times that you can run "PC playing the game is trapped in an electric chair that will fry them on checkmate, non-players can make attempts to get closer to disarming the trap every X turns" before it might get a bit repetitive.
I'm trying to make a grid based tactical rpg but I can't decide how I want hp and defenses to work. my original idea was simply armor as damage reduction with a roll to hit based on evasion or cover. then I started thinking about a system where you have bonus hp that refreshes every turn based on various defenses. for example you have a character with 3 base hp. then you have a shield that gives 3 bonus hp. any attack coming from the front would have to deplete the shield hp before you take real hp damage, and you get the shield hp back every turn. it would also apply to cover so if you were hiding behind a stone wall you would have a bunch of bonus hp, but if you got attacked from behind you would be weak. I think this would be a great system for a game where you are mostly using ranged attacks, but it doesn't seem like it would work very well in a game with a lot of melee attacks, since everyone would just keep running around each other to attack from behind and avoid the shield hp.
It's going okay, I've started the last few weeks writing everything down and fleshing out the world into a big binder of lined paper that I can refer to instead of having scattered notes across my pc and notebooks.
I've gotten the basics down but it feels like swis cheese with the amount of holes in the rules.
Have had several one shots to test the rules and they have served quite well as a combat simulation, with a decent amount of depth.
Still haven't finished making all the changes from the last session. But any suggestions are welcome for any part of the rules.
Its going aight. Done some playtesting with a friend. Wanting to make it a bit prettier and more presentable than just excel sheets and a word doc. Anyone got a good recommendation for make a nice page layout?
Fricking awful. My brain just sort of goes into microwave mode whenever I look at my notes & I dont know any good formats /templates to help better organize my shit when I type it so most of my shit is written in an old notebook
Are you me? It sounds like you've adopted a bad habit in place of the one that has you working on your game. What can you do to change your lifestyle so that your game's creation becomes part of it?
Idk. Ingot kids & a wife & can rarely find a quiet moment. When I do I stress about stuff & seek distraction by working on my notes. My brain never quiets down & I end up spacing out as random thoughts drift around in my head & I have to routinely shake myself to focus as I grow more & more frustrated as my apathy & inability to accomplish anything in life let alone work on my hobby.
Have you tried to introduce your kids to the hobby, or are they too young still? If not, you might be able to give them interactive storytelling in place of a bedtime story- just something to get the creative juices flowing again.
5 & 3. Too young for the hobby & the 5 year old is kinda spazzy & autistic, can't listen for shit. When he gets older & more disciplined I'm gonna try. I haven't gamed in years either which fricking sucks. I live in a small town & with kids it's impossible
What kind of media does your 5 year old consume? In these times it's practically impossible to keep away from fast-paced shows that constantly switch your attention to and fro.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Paw Patrol & old Saturday morning cartoons. I try to keep him away from anything new & weird. He plays some Lego games & pikmin, but mostly he just plays with toys
3 months ago
Anonymous
What's the frame rate on paw patrol, as compared to a show like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? Fred Rogers purposefully made his show be at a much more methodical pace than the cartoons coming out at the same time which draws out the scene which requires a longer attention span.
ADHD diagnoses exploded as fast paced shows came out, and I can't imagine Autism being that different with other regards.
Are you me? It sounds like you've adopted a bad habit in place of the one that has you working on your game. What can you do to change your lifestyle so that your game's creation becomes part of it?
Idk. Ingot kids & a wife & can rarely find a quiet moment. When I do I stress about stuff & seek distraction by working on my notes. My brain never quiets down & I end up spacing out as random thoughts drift around in my head & I have to routinely shake myself to focus as I grow more & more frustrated as my apathy & inability to accomplish anything in life let alone work on my hobby.
The answer to this whole thing is to get your shit together in your life before trying to work on your creative projects.
We are stressed, disorganized, anxious about a million different things, and then we try to use writing games as some sort of escape mechanism, but it only makes everything worse as you can't even have any progress here either. Get productive, organized, active and only go back to writing games as a reward for fixing your life and you willl see your game actually coming together with much less effort. Stop using it to escape your real life problems because it will only make it worse.
