Game Design General /gdg/

So what is the designers' stance on meta-currency (fate points, etc). I read in another thread that /tg/ hates narrative-rewriting meta-currency but loves re-rolls. Is this true?

Because for me it's just vice-versa.

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>>48705555
Nice digits.

<<< To answer that, you will probably need more opinions than one. I, personally, don't mind meta-currency like luck points or fate points or whatever. I think they give the player the ability to make a character extraordinary in ways that isn't normally possible. They also lowers the amount of deaths in your game (Which in most cases, is good), because many players don't use metacurrency in other places than in the face of death. I also see them as an opportunity to make the character extraordinary in other ways than pure statistical extremeness. If implemented in the extreme, it gives the player the opportunity to play characters like pic related, in addition to other kinds of extraordinary characters.

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Hey /gdg/. First time posting in one of these threads!

I've been having long nights recently, and decided to so something productive with it. So, inspired by me watching Stranger Things, I've been working on an RPG project I call A Town Called Nowhere.

I've made it only using Microsoft Word for right now, though a couple of friends have agreed to help me format it better and add illustrations when all is said and done.

But for right now, I'd like to know what you all think. Is it good? Bad? What can be improved?

Thanks, /gdg/!

>>48705330
>implying anything can keep these threads alive

>>48706174
What metacurrency can and cannot do is entirely defined by the rules. If you don't want to let it change the fact you're running a gritty, low-powered game you can have that.

>>48705555
I like them because they allow more interesting interactions than more traditional mechanics. Letting the player interact with the game world outside of what their character can do is fun, letting more people than the GM worldbuild at the table.

>>48706479
Pretty good for a first draft. The child's eye thing is nice.

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>>48705330
Fuck. Finally got back into research for Small Towns.
Finished the core mechanics in a polished way, and playtesting it has gone pretty well.

Changed the core mechanic to be rolling your stat (Fight, Run, Think) with a 4+ being a success. The environment/situation/tension/monsters invoke Dread, which are dice you roll and those subtract from successes. In a shitty situation you can SPEND a dice, losing it from your Stat, but you roll it unhindered by Dread. On a Success, you can interrupt what is happening to you, but if you Fail you still take Stress/Damage and lose that dice.

Items have their own Dice value (1-3 usually) and you can add those to rolls. So if you're in the Dark and you have a Flashlight 2, you roll 2 Item Dice for additional successes on seeing things. And if you fail a test that would otherwise damage you, you can instead take that Stress/Damage on your item rather than from your Health.

The running in the woods and tripping so your flashlight gets broken on a rock type of movement.

Monsters run on Dread and have a pool of it, rather than stats. They have the most Dread when they aren't out in the open; things are scarier when you don't directly see the monster. Monsters have powers/abilities that expend Dread from this pool, with the intent of forcing it on the player. If a character suffers enough Stress to become Cracked, a lot of these powers have very negative repercussions.

So, humans are weak still, but items can work as a shield of sorts. Monsters are more controlled mechanically, gaining and losing abilities depending on how much dread they've forced or still have in their pool.

Gonna try to get a new draft out for /tg/ shortly, because fuck, you guys seem to like it. Have a nice layout dude working with me on it, and my comic artist is looking at what sort of time allotments might be needed to get this thing done proper.

>>48659665
>>48659685
It always surprises me people still toss it around.

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>>48708511
Of course, the main issue, as always, has been monster research. I just enjoy research writing too much and next thing y'know I'm knee deep in scary spooky stuff and I start not sleeping proper because my bookshelf looks like something that might be used against me if ever something bad happens.

But it helps that I've got people who want to work on it with me, keeps me accountable. Plus, I can force them to watch 80s horror with me.

Gotta bust out some new charts, but those ought to go fine. Having more fun writing about the genre. Certainly helps that Horror's been having a few good years, not quite a revival but certainly a re-appreciation.

>>48705555
I think it depends on things. A free-floating reroll kind of bothers me, I think it is something that ought to have a cost of sorts. Edge of the Empire gives fate points to the GM and to the Players in a good back and worth; L5R's is tied directly to ones ability to call for Raises/or spending Honor which ties into Social stuff.

If there's a risk to the meta-currency, I can get behind it. It shouldn't be a "you're fucked if you spend it" thing, but definitely a price you pay later in exchange for a boon in the now.

>>48706479
Child's Eye is a pretty interesting concept.

>>48708511
Small Towns? Shit dude, I'm the guy working on >>48706479. I literally just told a friend about my project, and he said it sounded like "a crunchier version of Small Towns," and gave me the PDF of V2.

Our games are really similar, man. Hope you don't mind that. I honestly didn't mean to intrude on anything you were doing beforehand.

>>48708687
Its cool man, we're aiming for different things. Plus, I've been writing/working on the thing on and off since like 2013; I can't be bugged if other people want to do their own thing within the genre.

I'm aiming for a more 80s Horror, B-Movie, Slasher Movie, Alan Wake/Gravity Falls type of situation. Characters are important, research is important, and everything breaks and dies. The focus on designing for kid protagonists has shifted to just trying to better capture the setting and tone.

Our greatest similarity is that we're both doing shit in a small town cut off from society as a whole. I grew up in that, and I just ended up back there for other reasons. Its an interesting subject to work with, the weird microcosm. It helps to draw from personal experience for tone, and this town will be dead in two years; gonna be curious to watch that happens from the side-lines.

I think our stuff is different enough. I'm aiming for something you can run with just d6s; so anyone can pick it up anywhere in the world. Plus I'm going hardcore into making a good reference document for supernatural bullshit; because if nothing else I want my work to be something people can use to supplement their own.

You do you, I can't stop you nor would I. And best of luck to you with your thing.

>>48708979
Thanks man. That means a lot.

And hey, good luck with Small Towns. I do mean that. It seems like a great idea that we both just so happened to have and are developing in different ways.

>>48705330
I wanted to include a mechanic for larger models to do more damage in close combat, because I was playing with the idea of standardized stats for weapons, but changes to how damage worked killed it. I could try working it to fit, since the idea of a regular guy and a 9 foot monster doing the same damage with a club doesn't sit right.

>Have 4 games in development at a playtesting phase
>Organizing new playtest groups is getting increasingly more difficult

Oh god, I'm starting to feel like a telemarketer.

>>48711177
And forgot name.

The system I was thinking of for now is, for every point of Size the model has over the enemy, you roll +1 die on your attack roll, meaning you can deal more damage theoretically, but without it being an over the top advantage.

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What are some good "modern magic" spells? The fluff is that magic is always related to what society currently is. Burning hands is lost and is replaced with a gout of burning napalm. Alarm can be linked to digital devices to warn of hacking. Sending being able to deliver text messages to someone's phone.

What are some games that have lists of ideas like this?

>>48712411
<<<
>Auto-hacking
>Make alarms go off on their own
>EMP pulse
>Jam appliances / guns
>Make bullets autoaim

For lists of ideas? Umm... Shadowrun maybe? I haven't checked the books myself, but I guess there would be something useful. Also in d20 modern books, maybe?

Modern fantasy -settings are rather rare, I reckon.

>>48712411
All the stuff you could do in Watchdogs.

>>48705555
I believe I was the one saying I hated narrative editing, but can see the value of rerolls.

That still applies, AFAIC.

>>48706539
>Letting the player interact with the game world outside of what their character can do is fun
For me I find it makes immersion difficult. Don't like it as a Player using it, GM, or as a player adjacent to someone else using it.

>Letting more people than the GM worldbuild at the table.
This, I'm fine with. Just not once the campaign has started.

I often start my campaigns with Dawn of Worlds, with the players cooperatively designing pantheons before DoW, and then each player playing AS one of the pantheon during DoW.

I'm cool with having the PCs have most of the say in designing the world/geography/history/races, making up a large number of factions and plot hooks and themes, and then running it.

I'm not 100% satisfied with DoW as the means to do so, but am open to doing so as a sort of game. Perhaps some day I will make a 1-shot party game that results in an interesting campaign setting.

>>48714468
>immersion
I find immersion really hard to talk about, everyone has really different ideas what its about and what is enough and what is good and bad for it.

Can a GM ever really be immersed, since they're constantly RPing different characters and providing this omniscient narration? How is it that PCs interacting with rules does or doesn't break immersion? Is true seamless immersion then only possible in freeform? But internal consistency seems to be what most people swear by for immersion, so that implies a very simulationist ruleset.

The feeling I get when I'm really "immersed" (GMing or playing) is like reading a book, I'm usually feeling equally attached to all of the characters, not just my own. In that sense I don't see how its objectionable to control things outside of your own character in the game. It seems to come from a sense of "ownership" and connection with one's PC?

>Just not once the campaign has started.
GMs are constantly worldbuilding, things aren't static once the game starts. I'm not sure why things would be different after play starts, cutting off the players from being able to influence the world there seems arbitrary. I'm sure you have a reason.

>1-shot party game that results in an interesting campaign setting.
Played Microscope?

>>48716983
>Immersion
>Equally attached to all of the characters.
>"Ownership"
Hmm.

