No other reason to post this other than to have /tg/ laugh at me but bored and wondering how people respond. It happened a while ago so I'm already over it.
>Be me 4 years ago
>Been GM'ing 5e for 2 years and grown to hate it. Even tried running other system but half my friend group refuse to play and the other drop off on the first or second session
>Tell them I refuse to run 5e any more and that others should step up to GM
>couple months pass and the same cycle happens, play under another GM and have to put up with 5 hour battles, try to make my own campaign with a different system and have everyone refuse to join
>Decide to try and reconcile what I hate about 5e and what they like about 5e by making my own homebrew
>after 2 months the homebrew is created
>Players play for quite sometime but eventually confront me after a deadly combat encounter that results in 2 characters dying
>Tell me to create my own system instead of butchering dnd
>create my own system over a year and then play test it
>we play for a few months but the campaign starts to bleed, nothing out of the ordinary however I get complements on the mechanics and how it plays.
>Decide there are a few flaws that require it to rebuilt from the ground up and players agree
>Work on the system for another entire year
>Almost everyone say they're happy to play test it once I'm done.
>Despite that everyone ducks me, not even having the decency to say they don't want to play when asked if they will.
>One player says he really wants to be excited to play but I did a bad job hyping it up
>Lement that I wasted years of work creating a game no one will play.
>after 4 years, the group is still playing 5e weekly.
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How moronic are you that it takes you a year to get a system to a playtesting state?
In terms of development, "playtesting state" was practically beta stage rather than pre alpha or alpha stage.
Everything was ready for play and playing would simply adjust balancing or determine if I would alter mechanics.
In development, I work in iterations, happy to dig up what I've worked on and rebuild.
That's fricking moronic. You should have a prototype with core mechanics that's functional enough to playtest in a matter of days.
Gotta agree with this guy. Spending a whole year working on something alone is the classic mistake so many people make. I know I've done it too. I even had an incident where I spent years tinkering with a system, finally got to playtest it, and the whole thing fell apart within an hour. Had another system that I spent 2 weeks slapping shit together for and went straight into playtesting, and we've been playing that game fairly regularly ever since.
When you spend all that time working on the game alone, you're unintentionally setting expectations super high. Players start expecting a finalized, fully polished game. They expect you to have playtested the game extensively in that time when you bring it to them and say "I've spent the last year working on this"
So the ideal way is create, test, tweak... (repeat test and tweak until final state). So if the main issue is a long creation phase, how long should a person limit themselves too before they realize they need to bite the bullet and start testing mechanics to see the flaws?
at least post the PDF so we can see if anything worthwhile came out of this, OP
So you know. This is a game that never got playtested. Zero testing with other players, so if its bad, I wouldn't know. But it is what it is.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16RQdfMg8r2lkb4wCZlYyNs35NnyK2qWZSp0907FqWB4/edit?usp=sharing
I can see how you spent years on it, damn dude. I had a quick skim down to combat and it seems solid, but i didnt get far enough to actually see how any of the parts go together. Do you have a high res copy of the map?
Also not much point nitpicking grammar but
>Characters that are armored (through natural armor such as thick skin, scales or shells or through armor they wear such as breastplates andcuriasses) can negate half the damage taken by half.
Also, is a swift action a bonus action?
A swift actions and reactions share the same action pool called "bonus actions". Actions taken on your turn subtract from the number of actions you can take out of turn.
Defence is very reaction heavy, so spending all your bonus actions leaves you with minimal defence.
I don't remember if I changed the attribute that governs the number of bonus actions to Vigor or not but I was supposed to get around to doing that. When it was Prowess, it was pretty much the god stat, seeing as it also determines your offensive and defensive dice pool.
Neat, and also rip. Shame to see such a developed thing never reach fruition
Also, no. I no long have access to a full res map. I don't even have access to the account I used when I made it. I miss manage accounts all the time and I suppose I just didn't see the value in preserving it.
