Game Design General - /gdg/

>>49528411
Shouldn't system pdfs be posted on the front page rather than on a single board? Wouldn't it be better to have systems posted as their own threads, in order to increase both the viewership, and put systems through a better peer Review? Wasn't the front page originally a sort of gauntlet for homebrew systems?

>>49528442
why have 10 threads for games that die in 3 posts when you can have a single thread that dies in 30?

Okay so what's the max level in your game?

>>49528842
15. Not that that says much without context.

>>49528842
Depends how long it takes to max the 30-some-odd checks.

Make a game using any combination of dice, 52 deck and/or pen and paper.

What's the best application to make PDFs? I've tried 7-PDF but it keeps freezing during installation.

>>49528842

One thousand levels. And every time you gain a level you must allocate 100 skill points and select up to three feats.

I'm kidding. It's six.

I don't know where else to ask this, but what crimes would people do for money?

>>49529739

...Are you asking what crimes *we* would do for money, or people in general?

>>49529739
Which people?

Because otherwise the answer is "any of them"

>>49529796
>>49529811
People in general. Specifically people willing to do crimes for money. I've got heists and assassinations so far, but I'm drawing a blank beyond that.

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>>49528411

Do anyone know how where to find game designers in your city? I'm at Montreal

I want to hire one but I don't know where to find them. There got to be a better way than using craigslist.

>>49529841
Fraud
Theft
Prostitution
Contraband
Depending on the setting, hacking

Why do you need this again? We can give better help if we know your purpose.

>>49530193
I'm creating a system based around crime and mobs during the 1970's. I'd include the full rules but I don't have Word or a PDF converter yet.

>>49530226
Okay, so then you should ask what crimes people committed for money in the 1970's.

You could use this site for ideas:
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/OneYearofData.cfm?NoVariables=Y&CFID=132007181&CFTOKEN=d79e9b26e0e3ff81-23722E70-CBC3-47E2-CBE128A68A0007F1

>>49530291
Okay, thanks for the help! This helps trememdously.

>>49530193
Don't forget racketeering, extortion and "insurance" sales, forgery, and guarding any of the above.

GM perks, yes or no?

I really like PbtA's GM moves concept, less as a rigid set of restrictions and more as guidance for keeping the story going at a good pace. I also like Ryuutama's concept of the ryuujin, a mysterious GM character who shows up occasionally to help move the plot along that belongs to one of four classes.

In my game, characters choose and combine multiple classes, so why shouldn't the GM? I have a few ideas about what kind of abilities a GM could unlock. Using PbtA's GM moves as a basis, GMs could select traits that increase challenge for the players (and give them extra rewards) or make things easier for the players.

For example, maybe there's a choice between:
>Bigger, Badder Badness: When you warn of future badness, it's always worse than the characters anticipate, but they always gain extra XP.
>Pass It Back and Forth: When you Barf Forth Apocalyptica, each player can do the same; choose one of their ideas, but don't reveal which.
>Tick Tock Clock: When you make a progress clock, every other step should directly impact the players; if they can overcome these extra challenges, reward them with double XP once the clock is resolved.

>>49529739
Stealing. Theft. Burglary. Robbery. Pickpocketing. Taking without consent.

Also murder, grand theft auto, treason, or anything else at all.

>>49529739
fixing e-sports matches

What is a way of approaching the RPG on an essential component to essential component basis? For writing the rules. I've got so far:

>How to check if a character can do something?
>How, specifically, does time pass (when this matters)?
>How do you describe a character? (And, subsequently, "How does a character grow?")


I get the feeling that these are the first questions I should answer, before answering questions about the setting, like, "What is magic?" or "What is a longsword?"

>>49528842
There are no levels. Just opportunities for progress, and risks of becoming debilitated.

>>49531072
What do player characters do, and why?

>>49530133
Please never trust anyone who would call themselves a game designer. Never give them money. Look up games that you respect from a design angle, then research the people who made those.

Even if you asked me to work for you, you would have to give me 60% royalties and bring a lot to take yourself if you wanted me to seriously try and not just take your money

>>49530584
I don't really get any of this.

>>49531147
Have you read both the games I'm referencing?

>>49531213
Nope. I was hoping you'd explain

>>49531072
Brainstorm a typical campaign scenario, then add an item, check, stat and rule for everything in it. Brainstorm a different one and add to the rules & lists. Rinse & repeat. You can also use the info in the OP and relevant rulebooks for guidance and inspiration.

Bumping with a question: is there any good programs to simulate NPC movement, like sweeping an area for players or roaming an area they're guarding?

I'm working on my dream RPG system and I'm happy with it, but I know it will not become popular because it's not a gimmick/buzzword thing. I feel like starting a shit game with maximum gimmicks so it can draw people in. Hopefully they'll check out the good system after.

Good idea?

>>49531838
Nah man, just drop a pdf here. If people wanna play it, volunteer to GM or something since it's yours. People wanna play fun games, not gimmicky ones.

Speaking of which, do we have a game testing general or is the Game Finder good enough?

Have you ever commercialized an original system? Do you personally know someone who has?

>>49529739
Do some research on scams? Ring dropping, change raising, pyramid schemes, and the like.

>>49531072
"What's my game about," for one. What makes the world different than ours, what roles are the characters playing, what kinds of challenges will they face?

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I'm currently doing a little homebrew system. The idea is to keep everything as simple as possible. Having this in mind, does this make sense for magic attacks?

The idea is that even all magic attacks do some damage, obviously some are more effective than others.

>>49532874
Sorry for shit pic, I'm currently on the phone.

>>49532874
Yeah, I mean that's pretty much standard. Although you may want to consider what a Rock, Wind, and Water attack actually are. Ultimately they're all about hitting something with a lot of mass, unlike the distinct effects fire and lightning have on a target.

>>49533006
It's more a guideline for DMs as what to expect when some player says "I'll throw a fireball against that water elemental"; but i get your point.

bamppu

>>49534223
double bampuu

>>49528842
6

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the quest for the last knowledge trait continues

>>49535928
Oh, you opted for that kind of approach...

How about Anatomy or Medicine?

>>49536803
This is actually closer the very first approach I had, it's mostly an attempt to bring back the things that worked in the first version without entirely reverting to the first version.

I considered Medicine, but I'm not entirely sure if it would work (healing spells would use arcanism, medkits would use tech, potions are just items) so I'm not sure what kind of specializations it would bring at the table that wouldn't be better off as an abstract/general specialization in itself

>>49536840
Anatomy could be better, in that case (I reckon).

You can:
-Use it for medicine (surgery at worst)
-Use it for torture
-Use it for combat (kind of, if you want to stab them to an artery or something)
-Use it for psychology etc.

I guess.

Another possibility could be to separate scrounging / investigation from Survival to it's own trait? They are different in practice, methinks.

What's the fewest number of "elements" you can have in a rock-paper-scissor relationship without the players feeling limited? Like, if there's only the standard 3, there's no choice involved - rock should always be chosen when playing scissors. I was thinking 7 or 9 would present decent options without having so many some would never get used.

>>49537309
That is a big question, a little ill-defined, maybe.

If you have RPS relationship, does that mean that R beats S at least 90% of the time, or just 75% of the time?

Because that is an important distinction, and depending on the game, subverting those percentages would be part of the game.

Thus, it all comes down to balancing. You can make do with only three elements, if the breadth of each element is larger than "wins / gains advantage over x".

What is the reason for the RPS in the system? What do you want to evoke with it? Is it to limit choices or to make the choices give-and-take? Do the elements have more depth than "beats x" and "loses to y"?

If there are 7-9 elements, do all elements have 3-4 weaknesses and strengths, or are they singular?

These are very important questions. Try to formulate your question again, see the core of the question and see if you might actually figure it out yourself, be it through personal preference or some internal logic.

>>49537478
Hmmmmm, I have to think more about your first point. I was thinking just in absolutes, not relative values. I would like for a poor decision to not spell doom alone, but at the same time I don't want the advantage so small I need to invoke the law of large numbers to make the advantage apparent.

I know I'm definitely thinking all elements would have 3-4 weaknesses/strengths, rather than singular, since any "draws" would likely result in stats and dice rolls resolving things instead of tactics (which isn't an inherently bad thing, but it is something I'm trying to avoid with this game).

This was a really great response, thanks. Hopefully I can flesh out what I'm trying to get at better on the way home.

>>49535928
What's the difference between Arcanism and Channeling?

>>49538135
arcanism is various forms of academic and natural magic that use the spirit of the character in order to draw magical energy to cast spells through the use of catalysts

channeling is borrowing that power from another being, force, or source of energy for a different kind of magic

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l'm doing a bestiary right now. What should l put on it?

>>49538606
We can pitch you only so much if we don't know what you're working on. Is it modern fantasy? Generic fantasy? Sci-fi?

What are monsters? Are they just dangerous inhabitants of the wild, constructs, physical representations of concepts?

Even though depends on the setting is overused, on something as integral as fauna / megafauna of the world, some things need explaining.

I say put Strix in, whatever the setting though.

They are birds with long golden beaks that they use to suck the blood of infants, their favorite victims. They also have wings, usually red, and four black legs, all with clawed feet. Their eyes are yellow and round, without pupils.

To double the creepy, make them uncanny humanoids. Freakiest vampires you can get.

>>49538606
Owlbear

>>49538968
Yea its a generic fantasy thing.

>>49539157
Then make a plethora of Chimaeras, made of different fucked-up parts.

Like a snake-owl, human-eel or something equally weird.

>>49538606
The Shark-bear, which is known to have a symbiotic relationship, where Spider-hornets build nests on their back fin.

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First PDF of the rules, feedback appreciated.

>>49539753
I was trying to not sound too meme-ish with the hornets, but bees actually make more sense. The Spider-bees attach their hives to the backs of a Shark-bear, which gives them protection and mobility to collect pollen. The Shark-bear occasionally rubs against a tree or rock to force out some honey from the webby like hive structure and licks it up, its thick fur and scales protecting it from the angered Spider-bees.

>>49528442
>>49528448
Seriously, they drown under the hundred mtg/40k/dnd threads. Best to do both.

>>49531838
I'd be interested in playtesting this with my group if it has neat mechanics for dreams, and if you're willing to share details about it.

So I thought of a life system for a TGC.

King - You have a King, who is very similar to a normal creature. You lose the game if your King is destroyed. The King has 5 strength, and we're going for around MtG number scaling. It's okay, but its strength is boosted by...
Crowns - Crown is a card type and you start with five basic ones. They(the basic ones at least) have 1 strength(but things that aren't creatures cannot attack or block) and can be reanimated or bounced because they are actual cards and not tokens. Each Crown you control increases your King's strength by 1. Crowns and Kings can always be attacked. Your King can attack and block like a normal creature, however doing so will cause you to sacrifice all of your Crowns. That is, unless, you have...
Nobility - Nobility is a quality that some permanents have(marked by a number of ornate seals somewhere on the card) that let you retain some or all of your Crowns when the King initiates combat. Each seal among your permanents lets you retain 1 Crown, and many of the cards with Nobility are themselves Crowns.

The point about Crowns always being attackable is because I'm going with Duel Masters combat where normally only tapped creatures can be attacked, and Crowns can also be creatures.

>>49528842
20ish. Slower progression then.

>>49529158
Pirate the Adobe PDF thingy, it's the very best on the market.

>>49538606
The regular bois, the Goblin, the Orc, the Bugbear, the Ogre, the Zombie/Skeleton/Vampire/Lich.

Put in your regular fantasy foes and some of your own spins there. This way fellow GMs will know the relative power level of such creatures.

>>49539779
Sorry to be rude, but ugly font; not easy to read quickly.
I personally dislike the secondary derived attributes that use division. Might bog down parts of the game.
I'm confused with the %-based perks. Maybe they should be "-3 on firearm use" for Firearm trained people? 20% better lockpicking doesn't tell me anything. D&D alignments are a bit of a hassle.
The crippling and dying rules are great. Fatigue and stress don't seem to add much meaningful deals to the players.
You have too many weapons of which most wouldn't be readily available to criminal elements. Distance shouldn't play much here, it's a criminal-skirmish (under 100meters) not a sniper-squad simulator; you could drop the dist column.

All in all, it's okay, needs work. The base mechanics are solid, and the other bits could use some trimming.

"It seems that perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."

>>49529158
i personally make them in illustrator, bretty gud

>>49541417
A few of the percentages were tacked on without thought just as placeholders, but they only act as a modifier, rounding to the nearest whole number. It seemed easier to do than fractions. I have toned down the ammount of weapons and cars, and I'm going to add the rest of the charts before I release it again. Thanks m8

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Would you play a DnD clone with Animal Crossing like characters fighting giant bugs?

>>49528411
How would I balance a poison damage that deals a percentage of max health and doubles over time (1%,2%,4%,8%,16%)

>>49544087
Every unit of time, roll a die system, and for every roll increade the chance of successfully overcoming it.

>>49544375
so say every other turn you roll 1d10, and to break the poison effect you have to get a 1, then a 2 or a 1 then 1-3 and so on?

