Game Design General /gdg/

>>45005532
So for damage

3D5 +/- D5s

4D5 * A damage multiplier

or Base 10 * A damage multiplier

I'm kind of leaning towards the third option as it's going to be the fastest and about the easiest to balance for, critical strikes would do double damage naturally.

>>45005546
Who in their right mind has D5s for this system?

>>45005546
d5's are a good way of insuring that nobody is going to want to play your game.

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>>45005546
>d5

So polite bump and conversation starter:

What is your white whale, /gdg/? That game idea or mechanic that you are always seeking but can't seem to grasp.

>>45007631
I like the concept of making shit general threads nobody likes and not shutting the fuck up and going the fuck away

>>45007631
Sex.

>>45007631
vehicular and starfighter combat in a game with abstract combat distances and maneuvers. When infantry combat is good, vehicle combat is bad, and vice versa.

>>45007631
OSR Super Robots.

In related news, what game mechanics make something feel "anime as fuck"? I felt that in Double Cross and Tenra Bansho Zero but I couldn't put my finger on why.

I'm ham handedly trying to bring that "anime" feel to an OSR ruleset (because I like the amount of free content I can pilfer for my game) using these rules adaptations.

Scarlet Heroes and its damage rules as the base.

Simultaneous attacks from TBZ. You attack a guy, you roll a d20 and your bonuses, they roll their d20 and bonuses, winner does damage. So a dragon attacking a character three times, risks three counterattacks.

Escalation die from 13th Age. Get an increasing +1 to-hit bonus each turn starting from the second turn. Maybe "super attacks" can only be used when the escalation die value is, hell I dunno, 4 or more. This encourages finishing moves.

>>45007650
Enjoy your mad, anon. These generals have helped plenty of people.

>>45007678
What kind of stuff are you looking for? I threw together a fairly simple, fairly abstract set of dogfighting rules for my One Roll Engine space adventure game, and I'm always interested in ways to improve it.

>>45007744
I think what I want is an improvement on 40k RPG and SW RPG's vehicle combat systems

>>45007730

There are two primary components to combat moves that are super anime without having to get really really specific.

The first is an inhuman level of coordination and speed. The ability to slice bullets out of the air, or even just shoot their bullets out of the air with your own bullets. The ability to run through a hailstorm and with your absurd reflexes never get hit. The ability to run up a wall, backflip of, and land on a nearby roof. That shit.

The other is your emotions directly impacting your combat potential. If you are demoralized none of your strength matters, but if you are of strong enough willpower none of your wounds matter. Do something like let players write down important memories or things that motivate them, which they can erase and use up to fuel dramatic over the top second winds.

"Oh shit, I has like 2 hp left and I am all out of charges for my abilities. Hm..."

*remembers his promise to his sister to make a better world where bad things wouldnt happen to good people*

"And with a little internal monologue and some manly yelling, I am back at half health and all of my abilities are recharged. Lets do this!"

>>45007631
A wargame that has a strategic layer meant to give context and weight to the tactical battles. I've actually been working on my own version for awhile now. Once me and my buds have playtested it I'll probably throw It up on here :P what about anyone else? Anyone else working on a project ATM? Id like to see how y'all handle any design problems.

>>45007744
Sauce?

>>45007869
My white whale is my RPG system. It grows slowly and I'm proud of what I have, I just can't force myself to sit down and work on it. It comes to me in bursts. I just spend time making other games, which raises my chances of being inspired and keeps my design skills strong.

>>45007848
This would work. Thank you!

I forgot to note another rule adaptation which can work well with this idea, the positive death spiral in TBZ. The more wounded you are, the better you fight. I think I'll adapt that by putting thresholds at half HP and quarter HP and using Advantage.

>>45007825
>>45007907

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0lxa1jahxzfrvc/DOGFIGHTING.docx?dl=0

This is all theoretical as I haven't had an opportunity to test how it works yet. The main goal is to create a system that doesn't require a map or grid or whatever, where movement and positioning in space can be described qualitatively and dynamically.

Thoughts and suggestions are of course welcome.

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>>45007631
Right now I'm hunting this one:
Called shots to a body part that are able to miss but still hit the enemy in another part, while accounting for the fact that enemies can have a varying number of body parts and still have varying hit chances per part.

>>45005532
I've been sort of thinking about the idea of a strategy game based on supply lines connecting towns to resources.

So, there might be, say, four main types of terrain - wasteland, farmland, bog and mountain. These would exist in intelligently generated areas on a hex tile compound.
Resources could be harvested from all except wasteland using 'Mines'.

So crops could be harvested from fields, peat could be harvested from bogs, and stone could be harvested from mountains.

I'm not sure exactly how I want the gameplay to be work but it'll be about forming and protecting your supply lines and disrupting your opponent's supply lines.

I think I want to try to focus the gameplay on that core strategic principal.

>>45007631
A way to elegantly implement a classless system with a point-buy skill- and perk set. I'm borrowing pretty liberally from GURPS and Savage Worlds, but i'm adding my own. It's slowly - very slowly - coming together, but I lack the time to work on it as i'd like.

>>45008777
So like catan with pvp?

>>45008771
Sounds complicated anon, but worth it if you work it out. Maybe you can provide some details on the system and we can work from there?

>>45007631
Combat distances. My game will have high speed combat and I don't know how to abstract distances and the like.

Do I divide combat into zones? At what ranges is the battlefield obnoxiously large and unwieldy? What happens when the center of the battlefield moves or a target target tries to escape by leaving the current battlefield?

All questions that grind my game's otherwise decent production speed to a halt.

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>>45007631
A system with action points where the stat giving you AP isn't the most important one in the game

It can't be done

>>45008976
Why tie AP to a Stat in the first place if you're trying to avoid that?

>>45008877
What I find myself doing recently is one of two methods:

Zones. Each zone is a defined area in which all characters can reasonably reach one another. Behind the bar, entrance, left wing of bar, north wing, back room, back ally, out front.

Or for my rules light, less tactical stuff: close, nearby, visible, fat away. Close is what you can touch or touch ina. Few seconds, nearby are the areas you can move to, visible is what you can see clearly, and far away is everything else that is still technically on sight but far enough away to obscure details. This option is all relative to the character in question, so a giant considers someone close what that person considers the giant nearby.

>>45005532
might as well post the pasta, senpai

A thread dedicated to discussion and feedback of games and homebrews made by /tg/ regarding anything from minor elements to entire systems, as well as inviting people to playtest your games online. While the thread's main focus is mechanics, you're always welcome to share tidbits about your setting.

Try to keep discussion as civilized as possible, avoid non-constructive criticism, and try not to drop your entire PDF unless you're asking for specifics, it's near completion or you're asked to.

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>>45008016
Very interesting, though I've got a few questions.

Does this assume only 2 combatants are fighting at once? What happens when you have individual opponents who are spaced out across the battlefield and are taking potshots at each other with long distance missiles/weaponry?

My problem with dogfighting style combat is that it comes down to the game focusing on one or two combatants to everyone else's exclusion (unless others join in and turn it into a dogfighting conga line).

Not to say your system is bad. It looks well thought out for its specific niche of action and I love the maneuver list. I think that learning what I don't want helps a little too.

I think that maybe I want dogfighting to be a specific function that offers benefits and drawbacks when trying to engage an opponent, but not something that narrows the focus of the entire battlefield down to the participants of said dogfight...does that make any sense?

>>45008976
>>45008992
The game I'm working on has the assumption that AP comes with upgrades to your kit. Sometimes it will be cheaper and smarter simply to be more prepared than to have a ton of action points and nothing to do with them.

Think how D&D assumes most (martial) players will be getting magic weapons to stay with the curve of accuracy and damage. You should also assume players will be getting AP in some form or another to stay with the curve. Instead of letting AP items stack, just rule that in order to reach AP+2, the item that gives it to them most say so explicitly. Multiple AP+1 items won't stack and instead override each other. That way it is much harder to abuse.

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>>45008868
Context is a P&P RPG, weird fantasy type setting. I need the varying body parts for insectoid characters and those with tails or wings, as well as animals, modeling simpler or smaller creatures with fewer hit zones and accounting for mutations/transformations.

Base resolution is 1d10-1d10, done with a positive and a negative die, generating values from -9 to 9. Negative numbers are degrees of failure, positive are degrees of success. Attributes use the same range.

The game should have a survival thematic where the received wound matters. Therefore there are wounds (HP) per individual body part, which will give penalties when accumulated.

I don't want a random attack target, as there can be any number of body sections and I want a tactical decision about how to harm.

I'd like to use the degree of success in a attack roll for the inflicted damage, as it makes sense intuitively, but am open to change this if necessary.

>>45009629
How about this:

Each character has a spiral, with each branch reflecting a different body part. When you aim for one, you roll, and each degree of miss causes the hit to go to a spiral over. So if you do well enough to land a blow but miss the target by 2, you go 2 spirals over and hit that limb.

It's flexible enough to support any number of limbs, it can logically place limbs next to each other, and it's easy to chart and track.

>>45009629
You've replied to the wrong post.

>>45009703
Sorry; it seems I'm a massive idiot. Please disregard this.

>>45009296
Glad I could make something interesting! As I pointed out the whole system is speculative so I'm going to me modifying it when it actually comes to testing and implementation.

>Does this assume only 2 combatants are fighting at once? What happens when you have individual opponents who are spaced out across the battlefield and are taking potshots at each other with long distance missiles/weaponry?
It kind of depends on the scale of the action. "Dogfighting" naturally implies that we're dealing with small craft jockeying for position, but in theory these rules can equally apply to larger, frigate sized ships or even capital ships; the key difference is that your time reference for the action of each ship goes from split seconds to whole seconds or even minutes as they reposition. Moreover, when you're dealing with larger ships, each player can operate different systems on the ship.

Potshots can naturally be done at long distances by incuring attack penalties. That's why I didn't have set distances for each range band-- firing range for an X-Wing is a lot shorter than firing range on a Star Destroyer. It's all in how the GM and Players interpret the rules.

>My problem with dogfighting style combat is that it comes down to the game focusing on one or two combatants to everyone else's exclusion (unless others join in and turn it into a dogfighting conga line).
Indeed; what I want to emphasize is that if you're campaign is going to have a lot of dogfighting, you might want to give every player their own ship to partake; whereas if it's more naval based, each player is operating a system on a much larger ship and has stuff to do each round between fixing damage, piloting and operating weapons and shields.

>>45009296
>>45009762
>Not to say your system is bad. It looks well thought out for its specific niche of action and I love the maneuver list. I think that learning what I don't want helps a little too.
Glad I could offer some help then! One thing I want to do is deepen the Maneuver list a bit; I want maybe 5 codified maneuvers that you can do, with the rest being more improvised. Is there anything obvious that I missed? I had a comment before that Reverse Pursuit covers a huge amount of ground because a ton of air combat theory is based on getting behind your opponent, but I didn't see much serious advantage to writing separate rules for each different strategy.

>I think that maybe I want dogfighting to be a specific function that offers benefits and drawbacks when trying to engage an opponent, but not something that narrows the focus of the entire battlefield down to the participants of said dogfight...does that make any sense?
Naturally. It's a major challenge in tabletop, that's for sure, which is why a lot of space games sort of handwave fleet combat a bit unless the game is specifically about that. It's hard to capture the speed and dynamism of that kind of sortie while also creating enough satisfying mechanics that the players can learn and exploit.

My work schedule is starting to lighten up again so I'll be able to contribute to these threads more in the coming weeks.