I'd say "Immersion" is when I feel like I can get into the mindset of my character, and make decisions/act *AS* that character. I'd compare it to method acting. If I have to routinely make decisions in the game that are based on things my character couldn't possibly have any understanding of, those things break my immersion. So like - weird refresh mechanics, scene editing, metagamey mechanics, powers that don't make sense in how they react with the game world ("Ice" powers like a blast of cold air that does "ice" damage yet can't freeze or even chill water, etc.)

It's hard to feel any immersion as the GM, yes. You're typically not "wearing" an NPC long enough to do so.

>GM's are constantly worldbuilding.
I'm not an improv GM. My worldbuilding takes place between sessions. In-session, I'm improvving by just playing characters I've already designed, or by relying on random generators I built in advance to handle scenarios I hadn't considered in advance (random NPCs and the like). I also heavily incorporate random elements into my game even for the prepped stuff, as I tend to run sandboxy games with a wide variety of things going on simultaneously, typically on timelines, which the PCs may or may not interfere with.

As a player I don't like when there's meddling in worldbuilding mid-session because I find it jarring. As a GM, I don't like it because it doesn't encourage the kind of gameplay I would be looking for, but also because worldbuilding is sort of "my" game if I'm the GM. If I don't get the privilege to do the worldbuilding, and I don't get to play as a player, what am I getting out of the experience? If you want to GM, then GM, and I'll be a player. Odds are, if I want to GM something, it's because there's something specific I've been wanting to play for a while, and GMing it is my consolation prize because nobody is running/will run it.

>Microscope
Nope. Got a Rundown?

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Hello /hbg/, here is my little system I've been crafting, I posted here before a long while ago, but it's changed significantly.
I got told it's like a combination of Dungeon World and Savage Worlds, so take that as you will.
Main goal of the system is ease of access and being able to play just about any setting. It's not perfect, but, tear it apart and tell me whats right and what's terribly, terribly wrong with it.

>>48717491
>Skimming to brief review
>No version number.
Seriously, include a version number and a date. It will make updating things easier, and make it easier for others to know if they have the current version.
>D&D Stats, Renamed.
Eh. Will see how it goes, but typically not a good idea.
>Table as an image.
Ugly, unsearchable, and unprofessional AF, but usable, I guess.
>TNs
Those are not very good guidelines. Lots of subjective phrasing means it's very difficult for a player to know how hard something will be to attempt before they try it.
>Correlated attributes
They're not listed with skills. They should be. I'm not even going to try to guess what they all are. Note: You do want to somehow balance them between attributes. Not as in "same number of skills per attribute" necessarily, but more "equal division of useful skills." If a an attribute is worse for skills, it should be getting something good outside of skills to compensate, ideally.
>Failing skills gets you XP in that skill.
Sure, I guess. A generalist with a bit of everything may quickly surpass someone who specialized though. Something to consider.
>Heroic Persona
This is not clear. I don't really understand how they are meant to be used for bonuses OR hindrances.
>Valor
>Perform a Heroic Action
Vague.
>Advantage on the Roll
Am I spending Valor to do this? How Much? Can I just declare I take Advantage on the roll whenever I want at no cost? Is it something I get automatically by circumstance? Vague.
>Activate a Special Ability
Special Ability?
>Remove a Negative Modifier
Permanently? How long? What kind of modifier? Vague.
>Reroll
Does it expend all of your Heroic Personae, or do they simply not apply? Vague.
>Encounters
More Vague.

>TL;DR: Your rules are basically written from a perspective of already knowing how things are supposed to work. There's also a lot of wishy washy subjective language that makes things not specific.

Advice: Clean up the writing, assume reader knows nothing of your game.

>>48717281
>getting into character
>not "wearing" an NPC long enough to do so

I think one of the stranger things about immersion is that "time" aspect, people have this idea that you need to be concentrating on playing a character for some amount of time before you're truly "immersed" and that getting pulled out of it (by metagame mechanics) means you need to start all over again.
This might be true for some people but I think one of the signs of a good roleplayer is the ability to quickly and seamlessly get into character.

>GMing it is my consolation prize
That's kind of sad but a common enough situation I suppose.

I guess what I like best about players taking on GM roles is that the bouncing ideas off each other is something I really enjoy in an RPG. Other people being creative makes me more creative, they end up putting things in which I never would have thought of. I like being surprised by the game world, not just by the actions of the players, as a GM.

>Microscope
http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/

Collab worldbuilding game. You take turns either describing large periods of times, or within that important events, or within that you do a quick freeform roleplay of a scene. You're free to jump around in time and scope.

Made a history about demigod cephalopods and their mortal descendants oppressing each other and subsequently played a few short campaigns in the setting, it was fun.

>>48717491
Skimming it I can't see any reason I wouldn't play Risus or DW instead. Seems solid, but just nothing special.

>>48717829
>When taken out of character you have to start all over again.
Maybe not completely, but I (and most other people I know) aren't immediately back in character, and even so, that disconnect means losing out on some of the fun of making your decisions and the like in-character, because you actually can't.

>GMing it is my consolation prize
>Kindof sad
Yeah, it's how it goes though.

I've never found a single other person willing to run a game based on what I was looking to play.

It's also been fairly common for me at different points in life (particularly after moving or something) to not have ANY other GMs I know in the city to game with, or the only GMs around are flakes/shitty GMs.

So if I'm GMing, I'm not getting any IC Immersion, let alone IC Immersion in the game/setting I want to play.

Getting to do the campaign building/ worldbuilding and potentially game design, and having someone play it, is what I'm getting out of it.

I might share the world building, and then just do the campaign building myself, but if it's going to be "campaign by committee", then why bother GMing?

One day I hope to find a GM friend where he runs the campaigns I want to play, and I'll run the campaigns he wants to play. That would be great. Probably never going to happen, but it would be great.

>>48717829
>Skimming it I can't see any reason I wouldn't play Risus or DW instead. Seems solid, but just nothing special.
My friends decided DW was to "Simple" for such D&D veterans as themselves. Kept seeing Risus, but never looked into it, I'll have to see it.

>>48717829
>Microscope
I will need to check this out. Sounds interesting.

PDF?

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>>48717800
>Version Number
I have things marked in my drive, but it also has a lot of notes on it, so I just cleaned up the most recent one.
>D&D Stats Renamed
It works and gets the point across, any ideas? Still want to get that idea across of "Base Attributes."
>Table as an image
As you notice, I have no art, this has been a passion project in my free time. This is really the "This is how shit looks," more than anything.
>TNs
Noted.
>Correlated Attributes
I think I get what you're saying. Laying out this book has been difficult.
>Fail = XP
I get that, and I've been trying to fix that through the "If you can't even hit the TN you don't get anything" rule.
>Heroic Persona
You can spend a Valor to roll the specific die (D10, D8, or D6), you can hinder yourself by rolling that same die, but subtracting it. Persona has always been that one section that kinda works or just breaks down quickly.
>Valor / Perform Heroic Action
My head asplode, Idea is to have you effectively Exalted Stunt without saying it, but I can see the wording going haywire.
>Vagueness
It's a problem I admit, you spend so much time working on it you almost get tunnel vision.

Thank you by the way. Have a Corgi

>>48718207
>D&D Stats Renamed
Typically the D&D stats are not well balanced, and some are far more useful than others. You get some stats that everybody needs, and others that like, 1 guys needs. It's tricky, but ideally you want all your stats to be equally good, and then the players have to prioritize.

>Table as an image
>Starts talking about artwork
Artwork has nothing to do with it. Your table should be a table, not an image. Both so it doesn't get ugly jpg compression and look like shit when zoomed in/printed/whatever, but also so I can CTRL+F stuff inside it.

>Correlated Attributes
What I'm saying is I have no idea which skills correlate with which attributes, and your booklet is completely absent on the subject.

>Spend Valor to choose a die of your choice.
Is that instead of, or in addition to, your normal dice?

Why would you ever choose to use it to hinder yourself?

Having a mechanic for players to *CHOOSE* to fuck themselves? Not what I'd consider a good idea. They will never use it. I'd consider evaluating and redesigning this bit.

>Uses of Valor
Wording needs to be cleaned up, for sure.

>Tunnel Vision
I hear you.

You know what you mean. It can be tricky to make sure what you mean and what you write match up.

Good luck.

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>>48705555
I think it depends on what kind of stance is involved in the thinking with the meta-currency. A lot of players find the idea of making decisions as a player rather than as a character to be alienating from what's occurring in the fiction.

I've actually been working on a kind of meta-currency that avoids a lot of the issues I've seen with most meta-currency. Right now it's a bit of a bolt on system to make it easier to port to different games.
Any feedback on what I have would be helpful. It's largely tied into the idea of promoting "player directed goals" and trying to put mechanical weight on character emotions without disassociating players from character decisions to an unacceptable level.

>>48718856
Pretty good. I guess it'd need balancing for whatever system you using so they'd be useful but not overpowered. Encourages RP and tying the character into the world without being too forceful. The type list bit is great, having the players talk about what they as a group want to see in the game.

>>48718856
Sounds a lot like hyperactivity in Legends of the Wulin, which I'm a fan of. Incentives for playing the character at the expense of optimal play is always interesting.

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So I want to do "session" based recharge, not day or hour based recharge. But I want it to be, like, "episodes," not literal sessions at a table.

What's the best way to define "episode" in a way that isn't "lol a vague amount of challenges that the GM thinks is enough"?