(this doesn't apply to every single person ofc, but it did apply to me and probably does to you guys)
My dude... I'm stuck on the struggle treadmill, my life is as together as possible, but I'll never not be stressed or struggling, that's just what life is like these days
Over the past years I have been overhauling the equipment system of dnd. Specifically making each weapon have unique abilities and effects. This has been far less effective for armor. Other than that an enchantment and material system for those items has been going great. My groups seem to like it although as it's tested more and more I have been able to patch up flaws over time.
I have the format for races, classes, and equipment so far. All that's left is the magic for the bare minimum. For the simple world of JRPG-Isekai-landia, casting a spell should be as simple as taking up your turn and spending the required amount of MP. Unfortunately for me I have wallowed into the hell of Keyword soup, and that's before I actually bother to write down at least a sampler of what spells I intend to use (mostly ripping off whatever is in Basic Fantasy and Heroes of Adventure). I suppose having keywords may help in the long term especially with anticipating edge cases. In the olden days the only parameters are range, duration and level, with everything else detailed in the spell's effects.
So far I have Attack, Touch, Ranged Touch, Mind-Affecting, Saving Throw, and Subtle. That should cover the common bits.
like with all my personal projects, i get very passionate about them but then all the tasks needed to realize them pile up, i get overwhelmed, and i never touch it again.
It's slowly progressing. I've started roughing out the first class-book, and I have a big brainstorm document and an outline and a chunk of skills done.
Heavily houseruled 3.5 Eclipse the Codex persona point buy game adding in a bunch of AD&D and some gurps and planning to add in some Rolemaster as well.
So. It's a fantasy heartbreaker, but not a kind I've seen anyone else do.
it's alright, just a genericization of UESRPG 3e since I really like what they've done but I don't like the setting and prefer not to rebuild it from the brp building blocks and rather reverse engineer it into something else entirely
I've made a core mechanic that I like, but I'm grappling with the question of whether to base the system on 0-10 or 0-100 scale. Mostly it comes down to my like of d100 versus the simplicity of being able to phrase things in dots. After that, it's skill trees.
It came to a point that it works as a generic adventure system, so I am going to use it for very different types of campaigns.
>6aptep
>baptep
>”25% off...”
>oh! It’s barter!
Such a cunning linguist I am
Can you translate that table? Sounds interesting.
Share the character sheet.
This sounds super interesting, hope you can finish it and share with us. I think the only TTRPG I've played that had simultaneous resolution was Pendragon but it was just a simple versus test without any tactical options like yours.
>Share the character sheet.
I actively refuse to post anything I've made on Ganker.
This one is a char sheet for the Fallout hack based on the homebrew. You pick two attributes as your main ones. And one attribute as the weak one. Each combination of attributes influence two skills.
You form a dice pool from: 1 default die, 1 die for the first attribute, 1 die for the second attribute, 1 if you have the skill, and one if you have advantage/assistance.
Please spellcheck your shit, dude...
Who cares man you understood his shit anyway
Seems fun, thanks bro
I was going to say something similar (in a less antagonistic way) but noticed that he's got some Cyrillic-type text in there. I moved past the spelling mistakes as English is likely not his primary language.
Plus what he's done looks great.
Strenght should be Strength
Emphaty should be Empathy
Perfomance should be Performance
Rethorics should be Rhetorics
Along the vertical axis you have Intelligenc (it's missing the 'e' on the end).
Otherwise it looks great. If you can translate the non-English words it would be even better.
Here, I corrected it a little. I just didn’t plan to write it in English yet, so I didn’t bother.
Looks brilliant. I'd play it.
Maybe for the Endurance/Endurance ability, call it something like "Resilience". For the Agility/Agility ability, give it a name like "speed". Condensing the descriptive names into something of only a single word, gives it some punch. Then explain the abmnsjwility in the rules.