So, question: would it feel more thematically appropriate for a Spellsword type character to use Knowledge to make weapon attacks or Weapon Skill to perform combat magic?

In the latter method "regular" magic would still use Knowledge.

>>45009853
Without knowing the theme I can't say, but my instinct says weapon skill for magic.

>>45009699
I'm not sure I understand. By spiral, du you mean a branching tree?

And the number of parts connected to another part can vary. I target the head/neck and the torso is attached (and shoulder/upper arm zones are logically very near and hittable from a logic standpoint). I target torso and Head, arms and legs are attached. How would I get which attached part takes precedence?

I had this exact problem when just assigning a difficulty to the part. If rolled under I couldn't go to lower difficulty parts, because there could be multiple and the part with the next lower difficulty might be far of from the target.

But your angle has definitely got potential.

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I 'think' I've sorted out the quick rules for Hard:Suit but it'd be real helpful if I could get some feedback, particularly the combat system and its AP use which I feel may still have issues.

Could I remove the AP system entirely and stick to just an 'offense' and 'defence' move to reduce the AP bookkeeping that could potentially occur?

>>45009933
Yeah, like the Hordes wargame, a circle with a branch for each limb/part. You could add sub-branches too. That seems like it would get complicated.

Maybe instead have a matrix where each possible die roll lists an alternative limb target, including misses? So target the head, determine which box on the head matrix you hit, and resolve the attack. If you rolled the N for neck, then you hit the neck instead.

>>45009958
In theory, I don't think AP tracking would be much of an issue honestly. It seems like a pretty good system, tho I don't think you clarified the cost of using a reaction with AP vs just getting one free. It says you need to use AP, but doesn't say how much.

Also you flip-flopped Pilot and Mech stats. Just an FYI

>>45008856
I've got a first draft of the rules now.

The objective is to starve the opponent's capital city.

>>45009436
I still don't see what the advantage is here; are you just trying to create a sense of system mastery where players are rewarded for learning the system by knowing how to avoid trap options?

In almost any system I can think of, more actions = more better-- you can do more and have more the limelight in scenes, especially combat. Any system where one character has a greater supply of actions in a scene to another is going to need to levy some heavy penalties on him to avoid being unfun for the characters without more actions.

>>45009886
The idea is that most Spellswords (and spell casters in general) are employeed by the government, and typically serve in the military. Weapon Skill represents a knowledge of combat (combat styles, military tactics, maintenance).

Knowledge covers things like book learning, arcana, history and the like.

A Person with weapon skill can tell you what tactic an enemy is employeeing, a Knowledgable person will tell you what battle it was originally employed in.

The actually combat casting is usually done via a secondary squire/scribe who writes out the sigil for the spell, then the owner actives it. Alternately one by himself can fall back to what is basically a glorified stamp and notepad.

>>45009993
I don't want to be as granular to divide head and neck, they are put together to disperse the injuries a bit and account for the fact that there is a neck.

The Matrix approach sounds a bit like it would make a table necessary. I don't shy heavier crunch but tables are the one thing I'd like to avoid. I don't want to condemn the GM to have that page open at all times. This rules out a riddle of steel approach as well.

I thought of a sort of matrix for the whole body before, but applying it to one part could still be a good angle. This is already helping me. After a while you can get stuck in your own approaches.

>>45010178
Honestly with the sigils it doesn't sound like you would need knowledge to use them, just to make them. The military would issue sigils to the spellswords and they would use them.

>>45010181
Great! I try to just throw ideas out there to help because you'll immediately start thinking about how it does or doesn't fit, moving you forward. Glad it helped!

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>>45010181
This isn't particularly something will help you then because it's based on a totally different dice system, but here's how the One Roll Engine handles stuff:

This is the would silhouette from Wild Talents. When you roll an attack (a dice pool of d10s), you're looking for a matched set (say, 6,6,6). The set is described as Width (how many dice) x Height (what the dice say), so 6,6,6 is read as 3x6.

When you launch an attack, your Width tells you how much damage you do, while your Height tells you where you hit. So a roll of 3x6 deals 3 damage to the right arm. Light damage is called Shock; you represent this by making a / mark in the hit box. Shock means you've been bruised or lightly cut, and is non-lethal. If you fill up a location with Shock, you get penalized depending on where it is (a head full of Shock will knock you out).

Severe damage is called Killing, and you mark it with an X. Killing damage can cause irreparable damage to a body part and kill you if it fills your Torso or Head.

If a Hit Location fills with Shock, further Shock to that location becomes Killing (which is why it uses a / mark, so you can turn it into an X by adding an \ ).

Where you hit your opponent is largely random, though the distribution of locations means you have a better chance of hitting someone's upper body than lower. Called shots with this system are easy: you throw out one die from your pool, and you set another die to the location you want to hit, then roll the rest. So if you have a pool of 8d and want to get a guy in the head, you throw out 1d (bringing your pool to 7d), then set one of the remaining dice to 10; then you roll the remaining 6d. Now all you need to do is get a single 10 to hit the head, instead of needing to roll two 10s.

Now your game uses a totally different resolution system, but I wanted to give you an idea of how another system handles hit locations.

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>>45005532
/hbg/ give me ideas for an interesting initiative system, I am currently in a slump for a simple and sleek system that can be used easily.

>Speed Die is a thing from D6-D12
>Skills such as Athletics exist

Go to town, been using the traditional D&D system, but its not working as I want it to and just need some inspiration

>>45010404
I was aware of ORE, and it's very good in my opinion. Sadly I can't use dice pools, because I have a higher requirement for granularity in this concept. I need more than five points in attributes and skills, which would lead to dice inflation quickly. I need the range to model something like a weak poison debuff and a medium and a strong one, or a weak poisoning plus malnourishment on a naturally slightly weak character without bottoming out the scale.

>>45010651
Fair point; like I said I knew it wasn't workable for your system as is, I just wanted to give another example of how it can be done.

Hit locations in most games I've found to be extremely kludgey and not worth it unless combat is resolved in just a couple attacks, otherwise it really draws things out. Do you expect fights to have a lot of back-and-forth, or are they particularly deadly?

>>45010278
Well to activate then you need to use a command word from a long dead language and then solve what is a basically a mental math problem to get your body to actually expend the mana for the spell. Think of it as having accounts on 100 different websites and they all have different usernames and passwords. The easy part is remembering the URL for the site in the first place at that point. Combat stamps are VERY handy, no doubt, but just because a site is in your favorites doesn't mean you can always remember the password right away.

>>45007631
>that game idea
A good walking tank-style mech game. Not a wargame, a role-playing game.

>>45007631
Zombie-Tactics, basically you're a group of survivors who fight zombies and crazies until you are operator tier.

Have yet to make something both fun and tactically deep.

>>45010778
I don't want them exceptionally deadly, but definitely something you think hard about doing. There will be a death spiral and a character's fighting power should drop quite fast-ish if hit. But I don't want to go overboard on the killing of PCs. When you are losing a fight it should be a good idea to get your friends to take some heat of you and leg it, clutching your wound, hasting through the jungle.

reposting i guess

CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:

>Let's say 1d100

>Player's stat+skill is the maximum
>Enemy's raw stat sets the minimum

>Anything above the maximum is a failure
>Anything below the minimum is a "dirty" success - where the enemy is allowed a roll to react and dodge/block/counterattack but the attack hits if they fail

for example, my stat+skill is 75, the enemy's raw stat is 30
>1-30 = Dirty Success
>31-75 = Clean Success
>76-100 = Failure

>>45011008
Interesting. I did something vaguely similar, but I stupidly tried with 1d10 and just straight skill and it ended up a mess in a hurry.

>>45011008
That's actually a pretty good idea and a pretty good implementation of 1d100, which gets a lot of flack for being overly granular. You could probably do this with d20 too.

Do you have any ideas for how Dirty Success works outside of combat? I'm thinking kind of like FFG's Threats in particular, which can introduce complications to successful actions.

>>45010143
I'm not the guy who had initially asked the AP question, though I did give a answer.

That said, AP counts don't get extraordinarily high in my game. Getting more AP as the game goes on is an expectation of the system, but a new player and a max level player only have a 1-2 AP between them. Yeah those AP can make a big difference, but not all actions cost just one or two AP and you can't repeat actions you already performed in a round without a special feat (excluding Dodge or Guard actions).

If anything, extra AP means you are more likely to be able to defend yourself since an extra half attack isn't exactly the greatest benefit in the world and a move action being extremely useful is highly situational.

In most cases, having 1 extra AP when most standard actions cost 2 isn't a spectacular benefit (Players have 4AP to start). And by the time players get to 6 or so AP (at max level), they'll have been trading upgrading to better gear in exchange for one more action. In a lot of cases in my game, simply staying at lower AP in exchange for more firepower is a valid choice. At least I like to think it is.

>>45007631

How to make movement engaging. Specifically parkour and free-running. I love stealth-platformers like Sly Cooper, Mark of the Ninja, and AssCreed, and would love a tabletop experience that captures the feeling of being an acrobatic thief without just abstracting it away to "Make a DC 32 Acrobatics test. Oh, you failed? You fall, take 11 points of damage, and alert the guards." Doing this without excessively slowing down gameplay, actually reflecting the fleeting moment decision making in the mechanics, and not letting it dominate the ruleset is nearly impossible but would create such amazing gameplay.

>>45011490
How about some speed vs risk choice? Be fast or be safe. And acceleration for continued speed choices, so you want to have streaks. Maybe you have to act on opportunity windows, that you have to meet but pushing to hard can compromise you.

>>45011586

Those are great ideas, and if I was building something from scratch, I'd try and include them. It's more borne from being frustrated at systems like WoD or AD&D for not being able to capture that feeling.

>>45011490
I don't think this would necessarily be that hard.

Let's assume that movement is a major part of the game. In a crunchy game, that means characters will have statistics for things like Climb, Jump, Run, Tumble, etc.

If I were to make it a One-Roll Engine game, I'd have Jump and Run as Body Skills, and Climb and Tumble as Coordination Skills. Skills go from 1-5, and each value tells you a specific range of movement that is 100% free- so a character with Jump 3 can jump a 6 foot gap without needing a roll, or one with Climb 4 can scale 20 feet without a roll. Those are just things she can do.

If you need to further or faster, that's where the roll comes in. When you make a roll, your Width (see >>45010404 post) increases your movement range by a set amount, while your Height tells you how graceful you are. So if your character with Climb 4 wants to scale a 30 foot wall, she has a choice. She can take her time and scale it in two turns, or she can do it quickly by rolling Coordination + Climb; if she gets a Width of 2, she can make it up in one turn, but if her roll fails she falls or somehow is impeded.

Now let's say she's being chased across a rooftop and needs to jump from one to the other. She's got two problems here: she needs to outrun her pursuers and get across the gap. That's two skills- Run and Jump. She can do both freely if the pursuers are slow and the gap is long, but what if they are faster than her and the gap is longer than she normally jump?

For that she needs to take Multiple Actions. That means she looses one die from her dice pool, and rolls the lower of her two pools, and then needs to get a set for each action. Now if she has excellent Run and Jump (4-5 each) then that's really not a huge problem. a dice pool of 8 has a 95% chance of getting at least one set, and will probably get another set too. Dropping that down to a pool of 7 has a slightly lower chance of success, but still highly possible, and it would be awesome.