I have items that purge in here as well, some are held on the person and purge automatically at 50% or below max health, some take a turn to use

do you think a percentage cap is a good idea, say capping it at 16%

>>49544528
Yeah, something like that. I don't know about the purge mechanic though, at least on items where it could overdo the effect & waste healing. But I do like the percentage cap idea if it was bumped to 20%.

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Hey /tg/ how do you all feel about a TCG based on the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series? I know that this is usually based around tabletop games but I'm not sure where else to ask, and I plan to mock up some cards once I've figured out the basic mechanics.

Here's something I can up with. Let me know what you all think, y/n/fgt.

http://pastebin.com/yBU3rB8M

>>49543927
how is that even a question
of fucking course

I've been working on an ammunition mechanic which I think might be hitting the sweet spot in terms of how crunchy I want the system to be. It's not quite as relevant with a bow-only setting but when you have weapons that need to reload it becomes more useful.

1: Game has forgiving but present encumbrance limits
2: If you choose to carry backup ammo you have unlimited ammo, but it increases encumbrance.

Characters just keep track of their magazine capacity and have a binary "yes/no" answer to whether or not they can reload. Players may choose to go without reloads if encumbrance demands it.

Likewise grenades and other disposable tools have a minor, moderate, or severe encumbrance penalty for single use, double use, or infinite use.

The idea is to keep bookkeeping to a minimal while still enforcing scarcity when it's advantageous.

>>49548093
Sounds good to me
I'm gonna steal it now

>>49543543
sorry I had more negative things to mention than positive ones, it was 3AM.

>>49544087
% is a really wonky thing in pen and paper unless it's d% roll under. Maybe have it work in 10% increments? Much easier to quickly do /10 then /20. Depends on your HP system and lethality of combat and tone of game.

Balance is subjective anon; if there's poison, there's antidotes and cure spells. If you're geared you live, if you're not you die. That's a lesson.
Depends on how gritty you wanna go; IRL most poisons will take you out for a day or a week (black widow's bites are survivable), and don't go away on their own quickly. Shit's tough but survivable, and you're not going to be heroic with a heavy headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and heavy pain in the bitten location.

In video games (and some RPGs), poison's usually a bad choice because a instantly-dead target's a lot more worth to you than a living poisoned one (an orc with 1% HP fights as well as an orc with 125% HP). See how much you like poison and how effective it should be.

Mine's at 1d6 damage per round until cured + maybe some minor status effects in a system where most folk walk around with 3HP, players have 5-15HP and bosses have 10-50HP.

>>49548093
This is nice as long as players are on track. There isn't actually infinite gear, just more than enough for the mission. They should "restock" on that gear between missions.

Apply penalties (loss of infinity) when they attempt to share gear among themselves or waste it.

What are your encumbrance levels and what stat defines it? I toyed around with a d20-dark souls homebrew a long time ago and hit a dark-soulsy feel for currently equipped encumbrance.

>>49545295
I'm doing about the same thing, but I'm going for more of a D&D style

you wouldn't happen to know King, would you?

>>49549751
I currently have three different kinds of curative items, one is held by the PC, and automatically purges at 50% health, another can be used for an instant purge, but takes up an entire turn, and a third purges after three turns, and can be used at any time, and does not cost anything other than the item itself.

>>49550123
A PMD thing? Maybe we could work on it together?

>>49550397
yeah, all the hard work has already been don thanks to Nintendo, I just need to translate the existing mechanics to dice and coin flip, 1d30 takes care of IVs rather nicely. I'm just starting this, and if you wanna help, I can post the google doc

>>49550428
I certainly would. I should note that EVs and IVs do not exist in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon as pokémon have fixed stats for each level. If you want to generate them anyway I would use 6d6 - 5 to generate a more cushioned distribution.

Page 10 rescue!

My game has three types of dice:

>Success die determines whether you succeed/fail
>Opportunity die determines whether you get a positive or negative repercussion (called opportunity/consequence, respectively)
>Bonus dice can be subbed in for either of these two

Each individual die is rolled against a TN from 1-6 to determine whether it passes or fails, but this leads to some odd situations:

>I got a fail on the success die
>I got a success on the opportunity die

So what should I call these things? Should I rename the dice, or should I change "success" and "failure" to something else?

>>49553037
That makes sense; you fail at what you were doing initially, but instead of being punished, an alternate opportunity presents itself.

Also thinking of getting rid of weapon damage in my game - on a successful attack, you simply do damage equal to your level (the max level is five).

The weapons and armor are part of the characters' spirits, and they invest XP to add "keywords" like "burning", "jagged", etc. that have special effects.

>>49553109
But does the terminology make sense? Is it clear enough?

>>49553368
I might change them to be tests of action vs test of consequence/aftermath/opportunity, so that you can still use success and failure to refer to the results without confusion.

>>49550542
cool

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zvKpfrgOupKmjvBw5NStw1An06uxAl4gszwAeIaJ9N4/edit?usp=sharing

Do you ever have days where you feel really productive? Just overhauled all ~20 pages of my game today! It's still missing a lot of stuff, but it gets better with very revision.

>>49556608
Nice! Was making headway earlier, but then life butted in.

First time doing tabletop rules here. Any tips? Any common mistakes?

>>49556608
I usually work in bursts. Having constant inspiration rolling in helps, like watching movies just so you could rip off ideas and such.

>>49557171
Keep it simple stupid. Have a solid base mechanic and idea.
D&D is basically roll 1d20, add number(s) against Target Number or opposed roll. That's is, the other thousands of splatbooks are just flavor.
Don't rip off something too much.
Don't do zany dice mechanics (6d4+lunar cycle), anydice.com anything you come up with. Don't have mods (dice+mod) be higher than three-quarters of the die (a d20 should have no more than a +15 bonus or shit gets fucked up, likewise a 3d6 shouldn't have more than a +10 to a roll).

Write for yourself first; most players won't read it and if you share it here we're most likely gonna piece together what you meant. Keep the wordcount low.

Save everything you write no matter how dumb it may look. Say, a deck mechanic won't work in a modern gun game/setting, but it might work in a fantasy one. Save older versions of your system, maybe skim them later. Keep it somewhere online backed up too.

Playtest, playtest, playtest, both solo and with powergamers trying to bend your system.

Personal pet peeves are %-based mechanics in non-% systems and division because most numbers godda be rounded down. And zany dice pools like using 5d8s or 6d12s 'cause some people (eastern euro fucks) don't have many of those laying around.

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Second revision: better font, along with a few tables and some minor changes.

Dumping a potential idea, free for the taking: dice pools pre-rolled with limits based on your stats.

Roll your dice pool at the start of the session. Commit dice to actions whenever you want with the number of dice you can commit limited by your stat/skill, then set those dice aside in a discard pile. When your pool is empty you reroll it.
You can reroll manually by suffering a penalty - maybe -1 die when forcing a mulligan? Or allow rerolling your pool when taking an action but it reduces your limit for that action by 1.
Another way to mulligan would be from special abilities and circumstances like committing a special 'sweet spot' value depending on the action that the DM shouldn't disclose. That would encourage players to actually learn and remember where the sweet spots lie for different tasks because it lets them refresh their resource pool without having to commit bad values to tasks. For attacking something, you might know the exact TN ahead of time but the sweet spot depends on the target, so it's target knowledge that allows you to refresh your pool and you learn by experimenting and committing different values. I'd also even encourage people designing enemies to have the 'sweet spot' be a failure point on tougher enemies.

Personally, I'd use d6 for this because they're easiest to get in bulk and are most stable for keeping laying around. d10s are the only other good die for this acquisition-wise but they tip too easily, other dice would require buying a bulk pack to get enough of them to play which is undesirable (especially for a pool-based game - each player might be using 12 dice or so, so for four players you're using 48 dice plus whatever the DM needs - which I'd rule that minion-type enemies just roll their limit as they go along, while rivals use a pool just like the players, so the DM will need a shitload of dice too).
Set your overall pool based on your total stats, probably. Skills could contribute rolled-as-you-go bonus dice, too.

2000 chars

>>49540727
Haha I meant dream as in ideal

There is sort of a dream mode of play though...

>>49549751
Carrying capacity is determined by strength. Strength ranges between 1-12 with 3 being average, 7 being the normal human maximum, and 12 being the augmented maximum (sci-fi setting). Characters get 5 carrying capacity per strength. Weapons and armor use capacity between 1-6 depending on size, reusable equipment uses 1 capacity per item, and disposable items like ammo use 1 capacity per refill level.

If you stay under carrying capacity there are no penalties, dodge and speed decreased by 1 if your surpass your limit, and an additional 1 for every increment of 5 points that (1-4=-1, 5-9=-2, 10-14=-3, etc).

RefillLevels
Level 1:You have the ammunition in your gun or a single disposable item.
Level 2: You have a single reload or two disposable items.
Level 3: You have as many reloads or disposable items as you need, effectively infinite.
Level 4+: You have as many refills as you need, plus buffer for daily losses.

If you share or waste ammunition or disposable items your refill level for that item goes down by one. At the end of the day if you used that item you must pay upkeep at an appropriate store or the level degrades by one.

don't you die on me

>>49528411
Would anyone here use analogue random map generators? Or are online resources good/fast enough to sort of obviate the need for them?

What would you look for in a dungeon, hex map, or city map generator?

I've got most of a hex map generator, an idea for a city map generator, and basically nothing for dungeons. FWIW.

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>>49563899
A generated map. I don't have a system for roads, rivers, or keys just yet.

>>49538606
>>49539157
For generic fantasy, it might be best to make sure and put a robust and simple monster creation system front and center. Broadly generic games benefit a lot from being able to port whatever the hell you want in.

Then you could do samples by category. Instead of presenting your definitive vampire, present a few ways vampires might be handled under your system, for example. Same for dragons, demons, whatever other broad categories suit your game.

Maybe follow this with a deep all-fluff bestiary with insane quantities of creatures with brief but colorful hooks or rumors. "The typhic beasts were born from the blood of a rampaging mad god. They carry their parent's all consuming hatred but none of his intellect or charm. For the most part they are sealed beneath the earth behind wards and guardians, but the unwary or psychotic sometimes raise them." That sort of thing.

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Hi /tg/ and /gdg/

I'm working on a large scale map-based asymmetrical fantasy wargame, and I need some help with the visuals.

What are good color choices to nicely identify about 12 different factions on 1 inch square chits? The map itself will be in muted greens, blues and yellows.

But I'm generally completely clueless in design, so how the fuck do I design nice counters?

>>49564979
Blue, red, yellow, black, white, and green are pretty standard for game pieces. Also usually the pieces are a lot darker/more saturated than boards and maps.

If anything I think it's your map that's a little hard to read. Seems like it might be hard to tell water from mountains at a glance. Or plains from forests. Or plains from deserts, depending on the lighting.

>>49565033
They will still have a pattern. Plain areas will be empty color, forests will have black little trees, etc.

Man, coming up with class features is harder than I thought.

>>49565099
Depending on your scale, texture doesn't do much to distinguish facets of your map at a glance vs. hue, saturation, or (most of all) value.

>>49565194
Maybe you have too many classes to consider?

>>49565248
thats why I combine symbolic textures with slight hue differences.the mountain grey and water blue may be similar but mountain will have huge angles while water will have small squggly lines while forest will have small on/off-button-logos while desert will have dots. that should be distinguishable.

Back to my question:
Is there a guideline how I get the most differentiation out of the color wheel?

>>49565569
I mean... on the wheel you just use evenly spaced hues.

I still think that you might at least think about your value structure on your land vs water. It's extremely helpful/common to use a strong value contrast between those two. For myself, I made this guy: >>49564169

Went with a light pink for plains as default/easily traversible terrain, dark as fuck water, and middle range values for forest (green), hills (orange), and mountains (red). Also mountains and hills have a more similar hue so you can kind of see the mountainous/foothills region as a unit at a glance while forests are a complementary hue and should pop out at least on that basis.

If I replaced my palette with yours, it would be much harder to read the map. You don't have to use my colors. Your instinct to desaturate and lean light is okay given your intent to place pieces over the field, but you're still not using nearly the range of hues or values available to you and you run the risk of making stuff hard to read that way.

>>49528842
No levels, but almost everything (stats, skills, abilities) cap at 5.

It's easy to cap something if you focus on it to the exclusion of all else, but that'll lead to uselessness in any situation not involving it.

With a moderately high mortality rate, players are encouraged to diversify.

>>49565657
>I mean... on the wheel you just use evenly spaced hues.
Is there a tool where I can try this out?

>If I replaced my palette with yours, it would be much harder to read the map. You don't have to use my colors. Your instinct to desaturate and lean light is okay given your intent to place pieces over the field, but you're still not using nearly the range of hues or values available to you and you run the risk of making stuff hard to read that way.

It's a map with fairly large, non-geometrical territories, so it's quite visible. a bolder color scheme would just make the map pop too much, I'm pretty confident in that.

>>49565295
I'm having trouble making the big four (Warrior, Thief, Wizard and Priest). Each needs five moves and five traits. The moves are going okay but my system is so simple that I'm having trouble coming up with good passives.