Like, there's got to be at least one RPG that has a concrete definition of "episode" out there without imposing a rigid story structure, right?

>>48720534
An episode can be any goal reached over multiple encounters. How you define that without being uselessly vague depends entirely on the game.

>>48720580
But who's setting the goal, the players or the GM?

If it's the players, can't they just settle on minor, incremental goals each time, so that they can keep refreshing?

If it's the GM, isn't it the GM dictating what the players do and constricting their freedom?

>>48720592
Goes the goal have to be set beforehand? Why can't the GM look back on the recent activities and then decide that an episode has been filled?

>>48720610
That's really really vague.

"Yeah, I guess you've SORTA made some kind of goal. Get a refresh, everyone! And fuck you to the guys who were saving up points because they thought the refresh would be later."

>>48705330
is this thread for boardgame design to ?

>>48720636
Well what the hell do you want, anon? You're pussyfooting around the issues, worrying about players gaming a system then not wanting to punish them for gaming the system, or wringing your hands over GMs dictating things when GMs must restrict player actions by default since the alternative is collaborative free-form storytelling.

>>48720671
There's a difference between GMs restricting player actions and GMs saying, "Okay, THIS is your goal now. Want to do something else? Fine, but it won't recharge your abilities."

Quick bump

>>48711177
You could work with Size Multipliers, where both HP and Damage of larger creatures is multiplied by 2 or something...or just make new large weapons with their own stats
On the other hand, it would be good to reduce their attacking rolls and defense, considering that they are big targets fighting small targets

>>48712411
Modern Magic would mostly divide between Digital (new astral) and Physical types. In Shadowrun there are Technomancer that are basically mage-hacker covering most of this Digital approach. Making modern physical magic gets a little bit trickier since technology hardly requires a magical power-up to be extreme powerful/dangerous, think explosives, projectiles, electricity and heavy math and you can make most of the stuff under this category (there are also chemicals, magnetic fields, and new materials that can be used as an explanation)

>>48718856
Very neat, making goals mechanically significant is always good.

>>48720534
I don't like meta-time based recharges because they will usually fall to those problems, as I can see it you could say that one episode should end a number of conflicts after the first player exhausted his abilities (with the conditions of proper rest and finishing an adventure ending the episode too)

>>48720645
Yes, just ask away and we will try to help

>>48723099
>you could say that one episode should end a number of conflicts after the first player exhausted his abilities

Wouldn't that just mean the whole party goes crazy with abilities and recharges them quicker than a more conservative party?

>>48723192
No, because the GM set this number and it can vary a lot and he can always give a "proper rest" to the players, for instance, the GMs has a dungeon with 10 encounters, the last one being the boss, with a "proper rest" after the 7th one, so he does have 7 encounters and he wishes his players to have a change to recharge only once until then, just set this duration to 3, and they are going to face the boss after 2 fights without rest no matter how it all goes...and yes, that is why meta-gaming recharges are bad/hard to design, to make up to it you would need to use reinforcements mechanics (where the enemies side get's stronger with each episode) or something else to balance between blasting you way through or managing your resources...

An easier option would be giving your player a fixed amount of Recharges per session/adventure and let them decide when to use it. (Pillars of Eternity allow you 4 Recharges per adventure, awarding you a few extra ones for hard/long adventures)

>>48723385
>No, because the GM set this number and it can vary a lot and he can always give a "proper rest" to the players, for instance, the GMs has a dungeon with 10 encounters

But... would it actually matter when the first player ran out of recharge abilities then?

>>48723604
Okay, let's suppose a group is going through an unending series of encounters, assuming they one of their fighter is exhausted other will shortly follow (unless the encounters scale down), after all fighting the same or a stronger adversary without a fighter is harder....what if we make a single player exhaust first and the rest be conservative (yeah, that's a good reason for the GM to extend the Duration) supposing all players are conservative and usually will all run out at the same time (a good reason for the GM to shorten this Duration) what about we have a mismatch of player and some are running out of resources very soon while others burst at the end (then things are running very smoothly)...you can also make a formula for this, like the longer they can pass without exhausting a player the shorter is their Duration.

Or you could use the second option I gave and let you players decide about it.

>>48723755
The second option doesn't solve the problem, because then the "real" recharge comes at the end of the adventure.

What does /tg/ think of the following resource cost for a noncombat magic system in a not-particularly-grim game? (Combat magic works differently.) I wanted to have a cost that was *not* tied to any hours, days, recharging rituals, sessions, or episodes.

Certain noncombat magics are truly at-will. If you have super-scent, you always benefit from it when relevant. If you can generate illusions (other than invisibility), you can employ them when you think the time and place are right.

Using certain powerful (and character point-expensive) magics creates backlash. Some abilities generate 1 backlash, while truly powerful ones like "Receive a one-word or one-phrase answer to any question you can possibly pose" creates 2 backlash. Against heavy resistance, such as powerful mystical wards, double the backlash. Backlash accumulates permanently until it is spent.

Backlash is fate's justice. By spending 2 backlash, the GM can generate a minor misfortune against the character. 4 backlash for a moderate misfortune, 6 for major, 8 for extreme. This severity is based on context; what might be a minor misfortune in a calm, no-stakes situation might be major even extreme in a tense, life-or-death scenario. (I will be sure to give examples of each.)

The character and their allies can always identify if an event is caused by backlash, so they know that it would have been avoided had they not used their powerful sorceries as much.

The trick here is that magic only ever generates a set number of Backlash (short of powerful defenses), and the tradeoff should generally be in the player's favor. After all, they had to pay expensive character resources to have such strong spells. It is a matter of asking oneself, "Is this a good place and a good time to get the most out of this power the cost of Backlash"? Ideally, the player should always get the better end of the deal if they are smart in their usage, though they will still have to pay in some form later.

How can this be improved?

>>48719092
Ah yeah. As far as balancing, that'd mainly be a matter of changing the numbers around rather than fucking with the general idea of it. I think as well with the type list, I want it to reward having a party with cohesive themes going on. The system this is designed for is geared around exploring a sandbox so anything that helps the party be cohesive rather than scatter like cockroaches in 20 directions would be a good thing.

I wanted to try out a more narrative system but things that make players think from a metagame perspective or give them GM powers has never really gelled with my preferred style.
>>48720404
I'm thinking of with this system is that it rewards having goals and following them is optimal play. A player can use this as a reward for suboptimal play but if their goals are optimal, then it provides a boost to them. Make it where powergaming hard requires making a character that's invested in the story.

I'm thinking for example, that it would help provide a bit of a story like quality to games in that saving your dice for a climax could be very effective for example. Or that boosting ones of a certain type at session start means that each session can have a theme to it and players are rewarded for sharing types. There's a bit of an economy going on but I wanted it to work on a more campaign level than a session level.
>>48720534
The problem I've seen with episodes is that it will always be in the interest of the players to argue why they just completed an episode. Things like sessions, in-game time, encounters, all get used more often because they cause less argument at the table.

There are ways to get a similar thing like maybe having players vote on a party goal, define episodes around goals but then you're getting into some issues of goal based play which is a bit different from the story based ideas you see when folks say "episode".

Any milestone or episode based reward I've seen in play eventually became a once a session deal.

>>48725285
I would say to define a bit when the GM applies backlash and what kind of effects it has. That way it doesn't seem as arbitrarily punishing in play if it really screws someone.
One idea would be that the player rolls some sort of skill deal when they cast spells. So they're gambling on rolling high enough to avoid backlash. With that of course, a mage can cast any level of power with a spell; it's just the average level of backlash that changes when they get more powerful. Other players generally have to roll and have failure consequences in most rpg's, so adding rolling and failure consequences to at will casting makes them work more like other characters do. It helps make it easier to balance things imo.

>>48725881

>That way it doesn't seem as arbitrarily punishing in play if it really screws someone.
I imagine that if it would truly devastate someone, then that would simply be a major or extreme misfortune.

The question is, if the GM wishes to spend, say, 2 backlash on each of the four PCs (for a total of 8 backlash), how exactly should that be handled? How do a minor single-target misfortune and an extreme single-target misfortune look different from a minor four-target misfortune?

>One idea would be that the player rolls some sort of skill deal when they cast spells.
I am trying to avoid random chance in noncombat tasks whenever I can in this game.

>it's just the average level of backlash that changes when they get more powerful
I am also trying to emphasize horizontal advancement in this system rather than vertical advancement. If you have a spell, you can cast it just as well as any other magician, but you will certainly have less spells. There is no such thing as a broad "manipulate fire" spell so much as there are "wall of fire," "incinerate," "rise upon flames," and so on. Characters gain greater and greater amounts of points as they advance, so they do not suffer from diminishing returns.

>>48726811
With all that in mind, I'd say that figuring out a conversion rate would be the best thing to do. So say, put a point value to the misfortunes so you could have a major single misfortune be equivalent to a minor 4 target misfortune.
The GM buys those misfortunes with the points maybe and so there's a sort of a resource management on the GM's part where they could be trying to save points or they could do a steady drip of minor misfortunes. This though could end up quickly in adversarial gm territory.
If the backlash represents fate actively trying to screw the players, a bit of adversarialness might help get the atmospheric effect across though.

>>48727582

It is not so much adversarial as it is paying a valid price. There's essentially no other cost or usage limitation for powerful magics at all (they are quite expensive character point-wise, however), and the idea is that the magician still gets the better side of the deal, so it is just paying dues to fate.