>>45011197
I'm guessing the "enemy's stat" would be replaced with a level of difficulty in which the player succeeds but still fucks something up while doing so

>>45011490
>>45011821
On the other hand, if she's bad at Running, Jumping or both, trying to execute both actions at once is going to be extremely risky. A game like this would probably have some kind of Kludge point system to add dice to your pool at the cost of some kind of resource, so she'd most likely spend some to up her chances.

A fast, intuitive free running game is to me perfectly viable. You just need a.) a system that can resolve multiple actions quickly and easily and b.) a game structured around it; it might not be 100% about free running, but the in-game resources should be there to be taken advantage of.

>>45009436
I know this problem and I've been toying with how to solve it. A few different ways I've come up with.

>1 AP != 1 Action
Simple but effective. Means you can balance actions out with AP costs so people with lots of AP can do a really powerful attack/2 instead of 7 attacks.

>Making it dependant on multiple stats
This seems to bethe best way I thought of. If you had lets say the following 8 stats (Strength, Toughness, Fitness, Finesse, Intellect, Wisdom, Perception, Charisma) that went up to 20? each, then splitting AP like so might work.
AP = 3 + (FIT/6) + (STR/10) + (TOU/12).
Rounding down all numbers means a player can have between 3 & 9 max. AP at any time. You'd have to balance out the formula alot but it seems the best solo idea.

>AP and AP Regen.
Having AP rely on 1 or 2 stats while AP regen relies on another 1 or 2 could work. Creates a few options where you can build a guy who's always max stamina or has alot but slow recovery. I think the AP regen must be lower than the AP stat by a significant degree unless you build for it (e.g. AP = 3 -> 9, APregen = 2 -> 6).
Also means you can have more fun foes that drain your will to fight in a mechanical sense (maybe willpower test or lose 1 AP regen?)

>Caster abilities cost lower AP to use
It means non-melee classes can compete easier with melee classes. Since they're putting statpoints in other stats like Intellect/Wisdom, it means they'll have less AP to work with. This leads to the problem that they could be a spellspammer; so maybe diving spells AP costs into casting AP cost & preparation AP cost.

>Reduce effects that affect AP
If lets say shield-bashing reduces your opponents AP, then having more AP is more important. This is bad. Change it so a stagger pushes a target back or reduces AP regen or something else.

>Initative is linked to x, AP is linked to y.
Means you can build for having lots of AP, odds are you'll be attacking last. Makes AP less important in quick battles.

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>>45010042
Edited to account for that with a little bit explaining the free initial reaction.

>>45006826
>>45007468
>>45007627
Why are d5's bad?

>>45012758

Because either 1) players have to buy weird funky dice that will sit unused in their dice bag forever, or 2) they have to roll d10 or d20s and divide the result, which raises the questions of why you're not just using those dice without an added layer of unnecessary bullshit.

>>45012799
This
Nobody owns d5s
Nobody wants to divide for every roll

>>45007631
Settling on a damn setting. I keep flip flopping on it.

>>45013933
Can you fuse some stuff? You get denser lore this way but it may clash horribly depending on what your settings are.

>>45014042
I have a high fantasy, a stone age fantasy, a near-future sci-fantasy, and a grimdark sci-fi fantasy.

Question: are there any good examples of arena based combat in which the game can still be interesting and fun while played one vs one? I've been brainstorming a sort of "duelist game" for a while now, but every time I come back to it, the idea of one vs one combat ends up being distinctly uninteresting when putting reps in, with either two people rushing each other to bash brains and die, or one person running circles pewpewing until either caught or the victor.

>>45014382
What is the flavor beyond arena duels?

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>>45006826
>>45007468
>>45007627
D5s always provide an average, a D6 will have every odd roll(3D6, 5D6...) is split down the middle, so you end up with a decimal for the average.

>>45012799
What is software?

>>45015283
>Letting players us their phones/a dice app
Not even once. It needs to be dice on table, hands away or it's a natural crit-fail

>>45007631
Well thought-out armor mechanics that aren't lolAC or lolDR

>>45015283
What are the odds for d10?

>>45015540
Any even number is going to produce a decimal as the middle when you roll on odd number of dice, something something math I think

>>45015426
But most people play online now anyways, and ya, they could just divide a D10 by 2, or assign 6->1 7->2, ect

Also I guess game science makes D10s for this exact purpose, that isn't their D5 die

http://www.gamesciencedice.com/Original-d5--5-Sider-Quintahedron-Orange-plain-d10-1-5-2X_p_10.html

>>45015540
>>45015778
D10 average is

16 7.50 %

17 7.50 %

>>45011586
I dig this, and the potential for failure at higher acceleration to hurt harder.

>>45015283
What is a videogame?

>>45015896
In any case I ended up going with the base number

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>>45007631
My white whale for a long time was getting my game to look good, but in the last few months I've commissioned art and the card frame you see at left. Overall, I'm happy with my rules atm, so my real white whale right now is commercializing the game.

>>45007631
Hardsuits gone through 3 different themes which have all had an impact on the visual style which i'm STILL fiddling around with

>>45015778
>most people play online
I don't think so Tim.

>>45015283
>a D6 will have every odd roll(3D6, 5D6...) is split down the middle, so you end up with a decimal for the average.
I don't understand, are you implying this is somehow a problem? Or did you mean something else?

>>45018193
It unbalances the math, well at least for me.

On an attack roll you want a 50/50 split. On a damge roll you want an average, so that HP can be balanced around that. so 3D6 is split between 10-11, and let's say you wanted 5 hits to be the average before something dies. You either end up with 50, or 55, which is a 5 point difference in how you want your balance to go, which isn't major, but still requires you to make a choice.

if your roll is split 50/50 your game is either slightly less lethal(more hits due to taking the lower 50%) or more lethal.

really it's minor overall, so it really doesn't matter, but if can be avoided that's nice.

I'm designing an item for one of my PCs. He is a druid that frequently turns into a bear. I want the item to be very high risk, very high reward.

My first idea was to make a chance for him to go bearserk and attack the nearest entity regardless of allegiance, but I was told it is a bad idea to remove player agency.

How can I make this item exciting?

>>45016151
Thanks for the compliment again

>>45019045
I just had an idea.
He can turn into a megabearzeker using the item, but has a chance of losing control. If he loses control, I remove him from the room and have his do combat in another room. Just for him, I replace every living entity in the combat with whatever the common enemy is in the fight. He has to try to discern who is friendly or not and the others will eventually have to subdue him

>>45019045
The item makes you do a bunch of damage and become a far tougher bear but the more you use it the more you start to suffer the problems of hibernation.

Only in your human form.

Hibernation requires bears to enter a starvation state where its organs and muscle tissue is broken down which isn't a problem for bears since they can restore and repair it pretty easily whereas humans can't.

So the item puts the druid after he reverts from the bear into a completely malnourished and wasted wreck of a man that has to turn into a bear to restore his human body.

>>45019609
This is good.

>>45008771
Anon just do d% and assign limbs ranges based on how many it starts with, dumping the remainder into center. Like this:

1. 5% - head
2. 16% - each arm and leg
3. Rest into Body center

When you miss, move down that priority list. Make body untargetable. When hitting something that's destroyed move up on that list. It's dynamic and scalable per creature. Requires no tables since you just specify number of each limb.

You can even give players bonuses of like +/- 3 for each size class the thing deviates from "normal".

>>45008016
Did this in my game Revenant Age of Dusk. It's an optional theater of the mind rule where all the units (in meters/yards) are relative from that actor. The GM just sets each actor at relative distances and players ask how far they are from their target. You can even tie it to a perception roll so they can misjudge the distance. This system emulates a radius movement instead of grid. Getting to the side or behind just requires moving extra distance and specifying, which just changes relative facing. Unless you're within the actor's attack range in which it gets a free shot.

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>>45005532
I can't wait until the day when a computer algorithmically designs a human-playable roleplaying game.

>>45021284
>implying it wouldn't just pander to the lowest common denominator more efficiently than anything before.

>>45021284
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/VTNL

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>>45021435
We could always train it on indie and avant garde games.

>>45021472
That's a human trying to copy video games.

So, a deep part of me wants to tear apart D&D 4e, file off serial numbers, kill some sacred cows and tweak some numbers.

On a scale of actively detrimental to awesome, how well would this be received? What tweaks would you personally like to see?

So, I've finally figured out a thing that's been bothering me, the individual vs. unit approach for infantry.

Infantry units in Trenchbreaker are fielded on their own individual bases, like most wargames, but then organized into trays. A tray basically represents the men fighting as a section or squad. When infantry units attack, they add together the number of men on their tray, their relevant value for the attack(Balance for melee, Accuracy for range) and a D12. This means that larger units will generally beat smaller units. However, larger units will also be easier targets for artillery and cannon fire. Infantry are killed individually; when a shell detonates, it kills every infantry model in its radius, meaning an off-target shell could blast away the left half of your tray.

In no-man's land, infantry fight together, but they die alone.

Thinking a d20 fantasy heartbreaker
>Human is default race
>3 core classes: Mage, Rogue, Warrior
>Classes have specializations so Warriors can be unstoppable armored warriors or agile duelists, etc.
>Elves and Dwarves are racial classes; the must take at least 1 level in their racial class but can afterward freely multiclass into the core classes
>Skills and saves are d20 roll under attribute with minor class and situation bonuses
>hex-based tactical combat
>condensed weapon categories

>>45024069
Why wouldn't I just play one of the billion other D&D retroclones out there?

>>45024061
New development: Your units can break formation and leave their trays to go through terrain that a tray just can't fit through, but until the entire unit returns to their tray they count as having half as many models as they do for the purpose of combat rolls.

I have 7 base stats in my system, out of which 6 are completely ordinary, bought with points at chargen, (40 points to start with, it's a d20 system) and later improved with talents purchased with XP. However, the 7th stat is meant to reach up to 100 under normal, unmodified circumstances, and is calculated from 3 of the other stats, where one of them is of higher importance than the others.

Is (a+2b+c)*1.5+5 a sensible equation for that?

>>45024582
Players won't want to do even soft algebra if you put it like that. If you write it out, something like "your bite force is equal to half again your strength stat, plus your toughness stat, plus your hatred stat" players won't be so put off.

Numbers and algebra, while simple, remind people of their unpleasant days doing math in high school, and will usually be a turn off in something they're allegedly doing for fun. Clumsier written explanations will be received much more positively.

>>45024699
I dunno, that seems harder to understand from my perspective. I can include an example and text explanation alongside the equation, though.

>>45024726
Not him but I hate even calculations I can do if it takes much more thought than just additional or doubling/halving.

i only want to deal with numbers as much as comes off absolutely necessary.

>>45023914
Depends entirely on how well the changes are implemented. And if the sacred cow has any good beef on it.

I'd like to see the math fixes baked into the system. Expertise and improved defenses should be free, basically.

>>45024699
>Players won't want to do even soft algebra if you put it like that. If you write it out, something like "your bite force is equal to half again your strength stat, plus your toughness stat, plus your hatred stat" players won't be so put off.
Not that anon, but tt's been the opposite in my experience. Players hate or misinterpret rules when they're written out, while they love a clear and concise equation.

>>45024699
>>45024751
>>45024822
Well, another concept I have is a plain a+2b+c, which would require me to adjust a scale related to the stat, but would otherwise work fine, and eliminate the issue of possibly exceeding 100 aside from some really hardcore (and not gameplay-viable) minmaxing.

>>45024902
Sounds much more friendly to players who don't want to do math.