And this one is the same but MtG inspired. There are cardinal colors for different skill check types, but every color can contribute to a skill check depending on the context. It is not finished.
Nice to see russian, anon. Was a time that it was my goal to be able to play rpgs in russian.
I've done so much work on it, but it just never seems to be finished. The core mechanics were easy and rewarding to work with, making martial combat interesting wasn't a problem, but the magic systems are a relentless slog. Trying to create a system that is mechanically well-defined, balanced, makes sense in-setting and still allows magic to be used creatively, rather than having each spell be a solution to a specific problem, and especially doing all of this while keeping the rules comprehensible and easy enough to remember, is hell.
>Trying to create a system that is mechanically well-defined, balanced, makes sense in-setting and still allows magic to be used creatively, is hell.
Well, we can help with that.
How's magic in your setting?
What's (roughly) your base resolution mechanism?
I'm not so sure how doable that is, but I'll take any excuse to discuss my homebrew.
I partially described it in this post:
. Metaphysics is the only kind of magic that isn't finished, and the part I'm still working on are the spell effects. The basic resolution mechanism is 2d10+modifiers (gentle bell curve, but otherwise similar enough to DnD). Attacker always rolls, even in the case of traps and other hazards. There are no saving throws.
For metaphysics, your spells have a range in meters equal to your check result, an area of one square meter, and last until the beginning of your next turn. Range, area of effect and duration can be extended after rolling, by expending additional stamina.
Metaphysics is divided into four fields (of study): matter, energy, time and space, and each field has a list of effects associated with it. Mages gain additional fields as they get stronger - there is some overlap between spell effects, though, so the power boost isn't that extreme.
Not well.
I keep getting stuck and having to restart.
But I'll keep trying.
Here's a sample; I'll answer any relevant questions, if desired.
The sample doesn't give me enough for me to even begin to understand your system. It also sounds like there is going to be a lot of cross-referencing going on so one will need their tables handy.
Good on ya dude. Keep plugging at it!
>I keep getting stuck and having to restart.
Beware of the "Good Idea Fairy":
When you are nearly done with your creative work and *BOOM* comes a brilliant idea which leads you to start over.
Stick to your current idea and push it through. You'll learn 10x more by pushing an alpha version and playtesting it than with literal years of theoretical meditation.
Trust me, I'm a triple platinum regular customer of the Good Idea Fairy.
I'm a hextuple platinum regular customer of the Good Idea Fairy, and you couldn't have possibly said it better.
That being said, I personally have no regrets not ignoring the Good Idea Fairy.
Holy shit you aren't wrong. Between that and the stupid internal monologue constantly telling me it isn't good enough or won't work, it's a surprise I'm even able to write anything down at all!
Pain. Nothing but suffering and pain. Because I have 2 classes and 5 archetypes each, as well as 21 perks per Species for like 10 more species as well as art for like almost all of the ones I've got, and then a ton of other shit.
Is the pain due to trying to balance that all out or because you can't stop adding onto it?
It's mostly just having to do so much mandatory work and meet the standards I've set for myself. I'm nearly done with the Species Perks (I think I have like 6 more species/races to do perks/feats for) but then I need to sit down and draw the artwork. And one of the races/species is centaur, which means I have to draw like 90% of a horse at least once.
Some of the Species are hard to come up with stuff for, like I was struggling with Harpies for a while and ended up giving them the egg shooting ability (described as "egg-like projectiles") as a perk-based natural weapon because I am a hopeless nostalgia prostitute and grew up with banjo-kazooie as a kid so having the bird race shoot eggs (from their hands to avoid making it be any weirder than it is) was a good call.
It's just a whole lot of work and very repetitive and tedious is all. Once it's done though I'm sure I'll be glad I did it, because I'll have a functional alternative that I fully enjoy to 3.5/4e/5e/PF1/2e with a nice modern fantasy twist.
I am happy with some of the stuff I have, the Martial Artist (Monk) gets a John Wick inspired Gun Monk archetype for example, and there's an entire class that turns you into the Engineer from TF2 with a sentry pet that gets upgrades/modifications based on what archetype you choose.