>you could have a major single misfortune be equivalent to a minor 4 target misfortune
I have already written in >>48725285 a rough pricing: By spending 2 backlash, the GM can generate a minor misfortune against the character. 4 backlash for a moderate misfortune, 6 for major, 8 for extreme.

I am worried that it is still quite imprecise, and I have yet to actually come up with any examples.

>>48720534
I hand out XP based on "game windows", which is just code for "roughly 4 hours, but you dont get xp for a second window unless we play at least 1.5 hours into it". Maybe you could do something similar for your recharge?

File: craftingtest.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>48727893
Huh. You seem to have thought it through fairly well. If it's coming down to how to appropriately price the misfortune, then figuring that out is probably going to just require playtesting. Which isn't a very helpful answer, I know.

So /gdg/, what do you think of these crafting rules? It isn't very complex and there's a bit of negotiation and GM fiat involved in practice with determining how hard something is to craft. One idea I'm wondering on is the rare materials for complex items. The idea in the buying/selling thing is that to say make an iron golem, the player would have to travel to an area with a heavy ironworking industry to get needed materials or skilled employees.
So there's a geographic constraint to crafting that incentivizes traveling around a bit.

>>48706479
>Child's Eye
Like the other two anons said, seems like a very neat mechanic you have. I like it. Keep us updated!

desu if you're a faggot playing with funky dice mechanics, don't bother

all the good mechanics were invented by the OSR

File: Smashing Party! V2.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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Hey guys i'm not sure if you remember this but I was working on a smash clone. I just added items and rules to generate and create them. Give them a look and tell me how you feel.

>>48727893
The core idea seems pretty solid, you just need to nail down exactly what each of your 'misfortune' levels mean. Are they mechanical penalties to rolls? Are they demons spawning out of the air? Are they internal bleeding that gives damage with no save?

Some other questions that come to mind: does the GM spend it all at once or can they break it up? I.e. if Mage McGee has 4 backlash does the GM have to give them 1 moderate or can they give 2 minors? What about timing, can the GM just save up until McGee hits extreme? Can the player attempt to mitigate backlash in anyway, perhaps optionally reducing the power or effect of their spells?

Reminds me a bit of a magic system I did awhile ago, pdf related

>>48728716
Seems like the sort of thing a GM would just improv at the table, I know I have done pretty much that. A good guide I guess, but a pretty unspecial addition to tack on to any system.

I do quite like your little "add this to your system" tidbits though, keep it up

File: cepholopod rule ref.png (214KB, 794x1123px) Image search: [Google]

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>>48732546
Wrong pdf. It isn't even a pdf

Here's a question. Should you design your game for yourself and your friends and then assume you represent a % of the gaming population, or research all these views and factions and opinions and try to appeal to them?

File: herbalismtest.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>48732546
Ah thank you. Yeah, the crafting rules seem "functional but boring" to me though I don't know if crafting really needs to be anything more than that.

I've been trying to keep each subsystem decently portable since I hack random bits from game systems and assume someone reading a homebrew system would be kinda similar in outlook.
A few systems lean on other ones and are less portable. Like alchemy relying on magic, crafting and herbalism systems to work.

Here's an herbalism system if anyone has feedback. The general idea is that the list of herbs can be generated through play and it rewards players who like to explore the wilderness a lot.

For difficulties, just subtract the difficulty from 10 to get a normal DC in most systems. Then stretch the high end near 20 a little. The system this is written for uses 2d10 with the bonus being between 0 and 10 usually.

>>48732870
Go niche or go home. The games catering to the majority are made by large publishing companies with the resources for proper market research. Besides, making what you love will be more motivating in the end.

>>48732870
I'd say design games for you and your friends.
Unless you're already a professional game designer, having a game that works at your table would I think be more important to a hobbyist.

If you try to appeal to a certain segment and you don't already play or understand that sort of game, then you'll likely make sub par work. The best way to go pro as well, seems to be self publishing your own work. A self publisher shows that a writer understands layout, how to work with artists, organization, etc. Gaming is a bit different from other forms of book publishing in that regard.

>>48732970
>>48732974
I thought so. In that case it would be wise to pretty much ignore the contrary voices in /tg/ when they represent established factions of players

>>48733327
Pretty much. What kind of game are you looking to make?
And if someone is coming from a similar point of view as you, it can be useful to see their thoughts on the matter. As well, being familiar with the reasons why someone might hate your game can be useful though you'll understand what makes what you're trying to do good or bad, pitfalls to avoid, etc. better than someone who shits all over the style.

>>48717491
I skimmed through it.
While it's alright, as another anon said not really any reason to use it over existing generic simple systems.
Dice+Skill over DC has been done to death, and by people who understand statistics way better. And they still manage to screw up in balancing a lot.

>>48733380
Full feature original RPG system that I think blows other systems I've played or researched out of the water. New, generally simulationist approach to...
- Stats
- Combat
- Travel
- Campaign creation
- World generator
- Social mobility

And anything else including the kitchen sink. But I have a extreme focus on balancing the depth and simplicity so very little math needs to be done and all information can be tracked intuitively.

Been mulling the various features over for almost 10 years. Recently got a shitload of it organized and working in harmony. The world story is replaceable, but is low fantasy 1000AD tech level.

File: Gygax (2).jpg (636KB, 1536x2048px) Image search: [Google]

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>>48705330
Should have used Gygax

Hmmm...need a draw fag

>>48733620
Guys what if, guys listen, what if we made a game, guys, that you could do ANYTHING in.

>>48734648
Gosh that's a good photo. Such a nice action shot, the action being "explaining why the way you're having fun is wrong"

>>48735236
Remember, if you are not using official TSR merchandise, you are playing something other than an official AD&D, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

sup /tg

How do you guys feel about using a "fixed board" in a PnP RPG purely for combat encounters? I'm thinking of a system that'd focus on vehicle arena combat, which'd play on a board of concentric circles to guide player movement. This'd make the default motion be circling around each other, while with a special manouver a player can break circling to go for a full-on charge.

>>48735236
You laugh now! I'm making it workable!

>>48732870
Your research alone is not enough. You would need opinions from hundreds of people to get anything worthwhile. Do you know how few people are actually interested in giving you opinions about some specific game or system?

>>48705330
Oh, I didn't answer the query yet, it seems. Uhh... There are some, like my past game's attribute system (It's basically just a reversal of regular attribute systems, where skills define attributes rather than vice versa). I also come up with a handful of systems every day I want to include, but cannot because my game has a delicate balance as of now.

Anyway, /gdg/, I have a question. What is your opinion on additional character generation during game. Such as:

I gotta explain a little about my system first. So, there are three types of wounds your character can get, physical, mental and social wounds. Allright. And getting even 1 wound can drop your character out of a conflict, because that's how I've built the system. But gamewise, getting one wound is still a rather minor thing.

There needs to be an explanation. For example, say you take one wound and it drops you. The way how one drops from conflict is the player's own choice, but the jist is that they must at some point. The longer they hold it in the more serious it is.

Same with social and mental wounds. Because these ones are rather similar, a one-wound drop would actually mean something character-building-wise. Say, someone insults your mother (very original, isn't it?), you get one social wound and you suddenly drop.

This is a character moment. Maybe the way that character insulted their mother invoked something inside them, such as nostalgia or trauma, that makes the character lose their composure.

Giving the reins on "how" to the player, building the character is still in their hands, even though mechanically the game tells them to figure something out. They don't have to be some donut steel -level backstory things, they are just additional details.

>>48736753
Shit, forgot question markers:

>>>What is your opinion on additional character generation during game?

>>48728716
I believe it's pretty good as is, you could include rare materials to make a few items and physical requirements to work with some materials (a dwarven forge to work with orichalcum or whatever) but if you want to be more specific than that I believe it would be better to place those rules on the item itself instead.

>>48732202
Work a little bit on your grammar, you wrote " choose/select X types of ", other than that, assist characters seems to be a bit overpowered (what tends to happen on smash too) and you forgot to add their duration.I your mechanic for item respawns is really good though

>>48732894
I believe I have seen something very close to this before.Feedback is that it's quite simple and good to have on hand when someone wants to play with some focus on their herbalism/alchemy. But you would need to give the rules for long travels and traditional foraging.

>>48735384
I believe having a set of fixed boards would be better, like making some of those circles non-concentric and changing the distribution in order to make some different boards to add some variation. Also if you're going for Twisted Metal combat style it would be really fun to see what you got.

>>48736769
Keep it consistent and it should be alright, there's a reason why a dedicated player might find an amnesiac character fun. Other than that, it's featured very often on fiction where as something brings problems/situations long forgotten to the character, which then he proceeds to tackle in order to advance.

>>48735925
Go for it, but try getting some feedback on the actual thing before "finishing it", or else you might need to rewrite tons of stuff later

>>48705555
I'm a fan of how it works in Atomic Highway, especially how you can spend points on more than just rerolls - a rope being there when you want to make a dramatic entrance, for example. It can be a valuable tool for assessing what kind of elements your players want in the game.

>>48740723
On that note, Legends of the Wulin also has an interesting fate point system with Joss. You can gain Joss on a roll ending in zero in exchange for "Interesting Times," which invites the GM to twist the success or failure to add dramatic tension.