>>45024110
>>45024069

>Classes have specializations so Warriors can be unstoppable armored warriors or agile duelists, etc.
>hex-based tactical combat

These parts sound interesting at least. I just hope the Fighter will be the best at Fighting and Killing and the Mage will be shit at both of those things.

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>>45025038
Mages should stick to buffs and debuffs, then hide their frail, dress clad figures behind the real warriors.

>>45025359
Yeah. I agree. I think dungeoncrawl classes should stick to a sliding scale of lethality and utility. Warriors at one end, Mages at the other, and Rogues in between.

I'm curious to see what anon will do.

>>45007631
A way to encourage cooperation between players but still have them put their personal goals front and foremost in a board game.

>>45008877
If you're going for a dynamic battlefield, putting the focus on the participants instead of the area itself might be a good direction. That way you could have as large of a battlefield as you want, but until they move close enough to an area such that they can interact with it, it wouldn't be necessary to give info to the players about it. Basically give participants an area of effect/influence of stuff they can interact with instead of focusing on specific distances between random elements on the battlefield.

>>45014382
Tash-Kalar, Mage Wars, Summoner Wars, and Wiz-Wars might be good places to start.

>>45024061
Trays is a neat word.

>>45024069
What does heartbreaker usually mean in this context? I've seen it around but never understood it.

>>45026015
>What does heartbreaker usually mean in this context? I've seen it around but never understood it.
Heartbreaker usually means a game that aims to out-do a popular game with an existing player base, and usually fails to live up to it.

A game that tries to topple D&D, for example. It's the tabletop equivalent of a 'WoW killer' MMO.

>>45026438
>It's the tabletop equivalent of a 'WoW killer' MMO.
Because it's not actually good but just popular and despite every update making the game worse people would still rather play it than something new and good because all their friends are playing it?
Whoa, it is the tabletop equivalent of WoW.

>>45026627
Well, difference is WoW is slowly but steadily losing players, while D&D and PF retain their iron grip on the playerbase.

>>45024805
That was one of the things I meant by "math tweaks". I honestly do think 4E has some really good bones, they just also ended up putting a lot of bloat and diseased flesh on top simply because "that's d&d"

>>45026745
> slowly
Not entirely a a proper word when referring to losing nearly half your playerbase in six months, to the point of scaring them to not reporting subscriber numbers anymore.

>>45029411
Blizzard made their money off of WoW. If the number of players dropped to 0 overnight, it would still have been a massive success. It's not like WoW is even their most popular game right now.

>>45029411
They lose a massive number of players at the end of every expansion. It's the nature of expansions: People know there's nothing new coming out for a while, they've done everything they want to, they leave for a while. Then they come back with the next expansion.

>>45015426
>or it's a natural crit-fail
XD

>>45007631
Cooking/alchemy system and a technology creation system. Shit be hard.

Hi /tg/, I'm reposting this here,

I'm kinda new to the whole tabletop rpgs universe, I played something like twenty games in my whole life:
The thing is i've never touched ANY SYSTEMS.

I created some with really really basic rules (D100 stats etc..) with a lot of role play in it.
By example, swords and other items haven't defined prices etc

My question is pretty strange I guess but here it is:
Why should I use a Stat-heavy system or better, why should I use a massive rulebook when I can make easy rules myself with a lot of roleplay in it ?

>>45030327
>Why should I use a Stat-heavy system or better, why should I use a massive rulebook when I can make easy rules myself with a lot of roleplay in it ?
There's no reason to go one way or the other beside the players' preferences. Look at games like Fiasco and it's playerbase compared to that of more traditional RPGs

>>45030431
I see, thank you.

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My current WiP: A series of WW2 wargame scenarios themed around commando operations in Norway.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kN3vM7ZWYtTXIx9kIcbpX2GKGr0dig0NSYQyIjtgI68/edit

>>45026015
>Trays is a neat word.
Originally it was Bases, but I threw in Trays to make it distinct from the individual bases each model is mounted on, since everyone in wargaming already thinks of those as bases, so trying to introduce different terminology would just be annoying.

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>>45030327

>>45030327
You "shouldn't". That is to say, whatever system your using should suit your needs and there's no need to look into something more or less crunchy if neither your setting nor your group has any reason to.

There're benefits to thicker systems though. Despite age old advice of roleplaying instead of rollplaying, defined feature sets have their own appeal.

The process of building a character around a defined ruleset can, perhaps counter-intuitively, result in much more customization and variety between characters when most narrative toolsets assume one general resolution mechanic for absolutely everything. FUDGE variants are a good example from this where all roles and skills end up playing out the same way since the only consideration you really have to make beyond rolling the dice is how many skill points you have in it immediately. Limitation often provides more options due to having more aspects to tweak without significantly impact on balance.

Consistency is another major appeal. A structured system will allow scenarios to resolve under the same guidelines consistently and without argument so long as they're robust enough to define the cases. You don't have to debate whether or not your character is scary enough to provoke fear in someone bigger than him, the rules likely accommodate that by their nature.

Structure of course, is likely the biggest advantage to a structured system. Not all DMs are capable of whipping up sweeping campaigns on their feet, and many of them are perfectly fine runners otherwise. By providing a regular structure, you can get more out of the core rules and not need to create your own answers and scenarios to various things. It also aids in transition for players who might not have a regular group, as they can count on their character being appropriate across communities under an overlaying ruleset. Things like Pathfinder Society and D&D Adventurer's League have kicked off on this, allowing play with less investment.

>>45029705
Hearthstone? Legitimately curious, not sarcastic.

>>45032658
Probably Hearthstone, putting it out on mobile was a great move by Bliz.
Overwatch is preselling like crazy, might be a record breaker for Bliz.

Would there be a market or desire for a small scale miniatures game? Something like a squad of spec-ops vs a group of terrorists in a single building/area?

>>45033043
Skirmish wargames are pretty big these days.

>>45033043
Small-scale skirmish is the in-thing right now. Player's have been turned off of larger scale games, due to the investment costs in money and time they take. Small scale games, with only a handful of models, is much easier to sell, and I've seen players enjoying the ability to put more into painting and customizing models that aren't lost in the crowd of 20 other guys like them.

>>45033187
Nice. It's not even close to being an idea I've worked on, but a small scale miniatures game has always been bouncing around in the recesses of my mind.

>>45016151
Looks damn good, TB anon. Sure I said it before, when it had placeholder art, but without the placeholder art it's much easier to appreciate, so I'm sure it was a deal more reserved. Is Denise Stanz the designer? Does she have a DA or something?

>>45033414
Oh, I think that was just a placeholder name the designer threw in. The designer actually frequents GDG, if you're looking for commissions.

>>45007730
Check out Battle Century G
It has lot of great ideas like getting more power as you get damaged, special moves and other.

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>>45033187
The illustrator part of me really wants to make a bunch of pop-out-and-play two sided card figures for a small skirmish game akin to Necromunda/Mordhiem so you'd be able to play straight away

Pic was something I drew in that vein as an experiment

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>>45033544
That's actually exactly what I'm going to do for Trenchbreaker at first, so we can get the game into peoples' hands without a huge investment to produce the models.

>>45033414
Here's one with art actually designed for Trenchbreaker.

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>>45033414
Thanks.

Been working on Revenant this week (Souls-inspired gloomy fantasy) and I'm nearing completion. I think my gf finished all the mobs so all that's left before it can be tested is for me to get the other half of the factions you can join into the game.

Preferrably I'd also like to solve a few problems. If anyone can help me.

I'm in the early stages of the game, so I've deliberately chosen to hold off getting this into InDesign, where I would've done so from the beginning if this wasn't a personal project. That mistake aside, I'm using Word until then. I cannot for the life of me find a PDF converter from word that can handle semitransparent images behind text (without screwing the text). Also word tables do not convert well. Anyone have a plugin suggestion?

>>45033617
Love me some Souls gloominess. No idea how to implement it myself.

>>45033617
When can I have this?!

>>45036549
I'll be setting up a test version as soon as this last section is done and I go over it once for editing. After the tweaks in testing which might go on /tg/, it'll be for sale, hopefully on drivethruRPG

So, question: Which do you think would be more fun to play in?

Colonial/napolianic-style earth with fantasy races and junk with the main Meta-arc being about the revival of an ancient Proto-human hosting a trapped God leading an army from Fanatasy-Australia

Modern-style earth with fantasy races and is basically a time-skipped version of the previous setting dealing with the re-discovery of said land and its exploration by mercenaries/militaries

Sci-fi/cyperpunk- era time skip of previous two settings dealing with an outside force coming to fuck everyone x-com style.

>>45037242
First, but the Meta-plot doesn't sound interesting.

>>45037242
The first one, but the meta thing needs to be rethought

>>45037242
Colonial fantasy sounds neat but the metaplot seems silly.

>>45037242
The first, but a conquering evil god is a well-worn cliche.

>>45019828
Using a d% in some way is a consideration, but your method would just do a random hit location, without considering player choice. Also an untargetable Body zone makes no sense.

>>45037242
Define 'proto-human'.

>>45037594
Doesn't mean it can't be done well, though.

In a skirmish wargame with the theme of exploring ancient ruins, what would people think if the objectives were discovered during gameplay? The idea is players would deploy markers on the field, but models would have to interact with them to reveal what needs to be done to complete them.

For example, a model interacts with a marker, you roll to generate an objective, and it turns out they found an ancient sacrificial altar, so now any player that kills an enemy model and takes the corpse to the altar gains a victory point.

>>45039749
This sounds cool. Adventure archeologist wargame sounds real cool.

>>45039856
>>45037679
>>45037594
>>45037470
>>45037396
>>45037355
Okay, so colonial/napolianic thing is where it's at it seems.

And by proto-human I mean they were are basically one of the first beings to exist on the planet, from which humans (and most other races) originated. They are kind of the "ancient precursor race who discovered magic" guys. This particular one got possessed by the God of Time and Probability during a war (it happens), however rather than getting killed and this releasing the God as per usual in these scenarios, he survived and was locked in a divine-proof vault. So while the other gods wreaked havoc, they couldn't free their fellow deity. He eventually went fucking insane and gets released during an archeological expedition during the present time of the setting while 2 other nations are going at each other 100 years war style. Enter Ancient Lord who proceeds to free a bunch of slaves and unite them into a third army and the go on a genocidal rampage.

I want there to be potential plot hooks all the way from pre-release to "climactic final battle" from exploring not-Australia to trying to unite two countries who hate Eachother more than France hated England to facing off against a God in human form who combines spells that are super effective against modern spellcasters and can also (mostly accurately) predict the future in melee combat.

I'm open to suggestions.

>>45040324
Sounds like it would work better as a novel than a tabletop series.

>>45040324
Powerful gods seem like a step back to the medieval fantasy atmosphere we already know. It seems tired and distracting from the interesting stuff, which is the more unusual time frame. Your gods portfolio further feels very D&D-homebrew. Time is very fantasy game in feel, not really organic for a religion. Probability, especially in combination with time sounds just awful. It reads almost as if you were going for a meta-GM-stand-in or metaphor. God of the dice. Unpleasantly immersion breaking if true, and overpowered to boot. And it let's one think of time travel powers, which doesn't do settings favors that are not exclusively about time travel.
The slave army seems like it would be to small in number, being an archeological expedition, to threaten the mayor powers, and if you give them super powers to bridge that gap they feel like bullshit that ruins the atmosphere by roflestomping linemen. I'd axe the god and build some mysticism and occultism for supernatural elements.

