Game Design General /gdg/

>>54368372
I made a game called "on 4chan RPG" once. It was probably terrible and I think I deleted it.

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Bumping with interesting looking game pics

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yeah but check out these sweet ass weapon tags tho

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What's your favorite houserule you ever came up with, maybe one you're proud of?

Pic probably unrelated, just a random one on my phone (hopefully not porn)

Misfortune advances...

So now, I'm thinking of making FORESHADOWING into a game mechanic. Basically, a player can use development points in two ways: either use two development points to develop a thing as a twist, or use it to foreshadow something.

The foreshadowing can be later used to invoke a twist. Foreshadowed twists are cheaper and more powerful, they just require you to foreshadow it.

Similarly, you can take foreshadowing when you fail, meaning if your character does something drastic later or something fitting happens, you gain more development points when you take the fall from it.

>>54382547
Your pic related is
>social combat.jpg

Another interesting game design talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qly3p0bqY4

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Bump

Wrote this ages ago and played it again recently - running through the Chernobyl zone and getting shot at by a bunch of people and getting killed after about 30 minutes.

Has some potential but needs some clarifications, especially around combat with multiple people, and what happens when you walk to an area and the same people who just attacked you are still there...

Repeating my question from last thread. Are there any games that use low initiative characters choose actions first act last system? Bonus question: In this kind of initiative system if you use hexgrid low initiative chars will often just swing into air because their target just moved away. Is it possible to somehow eliminate or at least minimize this?

>>54388300
Closest I've seen is systems where all actions are chosen at once and then resolved. FFG has a couple of them like that with X-Wing and their new Runewars one.

>>54381447
what is this from?

>>54381447
snazzy

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>>54393466
thanks

>>54393349
my game, i'm working on damage and weapons right now
now that I think about it, Shield should be a weapon type and not a trait, since I changed the definition of a Melee type weapon to a handle+damaging part

>>54388300
About the bonus question:
Allow target tracking over a limited amount of hexes.
A roll against dexterity or accuracy might work here.

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>>54393534
Wait i'm a moron shields would be a Striking weapon
>tfw even you don't realize things within stuff you created yourself

bamppu

>>54379915
Shit like this sucks so fucking bad. Fuck the retarded student who thought this was good.

>>54388300
> Are there any games that use low initiative characters choose actions first act last system?
Call of Cthulhu 6e does that.

>>54381447
Looking good, man!

>>54393560
Wouldn't they actually be a bludgeoning weapon?

>>54395274
Would you like to elaborate?

>>54395851
Looking at the chart, it'd be both. Bludgeoning as damage, striking as type.

>>54379932
If you ever find it again, we need it.

>>54395274

The absolute worst abstract strategy game ever devised is still about five thousand times better than the best dumpster "RPG dice system" that has ever been posted to this thread.

>>54395274
>>54395931
Fuck off back to whatever community college you're from, retards

>>54395905
I remembered I uploaded it to mediafire

http://www.mediafire.com/file/i7sxj9bp7nsns3q/On_4chan_RPG_2.pdf

be careful what you wish for..

>making a game that has "moves" similar to PbtA
>beat myself up because they're kind of bland and boring
>read a bunch of PbtA games to try and understand what makes them so good
>realize the strength of PbtA moves is their ability to reinforce their genre and narrative
>realize mine are bland because I was developing the generic underpinning for future genre-based games, and thus could not reinforce a genre with them
I'm so close to finally forking my core mechanics and redoing these basic, boring moves will be such a weight off my shoulders.

>>54396198

Point me to your "system".
I'll improve it.

so the base rules for the card game I'm working on now are close to done and I'm starting to try to think of interesting mechanics to separate the various factions. Any interesting ideas that haven't been done to death?

>>54396362
Point me to your blog, I'll laugh at it.

>>54396416
>Any interesting ideas that haven't been done to death?

MtG has been going for twenty five fucking years. Have you even been alive that long?

There's still a lot of design space left in the playing-card medium, but a lot of it is contextual now.

If your core mechanics don't bring something entirely new to the scene, whatever you try to do to expand upon them has - yes - been done to death.