I got out of some writer's block and I'm back to work on mine. It's going to be a bear to get the core rules to make sense for the average stranger though.
Dynamic lift on a zeppelin is harder than drag but I'm getting there.
Fully playable with a great character sheet, but I still have nothing resembling a sharable document.
It feels like I'm about 1% through, but in reality it is probably closer to 60%. Like with most heartbreakers, this will be one of those "always in development" projects. I've been working on it for a couple of years now and it has gone through several iterations of both format and structure (though the core rules haven't budged, which is a nice sign).
I'm at 250+ pages so far with some smoothing out of rules, the entirety of the menagerie and the final parts of the setting.
There's a BIG file here if you're interested: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SoilkgTdXl1lVzDhZA7xHKhbM_qjxFoF. It's downloaded straight out of the Homebrewery and it's not optimised or anything, hence the size of the thing being so large.
Reading your work. The first thing that I have noticed is that there is no proper introduction in your book giviving you some taste of what the game is about and making you want to play. I wish I knew the exact word for this. But grab any White Wolf book and you will understand what I mean (you don't need to be as dramatic as they are or fill your book with dramatic passages, but you do need SOME flavor).
Yeah, I have to bulk out the intro a fair bit. It is very jarring jumping from where it is to the next chapter. I used to have part of the setting in there, but figured it was better to keep that all together.
I shall make some more notes as a better lead-in.
Thanks for your comments.
I'm planning on making one, just not really sure if I want it to be wargame/skirmish focused or go for more group/party focused type of gameplay.
I've been playing around a combat system where I want to largely just have opposed rolls - if you win the combat roll you do damage (or have whatever effect you chose.) Different maneuvers give you different bonuses and penalties, a reckless attack might give you an advantage to hit but take far more damage if you fail, for example.
Anyway, I've come up on an issue - in 5e a frequent (that I've seen) criticism of Advantage/Disadvantage cancelling is that a fight in the dark has advantages and disadvantages cancel out, resulting in the same hit chance as if you were both in daylight. While it's a bummer that there's no difference at all, does it make sense that you'd hit less? The fact that the guy you're fighting can't see you and is going to have a harder time defending against stabs seems like it should make things more, not less lethal, to me.
It isn't; my development team is lazy and wastes time on /tg/ and Ganker.
Without any real experience or knowledge of fighting in any lighting conditions, I'd guess that darkness would make it easier to get a hit but harder to get a good hit, reducing the value of dodging but increasing the value of armour.
That`s my system too.
Everyone uses two dice at the start of the round to choose their moves in secret and then everyone reveals it at the same time and the turn is resolved simultaneously. There are 6 "approaches" (attack, defense, counter, probe, feint, maneuver), with 5 attack moves, 3 moves each for the rest and 1 for maneuver, totaling 18.
Every approach has a bonus/debonus against the other approaches. IE, counter has bonus against attack, feint has bonus against defense, etc.
I thought about something like that but I think it might end up being too RPS-y. Most opponents would probably just use 1 or 2 different moves/approaches, especially things like animals.
How do you deal with combat where one player is fighting same two enemies? In my case I'm just resolving it as two separate combats, but with a penalty to the outnumbered player
I'm making it so you lose a die for every additional opponent adjacent to you, and the actions are resolved normally but you have to choose who you are going to hit (if you are using attack or counter). If you want to hit more than one person in that turn, you lose another die or more (depends on your weapon, a saber would be just one, a maul would be three, etc).
For the most opponents only using a couple moves, I think that is actually a plus. Let's say your character is a hunter and you are fighting a dire tiger. After a successful test, he would know the tiger is very likely to circle around and maybe paw a little from a distance (probe) until it senses an opening to pounce on you and maul you (a charge attack). So he would be in an advantageous position based on his knowledge of tiger behavior because he pretty much has his attack patterns and statistics already revealed, while a random knight that has never seen a tiger might struggle more with it even if he has higher stats.