>>45040324
Everything other than fantasy races in Napoleonic Europe is pretty bad, IMHO.
Without going any deeper than colonial-era Europe with elves and shit, the setting seems pretty great. Once you throw in all that meta shit it get cluttered and confused as fuck because all of these things have nothing to do with the premise of Napoleonic/colonial fantasy.

>>45040918
>>45040825
Message received. Axe the meta, keep the setting.

>>45033544
Do it faggot! that art is pretty cool.

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>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mWiKhirV6aKn7GeZTK79cNlDyTL44x2yBsgtOF2nbkc/edit?usp=sharing

Straight off the bat, this thing is a mess, but I wanted to post it just to see what you all think. The vision I had when I started writing stuff down was that in Mass Effect 2, the station orbiting the Omega relay was this nitty-gritty, yet functional society, but still almost anarchic place to run around and live in. It was a vibrant thriving place, which would be amazing to play in via ttrpg. However I didn't want to lampoon a great game so I set about making the abomination you see before you.

What I'm really concerned with is the stat/combat mechanics. It is incredibly hard to balance out such things when they are purposefully small. There are some things that are not included in there just because i haven't felt they were ready to be added like the preliminary weapon lists, the energistics list and the classes. I'm aware of /tg/s hatred for classes, which I plan to make it very clear its an optional thing, more of a good guideline for character growth.

Any feedback is much appreciated as it will tell me off in wasting my time or not.

>>45040371
it was going to be a novel

>>45042854
Looks interesting. I'm really curious about what the colors are in relation too.

Also: are there any hip-ilicious aliens a la quarians? This is very important.

>>45039749
Sounds neat, but there should probably always be one predetermined objective that can be completed at any time. That way you'll always have a sense of purpose to your actions, and can avoid the way of Betrayal in the House on the Hill of randomly getting just the right item to complete a random objective that randomly happens to be next to you.

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I have been playing Sil, and think the system how strength, dexterity, attack and damage work.
However, it relies on virtual sides with non-sense sides.

But the system might work in tabletop form. 2d10 for general resolutions, with ability scores advancing damage dies of weapons ( 1 -> 1d2 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 1d10 > 1d12 > 1d12+1 > 1d12+2 > etc. ). Crits on success of x+weight or more, multiple possible. Light, crit-happy weapons have high sides of damage, while heavy weapons have high number of dice. Crit adds additional dice.

But it would probably be bogged down by different dices. Thoughts?

>>45043991
I've seen some systems which weren't shy of using all the possible dice available, so that's hardly a problem.

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>>45005532

So I've been working on my system for some time now (it's a sort of mix between a very lite GURPS and Savage Worlds but designed with a very precise setting in mind, so it isn't not a universal system heartbreaker).

There is a very specific design problem i'm running into: i can't decide on how to award experience. In my game, the idea behind XP is that you get n XP at the end of a session and then you can hoard it or "spend" it to purchase new perks or skill points.

For now i'm sticking with the GURPS approach (at the end of the session, the GM decides how much the players accomplished in-game (enemies fought, tasks completed, yadda yadda) and how well they roleplayed and gives up to 3 XP per player for each of these two categories) HOWEVER i feel it puts too much power on the hands of the GM and it can be a breeding ground for player dissatisfactions and/or resentments if a player is too think skinned/a GM abuses their power.

So i'm looking to change the way i can award XP into something that can hopefully encourage teamwork, ideally by somehow putting the players themselves in charge of handing XP to their companions (but not to themselves).

I've been looking into Old School Hack and i sorta like the way they handle it there - there is a pot full of tokens (Awesome Points) and players can reach into it and give each other APs whenever someone does something cool, or helpful, and so on, and when everyone has 12 AP the entire party levels up. I like the idea because it encourages teamwork and player input (adn it takes a load off the GM's shoulders). And I heard good things about Apocalypse World, even though i haven't looked into it yet.

(cont.)

>>45045849
Or you just keep everyone's XP the same

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>>45045849

I'm thinking about switching/adapting into something similar to the latter, even though i'll probably have to tweak it some - the game I'm writing has a strong scarcity bent (post-apocalyptic scenario), and I'd like to subtly enforce this mindset by making it somewhat harder for characters to give each other XP, encouraging teamwork, and maybe allowing characters to "trade" XP for in-game bonuses other than character development (es. Are you willing to trade one XP for a +2 to your roll / a reroll of the dice? You get a little bonus now and maybe save your bacon, but you're going to progress slower).

Thoughts?

Felt good writing this down, i think i'm more focused now.

>>45045882
Micromanaging exp sounds neat. You could give caps on total exp in the pot depending on the scene, that way players would feel much more restricted. If there are any leftover when the scene ends, they can distribute it before the start of the next scene or carry it forward, so that they can exceed the cap for the next scene.

The caps themselves would naturally be a tiny bit higher than it should be, that way if they manage it well they can get more exp than usual.

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>>45046135

That's really good thinking. The pot definitely needs a cap; this plays both into general game balance as well as reinforcing that "limited resources" feel i want to go for. I'm not too crazy about giving away the leftovers - i think i'd rather err on the side of "clearing" them when the pot refreshes - but that really depends on the lethality of the game, which I haven't tested yet. The alternative is capping the total amount of XP a character can end a session with, but i'm not too crazy about that. I guess i'll find out during playtesting.

As for taking chips from the pot, i'm thinking of ripping a page off of Deadlands/Savage Worlds and allowing the character to take a chip by playing up one of their disadvantages. Of course this would only happen if this has an actual impact on the game.
The idea behind this is that characters can give tokens/chips to their companions freely (as a reward for performing amazing stunts, good roleplaying, and so on), but they themselves can only take chips for personal use if they agree to taking a small hit (Ex. A character is an alcoholic. The player can decide that their character is drunk during the scene and take a chip: the character is impaired and suffers some kind of penalty for the rest of the scene). This should encourage players to roleplay and work as a team.

The GM himself could reward a player with a chip, depending on the situation.

>>45046292
My thought with the exp pot is that it abstractly represents resources, and that it's basically what keeping them alive. They can use exp freely, but it means they'll be weakened (since they can't level up) during the next scene. Taking exp by playing a disadvantage seems... eh? I'd rather clear any tasks within given constraints rather than getting chips at a disadvantage.

Also, maybe go the way of I think it was Tenra Bansho Zero where each player has a seperate pool of chips, maybe 2-3 that gets reset every scene, specifically for giving to other players that a player thinks roleplayed well. Something seperate from the pot.

cautious bump

Just finished fusing and condensing some of my many systems into one things. I was wondering if I could get some feedback on the clarity and balance of what I have so far.

For Effects, just think Runequest style special effects.

Attributes
* Weapon Skill
* Will
* Protection
* Agility
* Knowledge
* Senses
* Sincerity
* Presence

Rolls
* Calculate your chance to succeed, called Scope, by adding together your pertinent Attribute and any Modifiers
* Using two 10-sided dice added together, referred to as 2d10, attempt to roll under your Scope. This is called Testing an Attribute.
* In situations where success is black and white, rolling equal to or less than your Scope is a success while rolling greater than your Scope is a failure.
* In situations where the degree of success or failure is more fluid, count every 2 points lower than your scope as an Advantage, and ever 4 points higher as a Disadvantage.
* Sometimes two people are actively opposing each other and are called to roll against one another. This is called a Contest. In these situations, every Disadvantage rolled counts as an Advantage for the opposing Contestant.
* Advantages may be "spent" to perform additional actions, called Effects, but typically can not be held past the end of your turn. Disadvantages may be "spent" by either the GM, your Opponent or yourself depending on the circumstances. When you are called on to spend Disadvantage on yourself, you must spend all of it, however when another player or the GM is called on to spend it on you, they may use as little or as much of it as they like.

>>45043632
The colors boils down to different damage types. To me its a way to limit what sort of Energistic actions can be take by certain characters and add another layer of tactical-ness, but remain simple.
The colors do match up to different things but its not a cutesy balanced system.
>Red - Fire/Heat
>Orange - Matter/Molecules
>Yellow - Electricity
>Green - Bio/Organic
>Blue - Water/Ice/Cold
>Purple - Force
>Pink - Mental
>White - Light/Photons/Laser
>Black - Gravity/Singularity


And if I matters, the Dextra are an all-female race that have four arms.

Do any of you plan on using KS of a similar tool to fund a wider release of your projects? Or are they just for personal use?

>>45049816
I don't like that advantages and disadvantages are produced at different rates.

>>45050706
Really? I liked the idea of rewarding success more often the punishing failure. Failure already brings the detriment of Not Doing Thing.

>>45050893
It feels less elegant as a mechanic to me.
And it isn't as immersive for me because it makes the laws of reality feel biased, like the hand of the writer wanting to enforce a certain plot.
If the mechanics are to be biased, I like it more when it is not as apparent as this directly opposed placement on the same scale.

>>45050893
Personally, most failures shouldn't result in Not Doing Thing. I think that's time consuming and pointless in most cases. It's better for games to let players "fail forward".

>>45051155
>>45051094
Good points. Maybe I'll move it back to 2, and allow a person to spend some Disadvantage to not complete the task, but also not take any other negative effects.

>>45051155
Also: to clarify, what do you mean by "fail forward"? Do you mean "they learn something from failure" or "they technically succeed, but at a cost" or "they may have failed that task, but when one door closes a window opens"?

>>45037601
If you are still around you I'll just type our my thoughts on the subject. When I think about the need to roll for scatter it makes me think that your shots are going to be doing a lot of damage, maybe even crippling with each shot. So the biggest barrier I think would first be making it so hitting counts for a lot.

Maybe with something like a 20 sided die and an 8 sided die you could do something like this : for each shot, the 8 sided die counts as the scatter angle. You would multiply the number rolled by 45° to determine the angle from where the shot was intended. So 1=45° 2=90° etc up to 8=360° or straight up. Then on a 20 sided die (or less depending on skill level whatever rolls is the distance in inches from where the shot was intended. This leaves a lot of room for fuck ups, as anything above a foot in most directions has no chance of hitting. This is easily customizable for skill as you either lower or raise the number of dice sides to make it harder or easier to hit your target and the d8 can be changed for more or less angles of missfire. Things like a 20 could still be a dead shot, with 1 being either really close to perfect or a horrible misfire.

>>45052380
>they technically succeed, but at a cost
If you fail a necessary climb check, you make it but take some sort of damage in doing so.
This can be taken advantage of by a good GM, who would follow the climb with some kind of encounter where the outcome of the climb check will impact the difficulty.

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>>45053206
I had that idea a while ago, except using a d12 "clock", but it doesn't play well with the other rules.
It adds another miss chance, which would let characters miss after already having rolled a hit. Or I would have to remove the standard resolution from combat because it already contains degrees of success and failure, failure being the miss in this case. With that mechanic goes further the chance to build some other mechanics of it, that I was planning.
Another point is that it breaks the pattern of high rolls being good in chase of the d20/precision part of the roll.
It would introduce a singular instance of die progression into the game and lastly, it feels very much like a ranged combat mechanic, but I would prefer a combat mechanic that feels good for both ranged and melee.

I would still consider the direction die though, however only if there wasn't a way to overshoot the body area again. Maybe I can still combine it with the matrix approach and move along the limbs connected to the target part.

>>45053782
I see. I personally prefer the "One door closes another opens" approach, as it still makes failures feel like failures, without grinding things to a halt just because of a bad roll. Not that the other method is without irs perks.