>>54396470

As the world's greatest living game designer I don't really have time to blog, and twitter is for morons.

>>54396481

done before doesn't mean the same as done to death

>>54396501
What's your most successful game, or most recently published game?

>>54396513

How many factions?
What kind of game is it?

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>>54396592

What's yours?

>>54396616
I'm not the original anon you were talking to, but our Hind & Seek is doing pretty well - sold 89 copies and top seller on Wargame Vault. Not much compared to a large company but we are small and there were almost no overheads for writing the game (no box, pieces, etc to print), just writing and uploading a PDF.

I'm in the process of writing a modern air combat game covering all the air conflicts from Vietnam to 2000. If you're still around when I finish the first draft it would be great to get some people to read through.
I'll probably make a thread on The Wargames Website for ideas and feedback for the first draft.

>>54396686

Awesome!

For your new project, I would strongly advise you to look over "Check Your 6! Jet Age" which is a superb effort of just the sort you are describing.

The various publications by DVG are also worth a look. Hornet Leader is the best known, but Phantom Leader is also great, Thunderbolt Apache Leader takes the series into close-air-support, and the upcoming Israeli Air Force Leader looks promising.

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>>54396825
Ah yep I have CY6 and a bunch of other air combat games and have had a close look at them. I tend to collect game systems and have around 20GB of game PDFs in my "game design" folder...
I've already written a WW1 air combat game (Dogfight!) as well as a WW2 air combat game (Lacquered Coffins), so I have a pretty good basis to work from - using the main ideas from those 2 games. It will be hex-less and my usual balance of "simplicity vs historical accuracy" - trying to represent accurately the weapons, aircraft and tactics of the period as simply as possible.

the DVG games look amazing and I've watched a few lets plays. I definitely want to include a solo mode for Missile Threat (the modern air combat game) as it would suit solo play well - being able to have a bit more fog of war with regards to radar contacts (I imagine playing cards face down and the player not knowing what they are until they get their radar on them, or request from AWACS to declare the target)

>>54396593

probably 4 to start out.

it's going to be an asymmetrical card game where one group is playing as the attacker and the other is the defender. designed to be played best of 3.

attackers win if they destroy their opponent's fortress. attackers lose if they don't have any units on the field at the end of their turn or if they deck out.

defenders get a bonus to their unit's stats based on their fort but don't draw as quickly as attackers

currently i'm fine tuning the fort bonuses and draw speed of the attackers but i feel like I'll just need to redo it anyway once i get each factions abilities worked up.

for the four factions i'm thinking of going a little generic at first and then adapting it once i get things fleshed out

so far it basically comes down to an ordered kingdom, a band of disorganized nations, forest dwellers, and probably necromancers for the edgelords

>>54396952

Some other reference material that might be useful or already familiar to you;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)

Anything and everything every written or touched on by John Boyd.

No Guts, No Glory;

http://www.simhq.com/_air/PDF/NGNG.pdf

Work of Major General Frederick C. Blesse

This is pretty limited in scope, but insightful.


I have a few other things tucked away, and pretty extensive notes/playtesting from my own work on an unfinished air-combat abstract. I'm not really into proper wargaming myself, but I very much admire you folks that are.

>>54397082
>currently i'm fine tuning the fort bonuses and draw speed of the attackers but i feel like I'll just need to redo it anyway once i get each factions abilities worked up.

That's fine. You need a solid foundation.

I would advise you to make a thorough investigation of both the original Netrunner team-play, and of the homebrew variants that people developed for the Android: Netrunner reboot.

Not sure how familiar you are with the game. Netrunner was one of the earliest asymmetrical hobby-card games. In the original variants, you could have multiple "runners" trying to steal "agendas" from multiple mega-corporations; "Corps". Very much an attacker vs. defender sort of affair, like the one you have envisioned.

The original Netrunner kind've got run over by MtG in the early years. The reboot, "Android: Netrunner" was more successful and has been doing rather well for some time now.

One of the multiplayer variants developed for "ANR" involved each megacorp having a pet runner. The result was that both teams had to be continuously thinking about both offense and defense from a variety of angles.