What happens if you don't choose to hit more than one person? Say a single PC fighting two goblins, but he only decides to attack the one. Does the other goblin just automatically succeed in his attack?
Also, how are you handling damage? Do you roll separately for it, or use the degree of success from the opposed roll?
Yeah he has zero defenses against that other goblin that he is not hitting, so if the goblin manages at least one success the attack has landed. The idea is that you don't want to ever fight more than one enemy at the time, using moves that allow you to move around your first opponent if successful to keep avoiding the second or third, using the environment, trying to assault in surprise or with a lot of aggression to quickly dispatch one before the other, etc.
As for damage, I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to make it as fast and streamlined as possible, so my first thought is to just use margin of success and bake things that would make you deal more damage on things like your attack pool being "BASE + STRENGTH", and heavier weapons having a bigger damage multiplier for the "STRONG ATTACK" move. But I need to test it a lot more to be sure that it can work this way.
Almost complete. Still having an hard time coming up with an hp system that I like tho, still uncertain if I should implement body zones or not.
Coding a battle simulator in Game Maker for my Nechronica homebrew.
I got profoundly stumped by this game's probability layout since any action can technically result in a recursive series of reactions, assists and hinders.
I've only scrached the surface of the math but already starting to think I'll either end up doing a full balance rewrite or give up entirely.
It's on hold. My day job has been working me to the bone over this winter, and I am coming home to tired to continue the process.
I will get back to it, but I just need some time to recover.
>+200 pages long
>Redwall autism
Did a ton of test plays but I couldn't wrap my campaign up and had to cancel it due to scheduling issues.
Which is annoying because I felt like I was beginning to refine the atmosphere and tone of the game.
>Redwall
I like how when you are reading the books stoats seem like some kind of ogre or troll equivalent monster, but in real life they look like this
Something something perspective, something something allegory.
Stoats and such always felt like 'generic enemy dude' to me. It was the wolverines that felt like the troll equivalent. pic not very related, being sables. Luv me mustelids.
mustelids are friend shaped & I'm tired of seeing them depicted as evil. Ferrets are cute. Badgers are brave, wolverines are powerful! They are not frothing monsters! Save that shit for squirrels
>Badgers are brave
That is an understatement.
They'll stand up to anything; get bit by a snake? They sleep it off like a hangover. Bears? Screw bears, they'll scare a bear away even if it isn't their territory.
Most people don't understand the sheer power and energy of the badger.
Terribly. My OSR-adjacent shitbrew has been in the same state since November.
>Incomplete spell list littered with spells in various states of completion
>Only things on equipment lists are weapons and armour
>Still haven't figured out how I'm using ability score modifiers for certain mechanics
>Have a re-worked list of thief skills but haven't figured out the maths for them
>Haven't figured out how to properly implement some class abilities
>No monsters
I thought I was on the way to thundering out a "basic" book which could allow characters from level 1 to 9, but the more I look at it, the more I realize I haven't put in.
I just open the documents once a week and re-read what I've written down, take note of what I still need, then close it again.
Man, I just wanted to capture the wonder of those D&D parody episodes from 90's cartoons.
>I don't have a key to the gate barring me from the grapes, so I'll just complain about them being sour.
>Rather than ask how to get the key or if there's a way around the gate, I'll sit here and say the grapes are too sour.
Who are you quoting?
This weekend I redefined the "death" mechanic.
So it's a Zelda RPG taking inspiration from all the games in the serie. Some are grim like MM, TP, some are more joyful like WW and MC ; some are neutral on the question of death and treats it as any other fantasy game.
I wanted players and GMs to be able to chose : either go with permadeath like most other RPGs, or go with a "Knock Out" rule that still has some serious punishment and feels coherent, but is more of a "high fantasy" vibe.
Picrel is the description of what happen if you get knocked out. Basically, KO means you lose some of your points in various sstats. There are four scenarios, from left to right, in the upper part :
>KO in a brawl type fight ;
>KO in a no quarter type fight (= would mean perma death in other system) ;
>KO from environment ;
>KO from any other action or source (GM decides of the loss).