>>45054796
The problem I have with "One door closes, another opens" is that it's very deus ex machina-y. Oh, you didn't scale the cliff? There's another way up the cliff just over there!.

>>45055018
I suppose it's about presentation. I prefer to say "Well shit, looks like you aren't getting up that way! Better take the long way around, it's gonna be even more dangerous though."

Less "magical alternate route" and more "now you have to take the mines of Moira rather than the mountains"

>>45055126
That works if you set it up before hand. In practice I use both, but I definitely lean to one side.

>>45051155
Fail forward is a ridiculous meme. It sounds like pure Wizard's organized play marketing. They don't allow any challenge.

>>45055233
Depends on your game. I challenge my players, but as a GM I'm more interested in investing my group in the story and in streamlining the gameplay so there aren't dull moments at the table.
Regardless, there isn't a huge difference between failing forward and taking a 20

So, a bit specific of a request, what are two good words for Attacking someone, one with a slightly more minor implication? Like Total-Defense is to Gaurd as (Attack word) is to (minor attack word).

If that makes sense. Right now I'm going with Attack and Aggress, but that's pretty rubbish and is just a place-holder at the moment.

>>45056873
Assault and strike?

>>45057008
I like Assualt for the big action, though I'm unsure if it'll fit the more fantasy-esque setting I'm working on.

Honestly I debating just going with Action(Major) Action(Minor) or something like that and just being a lazy fuck.

>>45057539
Battery and Strike?

>>45059833
Not sure if that's much better.

I may just go Assualt and Aggress or something like that.

>>45056873
Assault and Harass?

>>45056873
Onslaught and Attack?

I had an idea for a very simple wargame mechanic for combat.

Each unit would have a number, call it Armor or Defense or Quality or Morale or what have you but it has a range of 2-4.

When two units are in combat each side rolls a die and compares the results.

If Side A rolls greater than Side B's armor and Side B's roll is less than Side A's armor then Side B is destroyed.

If both Side A and B roll greater than each others armor the lower roller is forced to retreat. If their roll was a tie then both are destroyed instead.

If neither Side A nor Side B's roll was greater than their opponents armor then the side that rolled less was destroyed. If it was a tie they remain locked in combat at the end of the turn.

The mechanic is meant to be used for very simple stand/element based games where you don't care about depleting unit strength or taking hits - sort of like how Hordes of the Things does it.

>>45061025
>If neither Side A nor Side B's roll was greater than their opponents armor then the side that rolled less was destroyed. If it was a tie they remain locked in combat at the end of the turn.

*the lower roller is forced to retreat, not destroyed.

Hey I was wondering if you guys could help me with coming up for a meta name for part of my skill tree. A bit of background, the skill system as a whole is based on The Secret World, were it goes style ->type->sub discipline . Examples would be ranged->bow->skirmish or control. Or magic-> elementalism-> conjuring or summoning. Anyway, I need help naming a type of magic that encompasses celestial/astral forces and plant and acid on the other, any thoughts?

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So I was gonna do a storytime last time, but I figured I'd go ahead and talk about my system in the works. I'm hoping to get some money together and take care of all my copyright stuff, and then just put it out for free. I would like to maybe just make some side money off of it with some shirts and maybe some physical versions.

Basically I wanted to make a super simple combat orientated system that gave players loads of freedom to make whatever they want. It's saturday morning cartoons, anime, Fable, and traditional fantasy tropes. It's a bit of a silly setting, but it has the ability to be serious or dark, especially with it's unholy creatures and some of the races. It's a world with a lot of interesting and different fluff, there are also a pretty good amount of races, a few originals I came up with that I'm proud of, and most of the major common races. The system is a skill tree based one that over time makes your attack rolls crazy, it's a bit silly how big a dice roll can get in high level campaigns, but that's part of the fun, your characters really feel powerful after they've been through a lot. All the skills are either an active or passive, with the actives costing mana (which is pretty much just energy/ki, I don't have a good name for it yet).

Some highlights of the system
>Magical rules that within the system are perfectly blended into the science of the setting
>Multi class system allowing players to pick and choose the best of different classes to make the strongest characters (which the GM can also use for rivals and villians)
>Due to the level up rules and the class system you can play incredibly long campaigns where characters become the legendary in their strength
>A system where guns exists, are fair, and make sense within the fantasy setting.
>A weapon/armor system that allows your gear to level with you as you pick up awesome scraps or dismantle spoils from fights
>Multiple era settings allowing for completely different kinds of stories

>>45061217
To clarify, the Fable thing is the whole concept of the 3 main practices. Those are the 3 main stats, essentially, each with substats

>>45060520
>>45060404
Ooo, I like Harass, maybe Assualt and Harass, and maybe Onslaught as a Full Round variant.

>>45061217
>Tell me more tell me more
Got a PDF?

>>45061577
I'm still working on the system actually, I've been working on lore for years now thinking I would do something like a comic or book, but I realized world building was way easier then trying to write a single story at the time so I changed it up and realized I could use it to make the kinda rpg I would want to play with my friends.

What do you wanna hear about~~~

>>45061750
I want to hear about that multi-classing system

And the weapon/armor scaling system

And the guns thing.

Basically all of it.

And I ended up doing the same thing as you world-building-wise. I starting building, planning to write a novel, and it just kind of snowballed into something I wanted to PLAY more than I wanted to WRITE. And my buddies agreed that it sounded cool to play in, so I began work. I actually broke 4e D&D in half before I decided I should do my own thing, since I've been dabbling in home brew systems since I play my first game.

Does anyone here hae experience with creating a small business for your game design work?

>>45061896
>I want to hear about that multi-classing system
Okay so when you make a character you choose a single class, you can take up a secondary any time if you wish, but if it's after character creation they either need a mentor or some sort of learning material like a book or scrolls. When you level up you get 2 skill points. Your primary class takes 1 point to buy a new skill, 2 more makes it an advanced skill, and another 3 makes it a mastered skill. When you spend points on a class that isn't your primary you must spend one extra point. After you have enough points in a class it is considered mastered and you may take up another primary class


>And the weapon/armor scaling system
As you get drops you can take scraps from your adventure to black smiths who will use magic to strengthen you weapons while repairing them. After your blade is strong enough (aka lvls up) you may pick a new perk to add to the weapon, like weighted or serrated.
Also unique gear can be scrapped and repurposed. An example of this is a metal demonic face which a pc knocked off a boss' shield before he escaped. The face is embued with fire magic and as such can either be welded onto the side of her ax to cause her swings to do fire damage, or she can get it put on some armor to help negate damage.

I really am proud of this simple little mechanic because it makes making enemy gear way more fun and it's interesting to see what the players pick up and invest inventory space on.

>1/2

>>45062266
>And the guns thing.

Weapons come in a few varieties and those are

>Hopper style
A top loading gun that fires pellets from a hopper. Basically it's got a cog that is imbued with wind magic so it wants to constantly spin, but the trigger is made of a material that has void magic, which negates other magics. When the trigger is pulled it detaches from the cog and the cog spins, kicking out the pellets. This is most rapid fire weapons.

>Chamber style
This is more expensive of the weapon types to do the bullets being what's magical. The chamber is made of void materials and the bullets are wind, specially designed to spin with the magic to became very destructive. The bullet tips can have other elements but that it VERY pricey

>Crackers
This is a gun that fires spells. Essentially you have a gyroscope with a trigger that uses nickle balls. The balls are powerful spells compressed and then contained in nickle, these are loaded into the gyroscope and then when the trigger is the gyroscope spins up, the gyroscope has runes on them that weaken the shell of the ball as it spins, when the trigger is let go a nail in the front of the gun hits the ball and lets out the spell.

>>45061025
Would work as a skirmish(?) level replacement for the Combat Results Table, though it does mean that you can't modify the ratios as you would using CRT, and as such weaker units would almost always never be able to beat stronger ones.

>>45061191
Ethereal, divine, or cosmic for the former, nature, (de)construction, base(basis of life + reducing stuff to base), chemical maybe for the latter? Plants and acids are a really weird combination.

>>45061906
Unlikely, but do stick around to see if anyone has any insight on it. Though a business for only game design seems like it would be pretty tough.

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You know how in Lasers and feelings you decide on a digit on a die, and if you roll higher&lower that number, you succeed/fail? Well, this only works because lasers is the opposite of feelings, and therefore there's only one "stat". I'm toying around with the idea that a character has 3 stats, and each stat has 2 abilities that are the opposite of eachother. For example, using pic related, if a character attempts an INT-check, she has to roll above the chosen value (5), and if she wanted to roll a STR-check, she would have to roll below 5.
This system may be unplayable and retarded, but I'm still going to try and figure it out. Thing is, I don't know what stats to use. Obviously I don't want to force the players to choose between Int and Str, since the 2 aren't really direct opposites. I need to figure out 6 different stats, where to opposites makes some sence. For example, size could be Big vs Small, and Looks could be Handsome vs Ugly. But those are terrible suggestions. It's worth to keep in mind that both sides of the stat has to have a bonus, to make it balanced. Any suggestions?

>>45062752
Well, we aren't making the business with the expectation to make money, but to to legally protect our assets and allow us to file any revenue we do make legally.

>>45063008
I think that Big and Small are actually great choices. Fundamentally it is a weaker idea, but big and small are good.

do you have a theme or genre in mind? We could start there. What about something for magic where you rate magic aptitude vs magic resistance?

>>45063008
Speed <> Precision
Reckless <> Careful
Honor <> Infamy

>>45063298
Good shit, great suggestions. I might end up trying to use this now.

>>45063416
Power <> Control
Burst <> Sustain
Life <> Death
Day <> Night
Persuasion <> Intimidation
Pepsi <> Coke

>>45063209
Magic aptitude vs Resistance is a great idea, thanks!
>>45063298
Great suggestions, but I can't seem to find a situation where being reckless is sought after, any tips?
>>45063416
You mean for the system I posted or just the stats? If it's the system, do you really think it's good?

>>45063512
I didn't think it was all that great until these suggestions came out, and now I can see it really suiting a tightly themed game. Like you can combine Reckless/Cautious, Magic/Resistance, and then a variety of magic types for a game about mages dualing it out.

>>45063512
Guts and Glory! When you check for morale, swing from a chandelier, driving the car on two wheels in a tunnel in the wrong direction past a truck!

>>45063561
Man that's great, using it
>>45063540
Right? These suggestions are really good, thanks /tg/

>>45063008
Is there anything I can use for strength? That's an important one

>>45063738
Brute Force <> Deception? Framing it as an approach.

>>45063798
Maybe Force<>Cunning? Could fit sneak into cunning etc

>>45063811
Sure, go for it.

>>45063512
>I can't seem to find a situation where being reckless is sought after, any tips?
Let the players decide. It's basically a Lawful/Chaos axis, where the laws are just caution. Reckless means 'yeah, SOME people can worry about things like "shrapnel" or "fatigue" but we worry about doing what we need to do'. Maybe waiting isn't always the best option, and slow and steady might win the race, if the track is shorter than you first guessed. Say a hostage is about to be killed. Does waiting until it's the safest to intervene actually work when it's safest when they're dead? Or is it actually safer to charge in before they realize what's happening?

>>45063008
You could crib the approaches from FAE.

Careful<>Quick
Forceful<>Clever
Flashy<>Sneaky

Rename as appropriate.

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So, I've been working on a card game for a little while, and I think I've got the majority of the core rules down, and I've started to work on cards.