>>49565846
>is there a tool
Most programs I've worked with have hsb or hsv sliders. Those and your eyeballs should be plenty.

>>49566187
Could they get free rerolls on checks related to their class?

>>49566187
Mine goes like, D&D clone.
Fighter - +1 Perk, can use any weap/armor/shield, +1 speed/initiative while armored.
Thief - +1 reroll (any roll ever, including treasure rolls the GM makes), 1 nullify any attack (Dark Souls' I-frames roll), 2x damage sneak attack.
Wizard - Identifies items, can cast Arcane spells, can Divine (get hints from GM about things).
Cleric - Surgery (reattach limbs), can cast Divine spells, can pray while resting (prayer gets +1d6 to specific action, even treasure rolls).
Shaman/Elementalist - Can use Elemental magic, Survival bonus (roll twice for random encounters and use the better roll), can invoke element while resting for aid (say a Fire Shaman can use fire spirits as a forge to blacksmith).

Many classes are combination of these (Ranger is Fighter/Shaman, Paladin is Fighter/Cleric, Bard is Thief/Wizard, and so on). Multiclassing's simple, cheap and easy with me.
You can even evolve classes (didn't work this out quite yet), say a Cleric can become a Templar or Inquisitor and gain new passives/actives.
All this "costs a feat" sort of, only I give out one feat per level so the powerlevel of PCs grows really quick.

>>49561128
I can dig it. I might use some combination of that and LotFP's system for my own project

System for a medieval fantasy game, I need your opinion on something.

4 stats: strenght, dexterity, spirit and wisdom

PBTA system: roll 2d6 + stat (-1 to 3). 10 is a success, 7 is a partial success

each character gets 1-2 skills:

Acrobacy
Awareness
Medicine
Survival
Stealth
Deception
Endurance
Guild's lore (choose a guild)

Characters get skill dice equal to half their level. They can spend a skill die to add it to any 2d6 roll, making it a 3d6 roll (add everything) or even spending various skill dice at once (4d6, etc)

That's it. What I've still have to decide is: Do i use HP or not? Depending on this, I'll have to handle weapon proficency and spells differently. I procceed to explain both branches:

>Using HP

-Each character has 2d6 hp; whenever they rest they can re-roll it and keep the result if is better than the current value.

-Small weapons do 1d6, medium 1d6+1, two handed weapons do 1d6+2 damage.

-each character gets one weapon expertise. They do +1 damage for each odd level they have. Alternativelly, they can choose magic as weapon, getting 1 spell every odd level. (there are only 6 spells in the game)

>no HP

When a character is injured, armor is damaged and get -1 armor point (so armor is an HP substitute). An unarmored character must roll Endurance to stay in the fight.

Weapon proficiencies are added as a skill
"weapon mastery: sword" or whatever weapon you choose. Every character can choose having proficiency or choose a second non-combat skill

when on a fight, big weapons are better than small weapons because they hit first (because range). So a barbarian with a two handed sword would have preference to hit a guy with a one handed sword and a shield. But the later would have an extra armor point to spend if he's hit.

This is actually my favourite choice, but I don't know how I would add the spells. The logical thing is to make a "magic" skill. If you have it, you learn 1 spell every odd level or something.

Any Opinions?

>>49566187
the priest is just a wizard sub class. trash it too.

>>49569099
Given that priests tend to have higher educations than most and typically have access to vast libraries, wouldn't the Wizard be a sub-class of Priest?

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Sup, been a while since I posted here. I've been developing a game called 'The 12 Towers' for almost 1 year.

Recently picked up the pace and started working on the 3rd beta edition.

Game details on this crappy page I made on BGG
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/202491/12-towers

TL:DR: Heavy PvP / Lite RP / Team and FFA gameplay

Here's my question; Been working on a new design for the game cards. Right now my current project is Event Cards. Simply put, as players explore, they "run into" various secrets, battles and locations. Originally the top section of the card has some crappy artwork I did myself. Now I'm working on a system that includes a little lore, and a general idea of what the card can do for you.

Good/bad idea? Personally I'm liking it, it's saving me a ton of time. Don't want it to be too much bloat though.

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>>49569453
This is the 2nd edition of the game, new one is getting a redesigned board, and fixed cards.

>>49569453
>>49569466
I recall the earliest threads you posted about this - it's come a long way!

As for the Event Deck suggestion... what's the purpose of the deck? Is it to make the game "swingier" and more randomized? Is it to incentivize players who explore rather than directly engage the opponent? Is it just to pad out the length of the game?

Aesthetics wise I would re-consider some of the colour hues chosen with the text. Both the Brown and Purple cards are much harder to read with black text.

>>49566702
That's one possibility, yeah. Each class also grants a skill (warrior grants military, thief grants skullduggery, wizard grants sciences and priest grants faith) that gives them special bonuses when they make rolls related to those areas, so that design space is kind of ate up.

Each class also gets specific weapons and armor, but because you can keep your traits when you multiclass but not your weapon/armor I'm afraid to tie traits into those - something like +1 sword damage is obviously useless when you have a staff.

I also worry about making things too combat centric. Warrior is the most complete class right now, all his moves deal with strategy (ie Retreat! and Advance! could be a metaphorical retreat in a social situation) and his traits all deal with imposing on the situation. Some of them are also named after Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

My guiding principle right now is: moves are "I do..." while traits are "When I..."

>>49567107
Saved, some of these would fit well in my game. I too have combo classes that will need to be fleshed out, but I want to plautest the basics first.

>>49569099
Not in this game. Wizards study black magic, priests believe in white magic. There are four approaches (force, guile, passion and logic) that all align with a specific class.

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>>49569944
A little bit of all of that. It adds a slight background to the game, distraction from the combat, and incentive to gain more cards. (The pass and destroy option is one of the very few ways to gain more item cards).

I'll definitely fix the coloring, this is all once again done with Autodesk Sketchbook and MSPaint. Just for the sake of making a better and easier game to test.

After a meh summer of testing (not BAD reviews, but a big ol' pile of stuff to fix) gearing up for the next adventure of testing, once this is all printed.

Also, new board design as well. The circle pathway board worked great, but it became very cramped. New version will have a hexagon battle grid.

What do you guys think of having wind direction and speed affect naval combat? I'm thinking of some movement rules where ships can't go backwards or sideways. They can only change direction as they go forward. I already have wind speed and direction affect things on the "overland map" So I'm thinking of a sort of thing where the direction of wind and its intensity oriented to the ship affects movement cost.

I'm trying to think of a simple way to make it though I'm worried that subsystem will get too complex unless I find somewhere to trim fat.
The game is a high renaissance/early modern deal and I want to run a colonialism campaign with it though. So I want naval combat to "feel right."

>>49572445
Seems like it should be a basic feature of any naval combat game for anything using sails.

I'd suggest it's simply a case of adjusting velocity for going alongside/with/into the wind. Speed of wind could be broken down into simple tiers if you don't want to track specifics. that way you can just apply it as a base speed, modify it slightly by ship type, and then worry about the wind direction for final movement calculations.

To cut down math in play you can simply list with ship data the speed of the ship in the wind speed categories and directions as a chart that need not be more than what, 3-5 columns for direction, and however many you feel like for wind speed categories (I'd suggest a maximum of about six speed categories for wind ranging from none to the ship is taking damage from it being too high). That lets you get all the math of multiples and divisions out of the way in development, not during playing.

>>49572445
research what how wind actually affects ships, and then do your best to translate that into tabletop terms. If its too complicated then simplify it. If you can't get it to work, or if it isn't fun, then it might not be worth including

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What's your game all about? What's your gimmick?

>>49575611
d6-dicepool D&D-OSRish game for retards/children. Beer n pretzels game, quick and easy.

Notable gimmicks:
GM doesn't roll anything, players roll vs. monster attacks (they get attacked, if they roll well the monster misses/gets countered) and vs. monster defense (attack monster do damage), roll their trap/poison/spell saves, and so on. The GM only rolls for Initiative, Boss attacks and treasure tables.

Perks are like Feats but better, also spells. Every levelup, characters get one perk. Most perks are like straight out of Diablo/Path of Exile, such as Cleave, Fireball, Chain lightning, Blink. Perks being spells makes for a nice "should my wizard pick a spell or get more HP/Initiative this levelup".
Three schools of magic (arcana, divine, elemental) + universal magic that any caster can use.
Haste, for example, is an universal magic, but a Wizard casts Temporal Enlightenment, the Cleric casts Divine Fury, and the Shaman/Elementalists casts Flaming Soul, or whatever the flavor.
Perks can be swapped out once per session if you're unhappy with the current perk.
Fighters/Martials get Wuxia-deals like jumping 6 meters upwards (with a bang when they land) and force waves from their blades if they choose so.

A Gauntlet with a 52-card deck determining what you encounter in a room, treasure, monsters, etc.
This one is played with rotating GMs (and a main GM-sorta). The main GM (or all) lays down the main gist of the dungeon ("This is a Goblin Forest/This is a spooky graveyard with skeletons"). From there on, one encounter gets one GM, and everyone plays PCs; rotate clockwise and draw a card when you beat an encounter.
Cards drawn = XP earned.
This one is extremely fun, even if it's extremely beer n pretzels because you can't get a good story going like this (multi-GMs are usually a pain in the ass). The system's heavy simplicity and baseline stats for enemies on specific floors of the dungeon makes for a hella quick game.

>>49572445
Maneuvering on a wind-powered ship is something tricky to explain to somebody who is not willing to involve time on it; so I wouldn't use it as is on a RPG unless you're all sailors IRL.

Simplifying it, If i remember well, a ship in the age of sail cannot move on more than 90 degrees from the wind. Modern boats can reach 135º or higher. But reaching that peaks is hard and requires lots of knowledge and skill from the drivers and the crew.

If I were you, I would abstract the ship's maneuverability and the crew skills somehow, as a TN number that you can roll to maneuver sideways to the wind.

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Homebrew or otherwise, I'd love to see a combat system in which all attacks, defenses, maneuvers, etc, all take place simultaneously - thereby keeping all of the players focused rather than waiting for their turn.

Anyone know of such a beast or do I need to modify my homebrew racing game mechanics into combat mechanics?

>>49577922
That is, honestly, a scary fucking beast to tackle.
Imagine a combat with 10 participants (4 PCs and 6 monsters).
One Move one Standard action is usually quick and simple for most cases, but with more participants it gets hella prolonged leading to boring-ass combats. They do work rather well with capable players and not more than 5 monsters on board.

Phases (Movement, Shooting, Melee, Spells) also might get wonky, but it's in the realm of what you could do with minimal fuss; need to playtest this one more.

Not familiar with other systems and their handling of initiative well enough.

>>49577922
Racing game bro!
I am working on simultaneous actions too. Right now on each turn everyone chooses a strategy simultaneously: advance, attack, or defend (they're racing mechs so attack and defend are literal combat meanings but could be used in their racing meaning) and then everyone's strategy is player out. Unfortunately I'm not far into testing anything so I don't have much detail on how it works yet, but just passing along an idea.

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>>49578679
>That is, honestly, a scary fucking beast to tackle.
I'm finding that out right now as I'm currently in the process of translating some simultaneous car racing rules into simultaneous combat rules and trying to make things interesting and varied in the process.

>Phases (Movement, Shooting, Melee, Spells) also might get wonky, but it's in the realm of what you could do with minimal fuss; need to playtest this one more.
My initial idea was to make it for a setting of costume-type Kung Fu movies with combat-round-time choices in style contributing to the variation in combat resolution. But now that you mention movement and ranged attacks*, I'm honestly getting kind of stuck. I'm thinking that spell combat could take place just like melee combat though if the setting calls for spells.

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>>49578951
Another racing game bro? That kicks ass.

I like the strategy idea man, it sounds pretty similar to whats in my PDF. I'd love to see what you come up with.

The PDF, should you choose to take a look, starts with the text of the document in an easy to read format on a computer and then turns into single page printable sheets of the same text for easy play at the table.

I also have a board/card game version of this in the works but I don't have the graphics done yet so I can't exactly take it to The Game Crafter and have it printed.

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>>49579060
So here are my notes so far. I'm totally wracking my brain for ideas on ranged combat and movement (and yes I could just make this some rules-lite thing that never uses a playmat and just wing it but I'd prefer not to).

-Hit points are effectively Stamina that is traded as combat takes place and stamina is lost after each round so there is a countdown of sorts.
-During each round of combat, each combatant decides on a style to use. Each style does extra damage against another animal style a la Rock, Paper, Scissors.
-During a round of combat each combatant chooses a maneuver to use which can give them a further advantage against an opponent but also changes how much stamina can be earned with a won round of combat. If all opponent combatants choose the same maneuver, then Stamina is not lost at the end of a round but only traded.
-Players starting with the weakest player Stamina-wise may choose to lose stamina before combat is resolved to add to their chances.

>>49575611
Mech pilots battle in an unforgiving world under the whim of capricious, bickering, incompetent and petty governing bodies
>>49575611
Current gimmick is that pilot and mech stats are separate allowing experienced pilots to excel even in the shittiest of suits.