Are skirmish games allowed here?

I've been thinking of designing a skirmish game based exclusively or near-exclusively on d12s, but I'm having a bit of trouble in that I'm terrible at math-hammering and probability and game design.

Basic premise so far is Scifi skirmish game (4-12 models per team, emphasis on guns, shooting, LoS, activated abilities) that functions something like Infinity or the Batman minigame, though I'm also interested in dice pools and target numbers and every other possibility to find what's right. I would like it to flow easily and quickly, like how Infinity plays, without a shitton of modifiers to every roll that bog down play.

>>48740893
Skirmish games are allowed in here just fine. To start with, why do you want to make your own game instead of playing Infinity? What do you want to do differently?

>>48738883
Not Twisted Metal really. More of a Monster Hunter on Harley Davidsons type of thing. Thanks for the advice though! Definitely something to keep in mind in the long run (I'm just brainstorming and trying things out now).

>>48705330
>Today's Query: What is a system that you would want to implement into your game, but for some reason haven't / cannot?

Grid-based combat and facing. I like the tactical depth of choosing exactly where you stand but it just becomes a pain in the ass more often than not, slowing combat down more than it's worth.

>>48740893
A good first step is like >>48741099 asks; you want to take the games you like and ask what about them do you like and what do you dislike. Take every aspect, even things like tone of the game or artistic style. Immerse yourself in several different games, even if they don't fit the genre you want, it all adds into your creative thinking.

>>48741255

You could try abstracting it a bit. Instead of a grid, it's defined as abstracted areas of the battlefield that each provide various bonuses, and depending on what direction you're facing or even just by virtue of the location, enemies can get flanking bonuses.

You could assume a character is focused on a center abstracted area, or whatever area the action he's performing is focused around, or have them proclaim they're watching their six and trying to cover for ambushers.

For example, there's a central pavilion where the melee Fighters are doing their thing against an Ogre or something, the Ranger runs up to an outcropping amid some ruined columns off to the right and trying to pick off enemies in the center, and the Thief runs around some large stone blocks to the left watching the field for ambushers.
>The Fighters are kind of aware of what's happening in that central location, as it's open area and it's too populated for a sneaky ambush
>The Ranger is focused on the action in the center, and is vulnerable to ambush, from some Goblins perhaps, from their sides or back from within those columns
>The Thief is in some cover in the blocks, but it's open enough for them to have an eye on everywhere, and they're not doing much but watching the field, so no penalties if anything attacks them in any direction

>>48741255
Right now I have facing but I keep debating how to implement it. It's that sorta "movement is given in feet but it's all in multiples of 5" where it isn't grid dependent but works well with it.
I just worry though, how to really implement facing without using a grid. The way facing interacts with positioning and zone of control mechanics has always seemed real interesting to me.

>>48738883
Ah thanks. Smash dude here. Also ya if you can give me a hand and pointing out my grammar error i'll surley fixed it.

My grammar is a bit off to be honest and i'll try to work on it a bit.

I'll get back to you on the assist characters being op once I get some test in. Thanks for the compliment.

Because I wanted to hear as many opinions as possible when it comes to my game I decided to take it to reddit. Take a look for yourself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletopgamedesign/comments/4x6pxr/smashing_party/

>tfw I finally figure out what I actually want to make after weeks of research and contemplation

Feels good.

>>48748165
It is such a good feeling.

>>48745192

So much, so wrong, so contentious.
Ask /m/ or /sci/ or /k/ and you'll probably get a lot more feedback. Because it seems like you don't understand physics or geometry or vehicular combat at all.

Let's talk theme & scale.

I have a board game design I'm working on.
The mechanics are loosely based on combative interactions between aircraft or spaceships.

The question I put to you folks is a matter of setting & scale:

Would you rather an F-18 or a starfighter?
Would you rather fly one or command a wing of them?
Across a few miles, a few lightyears, or a few galaxies?

>>48749371
I want a full Top Gun experience.

>>48749482

Hornet Leader isn't enough for you?

Here's my big question. How do you personally identify problems in an RPG? Do you go with the GNS view, or do you have your own metric for knowing when something could be improved?

Personally I measure silence, jokes, and out-of-fiction discussion as a symptom of a game design problem. There's nothing wrong with joking, but if everything you experience is a farce that deserves mockery, your game sucks.

And before you Blame The Dungeon Master™ let me add that a good game should provide tools and instructions how to make compelling fiction worlds.

>>48749569
I don't play skirmish games but AttackxWing stuff is popular right now.

>>48749611
>I measure silence, jokes, and out-of-fiction discussion as a symptom of a game design problem.

I wonder if your statement is literally true.
An "RPG" is a game played for enjoyment. Enjoyment is the goal of the game.

Approaching such a game from a design standpoint means that gameplay decisions must maximize enjoyment. The TTRPG demographic - teenage boys - derives enjoyment primarily from power fantasies, sex, and humor.

So your best bet for keeping people in character is to create a game world where those behaviors are rewarded.

That is the framework that you as a designer, and your DMs have to work within.

>>48749611
> tools and instructions
Are only as good as the one using them.

>silence, jokes, and out-of-fiction discussion
are all 100% player issues, not system ones. Some players can't play certain systems and that's fine, as long as your system works for its target audience. If a system is so bad every player is silence or joking or going OOC I guess that's the systems problem, but that's hardly usual.

>identify problems in an RPG
Determine what effect the system is going for, i.e. what sort of experience its aiming for the players to have, and finding mechanics that don't contribute towards that goal.

GNS is a way to analyse it sure. Problem is RPG design goals are a lot more nuanced than just G, N or S.

>>48749826
I'm asking YOU what you see as symptoms of a problem while YOU are playing or watching others play. 99% of games completely avoid stating what their goals are or how the fun is created, because they don't have a real game design, just shit in a bucket you can toy with however you want.

So basically nothing could ever be called a "game design" problem, because you can just Blame The Dungeon Master™ or Blame The Group™? I don't agree.

>>48749805
Maybe, and probably true for most. The stereotype that teenagers only want to roleplay power fantasy might also be a symptom of uninspiring game design though. When you aren't given anything interesting care about, your interests degrade into primal urges.

Personally i loved the educational element. Simulating challenges and encounters, travel, and unusual social combinations can teach you a lot... If the fiction is solid and the system handles things realistically. Which they don't. But GURPS taught me some interesting ways to think about the world.

>>48750212
>interesting ways to think about the world.

just a different sort of power fantasy.
Literally >I'm so cool I don't need to selfish-meme

>>48750383
You must have some issues you're projecting onto me. I don't even play GURPS. I just read handbook and found the ideas interesting, like the Tech Level system and different background you could choose for your character.

I don't get any enjoyment out of pretending to be powerful, although I did when I was around 12 years old. I'm 30 now and I'd like a mature discussion about game design if you don't mind.

>>48750212
>I'm asking YOU what you see as symptoms of a problem while YOU are playing or watching others play
I answered
>Determine what effect the system is going for, i.e. what sort of experience its aiming for the players to have, and finding mechanics that don't contribute towards that goal.

So I'd consider a game which doesn't have a design goal to be very badly designed indeed.

>99% of games completely avoid stating what their goals are or how the fun is created
You're right that few do it explicity, often it's there in between the lines. It sucks, and I feel different interpretation of what a game's goal actually is leads to a lot of problems in the hobby.

However there's the school of thought where a system is used to facilitate the "game goals" or "creative agenda" of a group, in which case it can be measured against how well it can be adapted for a group to use it to achieve their goals.

>nothing could ever be called a "game design" problem, because you can just Blame The Dungeon Master™ or Blame The Group™?
That's a reductio ad absurdum to an argument I wasn't making. I believe the problems you listed are more player problems than game ones, I wasn't suggesting all problems are player problems.

>>48749805
>>48750212
>teenage boys are the demographic for TRPGs
While that may or may not be true for big publisher RPGs, it certainly isn't of many others.

Defining the target audience is about as important as being explicit about the sort of game and the sort of player experiences a game is trying to make. Should be page one of any RPG

>>48705330
>Dungeoncrawler/exploration game
>Randomly generated terrain from terrain deck
>Movement is by square, not by tile, each tile has 16 squares.
>The average unit movement speed is 3 squares
>Each tile adds a monster/trap
What size do you think is the max this could work at?
I really want units bigger than 32mm but fear the board may get too big.

>tfw I want comfy high fantasy but also gritty dark fantasy, Wuxia action heroes and murky political struggles, petty squabbles and world-shaking events

Needing to be decisive sucks.

>>48751009
How do you initiate endgame?

I've been visiting and applying to some board game devs/publishers. Some of them are starting to look like mills. Particularly ones that push licensed games.

I guess licensed games, even crappy ones, are just pulling in obscene amounts of money.

It's leading to some backwards game design.

>>48751674
Either you run an adventure where you have to beat a boss unit or collect a mcguffin, this encounter is shuffled between x and y tiles on the tile deck, you win when you complete this. Or survival mode, you win when you defeat all monsters in the monster deck, here the tiles deck would be fixed at a smaller size I guess.

Hey /gdg/, this is only tangentially/potentially related to /gdg/, but I hope you guys can help me anyways.