The theme is heavily based on the old Dungeon Keeper games. The player is a Dungeon Lord, attempting to defeat their rivals, and claim their place as ruler of the underworld. Game play consists of players taking turns building new rooms, hiring and summoning creates, building traps, and eventually forcing their way into their opponents dungeon to destroy their dungeon core.

My question is, how many general resources do you think is too many for players to keep track of? So far, I have: gold, mana, and affinity.

Gold and Mana are produced by rooms, and certain creatures.

Gold is mostly spent in building new rooms, building traps, and activating certain trap/room abilities

Mana is used to cast spells, activate creature abilities, and summoning certain creatures.

Affinity is used mainly in creature summoning, and represents that creatures only want to live in Dungeons that cater to their needs. Its pretty similar to Magic's mana system. Each room is assigned one of five Affinities, or is blank and " basic ".

The affinities I have so far are
Undead
Infernal
Mechanical
Arcane
Bestial

For example, a Gobbo warrior has an affinity of 2, he doesn't care what kind of rooms you have, as long as you have at least 2.

An Undead Knight has an affinity of 3U. He requires a dungeon to have at least 3 rooms, and one of them has to be of an Undead affinity. You don't have to tap or activate the rooms to summon them, you just have to have built them.

So those are the resources you'l be keeping track of when it comes to deck building. You want to have a solid collection of rooms that let you meet your creatures affinities, while also making sure they provide the right resources you need to build additional rooms, traps, cast spells, and use creature abilities. Does that sound like too much?

>>45067071
Three sounds just fine I say, you can probably ignore Affinities as a resource since you don't use or expend them the same way you do Gold and Mana. Most card games use around 2 things that work the same way as your Gold and Mana I'd say.

Any simple way to calculate some probabilities on following:

I'm thinking of using a simple dice system of "roll N amount of d6, total the two highest" where rolls are lot of the time opposed. So I need to figure out what are the chances of like, rolling 2d6 getting a better result than rolling 4d6 and picking two highest. This is needed to define the normal range of dice; for example, if I declare 5d6 being a master tier of ability, does someone who rolls 2d6 actually have a good chance of rolling better, necessiating a larger die range.

>>45033544
Fuck that is great art, I'm doing some playtest in a skirmish game with hero style characters, maybe we should talk in the near future to play punchies

>>45069580
Start with this on Anydice
output [highest 2 of 2d6]
output [highest 2 of 5d6]

And play with it from there, until you get the probabilities you like

>ctrl+f skyresh
>0 results
>the doc still says it's halted for reconstruction

god damn it /gdg/ i actually wanted to play that shit
hard:suit and around the fireside better not quit on me

>>45069844
I'm still here! Admittedly with little progress, but it's something. It's hard trying to prioritize a few key aspects when there's a lot bouncing around in your head, but cutting out dead weight and bloat is generally for the best.

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>>45069801
The chart is certainly enlightening. While it doesn't give me the odds of 2d6 succeeding against 4d6 I can tell those aren't very good.

>>45007631
Working on a system that's based on making magic work.

Preface: Only tabletop I've played is D&D and M:TG, so if you can suggest something let me know.

I've always wanted a system in which spells were more modular, in that you can create spells and alter parameters on the fly, and spells aren't dependent on pre-made spell lists etc.

Basically breaking down the different aspects of magic spells, and putting them together the way Sorcerers can use sorcery points to alter parameters of spells.

So like X points for damage type, Y points for shape, Z points for range, and ABC depending on secondary and tertiary affects.

I want to reward creative players for creating custom, personalized spells; stemmed from a Magic School setting.

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So this is what I've came up with so far. Keep in mind I'm trying to make this as one of those one page rpgs, but with some complexity. I realised that Cunning and Careful would be really similar to eachother, so I changed careful to cautious.

>>45069950
You might want to look into, Mutants and Masterminds I think it is. They have rules for building your own powers and junk.

>>45069950
Check out how Wild Talents handles creating superhero powers. It's a bit confusing at first but once you get the hang of it it's pretty incredible.

Basically, a power can do three things, called Qualities: Attacks, Defense and Useful. A power can have one quality or multiple qualities, and it can have more than one of the same quality (so a power that lets you control water and breath underwater has two Useful Qualities).

From there you add Extras and Flaws. Extras are benefits that make the Power more effective or broaden its scope, such as adding Duration (once you use it it lasts a while) or Non-Physical (its isn't effected by solid obstacles). Flaws restrain it by adding conditions for its use, such as having limited uses or being extremely obvious.

Extras increase the point cost of the Power, while Flaws decrease the Point cost, to a minimum of 1 point. In Wild Talents, powers are measured in Dice, so you buy more dice in the power to roll more when you use it.

Ulimately you can build just about any power, from heat vision to telepathy to being able to transform into a flock of birds or shut down the effects of nuclear fusion.

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>>45007656
Second

>>45007631
I want TACTICAL & balanced play with a completely robust and customizable character creation system.

For super heroes

It's impossibly hard to find and or create

>>45070650
>>45070650
How do you define Tactical and Balance?

It almost strikes me as a wild goose chase to apply that to the superhero genre, which is almost always about fast paced action and wildly powerful characters.

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>>45070832
It makes sense when all your superpowers come from technology and fringe sciences

I mean balanced from a mechanical standpoint; every person running around as a 'hero' is going to have a run in with the law, and the police don't roll over the minute fantastic ability shows its face.

>>45070650
Are we talking high-flying superheroes, Marvel Cinematic Level Heroes or Crackdown level Heroes? You may need to manage your expectations of how high you can go before things get impossible to keep tactical.

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>>45070951
Precisely

I know exactly how 'high' powers can go in my comicverse, but no existing system handles my needs for tactical

>>45069801
Out of curiosity, how would I get the probability of rolling higher than "x" on 2d20? Not adding them together, the chance that the individual dice would be higher or lower than that number.

>>45070926
That's fair, and I definitely agree that finding a superheroes game that is both perfectly balanced and totally customizable is basically impossible; I do think that a game like that could exist, it would just be real difficult to figure out.

As an ORE fan, it could maaaaybe be done by mixing Wild Talents with some of REIGN's combat mechanics, and rigidly enforcing movement limitations.

>>45071052
Does it matter if both are that number or does only one need to be for it to count?

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>>45069844
Hard:Suit is A OK but in a little dilemma.

While I have some grounded rules for combat in mecha suits and have drawn out a world map i'm in the smelly pits of worldbuilding which is proving to be more of an annoyance than fun as it can put hard limits on what mechanics and designs the rest of the the game has.

Basically I need a reason to justify ragtag mechapilots banding together to do missions (without it just being shadowrun-in-robot-suits) Inspirations from real life were events like the Wars in Yukoslavia and the Border Reivers on the Anglo-Scottish borders

yeah I know its a worldbuilding question but there's no thread for it at the present time

Pic is the map i've made.

>>45071052
>>45071227
output [count {10..20} in 2d20]
Adjust 10 up or down accordingly, it will give you the probability of 1 dice showing and of both dice showing.

Hope this helps

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>>45071052

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>>45071360
Or did you want the percentages like this? The chart says, for example, you have 79.75% chance (four out of five basically) of rolling 10 or better with "2d20 pick highest."

>>45018374
This is a problem I had with my homebrew. Somehow balancing the amount of damage something did with the amount of HP something has. I just based the weapon damages off of the average amount of health a player would have. It does kind of swing the game towards the NPCs favor (a player had his tanky character die two minutes into session 1), but the level of difficulty it has provides the players with a challenge.

>Using a dice-pool system because I thought it was gonna be cool

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>>45071075
>I do think that a game like that could exist, it would just be real difficult to figure out.

I do as well, and it is my aim to bring it forth into being, if it does not in fact exist in some capacity elsewhere.

For balance's sake, you have to catalogue all possible instances of powers, and have a system in place for what those individual powers can do in addition to the obvious.

Example: Using freeze rays to make an icebridge -- it's a matter of imagination verses limitation, your answer will be found somewhere in the mix.

>and rigidly enforcing movement limitations.
That's where tactics come into play, and a huge reason why I hate Mutants and Masterminds for everything except character creation. That system uses some really janky measurements, and I find it difficult to enforce the power descriptions when there is no map system in place to check the math.

As for ORE, I will have to look at that one a bit closer...

The best suggestion I've received is for FATE or GURPS, and I have my reservations about both, just in a different light that previously mentioned.

Say, would you or anyone else be willing to discuss the matter of homebrewing or houseruling games elsewhere?

>>45050074
tell me more?

>>45071890
I've actually done a some light tactical stuff with ORE in Wild Talents. Granted the game I'm running is very lightly tactical but it worked okay.

Basically I had the characters infiltrating the villa of a Russian mob boss. I had a map printed out and the major areas marked 1-10. I also had three sets of different colored d10s: one color for mooks, one for enforcers, and one for the bosses that were meeting there.

Each time the players made a move through the estate, I rolled the massive pool of dice and that informed how many of each type of guy was in the room they were in and the rooms around them.

ORE is fairly simple with regards to movement in combat: a character can move a set number of yards each turn based on their Body stat, and they can increase that number by making a Body + Athletics check. I'm not super persnickity about it, and within a building that's enough movement that you can basically go anywhere.

What ORE has in its favor is how easy it is to figure out and resolve multiple actions, such as diving behind cover while unloading with your gun.

And if you check out my post here >>45070543 you can see that Wild Talents actually does handle "what this power can and can't do" fairly well. Your icebeam, for instance, is a weapon that has an Attacks and Useful Quality (and a Defense Quality if you can use it to freeze attacks in place or construct and ice wall).

It's not a perfect system for all situations but it works really well with some flexible thinking. It could in theory be used for tactical play if, as I said, you were real obsessive about tracking distances.

>>45071037
Have you tried the HERO System?

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>>45072010
that's fuckin' radical, and I like how you handled your situation

thank you very much for the suggestion, I would love very much to pick your brain about some things, but I'm afraid I don't have a terrible lot of time.

Feel free to email me at your leisure, especially if you're interested in an original Supers game that involves experimental science and alternate history.

[email protected]

>>45072027
>HERO System
if it handles street level all the way up to cosmic, I'll look into it

Incidentally, I downloaded the character creator like five years ago, but I never got around to fully utilizing it.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to track down a PDF of that and ORE too.

>>45071880
The first thing you have to do is decide how lethal you want your game, measured in how m any turns you want the player to survive on average. (Sur)

Next, you decide how accurate you want attacks to be (acc). Typical is 50/50 but don't hold yourself to that.

Lastly, decide the average damage you want attacks to be. (Avg)

With that info, you now know how much health to give players. The formula is (sur) * (avg) * (acc).

Example: 10 round survival, 50% accuracy, 5 dmg a round. 10 * 5 * 0.50 = 25 health.

This gives you a rough ballpark. This will be close to the true value in games like dnd where you can expect to be attacked every round and less so on games like dark heresy where you tend to hide and run a lot.

>>45072235
Admittedly, it's the most complex system I've ever read, the upside being that it has a level of detail that I've sound to be unparalleled.

>>45069939
http://anydice.com/program/788a
View with [At Least] and then you can see the chance.
2d6 have 27.58% chance of being higher than the 2h3d6 and 6.92% chance of being higher than 2h7d6.

>>45072235
Wild Talents 2e Essential is $5.00 on DrivethruRPG. It's all you need to run the system.

If you want to incorporate rules from REIGN, which is a more mature version of the ORE optimized for fantasy adventure which has a lot of specific, detailed rules for combat, check out the Enchiridion. It's $10.00.