Also mechs have bodypart specific damage with various effects as the result of taking crippling damage. With luck a pilot can keep even the most busted mech going, some skills even allowing them to excel when parts have recently been crippled.

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>>49530133
Hmm.
I guess I don't know this need to hire/assemble a "team" because I already have a friend to collaborate with and use for basic deflection of dumb ideas.

I'd stick with someone you can trust or just bounce things off us losers.

I spend all my time improving my idea and never deliver anything. (imagine there was a pepe over there, i can't be bothered)

>>49575611
In-game customization with the game's tools. You create your own weapons, spells, character stats, maneuvers, etc. with the tools the game gives you. Want to cast the bestest fireball ever? Figure out how much mana it'll take to cast it and compare with what you have. Want to build a Gygax worthy Glaive-Glaive-Glaive-Guisarme-Glaive, Bastard? See if you meet the requirements to wield such a monstrosity. Want to trip someone by sundering their foot armor and knock the shield out of their hand? You can do that if you pay the requirements. Want to be a magic-casting Warrior? Take the Warrior archetype and put your points into Magic when you level up, or be a Mage and put points into Power.

Its and RPG version of Legos I suppose.

>>49575611
Army of DOOM guys fighting the demons. Skirmish wargame setting set after humanity broke reality let Hell loose. Mechanics use an unlimited range on weapons, bullets don't magically disappear, most fights are opposed rolls between players, and uses a D12 base.

>>49575611
>what's your game about
Vagrant sellswords either dying ignobly or coming up in the world.

>what's your gimmick
There are a few.

Rationalizing dungeon crawling, hex crawling, and mysteries in a fashion similar to combat (albeit on the back end to leave the GM wiggle room).

Building all my various game structures around shorter time scales and less book keeping where possible. Virtually nothing has a duration to track, for example.

Expanding the range of outcomes where possible.

Sort of balancing things so everyone plays a lot more like a rogue.

Drastically reducing chargen time.

That sort of thing.

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Hey guys. So I'm creating a ruleset for a custom card/board game for me and my friends to play and I want the cards to be as professional as possible

I looked online and, so far, the best advice I have found is to use 80 lb High Gloss Card Stock and Spray glue to create the cards. I was wondering if you guys have had experience in making your own custom cards and card games and if you had any advice of making professional cards.

>>49583928
you could do that. Most people just use game crafter.

Hey guys. I have an idea for a game. I won't go into the details of the mechanics, but I want to theme it around exploration and I want the aesthetic to be similar to the video game Skies of Arcadia. The issue is, I don't really know what style they were influenced by. Is it like 16th century or what?

>>49577922
I almost always suggest cards, but you might look into reflex based card games like speed, spit, egyptian ratscrew, or the like for inspiration.

>>49583928
I haven't had to yet. I'd suggest prototyping with something much cheaper and less labor intensive, like 3x5s.

Also, mount your stuff with spray glue before cutting the edges off. It is much easier to do it that way than to line shit up with no margin for error.

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>>49575611

The 12 Towers is basically a mash up of some of my favorite games growing up, and removing all of the time consuming crap.

There's no DM or GM, players are on their own to win the game. The rules of The 12 Towers are loose enough, that allow tactics, both on the board and between players, is allowed.

Does that guy have an item you want? Ask him for it, or threaten him! Have a plan to take down another player? Pass a note under the table to a potential ally.

When you play The 12 Towers, you're bringing strategy and wit, but also your personality. 12 Tower may seem like bloat, but it covers virtually every stereotype ever.

Are you the loud, boisterous type that speaks while holding an axe over your head? Fire Tower is your home now.

Dark brooding type that loves mind games and toying with mere mortals? Head for the Shadow Tower.

Overall, I want players to enjoy my game their own way. I always get this question, but you do not need 12 players to play. It works with all types; 1vs1 deathmatch, 6vs6 team battle, even a 2vs2vs4vs3vs1 can work! The main point of everything is to give players options.

I'll get back to writing more on this in a bit, if anyone's interested.

>>49528842
No levels, just resources (which limit/influence actions) and actions (which influence the environment and assist in learning)
Though, one could argue the progression of resources and actions a player has access to are simply nondefined levels.

>>49584360
Do you have a rules PDF?

>>49585006
Not yet no, the whole game is getting remodeled to fix some serious bugs found in the 2nd edition.

link on >>49569453
for my BGG game post, give the general idea of how the game is played.

So I have a 2d6 system. The GM gives you a number from 1 to 6 and if you roll equal to or higher than that number on one of your dice, you pass.

You can also get bonus dice from certain abilities or circumstances. How should they work?

>substitute bonus dice for one of your 2d6, so rolling a 6 on your bonus dice automatically means you pass
>add +1 to one of your 2d6 for each successful bonus dice, so if the target number is 5, and you rolled a 3 on your 2d6 but two 5s on your bonus dice you can add them together and pass

I went with simply getting a basic number and rolling for that number or higher because it's fast, easy and you instantly know if you pass or not. I'm afraid adding modifiers into the mix will dilute that - there will be more time between rolling the dice and getting your result, even if it's very easy math.

That being said, I chose d6 over d10 to emphasize ease of use (more people have d6 than d10) but I'm worried this constrains my design space. Six levels of difficulty means there isn't much granularity and even the hardest tasks have a ~17% chance of success. Substitution makes that even easier.

What do you think?

>>49587018
I think in this day and age, the hang up on which dice people have isn't as big of any issue as most make it out to be. You can buy D10's at Walmart nowadays, and you can find any kind of dice you want with a quick search on Amazon. Yeah, most won't have them laying around the house (except anyone that's played DnD before), but if it catches someone's attention, most are willing to invest a small amount to try it.

>>49528411
Sorry to bother all of you, but I'm new to game design, and I have a question: I made a trading card game and I want to know if it's needed to have a different pic for all cards? Or can some cards have the same pics?

Tl;dr: do I need a pic for each card in a TCG?

>>49589688
Maybe in America. In pretty much any other country, it's usually cheaper and easier to order dice from Amazon than it is to buy locally, especially if you want anything other than a 7-die set or a cube of d6. And that suddenly means the investment is a week or two of shipping time plus the shipping cost which will turn almost anyone off your game.

The reason a lot of people are hung up on it here is because there's a lot of people here who aren't American.

For one or two die games, yeah, not a big deal. Pretty much as soon as you hit three dice of anything other than d6, you're asking people to buy multiple die sets which can be a real issue, though, especially for stuff that isn't available in sets themselves (buying individual dice is expensive and not everyone wants a pound of mismatched dice laying around). It's a real consideration that you should take into account, just like everything else about your target audience.

>>49587018
Can't do much with a 1-6TN and two dice.
Go with Shadowrun hits (any die rolling higher than 5-6 is a hit, compare hits to hit TN).

eg. Oleg shoots Dick, Oleg rolled 5, 6, 3, 3, 5, 1 (3hits), Dick rolled 0 hits, Dick takes 3 damage.

>>49589688
3rd world shitter reporting in, polyhedrals are tough to get.

bamp

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>>49575611
>What's your game all about?
A fantasy planet with no humans that has been using magic for a while that receives an information cache from an unknown source that kicks their technological advancement forwards a good few milennia, which causes exploration to be slightly less dangerous and spawns conflicts among city-states because they all want a piece of the new lands and also want new lands to be found before the others - in comes your mercenary ass trained halfassedly and brought from whatever place a city or organization can to send you to explore, investigate, claim, or whatever happens in uncharted territory.

>What's your gimmick?
Currently the only notable gimmicks are Roll-High-Under and dirty successes - your stat+skill is used as the maximum of the roll-under and put up against the opponent's raw stat or the situation's difficulty level to provide the minimum. If you roll between your minimum and your maximum you succeed cleanly, if you roll beneath your minimum you succeed but cause negative events to happen around you (i.e. having a dirty success on a lockpick roll causes you to open the lock, but also causes some distant guard to hear a clink and investigate).

>>49587018
Go d6 as basic and have it so that bonus dice are d10s and d20s, so you still roll the one die but have a bigger success chance. If you're worried about restrictive difficulty, allow difficulties above 6 for stuff only a guy with a d10 can do, or go with d100 and have bonuses be big old pluses.

>>49589688
I have to disagree. This being a pick up and play game is pretty important to me. It's not a super minimalist rules lite game, but I want people to be able to play it without buying extra stuff.

>>49590196
I thought about doing this, but decided not to so that I could model fail forward - 1d6 represents binary success/failure while the other indicates positive or negative circumstance.

Tying success to positive circumstance (ie enough hits) and failure to negative circumstance (not enough hits) defeats the purpose - I want them to be independent so that pyrrhic victories and silver linings are possible.

>>49593421
That's kind of how it works now. Because bonus dice add +1 apiece, you can succeed at 7+ difficulties with lucky bonus dice.

Can someone explain the different dice systems: d6, d20, 2d10 and their comparative advantages to me?

>>49597467
d6 has 6 results, specific result is 16.66 (rolling a 6 on 1d6). d20 has 20 results, 5% each. Basic die randomness.

Rolling multiple dice gives you a "bell curve". This is why you can't do D&D well with 3d6, for they favor the result of ~11 (though, this is how stats are rolled, and 10-11 stat has +0 mod, being average). Their range is 3-18, and you have an incredibly small chance to roll either 3 or 18. D&D requires the d20 which can equally well roll a 1, a 10, a 20, or anything in betwixt.

2d10 can do 2-20; but it will do either 2 or 20 a lot less probably than it would do 11(most probable result is min+max/2 = 1+10/2 = 5.5. Two 5.5 rolling d10s usually do 11). There is a smaller curve with the tendency to roll 11 (though a bit less than the 3d6 example, for more dice make a bigger bell).

That's the basics. There are a few ways systems use this: the ones that have you roll 3d6 are extremely modifier heavy, because you're basically getting a ~10 +mod. The ones that do 1d20 are more luck based (though mods >10 are crazy great). 2d10 is a nice middle here, where mods and luck matter. Here, I am assuming you're going for the D&D diceresult+modifier(s).

There are other methods of results, such as dice pools vs. TN, dice pools as hits (Shadowrun, IIRC), various roll unders, exploding dice pools, and others.
I would also warmly recommend reading everything here, or at least, dice mechanics.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?21479-Design-Alternatives-Analysis-Archive

I ain't a clever man (but the guy at that linked forum is) and hope this clarified anything.

>>49597689
Alright, thanks a ton!

>>49597467
d6, d10 and d20 are just individual dice. Different systems use these dice in any number of ways, but I'll explain some of the most common methods.

d20 is one of the most pervasive dice because the most popular games, D&D and its descendant Pathfinder, use it. When the player says what they want to do, the GM determines a target number (TN) and that player rolls 1d20, adding any relevant bonuses or maluses to the resulting number. If it meets or exceeds the GM's TN, the player passes the roll, otherwise they have failed.

d6 systems usually revolve around a dice pool - instead of rolling a single die, the player rolls multiple d6 and, depending on the system, either adds the results together to meet a high TN or counts the number of individual dice that meet a low TN.

d10 systems are much less common because they are not as popular as the d20 or ubiquitous as the d6. In most d10 systems, the players rolls 2d10 - one represents the tens digit and the other the ones digit of an integer between 01 and 100 (00 and 0 on the dice), often to fall below a TN set by the character's own stats. Thus a character who is unskilled in a task may have a 25 - rolling a 25 or less indicates success, but 26 or more is failure. If they increase their skill to 75, the odds of rolling 75 or lower drastically increase, making the task easier.

>>49528842
Why would i need a max?

>>49529158
Pdf creator. It will be listed as a printer

Also i use pdf architect for reading them

I'm working on a system for a Science Fantasy sort of game. You know, knights in shining power armor, magi-tech, rocket ship wizard towers, that sort of thing.

But I'm having trouble coming up with different kinds of skills. They'd be tied to the games stats, but in uncommon situations a skill can be used with a stat it isn't normally used with.

Anyone wanna help me come up with some skills based on these stats? Not just for fighting, but for social encounters and survival and whatnot.

Physical Stats
Might
Precision
Speed
Endurance

Mental Stats
Logic
Creativity
Sociability
Instinct

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What is the optimal font size for a TTRPG book/PDF?

Right now my game is 6x0 at 11 pt, but after seeing the 6.5x8.4 Pathfinder softcover at the Barnes & Noble today with its wider pages and smaller but readable font, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to change things up.

Here's a sample page out of my game for reference.

>>49579556
Isn't that how most mecha games handle it? Not really a gimmick.

>>49601089
Not that guy but I've looked into a few mecha games. Long story short, no. They usually do keep pilot and mecha stats separate, but only because they're used for completely different things (ie social situations in the hangar).

Most mecha games specifically do not let superior pilots in inferior machines beat a superior machine because "that don't make no sense." I, on the other hand, want a game that will let me be the Red Comet just like my Japanese animes.