What I want to know is:

Let's say there is a piece of concept or illustration art that does not belong to a particular registered IP.

Is it legal for me to create a sculpt of it on commission? For fun/personal use?

If I sculpted it for whatever reason, who owns the casting rights? Can I recast the models as I please? Can I sell the models as I please? At what point do I have to reach a legal agreement with the source.

Basically what I want to know is the legal requirements and procedures for sculpting models for commission or personal use, as well as casting said models for personal use or sale, with respect to both source material belonging to registered IPs, and source material that doesn't.

>>48754729
If it is different enough from the design, you might be fine. It is legal to make for fun or for personal use, provided you give attribution if asked. You would still own the casting rights as you created it in that medium, but if it is too similar to the original design you might not be able to sell it without a lawsuit coming your way.

Honestly if you can change it to be enough of your own work and you don't relate it to any other work. "Power Armor Soldier" rather "Space Marine" or "Brotherhood of Steel Paladin" (I think that last one legit happened), you might be able to get away with it.

But you're entering specific legal research stuff here and the vaguness or rather, the wideness of your question doesn't allow for easy specificity.

I will say it is a dick move to steal a design from like, an indie artist.

>>48756005

>Honestly if you can change it to be enough of your own work and you don't relate it to any other work. "Power Armor Soldier" rather "Space Marine" or "Brotherhood of Steel Paladin" (I think that last one legit happened), you might be able to get away with it.

Right. One of the things I had in mind while writing my post was those companies which made Totally Not Space Marines and my curiosity at where the line is drawn. For example, Scibor's Totally Not Custodes marines, or other companies which make IG troops and weapons which are very nearly, but not exactly, like actual IG.

>I will say it is a dick move to steal a design from like, an indie artist.

I don't distinguish "indie" from otherwise because I don't feel the amount of money they make from art or their renown in the community is any real indication on the damage I am inflicting on them (not to mention it's hard to quantify how "indie" someone is, let alone establish some arbitrary threshold of "acceptably non-indie enough to steal from"). "Legally safe" seems like an optimal logical limit.

I am not planning on designing a game with stolen designs, either. I originally thought about two scenarios: One, if someone commissions a model to spec from some random artwork not registered to an IP, and then asks for casts whether for their personal use, or to sell on their own, or to sell through me, do I legally possess the right to cast it for each such purpose? Two, if I myself am inspired by an unaffiliated piece of art and decide to base one or more miniatures off of it, how much difference does there need to be for the design to be my own? Ignoring the obvious issue that, in the latter case it's probably easier and yielding of better quality to just commission the artist of said inspirational piece to actually produce concepts for miniatures.

Hello /gdg/, long time no see. It's been a while since I put any work into The Black Age but I've got renewed interest after all these months, so I hope you guys don't mind answering any questions I might have.

Here's one to start with: what is the better way to write a set of rules?

>"you" and "your character"
>"the player" and "their character"

>>48751670

Mixing it up is possible, but you will have to pick and choose from polar opposites if you cannot find compromise within the same setting.

I mean, you can, if you're skillful enough, find compromise for pretty much everything, but there's the matter of difficulty in fleshing it out and keeping the setting consistent.

>>48757011

Depends on how you want the character of the text to be with regards to the rules.

Involved in the book as if it itself? Go with "you."
Detached from the narrative and descriptive from on high? Write "your character" instead.

Not sure how to reconcile "the player" and "their character," but it seems like those are distinct from each other. "The Player" would be descriptive of actions a player can make, say with metagames and meta-currency should such things ever apply. "Their Character" is appropriate when describing the actions of a character from within the context of the game's rules.

>>48757309
I'd agree. It can get confusing to try to have "the player" and "the character" as the same thing since so many players intuitively understand them as separate entities.

>>48757309
>>48758533
some clearer examples of what I meant:

>when you get together as a group for the first time, describe your characters and their motivations.

or

>when the players get together for the first time, they should describe their characters and their motivations.

>>48760158

I like the second example better. Seeing as how this sentence fragment sounds more introductory, it sets up the difference in the narrative of the rule system between the players and their characters. It's subtle, and you might not have noticed it, but your brain did, and now you're all set for keyworded understandings of future texts to follow.

I had an idea for a resource system in a trading card game.

A card has a level, resource point cost(RP), and recast cost(RC). There are four ways to use a card:
-Cast from hand. This consumes an action point(AP), which reset to three at the start of every turn, and the written RP cost. You also need to have a number of mediums equal to or greater than the card's level. Each medium beyond the necessary amount also decreases the RP cost of the card. This can go negative, resulting in a gain of RP from casting the card.
-Turning into a medium. Any card from your hand can be turned into a medium for the cost of one AP.
-Cast from medium. A card that has been turned into a medium can be played normally, but it doesn't require an AP and its RP cost is increased by its RC. It doesn't count itself as a medium for the purpose of level requirements and RP cost reduction.
-Cast from shield. This uses the shield system from duel masters instead of life, and this system was designed with making the following workable. When one or more cards are broken from one of your shields, you may decide to cast them following the same rules as casting from your hand, except they don't require AP.

bump while I prep some stuff

>>48764582
The bull?

Does anyone have advice for someone who just today started seriously fleshing out their idea for a board game?

>>48766473
Also my apologies if that question is too broad or something like that

File: gatherinformation.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

So I have some rules on finding information and researching. What do you folks think of them? I plan on hanging spy network, magic research and some business rules off of them.

>>48757011
You and your character. That way if you're talking about your character affecting somebody else you can use "their character" and it will make immediate sense

>>48766473
Kind of depends on where you're at with the idea.

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>>48749721
>I don't play skirmish games

Can we pause for a moment and unpack this statement?

It's frequently seen among "hardcore wargamers".

What it actually seems to mean is, "I believe that making a hundred boring decisions is more fun than making one interesting decision."

Can I ask why you believe that?

>>48768472
You misunderstand. I *also* don't play wargames. Can't afford any miniatures-based games.

Does Wuxia (especially the concept of jianghu or wulin) work for a multi-nation, multicultural setting? Specifically if you want to tie core mechanics around player characters who have joined the "otherworld" as the primary mechanic for gaining supernatural powers.

(I've got a concept for a game which takes wuxia themes and applies them to a high fantasy setting, distinct from xianxia as not being rooted in Chinese mythology.)

>>48770415
Absolutely. Avatar the Last Airbender did this.

You could even run something like that in Legends of the Wulin. Each Nation would be aligned to an element and each clan would have its own fighting style. Check it out for inspiration.

>>48756224
You either reach a settlement with the artist beforehand or you don't make money off their IP. Simple as that. It's an exceedingly scumbag move to make money off of someone else's intellectual property without their knowledge and concent.

There's public domain characters like Dracula, doesn't mean you get to use Konami or any of Universal Pictures' designs of Dracula for your own profit, just make your own.
As for characters not registered and not in public domain, the artist can still pursue a C&D and even a lawsuit, all they need is evidence of them creating and using the character design before you did.

>>48770618
Oh believe me, Legends of the Wulin is probably my primary inspiration for this project.

Now that you mention Avatar, sadly I'm reminded of Naruto in that there were non-Ninja who were still similarly powerful.

Is there any good literature on writing a DMless system? Something where every player shares the responsibility and contributes to the narrative in an emergent way. Something that's designed for longer campaigns (i.e. not things like Fiasco).

It might not create the most coherent result, but I'd really like to look into such systems. I'm going to look into Polaris, but I'm not sure what else is out there other than vague blog posts.

>>48770415
I does and it kinda is, considering manichean cults in the south, mongols to the north, koreans and japanese to the east

>>48772056
I've found a couple of essay collections over the years, which are at the very least well polished vague blogposts. (They're all to big to post, go hunt through the "game design" sub folders in the pdf share archives, that's where I found them.)

Otherwise just read all the GMless systems you can.

I found a journal that published papers on roleplaying, but it was all LARPs and therapy.

In a CCG how should I resolve self-conflicting abilities? e.g. "X can't be attacked by goblins" and "If an enemy would attack you it attacks X instead" somehow ends up on the same card and you get attacked by a goblin.

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Question: My game has four approaches, but I can't think of a one-word name for one of them. They are:

>Force
>Guile
>"Emotional Appeal"
>Logic

What is a good one-word synonym for "emotional appeal"?

>>48773452
sympathy?

>>48773452
K I N D N E S S

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>>48773452

Allure

>>48773478
>>48773510
>>48773546
Well, the trick is they have to be applicable to physical and social challenges. Here are the first examples that come to mind:

>Force: a head on, direct solution (punching someone's face in a fight or yelling to intimidate them in an argument)
>Guile: an underhanded or covert solution (going for a cheap shot or lying to their face)
>Emotion: an abstract or emotional solution (rallying allies or giving an emotional appeal)
>Logic: a precise or inventive solution (deploying a strategy or presenting a reasoned argument)

Players have two stats, body for physical checks and mind for mental/social checks. They then describe how they approach the problem using one of these four general methods, granting them certain special abilities.

But I've been thinking of cutting approaches altogether desu. It's another layer to every check and I'm not sure what it adds to the game that I couldn't do more elegantly.

>>48773608
Are you familiar with In A Wicked Age? If not read up about it.

>>48773608

allure works. you can have physical allure

>>48773452
Empathy.