In all scenarios, the character :
>loses between one to three heart container (if they have any),
The heart containers fall next to him on the ground. Other character (NPC or PC) can collect the containers if they want or keep it for when the PC will wake up... or have to flee without picking up the containers !
>loses permanently between one to three points in a random stat, from the "D8 table", which are hearts, stamina, movement, Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Perception and Magic (as MP, not a roll modifier).
>loses permanently the stat(s) associated to the hit that put them down ("Tableau perte combat").
For exemple, a piercing weapon will deplet Dex by one (think of it like Dwarf Fortress, "a nerve has been severed by the attack !"). This can be cumulative, for exemple a sword of fire will deplet Cha by one, permanently deplet HP by 2 (1 heart = 2 HP) and burn wooden gears.
>gets one or two fatigue point (it's a cumulative state you get when traveling without resting for too long),
>gets scars and bruises.
It's basically "you can die 2 or 3 times before reroll gets necessary".
Cont.
In the bottom right part you can also see what happens if everyone in the party gets down :
>all lost heart containers are stolen or disappear,
>everyone throws another D8 for a supplementary loss of stat,
>each intelligent creature nearby steals 1D4-2 gear,
>each creature nearby steals, eat or destroy 1D4-1 items,
For both of these, GM can chose to use randomness or pick the items stolen manually if it's complicated to do any convenient random pool. Either way, it has to feel punishing for a whole team being down.
>ALL rupees are stolen,
>Fatigue +1 again,
>6D4 hours before waking up.
Depending on the place, the team can be ejected from the dungeon, helped, imprisoned... It can launch a new scenario for the characters, since the game is meant to be played in a sandbox style.
I consider the game finished and playable but plan to update it, hence this table (before this, GM simply had to choose some stats to deplet for each KO, but I realised it needed some guidelines to stay coherent from game to game).
I feel you. Went through the exact same process on martial combat and magic. Still refining magic at the moment. What kind of magic system are you doing ? Does it use elements or schools, or is it more open ?
>What kind of magic system are you doing ? Does it use elements or schools, or is it more open ?
There are three different ones. Divine magic consists of a small handful of miracles, whose effects and resource cost increase the higher you roll on your channelling check - this was by far the easiest to write. The second, folk magic, is a collection of distinct magical effects most similar to DnD - these effects are limited and clearly defined, or they depend on the environment, such as turning different base terrains into different kinds of difficult or harmful terrain, or causing nearby objects to attack a target. The last one is metaphysics, which is a faux-scientific type of magic that involves picking an effect and then defining its area and duration.
Metaphysics is the one I'm still struggling with, because it doesn't produce clean mechanical effects like 'target is prone', but rather does thing like conjure physical matter with properties depending on your power level, change the laws of physics in a target area (speeding up time, increasing air drag, changing the direction of gravity, etc). Sorting out the actual rules for this is not a problem in itself, but doing so concisely and without confusing the reader, while keeping the spells intuitively usable and balanced is turning out to be a massive problem.
Interesting. It seems like metaphysics magic is a bit overpowered from what you describe ; can the player come up with their own effects past a certain level ?
Balancing will certainly be hard with this. But it can gives very interesting outcomes.
The types are quite different. Divine magic always targets individuals, and can just make desirable or undesirable things happen to people, without the caster having to concern himself with how. Folk Magic can sometimes create larger and/or more complex effects, but has no capacity for customization. The weakness of metaphysics is that it can't just produce a desired outcome, but instead has to achieve its goals indirectly, and with simple forces. A mage picks an area and creates heat, or cold, or a strong gravitational force inside it, or conjures a temporary block of gold over someone's head to crush him. There's no 'protection from arrows' spell or anything like that - he'll have to conjure up some cover and start napalming the opposition. The strength of metaphysics is that mages are able to fine tune their stamina expenditure, and have the potential to create synergy between their own spells - you could, say, create a strong downward force to pin an enemy in place, then set him on fire. Increasing the duration of those two spell effects costs less than casting those spells multiple times. There's more to it, too, but explaining every nuance of the system would take so long that I haven't finished doing it in the actual rules document yet.