>>49601203
I've been playing in someone's homebrew mecha game that captures that to a degree. Six players act as pilots (the rest are NERV style base members) with their own unique mecha that can be outfitted as necessary. In addition to a degree of social/personal skill, pilots have a number of skills that impact their actual capacity to utilize their mecha. Bad or good.

>>49598581
This seems good, easily readable and not ridiculously big.

>>49598046
This depends on whether or not weapon use counts as a skill in your game, but unarmed and melee weapons would obviously be Might skills. Ranged weapon use, Precision.

You could just lift the charisma skills from 3.pf for Sociability. Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate. Though Intimidate could potentially be use with any number of stats.

I don't know how magic works in your system, but different schools could be skills under different mental stats. There'd also be Navigation and Vehicle Use for the aforementioned wizard tower rocket ships.

>>49598046
I imagine zero-g movement would be an important skill to have. Not sure which stat it'd be tied too.

Mechanics and computing would likely be logic based. Medicine too.

Other than generic craft/art skills I've got nothing for creativity. Instinct seems to be a decent idea for a stat but I'm not sure what kind of trainable skills would be based off it.

>>49589852
I suppose you don't NEED a different pic for each card, but the ability to quickly tell two cards apart is pretty useful.

Could just go with same pics at first then change it up later on.

So what do you guys think of this so far?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ntcBWHa_TTirvvdVrxdE2T4g-VRcqqWGiOL43ZgWkzU/edit?usp=sharing
It's still a work in progress, but I want to get rules down pat. Still need to put in Psykana rules.

What are some different types of spirits I could use in my game?

I've already got Elementals (no personality, really computer or robot like) and Demons (can only really have one emotion, beings of emotion) but I need more.

I'm trying to think of a type of spirit to fill a more primal role, and perhaps another that's more artistic.

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I've done this some time ago,
it is a 2 player game built on a standard deck with buy/sell mechanics.
What do you think?

>>49608906
You'll have to explain more than that.

>>49608906
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xs2xia0XSmTiJfSZW26IfTbUnolqkP6WQfuYkI29YRE
forgot the link

>>49608633
Primal spirits are easy. Just use totem spirits or animism or whatever.

Artistic spirits might be fairies. If they count as spirits rather than magical little people.

>>49607991
I have a lot to write up about this, too much for my phone, so I'll write it up when I get off work. What I can say is there's some good ideas, but needs refinement to avoid being clunky.

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>>49575611
Originally it was about being Realistic while keeping it Simple, but after a while it turned more storygamey. It's still probably counts as realistic in a sense, at least combat-wise.

Realism and storygame may seem like they don't mix, but I can just tell you that I've worked hard to make it work. The whole point in combat, for example, is that you can either beat a person until they can't fight or you can break their will so they surrender or escape. Both can snap REALLY easily, because even a single wound can drop you out.

Storygame comes from regular tasks, meaning anything you may do. If you're about to fail a task, you can use characteristic points to raise the roll by an amount, the downside is that these characteristic points DO NOT RECOVER BETWEEN SESSIONS, and can only be recovered by taking negative characteristics to tasks (such as overthinking a problem or handling an item too roughly).

The game has somewhat of a delicate balance as of now, and I'm not sure who the game is for, but I designed the game from the ground up to be REALISTIC but still easy to play and especially easy to GM.

For example, GM never tells you what your character does, you always describe it yourself. NPC:s or monsters really need only a few numbers to go with them.

>>49577922
Mine does that, but it is in delicate balance with everything else in the game, so just taking my round system and injecting it to another game might be messy.

File related is a little oldish version of my system, the entire combat system is built around fluidity and realism (somewhat). The system around it changed a little, but combat is completely unmodified in my current version.

>>49608633
>Artistic spirits
Muses?

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TANGENTIAL RELATED

any of you guys have experience designing and marketing adventure modules? It seems like a fun and potentially profitable thing to do

What's a good thematic justification for something taking half damage during its own turn only? Setting is gonzo so anything with the proper affordance works.

>>49611459
situational awareness zen, or some subjective quantum time-delaying bullshit

>>49611459
Intentionally taking the hit in a way that avoids more serious damage. Like jumping into an oncoming car so as to avoid getting crushed under the wheels.

>>49610836
I like it. Vague enough to still be a mysterious spirit, descriptive enough for the players to know what it is.

Makes me want to swap out Elementals with something else to fill the Logical/Robotish niche.

Anyone know a good, vague name for some sort of law/order spirit?

>>49612048
I really can't think of any, and that's weird.

>>49612048
Djinn. Elemental. Follow the letter of their orders.

>>49595435
It doesn't have to be binary success or failure. Each success gained can affect the total quality of success of the action. Or like in my game, I roll contested d20s. The difference between each d20 determines teh quality of action (i.e. if you win you attack, if you win by 10 you crit, If you lose you deal 1/2, and if you lose by 10 you miss)

You can do a lot of things if you design it that way.

>>49608633
>>49612048
Animals and Angels/Patron Saints are common for any of those.

>>49611459
I don't think you need any justification more than Total Defense. Going super Zen also works, but not everything necessarily goes Zen.

>>49614360
I like it.

Djinn = Pure Logic/CPU
Muse = Creativity Incarnate/Graphics Card
Demon = Sentient Emotion/User Interface

Because why would anyone develop computers in a world where you can bind spirits to a box to fulfill the same role?

>>49614468
Shit, to elaborate, the Demon isn't the GUI, just the master control for the box and the typical means of interacting with said spirit box.

Try to get one made of an emotion that fits the machines function. Last thing anyone needs is a warmachine controlled by compassion or a coffee machine that knows nothing but hate.

>>49614512
>My brother is studying demonology at MIT and wanted to try installing a new demon on my phone.
>I said sure, he needs practice.
>I think he fucked up, my phone surfs porn on its own and keeps vibrating when I put it in my pocket.

>>49614468
>>49614512

Taking a wild guess and saying you're >>49598046

Science fantasy, magi tech, the spirit types matching up with the mental stats...

And since you were looking to fill out the skills earlier, I'm gonna also guess that there are mental skills specific to each type of spirit?

>>49614776
Yup.

Communicating with spirits requires talking to interacting with them in ways they'll understand.

Gotta use (Insert Djinn skill) to deal with Djinn directly. This replaces the computer/hacking skills you'd find in sci fi games.

Muses only understand color and shapes and stuff. Need to be pretty creative to get your point across to them.

Demons can be used to interact with the other two as a proxy. It isn't understood how a being of emotion can communicate with a being of logic or a being of creativity so easily, but it's assumed it's because they're all spirits.

Not every piece of magi-tech needs all three of them and the simple stuff doesn't need any.

The skills used to interact with them are useful for crafting, repairing or manipulating machines. They are also used when using gear in combat or social situations that is controlled by spirits.

For example; The scope on a rifle (mundane or magical variety) might have a Djinn container attached to provide what amounts to aim assist. A Muse could be hooked up to a projector to create illusions and glamor effects. A shield projector with a protective or paternal demon within could activate on its own in response to danger.

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Decided to load up on magic-adjacent lore for my setting after trying to avoid it. It feels like cheating because it's such a cheap a way to boost interest.

The issue of "end game" ideas forced me to include it. The problem is that magical shit tends to steal the spotlight from normal adventuring and skills.

I'm trying to structure the game accordingly. As much as I can structure an RPG without lame concepts like unlocking spells different "levels". Yuck.

Hey /gdg/
I'm trying to invent some abilities tied to weapon traits in a modern-ish setting.

I have high-energy rounds ignoring a layer of protection, for example.
However, it's not all guns and ammo. So, with some of the melee options, I was wondering what kinds of benefits there are to using a heavy weapon--a weapon with plenty of momentum.

>>49617205
Knock back, etc

>>49607991
So the biggest things that need to be addressed are, with the way resolution works now, its easy to bog down the game; there seems to lack a regular move and shoot option for orders, all you have is no movement and shoot, or movement +D6" and reduced shooting, not sure if this intentional or not; and there's not much point to units.

I think the resolution is the biggest issue to address. As it is written, each shot/attack needs to be resolved separately, but the scale does not match up with that. Something as low as 5 guys with carbines is a potential 15 attacks to resolve.

I actually had a similar issue with an early version of my own game. I got around this by going by Risk's rules, which defines matching multiples rolls in descending order. For example, if you rolled a 5, 2, and a 4; and the opponent rolled a 1, 6, and a 4; you'd go 5:6, 4:4, and 2:1. This means that you can roll multiple dice at once and have an order to resolve them quickly.

>>49616800
Two ways to do magic well; either everyone can do it (this ends up pretty anime-y) or nobody can (or at extreme risk, such as a heal spell opening a new wound on both the healer and the patient if it fails, but this is pretty grimdark).

>>49617205
As usual, heavy weapons inflict heavy damage and have longer reach. If you're a bit more fantasy, heavy weapons could do a +dmg followup shots and combo off themselves at every successful hit.

Gimme your action/init anons.
Free, Intermediate, Move, Standard, Full actions, or an another (better and more interesting) initiative system?

Mine works at 2 Small/1 Big Actions, 5sec round time. A small action is anything <3seconds that doesn't involve other actors (movement, inventory, casting buffs). Can't do two same small actions (one move, one buff, one chug of a potion, one aiming of the shot, etc).
A big action is anything <5sec that involves other actors or is tough to do (attacking/healing someone, buffing someone else, bomb diffusing, hardy sprinting, etc). Regardless of how many Haste effects are on you, you can't have more than 2 Bigs per round.

The idea is D&D, but simplified, and it works atm. Been thinking about having movement be implied and not in the mechanics, 'cause I already play without a battlegrid.

>>49619933
Players have Stamina and Willpower pools that slowly regenerate at the start of their turn.

These pools are used to pay the STA and WIL costs of actions. A player can move twice their Speed for free, every additional space costs 1 STA.

They can take as many actions as they want, but those pools are also used for reactions and defence. Ending your turn without stamina is a sure way to get wrecked.

>>49620113
So a player could go all Iron Mike on someone, burning through all their stamina in a single vicious assault. And anyone who survives has the advantage of the player being too exhausted to defend themselves. Sounds risky.

>>49619933
I kind of like that more than 3.pf. It seems a bit more straightforward.

What does /gdg/ think of using stat damage as an alternative to hit points?

Not in a d20 system, obviously, as that has to many variables derived from stats. Recalculating a bunch of stuff every time damage is taken is no fun.

I'm just going with the idea of characters losing effectiveness as they take damage. The reason I ask is because it can lead to a death spiral and potentially result in a high mortality game.

>>49624806
Honestly, I hate how most games handle it, where you run at 100% until you lose your last HP and go down. Makes the idea of taking damage too gamey; its a number, not your character taking damage. I go with wound states, personally.

>>49625128
I know the feeling.

The system I'm working on uses [skill d stat] for rolls (stats range from 1 = d4 to 5 =d12).

Damaging stats directly lowers the die types used by that character. Hence my interest in damage going directly into stats.

>>49617774
What makes you think those are the two options for magic?

>>49624806
It can become quite a bit of additional bookkeeping depending on how many stats you have. Using d&d as a example, even without having to recalculate everything that's still 6 stat totals that you have to keep track of per character. You also run into issues determining what sort of damage is dealt by what. It also increases the amount of effective hit points that everything has. If one character deals mostly INT damage and another STR, then that essentially doubles the hp of whatever they're attacking. From my experience, attribute as an alternative to hp is one of those things that looks good on paper but falls apart in practice.

> friend of friend invites you to help playtest his alpha
> Sends rules
> No setting to speak of
> D20, simple advantage
> D6 pool for some reason, with explosions
> AW style character generation
> Zero context or objectives
Respectfully decline?

>>49627376
Barf. Lose the friend.

>>49627331
A valid concern. I won't know for certain until I do a play test with my roommates.

I'm hoping to avoid the issues of stat tracking by keeping stat totals and damage values low. At the moment, stats are only valued from 1 to 5 and determine the die type rolled when using skills. (I'm >>49626499 by the way).

Physical stats are damaged by physical attacks, mental by mental. Called shots would obviously target specific stats, but the big issue I have now is determining how damage is to be distributed by regular blows.

All damage to one random stat? Damage distributed to different stats? If so, what order?

I could potentially just have character health tie into the stamina system I already have in place (detailed here: >>49620113), but that would mean every action they take would translate to "casting from hitpoints".

The ideas might not be compatible.

>>49625128
its only perceived as gamey, but viewing HP as absorbing blows, spending unnecessary effort to dodge, superficial wounds, and being demoralized until you get to your last HD isn't immersion killing for DnD.

Then again, I combine HP, Hit Locations, and 4e's Bloodied system into one. You can get some nominal penalties when locations are bloodied so there's only a very weak death spiral. That design decision ties into how I wanted people to view weapons and armor, so it might not directly translate to every system.

>>49624806
I'd go for roll-under stat to accomplish tasks. The more damage you take to a stat the harder it is to perform related actions in an easy and direct way to see. Characters don't have to die because of stat loss, but say taking physical damage affects your Strength score. Future attacks by a damaged Strength could deal less damage or have less accuracy. However, having 0 Strength doesn't have to mean you literally cannot move and die. A system where you deal Weapon+Strength score damage would fit best. Or more accurately, Strength is your attack strength, not your character strength. I hope I made it clear enough.