>>48773431
You may have to add something on your cards which says that they can or cannot be superseded by effects like that.

>>48776104
Or add timing/priority rules to the core. Negative beats positive rules or such.

Or take the MtG route and post pages upon of pages of rules rulings.

So I was thinking up of races for a dungeon crawler style miniatures game, but hit a snag where some of the ideas were things like trading an immediate disadvantage for a bonus in a progression system, for example, lower starting stats for the advantage of earning levels quicker.

The problem is how would people see it in a one game off style system, if you're not playing progressively, it would ending up being a stat reduction in exchange for a point cost decrease.

I'm wondering if that's enough, or would the race choice be relegated to campaign play only?

>>48773431
You could rephrase it such that the action is not impossible, but useless.

For example
>X cannot be damaged by goblins

This would mean that if the second card forced a goblin to attack it, the attack would do no damage.

>>48776491
One weird thing about MtG is how jackal familiar can potentially force other creatures to attack if it's affected by something that forces it to attack.

The description of MtG's system is "follow as many requirements as possible, while violating no restrictions."

>>48768365
I guess the pre-prototype stage. I have a solid idea of what I'm doing and where I'm going with it, I just need to hash out the hard numbers of board layout and card details

>>48772056
http://www.mythic.wordpr.com/page14/page14.html
Mythic DM Emulator is by far the best GM-less resource I've run across.

>>48773452
Pathos.
You might have to define it to your audience, but you should be doing that with the rest of your forms of persuasion anyway.

>>48778263
Good thing to do now is just start trying out how you want the game to go. Take paper, make mock-ups and see how it feels now. This also helps you tighten up the rules, you'll start seeing things that you missed when writing. You don't even need playtesters, at this point you can just play against yourself. Its about translating idea to reality and working from there.

>>48780414
Cool, thanks for the tips. I'll keep working at refining my idea

Wuxia bump technique: Thread Climbs the Page!

>>48778160
MtG has always had weird rules interactions, like the numerous infinite combos and those few combos that break the game.

So I have a rules system for the players to create a home base village in the setting during a zero session, sorta similar to a condensed microscope. The idea is that the GM has a sandbox and sets aside an area in it for the players to play three generations of history for a small village in it.

What I'm wondering though, is the idea of players creating the village during play. The idea being that I could plop players into the game and have the village created during the adventure so we could have a shorter zero session. I'm wondering though, ways to work with limiting the amount of things they can add and managing them adding setting elements during play. Something a lot more focused and limited than most games playing with the concept. One issue I'm thinking of is how to handle if players join the game after the first couple of session. It could end up in some odd "We would have sought this npc's help if they didn't materialize into existence out of nowhere." territory. That sort of thing is easier to handle in the first couple of sessions.

Any advice/ideas or do you know of games dealing with similar ideas?

>>48754729
You don't need to register copyright. If the sculpt has too much likeness to the illustration, you and/or the sculptor are liable for that.If you do it for personal, private stuff only, nobody will notice/care. If you start selling models with enough likeness, you can be fairly sure that word will reach the illustrator and he will very likely seek compensation. In that case, your best bet would be to develop a business plan to begin with instead and propose it to the copyright holder of the artwork. If somebody else created something unique/specific that you like, you need to come to terms with them. If you can't, come up with your own ideas or make it generic.

For example, you can like Jaime Lannister but if you cast models that look like TV Jaime, you will get sued (even ignoring publicity rights). If you just sell some kind of one-armed swordsman, you're good.

As for casting rights, etc. it all depends on the contract with your sculptor that you both have signed.

I tested my new game this friday and saturday. It was a huge hit. People kept wanting to replay it for hours.

I picked up an artist for card art, too, who was really impressed with the game.

Totally psyched.

>>48792614
Nice.

>>48792614
Started to beta test my RPG yesterday. Both setting as well as the system were praised a lot. Time to worry about production issues, I guess.

>>48732870
Write for yourself and the people you play with. Your idiosyncracies will be far more appealing than trying to churn together something that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Also, customers have no idea what they want til they see it.

Somebody on Tumblr I follow has been asking for people to check out a game she's designing from the ground up. She's often posting ideas and dev work and asking for feedback.

I think it might show potential but I don't have a lot of experience with RPGs.

RPG blog: http://beyondthepalerpg.tumblr.com/
Her blog: http://thespectacularspider-girl.tumblr.com/

I don't know if she browses /tg/ but maybe go help her out.

>>48792614
What is the game like?

>>48796212
Dice mechanic seems interesting from a glance.

Ok /tg/ help a brother out. Lemme ask you somethin.

Ok so I'm cooking a homebrew system up that uses a pretty unique resolution mechanic I think.

It uses both Attributes and Skills. Every test is formatted as Attribute/Skill. When a character rolls, they roll 1d12+Attribute (Attribute Die) and. 1d12+Skill (Skill Die) separately. If both dice pass the DR it's a full success (so it's a success AND in combat, or a success with no drawbacks). If one die passes, it's a partial success (success BUT out of combat, or just a regular hit in combat). If both fail it's a failure (miss in combat, a "No, and" out of combat).

I like it theoretically, and my players like it, but I'm not sure how much I like the feel of it. It feels too. Dungeon Worldy quite frankly, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that.

I really like d12s though, because you can do fun stuff like throwing in talents that let you roll 2d6 instead to change the odds, and as DM I've been drawing cards from a playing deck (jack counts as 7, queen is 11, King is 12) for quick rolling for the NPCs and stuff.

Thoughts?

>>48792614
Way to go. Share how it works?

>>48705330
>Procedurally generated conversations with procedurally generated NPCs
No, I am serious. I want to have an insane amount of NPCs for the players to talk with, all of them different and all of them with dialogue and motivations ready out of the box. I've always wanted my towns to FEEL ALIVE.

Like say, I roll up a street beggar, and place him in the town. One of the PCs is a paladin, and wants to donate some money or something, and says some words as he does so.
>PC: I give the poor beggar 1 gold and say "blessed are those who follow the path of light"
Alright! I go to page 97 in my book, make a couple of dice rolls, and bam!
>"Thanks m'lord"
>"By the way..."
This way I can improve my multitasking and have numerous NPCs all going at the speed of dice.

>>48798179
Their site conflicts with my phone, what dice mechanic?

>>48712411

A spell that interacts with technology, I imagine.

Like interfacing with computers or shutting off electrical systems in vehicles.

>>48717491

That's very interesting! I like how wounds shut a player down slowly.

>>48773608
Passion

>>48798484

I run a similar system

Mine is 1d100+attribute bonus+skill level.

The DR is 60+ depending on the difficulty.

In my experience it works fine. My version is more complex but players can handle.

>>48798484
>partial successes are Dungeon World

Nah, plenty of RPGs before and after have done it. It's a good mechanic.

>>48799688
>>48796720
I'll post a detailed post about it after we get it a bit further along.

I've already had to deal with one game idea getting lifted by a company so I'm going to be careful.

It's a simple game, 3-6 players, 30-45 minute playtime depending on conditions, and is amazing for light party gameplay.

Can't say I come to /tg/ often, but this seems like the place to ask.

Is there, or whats good examples of a survival type tabletop boardgame?

A friend an I are playing around with an idea of making a survival type board game.

One player would start as the antagonist/DM. We were thinking an alien, xeno queen, whatever. Their job would be to build a nest, send out minions to force the players into choke points and systematically remove them form the game by different means.

The players can systemically remove the enemies, or get to an extraction point. Players would have to work to survive, or be a shit cunt and sacrifice your buddies to win.

We were trying to think of a way to make the board/tile setup generated as you play, or something to create a sort of fog of war. But it seems hard to completely do, since you can look at the entire board/etc. But something to give players a sense of urgency to get to point B, but caution in their decision making as well.

We were just bored and thought making a board game would be kind of fun. We have the means to produce something, just really to ambitious or having a lack of ideas or what people would want to play is our problem.

>>48798484
Partial success isn't exclusively DW territory.

The only caveat I have is that you basically make two seperate tests for the resolution of a single task. Many gamers will consider that excessive and wonder if it couldn't have been rolled (no pun intended) into a single test.

>>48805769
Zombies!!! is pretty much what you're looking to make.
http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/fileadmin/downloads/zombies_rules.pdf

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So I have some rules for making a starting home village for the party. What do you folks think of it?

>>48796212
huh, that looks pretty neat actually.

>>48806247
Shit, I haven't even heard of this before. Looks interesting.

>>48802093
What I skimmed is you roll a D10 for every point in the skill to test, and choose up to 3 of them. How many dice you choose triggers effects from skills and specializations, and the total is your score for the test. The how many you choose affects things is the interesting bit and would be interesting to see how its implemented.

>>48810654
... interesting. I wonder how that plays out in combat.

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>>48805998
That's exactly my concern. Is that it's two tests for one check. My beef is that I don't want to have Attributes just be another modifier on your "main roll" but I still want to include them in the game somehow

Hey /gdg/

How do you approach the ethical quandary of using derivative mechanics (without a license)?

Like say I just thought some game had a perfect mechanic for what I was trying to do, but there's no OGL version or SRD. Setting, writing, and so on would all be my own creation.

I know you can't copyright "roll two dice and add this number" or "fill in this hex", but would you comb through your work to make sure your phraseology wasn't too close to the book that inspired you?