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>>45072295
you've piqued my interest then

At the very least, it will go a long way to help me with my homebrew

>>45072366
dope on a rope, thanks again

this homebrew thread has been gre

>>45072393
No problem. Glad I could get more people interested in ORE, since it's a pretty obscure system on this board.

>>45071322
>>45071360
>>45071461
Thank you immensely for this. I'm basically looking for something that measures the percentage chances of rolling multiple d20s and getting below (or even above) a target number for each d20. Think counting successes.

I'm pretty sure the odds of rolling under your target number suck even when rolling multiple dice, but I'd like some probabilities to back it up.

As for why a success-based d20 dice pool...don't ask. But I haven't seen it done often and I'd like to learn why from a numbers point of view.

>>45072513
frankly I'm more familiar with OGRE

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>>45008854
>Classless system
I like this idea already. I know some other games that do it, but I have not like it much. I'd like to hear more of this. I was trying to come up with something similar... but... well... My mind is everywhere and I've started too many projects.

>>45007631
Pic related. Trying to come up with a game that has the same world as Brutal Legend, but ads in more than just metal. I remember there being a /tg/ project about this... And I've read most of it... but I want to try to make something as well.

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I sort of want to host a campaign with mechanics similar to dragons pass, the players each being a member on the ring, but I'm not really certain where to start on something like this.

have any of you ever homebrewed something similar?

>>45007631

I wanted to make a game involving monster girls where you pick one and make a character, but I don't know shit bout tabletop RPGs

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>>45076635
For one with a bunch of rules already that are easy to find, go the the pathfinder SRD and just look up the race creator. You can make your own.

>>45076635
>don't know shit bout tabletop RPGs
Why are you on /tg/?

>>45077156
I really want to get into tabletop RPGs and I figured I might learn a thing or two if I browse the board long enough

Gents i'm making a skirmish game, ideally it is going to be fast paced and lethal with respawn time, the units are going to have 4 basic stats being:

Speed: The number of spaces the unit moves in regular conditions.

Attack: this + a d6 when making an attack. (3 of attack means 1d6+3)

Defense: This is a somehow fusion of armor and hp, if an unit has let say 5 def when it is attacked the attacker rolls attack and defensor rolls 1d6+def, if attacker rolls higher the diference is reduced from the base def, as example if the def was 5 and attacker rolled 2 points higher the remaining def would be 3 and so on decreasing if hit to the point that if an attack pass trough def the unit dies. (then respawns a few turns after)

Reaccion: this is used for a spot roll like "did you see that fucker runing over there?"

the thing is i don't know how much defense would be ideal for a standard unit since using walls and crates or standing from higher position gives + or - def bonus, and the idea is if you stay uncover you won't live too much.

>>45072266
Note that lower accuracy means swingier results. Higher accuracy means less yelling "Bullshit! " at the table and less sacky deaths.

>>45072326
This. You always have a big spike early with systems like these and then diminishing returns. The result is players are discouraged from specializing.

A friend of mine is designing a CCG and has come into a problem.

An aspect of the game includes secret goals, both prohibitory (eg- only one card on the field for X turns) or missions (eg- destroy two enemy cards)- in return for a reward. Failure can reap punishments as well.

The issue is, that without the supervision of the other players, individual players can't necessarily be relied on to consistently follow the rules or cards in question. And the secrecy of these goals is central to their mechanic.

In keeping with the rule that a mechanic cannot be based on information that not all players can see- is there a way around this?

>>45077991
Prohibitions pretty much must be in the open or they become impossible to enforce. Mission goals are easy to keep secret as they can be revealed when the mission is complete and everyone can check their validity. At the end of the game all unfulfilled missions must be revealed so their fail state punishments can be enforced.

>>45078426
This. It's the punishment for failure that makes it difficult to work in. You have to set a timer, like "complete this by turn six or suffer these consequences."

>>45078426
This. Also just have the prohibitions give slightly better rewards. That offsets the cost of knowledge and cost of the prohibition.

>>45077256
Best way to approach this is to first decide, on an average roll (3.5 in case of D6), how many hits do you want it to take to remove a model when standing out in the open, with no modifiers?

The thing with your system to keep in mind is also that there's going to be damage inflation when you take hits. So, if you want it to be 2 hits, its not going to be (average attack + 3.5) = (average defense + 3.5). Its going to need to start at (average attack + 3.5) < (average defense + 3.5) to compensate for the initial damage eating into defense, otherwise the weight of defense versus weight of damage goes down.

I'd suggest using the AnyDice roller to find that nice curve that you want.

>>45078828
Assuming missions are on cards like everything else... if there are missions that have a time limit, they should either have the limit printed on their back or be partially revealed so the time limit on their face side is visible. This way, everyone can see that a mission has failed because it has not been revealed by its time limit.

So how's my One Handed, and Two Handed system?

D100 for attack rolls, 50 AC effectively, so base 50/50 chance to hit for NPCs

Base Damage is 10*1 | 10*0.5 | 10*0.25

Math should work out well, I'm sure some idiot someday will try to make a character dual wielding two 2-H weapons

One Handed and Two Handed Weapons (1-H, 2-H) :
You normally want to hold weapons in your hands, most weapons can be used effectively in a single hand, however you of course have two hands, usually.

Whatever your main hand is, attempting to attack with a weapon in your off hand incurs a penalty of -20 to your attack rolls, in addition, your damage with that weapon is treated as having 1 size smaller Base Damage(A medium creature's attack with his off hand weapon would have a Base Damage of 5)

Attempting to use a Two-Handed Weapon in a single hand incurs a -40 penalty, and your Base Damage is treated as a size category smaller. These negative mods are doubled for attempting to use a two handed weapon in your off hand(A medium creature has a Base Damage of 2(Tiny) for a 2-H weapon in the off hand)

>>45077181
And you probably will. That's what I did anyway

>>45069956
Lucky vs Intelligent is neat. Since it's a "select any digit" for your stats, is there any reason to not choose 5s and 6s apart from roleplaying purposes? Also, I'm assuming that final number is a 10?

>>45071319
>a reason to justify ragtag mechapilots banding together to do missions
Wouldn't that be up to the GM to handle? Given the amount of things happening in Hard:Suit you could easily have a campaign about war refugees teaming up and stealing mechs, or about a group of border guards going through their routine, etc.

>>45073624
Speaking of OGRE, I wonder how you could modify the system and use it with the Heavy Object setting instead. Probably not possible since the latter is a lot more tactical(?) in fighting huge monstrosities I guess.

>>45076635
I think there's a CYOA for monster girls, start with that.

Is there a board game that captures the basics of a game like breach and clear or door knockers or do I have to try and make up rules myself? Would love to battle hostage scenarios in a sort of dungeon crawler way

>>45077181
WHY ARE YOU SPOILERING EVERYTHING?
FUCK, THAT'S ANNOYING

>>45081323
>is there any reason to not choose 5s and 6s
Glad you asked! I was thinking to use a "hard check" for skillchecks that are hard to do, where you have to roll below (or above) half the value to succeed.
For example: A person with a luck/int of 6, he would have to roll a 3 or below to succeed a hard luck roll, or an 8 to succeed a hard int roll.

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>>45081365
A picture was supposed to come with that post

>>45077256
Square off a standard unit vs a standard unit. Once you reach a point where one unit can kill the other quickly when both are at a neutral def bonus location (under 2-3 turns maybe?), then that should be the minimum Defense all units should have. Modify as needed.

>>45077991
You could take tokens equivalent to X turns, it'd alert the other player that something is happening, though they wouldn't know what. Have multiple prohibition goals with the same X turn count to mix it up. Alternatively, >>45079581.

>>45081467
Half the value could work, it scales pretty well even when it heads on the extreme side of the scale as well. How would you handle odd numbers though? Also, maybe clarify which of the stats are the Hi/Lo values as well.

>>45081365
Plenty make fun of Descent saying it feels more like SWAT clearing out a dungeon rather than a dungeon crawler, maybe look at that?

>>45081732
>Tokens
I like that, but it's something further to remember.
OTOH, other games, like Magic, expect players to have tokens. Thanks! I'll certainly tell him.

>>45081732
Half value man here. Odd numbers are rounded down. Basically the HI values are the values to the right of your score (HIgher) and the LO is to the left of your score (Lower). If I finish it, the rules will be alot more clear. Hopefully.

>>45063008

The way I seen it, adventures are about bypassing obstacles, so if you boil the genre game type down to a few stats, it would need to work along those angles. I can think of five relevant ones:

- Force
- Finesse
- Knowledge
- Charm
- Luck

Charm's technically optional. Stats like Force can work in social situations too.

Problem is, I still can't think of any reasonable way to offset these stats against one another without excluding reasonable character concepts.

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Okay, rebalanced, rewrote my game for the D100 and simplified things quiet a bit as far as initiative and combat go, so far the whole combat combat chapter takes up about 6 pages

also including a picture of the size modifier chart, basically +/- 50% from the medium size, forgot to include it in the PDF

I believe the math is reasonably sound for now

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JeQd4atb7vUkFhaUVHU3VKWlk/view?usp=sharing

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>>45071964
>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mWiKhirV6aKn7GeZTK79cNlDyTL44x2yBsgtOF2nbkc/edit?usp=sharing

I updated it with some very early weapon lists, a pair of classes I worked on over the past couple of days and some fluff that is relevant to my particular setting.

Right now, my internal struggle is how to make classes not overpowered but yet still interesting, different and strong enough to have a hard time choosing between. That and an initiative system...might just do (Level + Acuity Stat) + 2d6. Not sure if that will capture the reflexes, overall power and the chaotic nature of fights though.

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Map guy here, back with a new map.
Behold the Placeholder Names!

>>45084045
That's really cool, but I kinda feel like the borders are really... bold?

>>45084271
I think they are fine, font for cities is to small though.

>>45084045
I'm having some trouble with the scale of the map. The shape is as if it was a continent or several, but the cities are so far apart and certain areas like "plains" take up so much space it feels like it's a small island

>>45084045
Nice map

Did you use a program to make it or good old photoshop and hard work?

>>45007631
Take the action economy of 5E, and then make Pathfinder use it. I want options, loads of them, but the base system for Pathfinder infuriates me. I adore 5E's action economy and the simple way Advantage makes everything easier to adjudicate, but the loss of options has grated on me.

I just don't know where to start.

>>45084987
Just keep making homebrew stuff for 5E till it has as many options as pathfinder

This is a really basic question, but what should I keep in mind when converting classes into another system? Where do I start and what should I look for? Do I have to consider the nuances between the different systems? What should I ditch or keep?

If it matters, I want to turn things I find cool into something OSR compatible.

>>45073928
It's called Chronicles (kind of a placeholder name) and I posted a couple early versions last year in the homebrew thread, but it's still not a lot to look at because i'm still working on it and university eats up most of my time.
I'm going to post a rough draft of my system during teh second week of February however.

>>45085613
Probably whatever it is that makes the class unique. Key skills, stat distribution, etc. Throw a post at the OSR general too, they're probably more used to converting stuff into OSR.

>>45084608
>>45084377
>>45084271
You make very good points, I will tweak the font and border sizes.
They are supposed to be continental. The photoshop files is huge, One problem was I had to shrink the overall size to get the png below 5 megabytes.

>>45084632
Yeah it's photoshop, the continents are a layer of white shapes with an effect layer to create the shore.