>>49627842
I forgot to mention, but its relevant to my 2nd and 3rd paragraphs. When 3/8 hit locations are brought to 0, that's a target death. So for the attributes, when any given amount of stats are reduced to 0 then it counts as death so that you don't run into some of >>49627331's concerns. In any case it can't be fluffed to represent the character's literally attributes, but rather the bonuses above what is necessary to live. Reducing enough of those should be able to trigger the defeat condition (death, retreat, surrender, etc)

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Hello /gdg/, I normally don't come here because I'm a lazy bastard and take too long to develop my games.

Anyway I'm making the rules for jumping, climbing, running and swiming, does someone know the average speed for such things?

>>49544087
roll more die every time the posioned character would take damage. Ex:
first round 1d6, next 2d6, next 4d6, next 8d6 etc.

Does anyone have a good system for modeling automatic fire? Preferably one that doesn't translate into simply just making multiple attacks.

>>49628161
One way might be to take the difference of the attack roll and TN/Contested roll and use that to determine how many bullets are on target.

Or, you could have automatic fire used specifically for covering fire to provide penalties on the target's actions.

>>49628178
Here's the options I've thought of so far:

Weapons have an ROF rating. Each point of ROF is an additional attack it can make against a single target. If that target dies, the remaining attacks can be allocated to new targets within up to 3 squares as long as they're still in range and LOS.

Margin of success on the attack roll with an automatic weapon is granted as a bonus to damage for that attack. Currently being used for accurate weapons to represent that accuracy.

Automatic weapons can skip their movement for the round to auto-hit for half damage. Automatic weapons with a high fire rate can do the same but for full damage.

Automatic weapons have an ROF rating; each point allows you to roll an additional die in the attack roll and use the two highest (2d6 system).

None of them strike me as particularly elegant except for the last one, except it would mean I need a system to do the same thing on the defense roll and I don't want to incorporate cover, which is the only way I can think of to do it.

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What, in your opinion, is the best way to represent the 'heavy, tactical feel' of combat in Dark Souls, Chivalry, and For Honor using a tabletop system? In keeping with the thread title, let's "Keep It Simple, Stupid". That means as few moving parts as necessary while still supporting anything from a 1v1 duel to a 5-man brawl to the death.

I think some pretty basic requirements would be:
>"Health" gauge that, when depleted though damage, disables the character. Limited methods of replenishment mid-fight, if any.
>"Stamina" gauge that enables more powerful tactical options but leaves the character vulnerable when depleted. Likely has some method of replenishing itself.
>Special moves based on equipment, training, or battle stance.
>The ability to counter, parry, block, or otherwise mitigate incoming damage in more than one way.
>A rock-paper-scissors dynamic where some attacks are better against some defences, and vice versa.

Personally I'd love to see a 'telegraphing' mechanic but I've yet to encounter one in a TTRPG that isn't terrible.

>>49626541
3.pf and experience.

If something's amazingly powerful, either everyone should have the option or the drawbacks should be incredibly severe.
RPGs are a game of pitting semi-super people (limited by biomechanics, but Olympians) against orcs and dragons; doing all this under an illusion of danger (so that the precious PCs don't get TPKd). So, you'd always need an even ground.

If you allow magic to the PCs (or one Wizard/Cleric, which is even worse, in-party imbalance), they will hella out-shine most non-even magical encounters, and probably outshine other mundane party members too.

If you don't, the orcs that can berserk/shaman and the dragon will shine, but will also become foes you can't fight with honor (and most players like the regular charge+attack answer). Yeah, you can kill magical foes with wit, planning and hard work, but let's be honest, most of our players don't even try anything beyond attack/obliterate with magic/run away if it's too strong.
If you have amazing players (be honest), you can do non-magical PCs vs. a magical world. Even then, they'd stock up on scrolls and magical items that can cast fire or acid.

If nobody has magic, you're kinda safe, if boring.
If some have magic, it's unbalanced. Magic-users are like nukes, or Deus Ex Machina.
If all have magic, anime-like it may be (4e), you can balance that.
I go with the 4e option, magic for all, different fluff. A Fighter can cast Haste, a Thief can cast Invisibility, and so on. Fluffed as a Fighter unlocking his potential and having a massive adrenaline rush, and the Thief being so damn good he's very well near invisible.

Third option is magic with a heavy price, which also usually just forbids it to the players (eg. if you heal this wound you go blind. A blind character's an NPC, not a PC). Grimdark systems/settings go with this option, and a mage's position is best filled by NPC.

Hey, formatting question here, if most actions a character takes in combat (like attacking and defending) are determined by Skill Tests, and the description of how those skills work is in the skills section, is there any use in having a combat section?

Almost everything I've written in the combat section, I realize, would be better in the skills section. The three entries not based on skills could easily fit elsewhere.

>>49628603
Nevermind, just answered my own question.

It's just going to be a very short combat section.

>>49628383
Second winds/Execute bonuses for HP. HP works okay. Wounds might be better if you'd want "the more you get hit the weaker you get".
Stamina's a binary construct, in the end; if you have it, you can attack, if you don't, you can't.
You can have most actions working as intended, but overexerting yourself nets you risk vs. reward deals that leave you vulnerable/exhausted.
A great fighter could have "2 stamina", meaning he could do 2 crazy moves per round and get stunned/exhausted. Otherwise, he can go normal attack all day.
Don't go overboard with special moves to not choke up the players.
3 stances, Heavy, Medium, Light (a la Jedy Academy) and weapon abilities (Winged Spears can trip).
Parry's usually a fluffy way to say "the enemy misses you". If you wanna do the Dark Souls parry, have the enemy be disarmed/stunned if you outroll his attack roll by some margin.
Counter, in my book, means an all out attack the moment you get attacked, so both you and the target have 0 defense. This, while unrealistic in actual human combat, is fast and simple enough for the game.
Blocking redirects the damage from the character to the shield's HP (durability) N times per round.

Read Conan d20, Codex Martialis, Shadowrun 5e, Riddle of Steel and WFRP 2e and steal some of their mechanics.

Telegraphing is extremely hard to achieve because the combat isn't realtime, or seconds based.

>>49628603
If you find that to be the case, do as you think people will understand it better, but don't take out the combat section, or else people will feel confused when reading the rules. In my combat rules section I have :

Initiative
Actions you could take and their costs (including the mention of the combat skills)
Weapons and their characteristics
Types of damage
Reach of weapons
The board and how to play with miniatures
Grapple and unarmed combat
Surprise rounds
Other ways to get wounded (like falling)
When to have advantage or disadvantage (some examples)

And other smaller details to spice up the fight.
If you have simpler combat ask yourself how would you explain the way you want combat to be done to someone that haven't played any of the games you are used to. Don't forget some important details that skills don't normally cover, in my case it was initiative and other types of falling damage.

>>49628730
No, fuck you, I already wrote all this shit.

>>49628383
>>49628758
>Telegraphing
Is it being telegraphed to the players or the characters?

If its the characters you could have some sort of reflex save thing before the attack that, if passed, would grant a bonus on their dodge/block attempts.

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>>49628788
I appreciate the effort you put into the post.

There are a lot of things you listed I had yet to consider and would have eventually realized I had forgotten.

Reminding me now lets me go over them during my creative time (when I'm at work).

Thank you, have a cookie.

>>49628805
I'd also add, in my games (shittyd6homebrew), boss monsters telegraph at the end of their turn.

So they attack once/twice, move, and at the end, ready a charge, spell or swing in a direction.
This lets players decide where they wanna be and know what the boss will do next.

I don't want to bump the thread by just saying "Bump". I believe in bumping by encouraging further discussion.

So...

Experience systems and character advancement. What have you got? What do you like? Whether the system is classless or not, characters have to have some way to grow.

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Like all the big projects I've tried to tackle solo, I'm starting to get burnt out on making my own game. It's playable, but only if I GM as I don't have any GM rules or help set up, and it just doesn't feel completely finished. Is there anything I'm overlooking? Anything I've forgotten?

>>49629651
Mine uses points, but so many anons have been asking about a class based game that I'm making optional hybrid rules for people that want such games.

>>49629651
I haven't worked out exactly what I want with experience, but I do know that level 20 is max level and max attribute level. Players choose a predefined array of stats that relate to a archetype which will stay the same throughout their character. At each level up, players will get to increase attribute points as they see fit to customize their character. For example, the Warrior archetype will always have good Attack and poor Magic progression, but you can put almost all your free points into Magic to create a gish character (same with Mage archetype and points into Attack). Because you are encouraged to build your own weapons, armor, spells, etc, and your stats determine how complex those things can be, low level characters have less freedom to personalize while higher-level characters have more.

I'm a fan of systems that provide a structured way to personalize characters. Being able to "write-in" your character's attributes feels a little too arbitrary while being locked in to certain tracks with little wiggle room is stifling. Ignoring your choices' performance, I like 3.5's multiclassing on a design level because it lets you grab the abilities that you want your character to have. Its similar to Path of Exile's skill tree or FFX and FFXIII's skill trees. To use an analogy,

As far as experience itself, I'm a big fan of Experience by quality of interaction. What I mean by that is: You get experience by performing related actions (like getting better at opening locks when you pick a lot of locks) however, it needs to be geared in a way that you can't "farm experience" by doing menial tasks. Opening (or attempting) harder locks grant more experience, but trying to open locks that are too easy or beyond impossible would grant minimal to no experience. I have a system written somewhere that actually accomplished that, but so far its fitting better as a standalone mechanic than something I can add into my current projects.

>>49628161
I did a quick-and-dirty homebrew rule for weapons battery fire for naval combat in d20. Each additional weapon fired gives +2 to hit, every full 5 points by which the attack roll succeeds yields an additional hit, up to the number of weapons fired.

Not exactly the same as full-auto, but maybe a start, and easily adjustable to other systems.

>>49628547
I'll grant all of that. But what about earning slight magical powers through hard work? Like, you can speed up healing 3x as fast -- meaning it will take 5 days to heal instead of 15. I don't enjoy powerful "nuke" magic, but even weak magic appeals to players.

My system forces players to commit to some serious stuff to get magic, and wouldn't even be available early in an adventure. The payoff is still magic, but not nuke.

>>49631201
That's really fun for players. They feel like they earned something new and cool and not picked it out of some book, like they bathed in demon blood and ping as evil but have fast healing 1 (3.5example).

>>49631252
Thank goodness, positive feedback on it. I've got plenty of ideas for structuring magic development without a class system and I was worried it wouldn't sound fun to /tg/

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After reading the "Design and Layout" portion of the OP, I have some questions regarding personal tastes in RPG manuals.

What are some examples of well written or aesthetically pleasing RPG books that I can look to for inspiration?

What font(s) do you think best suit this sort of book? What type of paper do you think best suits this sort of book?

What are your thoughts on paperback RPG manuals? (One of my printing options that will save me quite a bit is an 8 by 5, paperback.)

>>49631663
I'm only familiar with D&D, GURPS, and Burning Wheel, but I'm not impressed by any of them in terms of format.

GURPS can be forgiven because it is so loose and generic, and Burning Wheel has interesting tricks like the little "imps" that speak to readers, but overall I think they are inefficient. D&D seems designed to annoy readers more than be a resource.

Font and paper size doesn't really matter. Presentation, writing style, etc. is more important in my view

>>49606718
And what if, for "basic" cards I just draw a sort of stickman, and I do the same with an added detail for cards not that differents?

Like:
1 damage; 1 defense: stickman
1 damage; 2 defense: stickman with a shield
2 damage; 1 defense: stickman with a sword
And only cards with effect would be "well drawned"?

Bumping with a question: how do you handle death & unconsciousness? Do you kill them on the spot or leave dying players alive for a bit?

>>49634944
right now is unconscious at 0, die at -HP but I might change it later.

How do you decide what dice to use? I know what I want my system to do, but I'm working with abstract numbers rather than a set range or an array of values

>>49635135
Elaborate.

>>49635149
Like, what makes you think "this is exactly the set of dice I want to use" when dealing with the random element in your system

What makes you go for flat, triangle, curved, dice pools, etc when dealing with your own system?

I'm not asking for advice on my specific case, I'm just interested in the creative process of the rest of /gdg/

My game have 3 stats but naming them in english is somewhat hard for me, how would you name the Physical in english so it sounds ok?

>>49635188
depends on the amount of randomness I want.

If you want a lot of randomness roll only one die, if you want more control roll a pool of them.

>>49635211
Physique could work. It describes a persons general level physical fitness.

>>49635531
thanks anon

>>49634944
Physical stats damaged to zero is death. Mental stats at zero is vegetation. Paralysis occurs if either stat block hits zero due to drain effects.

If a characters stamina or willpower are burnt out, they fall unconscious. This can be self induced by pushing themselves too hard or by using reactions that convert damage to STA or WIL burn.