>361 pages
Damn, I wouldn't even call this a D&D heartbreaker (although it did break your heart) because it's very different from D&D, even if it follows many of the same resolution mechanics in principle. And it looks better at first glance that 80% of the homebrews I've seen here.
Well, think of it this way: you basically gave yourself Game Design 101 and 102 classes for free, and learned a lot about RPGs even if nobody plays this, so it's not a complete loss.
But you also learned something from Marketing 101: just because a product design is good doesn't mean people will buy it. Salesmanship, advertising, promotion and network effects are all out there and affect consumer behavior. If you want to sell games and not just design them as a hobby you'll need to learn those skills.
>RPG enthusiast devotes time to making a game more enjoyable for himself and his group
>horrifying internet troglodyte obsessed with "the industry" explains how the enthusiast has "failed to market his product"
>enthusiast never even mentions publishing his homebrew, but drone homosexual tut tuts him and replies "if you want to sell games, you're gonna need more business savvy!!"
You are the reason we deserve and will likely receive planetary extinction.
His post inspired me quite a bit.
I appreciate it deeply.
If it inspired you to try to sell your shitty d20 fantasy system or to make similar garbage for profit then it was a truly terrible post with purely negative consequences.
Think about it from this perspective.
Someone took a glance at my work and associated it not with the typical dog shit you see paraded around on reddit or d&d wiki but with something more along the lines of an independent system.
I don't have hopes of making a living from this game or a cash windfall but it is simply a matter of being told that the failure to attract the people I used to play with isn't necessarily a reflection of my failure as a GM or a testament to the quality of what I created but simply a matter of how I presented it.
The alternative is I wasted my time and have something of zero value which was my view before reading it. Perhaps I will feel that way again, but to feel otherwise for even a moment was valuable.
I wouldn't get too excited, I just skimmed the document for rules I'd consider actually valuable and found a whopping zero instances. It's also weird that the word rule only shows up 28 times yet the word command has 45 instances - however none of these instances actually relate to field command because there are no rules or even references to players leading troops. No support for domain play and the wealth rules are far too abstract to make playing a merchant (one of a handful of backgrounds) any fun in actual games. Basically I'd see no value in this system over ACKS, if there is some elevating gimmick it's certainly not obvious.
>Command
>From memory (it's been a while), Command is a specialization of the compel skill so would likely be mentioned quite a bit. Though I could also be wrong.
>No support for domain play and wealth.
>This is a game that had yet to be played, those aspects would be expanded upon and yet even then you are wrong. Through background features in the commoner, crook, patrition and soldier backgrounds, domain play is available. Also you're just wrong, npc companions has an entire section, however, the quality of the rules are up for debate, again, they were never tested.
>ACKS
>Don't know what it is. Don't care
I don't like you.
>Your homebrew isn't as complete as the most autisitic OSR professional product ever hitting the storeshelf therefor it's bad.
Kek. What an absolute lack of social skill. I suggest you go to the nearest local junior sport event and explain to any dad how their kid isn't any match for paid events the next time one of them score a goal.
This way you'll get the punch in the face that you deserve.
>nooooo you can't just try to get material value from all your time and efforts nooo that's souless you need to make me things for free otherwise you're just a hack!
Yes, dumbfrick, that is indeed how it works.
Alright, let's see what one year's worth of thinking on your own got you.
>Advantage and disadvantage
I found myself rolling my eyes already. Why would you not just include flat bonuses instead of taking 5e's least flexible mechanic, and making it even more boring?
The only possible reason I can think of is that you want to limit how large of a bonus players can stack, but... You can just limit the maximum bonus they can get anyways. The only difference is that you're no longer limited to "Advantage" and "disadvantage", but now a +1, +2, -1, or -2 range of advantage/disadvantage.
EXCEPT you can include larger bonuses or penalties to override other ones, too.
>Passive checks
It should just be a -1 to Hits to stay consistent.
>Aspirations
Cool idea. It should be explained more thoroughly though.