Oh, I forgot. No, players can't come up with their own effects, at least I haven't written any rules for that yet. There's no real in-universe reason they couldn't, per se, it would just be even harder to balance.
Just started my first actual campaign in over a year, using what I hope is the final structural version. I think anything left in my game is just massaging the details.
Going well too, thank you.
Which one? I've made over 400 RPGs and board games (that I won't ever allow you to see).
Hammered down the format for race, class, weapons and armor. Next are the spells then npc services. I have an idea on how I want the combat to go but I keep hesitating and second-guessing what the smaller details should be. And I also got the hare-brained idea to structure the exploration and downtime like it's combat, in that you have a selection of actions you could do. For exploration it's stuff like Search, Ambush and Rest. For downtime it's stuff like Train, Transact and Research. It's kinda dumb but I think it's interesting to add structure to a usually-nebulous part of adventuring. Whether or not it'll work out will be a different matter entirely. At the very least the PCs aren't restricted from doing miscellaneous actions, the listed options are just what the character is primarily focusing on. Once I have the bare minimum of content I'll hold a playtest with my group that normally plays a different game, which should happen at the end of March.
Doing decent, but I'm struggling a bit with the combat system. Specically, I'm building the RPG around Yu-Gi-Oh's Shadow Games where you play a game with various stakes attached to it. My current struggle is being able to handle 1v1 combat encounters from a villain having their signature game being Chess or people are running with a standard card game format (System is being weirdly flexible because its using games as the combat system, so you can easily do jank like Yu-Gi-Oh plot but the game is Magic: the Gathering, or you could do a Pokemon adventure with the battles represented by the Pokemon TCG).
The specific trouble is: How do I set things up so that the players not involved in the 1v1 will want to pay attention to it? There's only so many times that you can run "PC playing the game is trapped in an electric chair that will fry them on checkmate, non-players can make attempts to get closer to disarming the trap every X turns" before it might get a bit repetitive.
I'm trying to make a grid based tactical rpg but I can't decide how I want hp and defenses to work. my original idea was simply armor as damage reduction with a roll to hit based on evasion or cover. then I started thinking about a system where you have bonus hp that refreshes every turn based on various defenses. for example you have a character with 3 base hp. then you have a shield that gives 3 bonus hp. any attack coming from the front would have to deplete the shield hp before you take real hp damage, and you get the shield hp back every turn. it would also apply to cover so if you were hiding behind a stone wall you would have a bunch of bonus hp, but if you got attacked from behind you would be weak. I think this would be a great system for a game where you are mostly using ranged attacks, but it doesn't seem like it would work very well in a game with a lot of melee attacks, since everyone would just keep running around each other to attack from behind and avoid the shield hp.
Not too bad, trying to implement an interesting injury system that makes healers relevant.
It's a heavy homebrew of an existing system to add more detailed sanity and downtime rules
Both are kinda working but not elegantly and I need to get off my ass and make some docs I can share with other autists
Oh and to maybe figure out how to make players swap to a specific vision mode instead of just picking which night vision has the nicer color
It's going okay, I've started the last few weeks writing everything down and fleshing out the world into a big binder of lined paper that I can refer to instead of having scattered notes across my pc and notebooks.
I've gotten the basics down but it feels like swis cheese with the amount of holes in the rules.
Have had several one shots to test the rules and they have served quite well as a combat simulation, with a decent amount of depth.
Still haven't finished making all the changes from the last session. But any suggestions are welcome for any part of the rules.
Its going aight. Done some playtesting with a friend. Wanting to make it a bit prettier and more presentable than just excel sheets and a word doc. Anyone got a good recommendation for make a nice page layout?