The idea translates neatly to siege warfare of varying sorts. The sally has been around forever.

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>>54397239
Ah great, saved that No Guts No Glory PDF. Always interesting to see pilot manuals from the period.

I'm currently reading "MiGs over north Vietnam" which is giving a very interesting look at the "other side" of the Vietnam war - I've seen plenty of documentaries describing the air war from the US side, but never anything from the VPAF side, so learning a lot from it.

The VPAF pilots don't describe their missiles failing anywhere near as much as the US pilots do. The early AIM-9 and AIM-7's were well documented and notorious for failing - having a %16 probability of kill and %14 pK respectively.

Meanwhile the K-13 Atoll's of the VPAF, while being less documented (I may need to find some russian sources...) so far I haven't read about any of the Vietnamese pilots describing them failing. So far in the book one missile out of 15 or so "missed". At the moment the K-13 atolls seem to be much superior to the AIM-9 and AIM-7 missiles, which I wouldn't think would be the case (the K-13 being a reverse engineered AIM-9B). I wonder if the failed missile launches on the VPAF side just weren't mentioned, or if their hit and run surprise tactics and the large heat signatures of F-4s and F-105's helped their missiles perform better. The VPAF ground crews and ordnance being used to the tropical conditions may also have helped the situation.

It would seem strange to have US missiles rolling a 5+ to launch successfully (pic related giving the explanation) while VPAF missiles never fail. I will have to research further, and maybe there will be some accounts of missiles failing as I get through this MiGs over North Vietnam book.

Thanks for the resources anyway!

>>54397482

Thanks! will do!

>>54397561

Ohhh.
It's so hard to know.

Even if we assume that the guidance technology was identical or better in capability, and we ignore the cultural barriers and the rest of the unknowables, the MiGs of the era had very different performance envelopes than American aircraft.

The card selection/life mechanic in my game might have a problem with creating too much information.

When a player is dealt damage, an amount cards from the top of their deck equal to the damage is turned into a face-up pile called a "string" inside the Seal Zone. The cheapest, most versatile, and most dangerous form of card selection involves taking a string, recovering a choice card from it, then turning the rest of its pieces into their own strings while also growing them by some amount. For example, taking a 7-string, taking one card from it, splitting the other 6, then adding one card to each, so you have 6 strings of length 2. This can create a lot of piles.

I'm thinking about making a small and simple (simple is the key here) skirmish game where players use a combination of tanks and ships to fight one another on a small grid playing area (20x20 or so).

I've considered making combat handle the same way it is in the board game Specter Ops and I was wondering if you all thought that this would be a simple and easy way to handle combat.

For those that don't know about Specter Ops, combat is handled by rolling a d6 and in order to hit the opponent you must roll equal to or greater than the number of squares between the two players. Example: Player B is 4 squares away from Player A who is attacking him. In order to hit Player B, Player A needs to roll a 4, 5, or 6. He rolls a 3 and misses.

Thoughts on this?

>>54399620
>players use a combination of tanks and ships to fight one another

Last I checked conventional tank rounds had exactly zero chance of penetrating conventional ship armor...

I have never actually checked, but I am pretty godamn sure that's not a thing...

>>54399620

>Thoughts on this?

Seems like another pointless, stupid dicefest where player decisions don't actually matter.

>>54398724
Sounds like you will always have at least a bunch of 2-strings around, and the number of piles will only grow.
Rather than just the amount of information I would legitimately worry about running out of table space and cards.

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I'm planning on making an rpg in a box something kinda close to mice and mystics, descent, and with a bit more ttrpg in it, I'm only at the base beginning just coming up with core mechanics, will post my rules soon and see if you guys got some feed back, also this is a bump

>>54402342
Have you thought about starting with a theme or setting rather than mechanics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPU_yi9Nv3M
These guys do a lot of good stuff when it comes to game design.
Only problem is with their podcasts and how they can push their politics at time, but that's pretty rare.

>>54397082
I'd reccomend you watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR-9oXiytsk
and if you find the video interesting, check out his site.
It does focus a lot on making stuff for card games.
https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/