>Ideals, Convictions, & Inspirations
Less cool idea. This sort of stuff really should be at the bottom of the rules on making a character, since none of this matters yet.
Infact, this entire summary section is kind of moronic and an unnecessary design document element. Just state the mechanics the game will use, and only state them once, and as close to the order they would actually matter in as possible.
>Advantage and disadvantage
I see value in having both none stacking buffs and stacking buffs. Advantage is less valuable than a +2 bonus because a +2 bonus not listed as advantage can stack with advantage and other bonuses.
>Aspirations
I do when I fully explain the rules later in the book
>Ideals, Convictions, & Inspirations
Aspirations, Ideals, Convictions and Traits are all my roleplaying mechanics which was the crux of my system. Traits aren't mentioned in the summary but are my favourite mechanic I made personally.
In summary
>Ideals
>Characters chief code. A single word that is broad and can be a source of positive and negatives and is most frequently drawn upon when attempting to create ideological challanges which make up a big part of roleplaying
>Convicitions
>honestly not nessary for the system to work, but are more specific beliefs the character has written up in sentence form. These are just a source of rewards when expressed in roleplaying
>Traits
>Character personality that is a source of rewards. For example, if you list a trait as brave, it can be evoked in times of danger to offer bonuses against fear.
I wanted a summary for the people who wanted a jist of the system without having to read through detailed rules. Dice rules are less than a page in the summary but make up a few pages in the full rules.
>Advantage is less valuable than a +2 bonus because a +2 bonus not listed as advantage can stack with advantage and other bonuses.
That's my point. Just keep the latter and cap it if need be, otherwise it's wasted design space that just makes the game sound and feel like another bad 5e hack.
>I wanted a summary for the people who wanted a jist of the system without having to read through detailed rules
Your summary doesn't really convey anything beyond "This is 5e but with new dice mechanics and tacked on ideas."
I'm not saying it IS that mind, I'm saying that's what your summary conveys. You should keep a summary down to the length of a paragraph or less; All it needs to do is highlight what the system offers.
Your actual rules look like they need trimming though, because holy hell even the section on rolling dice is a chore to read. Most people will immediately turn their nose up when they're confronted with nearly five paragraph's worth of explaining how a basic dice roll works.
I probably will cut advantage. It isn't necessary to have a special type of bonus that doesn't stack with itself but only to cut down on complexity.
I think the more complex rules are, the more control you have designing it and also running it. It allows for easier homebrewing too as there's more parts within the kit to work with.
But the benefits of simplicity is undeniable.
The mechanics I most struggle with is anything involving team work. That is something I need to brush up if I ever get back to this system. doubt
Don't fricking give up, anon. Finish the fight.
>Actually playtest your shit
>Focus on aesthetics and marketing; if this isn't you, find someone you can collab with here or hire people
>Get it done
You can do it.
>Be GM
>Players demand something
>Whip out life sized, spiked horse dildo and rape asses for hours
>Let the survivors clean up the shit and gore after their intestines are shoved back in
>Ask if there are more suggestions
>Leave anyway after pissing in the sink
>Lement
Lament
lmao making a typo what a fricking moron
Wait that's the only typo?
I'm improving drastically, I didn't even give it a second read through.
>laugh at me
Nothing to laugh about OP, you're clearly the most passionate out of your peers, the only mistake you made was to try compromising with your table.
>Inb4 b-but i couldn't get a game regardless!
No matter, you could have channelled your passion in something more productive instead of chasing a compromise with your group they weren't interested in to begin with.
For the future if you need to scratch a itch regarding ttrpgs start with solo and then breach the subject with new peers other than your current group. Rinse and repeat untill you met enough like-minded guys good enough for a proper game.
Looks interesting, though I just skimmed it. Great job developing your own system. On page 43 it says "The five Major core attributes are...", but you list six.
I'd offer to be your player but I'd rather not play 5e or anything based off of it... still morbidly curious though.
Aside from being a kitchen sink fantasy, it's quite difference in both theory and practice.