>>49635211
Body and Strength tend to be pretty common depending on your needs
Body tends to incorporate the idea of constitution that DnD made distinct from strength. It also incorporates dexterity to an extent.

>>49636057
I know, that's the problem, HP is something diferent. I just need Strength, Dexterity and Stamina.

>>49633657
That could work. Alternatively you could just ditch the stick man and have an image of a large sword for your high damage, a sword and shield for high defence and just a sword for the low one.

Is the stick man necessary? The items alone could portray the meaning if these cards aren't representing soldiers in the game.

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Oh shit just had an epiphany for my Fate based home-brew. Instead of taking a -1to all relevant actions when maxing out a Stress (damage) track, you leave one of the fudge die on the table (negative side up) and roll 3.

It's still a -1 but now your odds of either success or failure are steeper. And when you roll less dice than normal you FEEL fucking injured.

speeding up the conflict when people start getting wounded is a great mechanic, imo

>>49635135
KO when stress equals health. Death at health zero.

So, class systems and classless systems both have their pros and cons.

How would you, anon, feel about a system where "classes" are highly focused on one particular skill or ability, have only five ranks (gained easier than levels in other games) and are easy to mix and match?

Wanna be a sword and board armored knight? Taking Expertise in one handed weapons, block and armor use is a good way to go.

Caster? Well, each school has its own Expertise, so rank up in the schools you want to use.

It's a bit more complicated than I've written out here, but the jist of it is that classes are like big packages of stuff while these areas of expertise are more like building blocks for your own class.

Also, I don't like the term Expertise. Too cumbersome. Any alternatives?

>>49639255
>the jist of it is that classes are like big packages of stuff while these areas of expertise are more like building blocks for your own class.

I've seen this done before, and systems that use this technique tend to run into one of two problems (if not both).

1) A lack of balance between choosing five 1-rank abilities and one 5-rank ability. A good example that comes to mind are two 15th level 3E D&D characters, one with 15 levels of Wizard, one with three levels each of Wizard, Sorcerer, Warmage, Beguiler, and Wu Jen. The pure Wizard is going to be so much stronger because he has access to 8th level spells. You can also have an inverted situation with 3E Martial classes, who tend to get a power boost at low levels so heavy multiclassing works in their favour.

2) Few constraints on how quickly characters can 'rush' the final bonuses of these class/ability progressions. For example, characters investing all (or most) of their ranks in abilities into one or two disciplines or fields to start the game as experts or even masters in that category. This can lead to overpowered characters, as well as a lack of meaningful progression. If you're the stealthiest man alive because you have Rank 5 Sneaking, where do you go from there?

The system that (IMO) handled this the best is the (mostly) dead Legend RPG. Your character gets three ability chains with seven benefits in sequence; these benefits are earned at specific levels on a character progression chart. These ability chains are determined by your class, but you can mix and match them a little and throw in some specializations and racial chains as well. It avoids Problem 1 by forcing PCs to invest in pre-chosen ability chains; at level 20 everyone has three ability chains with all seven abilities, no exceptions. It avoids Problem 2 by giving specific levels when you earn abilities. At level 3 you get the second Rank of your first Chain, then at level 4 you get the second Rank of your second Chain.

>>49639255
>>49639607
Legend, however, doesn't exactly fit what you're trying to achieve with your system, so I can't fully recommend it. The game also has a number of other issues that plague it, so I'll move on.

A third problem I failed to mention is balancing these ability chains. That means making all of them meaningful and relevant to whatever kind of game you're supporting. If you plan on having people delving through dungeons and fighting monsters, an ability chain focused around political intrigue and socializing is going to be pretty worthless. Context is important as well; something like the Ranger's Favoured Enemy is a waste of ability ranks if you never encounter that kind of foe.

The benefits of a more rigid class system is that (in an ideal world) you can plan around characters having a mix of combat, social, and exploration-based abilities. A Ranger's Favoured Enemy might not show up often, but he's still got combat styles and special techniques he can use. Rogues might not always have a chance to steal or infiltrate, but Sneak Attack is a handy tool almost all the time. Basically, class-based games tend to ensure that everyone has a viable combat role, while also having some kind of niche they can help with out of combat. Without classes you run the risk of characters (for example) investing heavily in niche, non-combat options and being useless in a fight. The reverse is also true; someone with nothing but weapon skill isn't going to be able to contribute much in a social adventure.

Granted, the GM can always adapt their campaigns to suit the skill-set of the characters presented, and players can co-ordinate their characters so they know whether to focus on combat, roleplaying, or exploration, but it's still a sizeable weakness in the nature of the system.

For all that I've said, I still prefer class-less systems and I love the idea of ranked powers, and I wish you the best of luck.

>>49639607
>>49639779
Fantastic posts. It's stuff like this that makes me love the /gdg/.

The Expertise system is still in development, so I'm still not entirely sure how it'll work. But I've already figured that it'd be best if increasing ranks in pretty much anything (stats, skills, expertise) comes with an exponentially growing cost.

A player could potentially get a mastery at the start of a campaign by dumping literally everything else, but holy shit would that be a bad idea. Masteries (I'm liking that name more than Expertise) are comparable to class features in 3.pf, having one cranked at the expense of everything means the character probably wouldn't even be good at what the Mastery focuses on.

>>49637245
Technically every card is a soldier, that's why the stickman.

>>49640280
Thanks for the praise. I'd be very interested to see how your system develops.

I've worked on something similar in the past; a-la-carte abilities and class features that came in three Ranks of ascending power. I avoided the first problem by giving a very specific number of Rank 1, Rank 2, and Rank 3 abilities based on character level. Characters progressed by gaining more Rank 1 abilities, then at higher levels raising an existing ability to the next Rank. If you were level 5 you specifically had five Rank 1 and two Rank 2 abilities - always that number at those ranks. This also handled the second problem, as characters couldn't gain Rank 2 until level 5+ and Rank 3 until level 8+ (out of a maximum of 10 levels).

The third problem was the harder to deal with. Eventually I decided that every non-combat ability would contribute to a pool of points that could be spent in combat for bonuses. That way a skill-focused character would skill be able to contribute in a fight, though not quite as much as a combat-focused one. I also instituted a minimum number of abilities that HAD to be non-combat, so that everyone could do something useful outside of a fight.

The system worked pretty well overall. It had some hiccups but seemed to playtest well.

So Duel Masters combat lets creatures attack tapped creatures. I was going to use that, but I had a slight issue: there is a type of permanent that is important to deal with in order to win, and that type can additionally be a creature. My first idea is that creatures who also have that type can just always be attacked, but I thought of something better.

Instead of tapping to attack or block, there is tapping to attack, block, or dodge and creatures are always attackable. Dodging cancels an attack focused on the creature in question, but since it requires tapping you can get it with a second attack.

Does any card game already do it this way?

>a game that has two resources
>XP is awarded by other players for good roleplay and is spent as money, meta-currency, stamina/HP and character advancement
>corruption that is accumulated every time XP is spent, and if it gets too high the character dies/player loses control

yes or no

>>49641766
Depends on how Corruption is handled.

Do magic-users in your system use pre-baked spells like Fireball, Greater Fireball, and Sleep? Or do you have a system to allow magic-users to build their own spell effects? Does it allow them to build the spell on the fly (during combat or other encounters)?

>>49639255
My questions for your approach so far:

1) Do the abilities have to be taken in a specific order? If so, why?
2) Related, but do you need all the abilities in a field in order to get the last one? If so, why?

On that note, you might think about something featlike. And you might think about using tags and levels to make the requirements loose.

For example, maybe there are 10 fighter feats (or berserking or lawnmowing or sodomy or whatever classes/skills your game has) and to get the nice ones, you need to be level 5 or higher and also have at least 3 of those fighter (or whatever) feats. In my hypothetical you're probably going to focus on one track and lag behind in the second one, so it's a little class like (albeit with many permutations because you can drop portions of the chain). But the balance could be shifted.

>>49641950
Like karma in Tenra Bansho Zero. You accumulate it through certain actions and once it crosses a threshold you lose control of your character.

>>49642343
Many actions have very basic uses with limited options for customization (For example, you can spend more stamina on your CQC test to grapple on success). This means that basic magic actions are very simple and typically have but one extra option.

However, some of the (Mastery? Expertise?) paths a character can pursue add new options to the actions they take.

So by pursuing Mastery in different types of magic they can gain new options to add to the basic spells they cast. This isn't cheap, these bonus options cost stamina and willpower to use, but it does mean that an accomplished caster can put a ton of effort into a single spell and stack a bunch of added effects onto it.

>>49640280
>>49643024

I'm going to write up a nice long pitch when I get home from work. Throwing out snippets is too disjointed.

>>49643342
Ok, here we go:

>Unnamed Science Fantasy Game
The following system, a work in progress, is meant to be used to run a science fantasy style game with a fusion of technology and magic. Many of the games values are capped at five. This trend started as a result of how skill tests are rolled and the size of a typical gaming group.

>Stats
Characters have eight base stats broken into two blocks, Physical (Might, Precision, Speed and Endurance)and Mental (Logic, Creativity, Sociability and Instinct). These stats are ranked from one to five and correspond to specific die types (1=d4, 2=d6, 3=d8, 4=d10, 5=d12). A stat reduced to zero cannot be used. They also have two derived stats that are the sums of these blocks (Stamina and Willpower).

Actions cost stamina (STA) and/or Willpower (WIL) to perform. At the start of a characters turn they regenerate spent STA equal to their Endurance and spent WIL equal to their Instinct.

STA and WIL can be burnt, temporarily reducing their maximum value. If either pool is burnt out the character falls unconscious.

>Skills
Skills are ranked from zero to five and are tied to specific stats (though there are some situations where a skill might be used with a different stat). They can still be used while at zero, but with heavy penalties.

Skill tests are performed by rolling [skill d stat] and choosing the highest rolled number. This means that stats represent a characters potential while skills represent their likelihood of achieving that potential.

>Masteries
By default, skills have basic and unimpressive uses. Characters can gain Masteries (also ranked from zero to five) that grant bonuses at each rank. These can be bonuses on certain skill tests or in certain situations, new actions or reactions, new options for actions taken in and out of combat or the ability to craft complex or unique gear.

They may or may not have stat or skill requirements to for each rank.

[1/2]

>>49644332
[2/2]

>Combat
On their turn, characters can move twice their Speed in spaces on the map at no cost. Additional squares cost one STA per square.

Actions taken against other characters and those characters reactions cost STA and/or WIL to perform. An action/reaction is typically resolved by the characters performing opposed skill tests. Outcomes vary, as different reactions have different effects.

>Armor
When a character is physically struck they make an armor save. This save functions like a skill test, but uses [armor coverage d armor quality] on the roll. If one of the die rolled matches or surpasses the attacks armor penetration the attack is nullified.

Mental armor might be introduced as the system is developed.

>Damage
Damage is dealt directly to stats, lowering them and thereby the die type rolled while using them. Typically, mental attacks damage mental stats and physical, physical. If the physical block is completely emptied the character is dead, an emptied mental block results in vegetation. If either block is reduced to zero via temporary drain effects the character is paralyzed.

Characters lose effectiveness as they take damage, which can result in a downward spiral. Teamwork, armor and strong defensive reactions are vital in staying alive.

>Advancement
This concept is pending changes, but characters earn points to be spent on increasing their skills, masteries and stats.

Increasing a skill requires a number of points equal to the new skill level. Masteries require triple the new mastery level and stats require quintuple the new stat value. These costs are very likely to be changed.

>>49644332
>>49644354
Fuck, why do I always see something I missed after I post?

Currently the only limit on the number of actions a character can take is how much stamina and willpower they have. This is very likely going to be changed, likely by increasing the amount of STA/WIL needed to perform further actions.

A character could blow through their entire pool in one round, but given that it regens slowly and defending ones self (reactions) still has a cost, doing so could be suicidal.

Thoughts on diceless resource management systems?

Right now my game is a hybrid, where characters spend resources more or less every time they roll the dice.

>>49644332
>Many of the games values are capped at five. This trend started as a result of how skill tests are rolled and the size of a typical gaming group.

??

>>49644691
When I think of a game group, I imagine four players and a DM/GM. That's five people and five sets of dice.

So at no point is a roll more than five of any one kind of die.

Oddly enough, I've yet to find any use for a d20.

>>49641370
No that I know of, but seems complicated, why not just give the special creature an ability that allows it to dodge targeted attacks? maybe you need to spend resources to dodge.

>>49641766
Sounds like you are punishing a player for doing well.

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>>49644531
People often turn their nose up at them. The random aspect of dice (or any other randomiser) 'feels' complex to people, you'll probably want a fairly complex resource management system to replace it.

Unless the whole point is to be rules light, of course.

Personally I like usually low-variance bell curve dice systems with powerful resources. So there's a little bit of random, but it can be completely dominated by players spending their resources. Gives a strong sense of agency, and the ebb and flow of resources leads to a natural narrative structure.

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>>49646663
To my great surprise, Fate Core's Fudge dice distribution and Fate Point management is what really just won me over and convinced me to abandon making my own base system.

Now, I'm just deranging the system beyond normal tweaks to my gamist needs.