Particularly with rules light games, there's a lot of opportunity for parallel development.

Say you have a cyberpunk world, factionalized.

What would you call the 'good punks' of the setting? Not quite 'gangs', and avoiding just calling them 'hackers' or something, these guys are more like Shadowrunners.

To add some context, there are a few mega corps, a couple PMCs, and a spattering of gangs, all with various alignments and personalities. Just don't know how to do 'good punks'.

>>48812107
Mercs
Adventurers
Private Investigators
Milkmen
Free agents
Day players
Day traders
Contractors
Street Samurai
Cowboys
Vaqueros
Freelancers
Deniables (deniable assets)

>>48812182
I'm seconding Free Agents

>>48812661
I like that one too, sort of a sports reference you could extend to the rest of the nomenclature.

>Farm team
the b-list guys you hire for routine jobs

>Drafted
Got a cushy security job at a megacorp

>contract expired
Died on the job, what a shame

>>48810349
There is no antagonist player in Zombies!!! Fury of Dracula has an antagonist player but the lone antagonist is on the run here. Then there is Dead of Winter where you have a hidden antagonist.

>>48803312
You should take a look at Rolemaster.

>>48811872
Find out how.

>>48811874
Make it different. A fairly straight knock-off will backfire anyway - you will acquire a copy-cat reputation. Or, if you want to use the rules overall, ask the game company if you could hand them a business proposal. To license their system or to sell them your game.

>>48812107
Freedom Fighters
Operators
Black Ops
Shadow Ops

>>48813035
Oh! A hidden antagonist sounds fun.

>>48718856
what is this?

>Want to trdemark my game's name
>Already taken by a no name garbage game
Aw dang, I'm having a hard time coming up with a new name.

>>48730705
wat

>>48733620
Can you give us an example?

>>48801191
this sounds veeeery complicated. I don't see how can you hope to have enough variations.

>>48810654
So like pick three? That's new. I wonder if there are any other games that use that.

>>48806247
That gives us some ideas. Thanks.

>>48812107
I remember reading a book where the "good guys" punks that were free were called 'free-runners', cause they were free but constantly on the run.

>>48819142
So Mirror's Edge.

>>48820222
This predates that, but you could look at it like that too i guess.

Ursus, if you're here hop on roll20.

I have a long running group and they're good at roleplaying and they show up and make me feel valuable as a person, but they're also idiots. I have plenty of RPG-playing friends but none of them are interested in design. I want to playtest my new game; is there any good venue for that?

>>48822848
It's like you think idiots won't play your game or something. Play test it awhile with them their pea brained perspective might see something you gargantuan brain did not.

>>48816062
I created a system for rolling d20s to generate the size, geography, climate, biome, and political system of a continent. None of it requires a computer or math, and the information can be stored a simple printed paper form for when you want to create maps later.

>>48823521
This. Building a game is a complicated process, even simpler games, and doing it solo will blind you to obvious errors all over the place.

After first playtesting my smaller board game I made edits to 50% of the cards, and almost all of them were in retrospect obvious.

It took the players no time to figure them out.

>>48822848
Just make it functional enough for testplay, then play it with your friends. That's what I did on the last weekend. They didn't have much interest in the game before. But now that most of it has been done and they played it, they were intrigued and I got quite a few helpful hints.

>>48823733
Most sci-fi games have world generators. Traveller had it since the 80s.

>>48823765
Keep in mind Roleplaying systems are a totally different beast than a tabletop game with obvious win/lose conditions.

The ability to even *identify* a problem in an RPG requires a tremendously strong vision for the "feel" you want and a good grasp of group psychology to enact necessary changes instead of just blaming your players or Blaming The GM™

>>48824285
I can't say I looked up alternatives or the history of world generators but examining it now online, Traveler least seems extremely shallow. Almost more like a novelty system for inspiring a real setting than anything meaningful

Can't decide if I want to make a setting for my wuxia/high fantasy game or not. A setting would help to steer development but one of my aspects of games like D&D is the ability for the GM to make their own setting.

>>48751009
>Each tile adds a monster/trap
You gonna need a really tall pile of traps and monsters...
About size, just multiply your unit base size by 4 and you're going to have the length of a tile size. Then you need to think how/when/where this game would be played and think which tables would be available and see if you game would fit...

>>48761968
Everything seems fine, you just need to balance it and make it a little more immersive (optional), other than that you need to be very careful with your balancing. Heavy cards are going to be turned into medium while casting the cheap ones at first, later in game the game reverses using cheap cards as medium and playing your high cost ones...

>>48777469
There's a game where you play as a community of monsters trying to rebuild your lair, a bit similar to what you're looking for. My advice would be to use time and people as a resource to advance your village, thus limiting what they can do. About new players joining later it's a bit of a no brainer,, someone new arrives in town someone with great ambition, supposing you're using those said resources, make him start with less resources to contribute to the village and make him gain more resources as the players start to trust him (also it should be good to have a rule to kick someone out of town, or at least to reduce the power of a player, but it should be very expensive)

>>48801191
That's not hard, as you said yourself, all you need is some tables (or an app) where you can roll a new character whenever you want, the real problem is world against character tracking, you're either using them for advancing world plotlines or using them do advance character plotlines (that is when it's not about Major NPCs)

>>48805769
Yeah, but it's a bit more of an escape rather than a survival game, I remember another competitive game where each player had to defend his own house and use his resources to send more zombies to his opponents (last man standing)

>>48824777
I believe your choice is kind of the same as mine...But it's quite simple in truth, do you want to develop a game or a setting? Okay, should you decide for a game, what mechanics do you have in mind and do they really depend on your setting? And even if you do, do you need your whole setting fleshed out in order to develop your game?

Thinking about those, I have a setting in mind that I use to steer some of my choices, but this setting is not ready and I will not work on it until I have most of my system ready. For me my own system is more important than my setting, the world I developed is interesting but any world running on the same rules as mine would be.
(working on a street-to-global urban fantasy game about power struggles)

>>48824777
Comes down to how developed the setting would be. DnD has a setting, but it was so under-developed that people didn't care. They've been trying to rebrand it with switching from Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms as the default setting, but its too late for that.

>>48828598
>Heavy cards are going to be turned into medium while casting the cheap ones at first
High level cards would tend to have higher RC for this reason. Using your late game powerhouse as a medium means you risk never having enough RP to cast it.

>>48830776
Forgotten Realms is a horrendous default setting though.

>>48828810
>>48830776
I think I'll compromise with an infinite plane, of which there is one area detailed by the books as a default or example. I think setting up the effects of how magic and spirits affect society (like the jianghu and wulin) is crucial for differentiating my game from complex wuxia combat slapped onto generic fantasy.

>>48833194
That said, any opinions of how much crunch in combat is too much? I've got ideas for stamina as action economy, grids and facing, defense rolls, weapon ranges, locational damage, weapon-unique abilities, special materials, special effects for critical hits and critical defense, social combat in the middle of melee combat, you name it.

>>48833269
Oh yeah, and a dual hp/wounds system. I've done a lot of research but I haven't made a lot of decisions. I want to give tons of tactical and strategic depth but I know that a simple engagement taking an hour to resolve can be painful.

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Just curious before I start working on something.

Is there an existing system that attempts to convert MegaMan Battle Network type combat to a tabletop game? I don't necessarily want to make a MegaMan game, but once rulesets are laid out and all that, you never know.

>>48834270
Someone here was already working on that or something

So I had an idea for a game. You have your nine stereotypical traits (Strength, Willpower, etc.) and you have to divide them into three groups: what your character is good at, what they are average at, and what they are bad at. Good traits start at 15, average at 10, bad at 5. Then to make a check you just roll 1d20 and aim to get equal or below your traits value. Still in the works but my players and I usually go for stuff more story than rules driven and Id love some input. I also feel like it might have already been made, so of something like this exist maybe point me in that direction to see how they made it work for their game.

>>48835445
The concept is solid. The numbers are always where some of that gets interesting, but if you design around 75%-50%-25% then it'll work out fine.

shitpost

>>48835445
Sounds similar to GURPS, but with d20 instead of 3d6. Some points I'd like to make.

Nine attributes is a lot, so a robust skill system would probably be a bit much to keep track of. If you're aiming to be rules light (and it seems like you are), then I wouldn't recommend having skills. At the very most, wide backgrounds (EG Sailor, Doctor, Thief, Hacker, etc) that provide a bonus in certain circumstances would be the most I would add.

Contests might be annoying for some people. The obvious thing would be to do what GURPS does and keep track of the difference between your roll and your Trait and then the person who gets the higher difference wins.

Also, you should consider how your Traits progress. What's the absolute cap on a Trait? When and how can you raise Traits? Can Traits be lowered? Is there any restriction on how high an Average or Poor Trait can be? Is that restriction relative to the tier above? Etc.

And finally - make sure that there are strong reasons to take every Trait. With nine in total it's going to be difficult to completely balance them, but so long as there are good reasons to take them, you should be alright.

In general, if there's a Trait you can't do much with for, there should be some sort of important benefit or a dangerous thing it protects against. Take Constitution in D&D for example - you can't do anything with Constitution, but it gives you precious, precious bonus HP and protects you against nasty spells like Disintegrate and deadly poison.