Wondering how much of the shit I feel indecisive about (item prices and the like) can be handled by AI
Just steal from other games bro
Being dissattisfied with other games' economies is why I'm doing my own rebalance
But you’re not doing your own rebalance
Fricking awful. My brain just sort of goes into microwave mode whenever I look at my notes & I dont know any good formats /templates to help better organize my shit when I type it so most of my shit is written in an old notebook
Are you me? It sounds like you've adopted a bad habit in place of the one that has you working on your game. What can you do to change your lifestyle so that your game's creation becomes part of it?
Idk. Ingot kids & a wife & can rarely find a quiet moment. When I do I stress about stuff & seek distraction by working on my notes. My brain never quiets down & I end up spacing out as random thoughts drift around in my head & I have to routinely shake myself to focus as I grow more & more frustrated as my apathy & inability to accomplish anything in life let alone work on my hobby.
Have you tried to introduce your kids to the hobby, or are they too young still? If not, you might be able to give them interactive storytelling in place of a bedtime story- just something to get the creative juices flowing again.
5 & 3. Too young for the hobby & the 5 year old is kinda spazzy & autistic, can't listen for shit. When he gets older & more disciplined I'm gonna try. I haven't gamed in years either which fricking sucks. I live in a small town & with kids it's impossible
What kind of media does your 5 year old consume? In these times it's practically impossible to keep away from fast-paced shows that constantly switch your attention to and fro.
Paw Patrol & old Saturday morning cartoons. I try to keep him away from anything new & weird. He plays some Lego games & pikmin, but mostly he just plays with toys
What's the frame rate on paw patrol, as compared to a show like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? Fred Rogers purposefully made his show be at a much more methodical pace than the cartoons coming out at the same time which draws out the scene which requires a longer attention span.
ADHD diagnoses exploded as fast paced shows came out, and I can't imagine Autism being that different with other regards.
The answer to this whole thing is to get your shit together in your life before trying to work on your creative projects.
We are stressed, disorganized, anxious about a million different things, and then we try to use writing games as some sort of escape mechanism, but it only makes everything worse as you can't even have any progress here either. Get productive, organized, active and only go back to writing games as a reward for fixing your life and you willl see your game actually coming together with much less effort. Stop using it to escape your real life problems because it will only make it worse.
(this doesn't apply to every single person ofc, but it did apply to me and probably does to you guys)
My dude... I'm stuck on the struggle treadmill, my life is as together as possible, but I'll never not be stressed or struggling, that's just what life is like these days
Over the past years I have been overhauling the equipment system of dnd. Specifically making each weapon have unique abilities and effects. This has been far less effective for armor. Other than that an enchantment and material system for those items has been going great. My groups seem to like it although as it's tested more and more I have been able to patch up flaws over time.
I have the format for races, classes, and equipment so far. All that's left is the magic for the bare minimum. For the simple world of JRPG-Isekai-landia, casting a spell should be as simple as taking up your turn and spending the required amount of MP. Unfortunately for me I have wallowed into the hell of Keyword soup, and that's before I actually bother to write down at least a sampler of what spells I intend to use (mostly ripping off whatever is in Basic Fantasy and Heroes of Adventure). I suppose having keywords may help in the long term especially with anticipating edge cases. In the olden days the only parameters are range, duration and level, with everything else detailed in the spell's effects.
So far I have Attack, Touch, Ranged Touch, Mind-Affecting, Saving Throw, and Subtle. That should cover the common bits.
like with all my personal projects, i get very passionate about them but then all the tasks needed to realize them pile up, i get overwhelmed, and i never touch it again.
It's whether you keep designing and editing after the honeymoon is over that makes or breaks a potential game designer.
It's slowly progressing. I've started roughing out the first class-book, and I have a big brainstorm document and an outline and a chunk of skills done.
Heavily houseruled 3.5 Eclipse the Codex persona point buy game adding in a bunch of AD&D and some gurps and planning to add in some Rolemaster as well.
So. It's a fantasy heartbreaker, but not a kind I've seen anyone else do.