>>49646559
Not necessarily. This idea was inspired by Tenra Bansho Zero. In that game one way to gain XP (kiai) is to roleplay your background. Spending kiai increases your karma, and at 108 karma you become an NPC (you're too attached to this world). One way to reduce karma is to "move on from" and acquire new background features like goals, secrets, relationships, etc.

So you're not punishing the player for doing well, you're punishing them for not being dynamic.

>>49646663
I agree, I think people are turned off by it unless they're consciously going into a rules lite game.

Right now my game has five resources and I'm wondering if I shouldn't consolidate.

>XP is spent outside of battle to purchase items and advancements; awarded by other players and the GM for good roleplaying
>AP is spent to use moves or consumed when you fail defensive tests (acting as HP and stamina), your maximum AP is determined by your level
>SP is like backup AP; every AP lost becomes an SP, so it's always equal to max AP minus current AP. You can spend these like AP in a pinch, but you'll gain corruption for it
>Injuries are grave wounds suffered when you run out of AP. You gain corruption every time you are injured and it takes a lot of effort to remove one. You die at five injuries.
>Corruption is your failing hope you can complete your quest or survive your adventure. It's like metacurrency debt. Instead of spending fate points you take on more corruption and have to work it off.

I wonder if this isn't too complex, but it also gives me a lot of design space for different classes to interact with these systems (ie corruption is actually a good thing for Dark Knight).

>>49647063
>Now, I'm just deranging the system beyond normal tweaks to my gamist needs

I'm convinced that's how Fate is meant to be played, its got so much potential as a system but is kind of garbage RAW.

Spendable Stress is super fun.

>>49647158
You should definitely roll AP and SP into one. It may be simple on paper but sounds annoying to play with on the table.
Try something like you start gaining corruption when you're spending your last 10 (or whatever) AP. Same effect, slightly less mechanics.

>corruption retires characters
Sounds like it'd be more palatable if you had several characters you're managing a la Kingdom Death.

But one should be fine as long as there's ample opportunity to shed corruption and you don't have any "gotchas" where a player unexpectedly has to retire a character. That sounds anticlimactic and not very fun.

>>49531072

>What sort of genre and/or gameplay am I aiming for?
>How chunky is/should combat be?
>How important are non-combat skills?
>Given the genre, how much difference between an end-of-campaign and beginning-of-campaign PC should there be?
>How lethal should a fight be, if at all?

>>49647158
XP sounds fine, especially as a way of combining advancements and items, though if items are easily consumed or taken you may wish to be wary of using them to delay advancement.

The AP/SP/Injuries/Corruption sounds needlessly complex, to be honest. Maybe roll AP/SP into one thing, but you can gain Corruption up to your AP/SP limit before gaining Injuries, which lowers said limit?

I.E. Your AP/SP is 12 at max, but you need extra actions, so you use some Corruption points until you hit 12. Now you can be Injured, and each injury knocks down your max AP/SP until removed, so you die at AP/SP 7.

So I've been working on some stuff for naval warfare and here's some ideas for movement I have. During overland travel, wind direction and intensity are generated so I figured I'd use it for this.

General movement
A ship can change direction but cannot move sideways. Ships always move forward. When changing direction, every 45 degress of rotation cost 10' of movement. Moving in any direction which is more than 90 degrees off the direction of the wind costs double movement.
Sails: Movement in the same direction as the wind cost 3/4ths movement. A ship cannot use sails to travel in any direction which is more than 90 degrees off the direction of the wind.
Oars: A ship with oars has a separate movement speed and crew requirement for movement under oar rather than sail. If a ship is using both sails and oar, the higher of the two is always used.

Wind Speed rules
Strong wind: Changing direction cost double its normal cost in movement. Moving directly in the direction of the wind cost half movement.
Light: Sailing ships have no bonus to movement for traveling in the direction of the wind. Moving against the wind only cost 3/2 movement.
None: Sailing ships move as if under oar but movement in any direction cost double movement. Moving against the wind carries no penalty.

The crew requirements are required amount of crew for a ship to make certain actions. So say, a certain amount of crew is required for movement or attacks and they're used during a round. That way say, a galley with heavy casualties can choose between moving at full speed or moving at half speed but firing its cannons. Sailing ships generally have much lower crew requirements for their movement.

As far as realism, I'm just spitballing numbers with this. I go for the gamey sorta thing more than the realism sometimes where I'm okay with sacrificing accuracy if it makes the math easier to work out.

>>49642343
My system allows players to craft their own spells using the effects the system provides. Players get MP which is replenished per round. Spell effects cost an additive amount of MP while metamagic is a multiplier to the cost. I.e. Fireball might be represented by [Fire Damage] (+2MP) and [Projectile] (+3MP) for 5x1MP total. Making it fly farther (x1MP) and explode (x2MP) results in 5x4 or 20MP.

I've decided I won't want people trying to figure out exactly how much spell they can squeeze out of a given MP total per round, so I'm going to use the Magic stat (which determines their total MP) to determine how many spells they can have in their spell book at a time. Players can use downtime to write spells in their spellbook; the same way a character might. This way combat stays fast and it gives players something more to do during downtime. Non-combat spells are considered rituals, which essentially use time as their cost rather than MP.

>>49641766
It can definitely work if everything is designed around it. It might be more thematic to just have the one resource be both the all encompassing currency and the corruption. In a post-apoc setting, it could be a valuable resource that also happens to be radioactive. In a dark fantasy setting it could be demonic favors or souls/blood/humanity. It fits along the lines of DnD2E, but deters hoarding.

What do you folks do when you want to tweak your system more but know you shouldn't?
I've been fucking with and heavily modifying how combat works but I've hit a sort of wall. I'm running a playtest game in a couple weeks so I think I'll wait till then before I start changing rules around again. What do you do to resist the urge to tweak in the meantime?

>>49649493
I don't resist the urge, I just mock it up as an alternative ruleset

>>49649381
Had a similar system before and players got confused. Running an extremely simple one (eg. Fireball would be 5MP always, and if in touch, would do double damage; AoE would be *targets. (So attacking 3 orcs with a fireball, at any range, is 15MP). I also have a Dusk-Cleave mod (3 adjacent enemies are hit by the spell), and Shared Damage (roll for damage. You have 12 damage. You can damage 12 orcs for 1 damage, 6 orcs for 2DAM, 4 orcs for 3DAM, 2 for 6).

Don't know about you, but my target audience is children (even if my group's all 20+) because they can't be bothered reading or making builds.

>>49649493
Players (and by accident, playtesters) dislike sudden changes.
Run those tweaks solo in multiple situations, like 1v1, 1v5, 1v10, 5v5, 10v10.

>>49601203
Yes, the mechanics i'm trying to work with has a simple addition of one pilot stat to one mech stat for rolls in a suit. Since all stats have a maximum value of 10 the roll is a 1d20 roll-under for both. you could theoretically have a stat value of 0 in a suit stat to represent the absence of a computer or sensors

e.g Shooting a mechs cannon is the pilots Ballistic Skill value + their suits Sensor value = ranged attack value. Roll 1d20 and if its below or equal to the ranged attack value its a success.

>>49649493
>>49649652
Instead of directionlessly changing rules I analyse each potential change to determine how it will affect the feel of the game and whether that change would align with my design goals.

How's that manual coming along, /gdg/?

>>49650454
An old professor of mine once told me that if it can be said in N words, it can be said better in N -1 words. So I'm making everything shorter and to the point. Deleting all unnecessary descriptions and text, I'm simplifying my manual. I didn't want to delete stuff I worked on, but it feels good, like I'm gaining focus.

>>49651286
Add a fat-journal: open a doc, and instead of deleting, just cut-paste the things you dislike there.

Someday in the future, you'll maybe revisit it to know what not to do, or find an actually good description/idea there.

File: HardSuit Rules WIP 1.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

Posting the current progress with Hardsuit for help and suggestions - I'd like to know if the core mechanics of pilot stat + mech stat work and if not, how it could be improved.

Is crafting an option in your game? Is it the main feature? Is it heavily involved and complex? Super simple?

>>49652438
I saved the old version, before the cuts. It's all still there if I ever need it.

>>49652441
The method used for skill tests (pilot stat + mech stat) looks like it'd work pretty well, but I'd have to play test it to know for certain.

It's hard to offer suggestions at this stage of development, as there's still so much to the game that has yet to be done. But I like what I see so far.

Have someone tried a system with no stats? like just skills?

What could be some pros and cons?

>>49652560
muh man (all up in google drive too?)

>>49652448
Yeah, it's there, blacksmithing (arms'n'armor+N), scribing scrolls, alchemy+poisonmaking and enchanting (making that sword+1 into a Flaming Sword+1).
Not the main feature, but also worthy enough to take for a PC. It's extremely simple, pay gold and downtime, obtain sword+1. Now, the gold is a stand-in for material and such.

Players could do quests instead of gold for material.

>>49652762
Pros: simplicity, easy, quick to play, noob-friendly. Cons: too simple, not good for longer games than oneshots, needs a very open-minded table to work, can't do tactical or serious games well.

>>49653149
none of that is really true about skills only systems
HeroQuest, OVA, Fate, Asoiaf and probably many others are systems without Attributes, but only skills and they have varying complexity

>>49650321
I like what I'm reading, my only concern is that the skill list could get bloated. I don't really like the 3.PF model of complex attributes and granular skill points feeding into a laundry list of inane skills.

The last thing I want to deal with is making Walking (Biped) checks.

>>49653149
>Google drive

So far I've just been throwing it all into a word document. Once I get the combat system mostly sorted I'll probably be putting it online.

>>49654106
Just for backup.

Guys, any playtesting getting done? I think I have about a year or two of playtesting here, but it doesn't tell me much except to KISS because players won't read anything.

>>49647869
>>49648513
Thanks for the feedback. Originally the system did not feature SP at all; here are my reasons for adding it:

First, it helps expand character longevity. Right now the functions for determining maximum AP is (level*5)+10; because the max level is 5, a character can only have 35 AP at most but starts with only 15 AP. It's difficult to find a balance between making characters afraid to act (if moves are too expensive relative to AP quantity, players will not want to use them) vs damage sponges (if AP is too high, the game can drag). SP is an "emergency valve" in case you need to use a move without risking an injury; you'll suffer less immediate danger from corruption instead.

Second, it opens up more class design space. Most classes are pretty straightforward: spend AP, use move. They have different traits that affect how they use AP, but there's only so much possible. As I mentioned, Dark Knight is a class that uses corruption; taking corruption can be good for him in some cases. Classes like Gambler, meanwhile, use SP to power their moves, while Swordmaster unlocks certain moves at different SP thresholds.

I'm open to redesigning AP/SP and changing classes to match, I'm just not sure how to get back that design space right now.

My philosophy on corruption is that you should never lose control of your character unless you, the player, really messed up. There are no "random chances" to gain corruption; it's always the choice of the player if they want to push their character. Suffering corruption is simply the cost for it. You will NEVER fail a die roll, suffer corruption and lose your character.

Injuries are your 5 "for real" HP, but it's very rare that you'll take 5 and die. Their main point is that suffering/healing an injury changes your background (main avenue for XP gain) and bonds (main avenue for healing corruption).

>>49654362
So say you lose a fist fight, your background may change to have features of self-doubt ("I am weak - I couldn't even win that fight") and you gain XP for overcoming that. It also changes your bonds with the rest of the party ("Kalgor should have had my back, but he left me to get beat!"), and raising your bonds is the best way to get rid of corruption.

Basically, injuries are the "RP timebomb" making you keep a dynamic character. Because you are removed from a scene any time you suffer one injury, you have to really, really try to accumulate harm.

As a note, XP does buy consumable items (ie potions) but you buy them in packs so it's still a good value. XP numbers are kept low, so 1 XP = 1 potion would be a terrible value. Characters also don't have to buy armor or weapons (they are part of the character's soul); instead they invest XP into keywords for their gear, like buying "burning" for your sword.

>>49653664
>>49652730

Thanks for the feedback.

My primary concern is that it could degrade into an unaccountable number of modifiers (aka Dark Heresy which was the original inspiration) This has been the major factor I've struggled with creation in the eternal question of 'would this be fun?'

I'm torn at the moment between having the abilities as straight bonuses to roles or instead of this, have them as more fluffy kinds of traits that have a more roleplaying aspect than mechanical (similar to how the firefly rpg had them). For example

>Hardy: +1 to resist the effects of poisons and environmental hazards = the mechanical result
Numbercrunchy for things but a defined bonus that can't be quibbled

>Hardy: You are tougher than most and can resist the damaging effects of poisons and environmental hazard
Fluffier but would need to be referenced to a 'general bonus' range of +1, 2 or 3 based on the details or severity of what is being tested. Unfortunately that then leads it to being down to 'as written' which might be too open.

Thoughts and opinions?

>>49654577
That's a tough one.

How much of the system is up to interpretation? Internal consistency is important to a system and if everything else is hard and crunchy then the abilities should be too.

>>49655094
>>49655094
>>49655094

New thread, migrate