RPG Theory

>>54906201
All answers must fall into the 3 archetypal categories of: Yes, No, Maybe.

>>54906201
I dunno, probably. What the fuck even is RPG theory? You gotta be more specific.

>>54906201
No. And in fact it almost can't because of a simple, universal truth.

A badly designed game with good people playing it will do much better than a well designed game with shitty people playing it. No amount of game design will stop a That Guy, or a shit GM, (and I mean the sort who is intentionally fucking you over, not just bad at GMing but trying to do a good job), or a motley group that every single person at the table wants a radically different thing out of the game.

The #1 secret to having a good game is to have a good group that enjoys playing together. And you can't design that out of a player/GM guide, or a set of rules mechanics.

>>54906382
I will agree, to a certain degree. The amount of fun you have certainly correlates with your companions, but a clunky, disjointed, poorly written rpg with too much granularity and rolling can stick out and be a labour to play even with a cool group. That's what game design theory tries to tackle.

>>54906326
Well, the usual stuff, narratives in RPGs, player motivation, interpersonal dynamics, that sorta thing.
The GSN model is kinda crap, and I can't seem to find any interesting alternatives at first glance.

>>54906382
This.

You could dip your dick in ink, wank off onto a piece of paper, and whatever you got would be just as good as those forge autists could make up lol! More fun to do too! XD

>>54906382
True, a lot of frequently talked about problems bottle down to failures in communication.

Yes, but it's less about RPG specific design and more about good design in general. Formatting, clarity of rules etc are all important for any type of RPG.

>>54906577
Except when your target audience prefers inconsistent formatting and unclear rules because it helps their "versimilitude" and doesn't make things "sterile" and "videogamey".

>>54906616
Seriously fuck them. I'm from that era, I grew up on ad&d and all those other early games, and I still very much prefer modern game design over older. Early games were designed by amateurs, and understandably so because it was an early field. But like anything invented new, it only gets improved on over time. RPGs, boardgames, wargames, whatever is no different

>>54906283
I don't know. Can you repeat the question?

>>54906858
Reply hazy, try again.

>>54906858
You're not the boss of me now.

>>54906201

What stupid shit is this?

It's telling a story with your friends. Everything that makes a good story makes a good RPG.

>>54906976
Forge was a bunch of people desperately trying to reinvent the wheel to seem relevant.

>>54907016
You are celebrating the triumph of ignorance as a victory of your own.

Amusing.

>>54906507
I feel like the search for a meta-model to categorize how to best discuss rules by which we construct make believe stories for a group of friends, possibly with the aid of dice, is a pretty tough niche.
Once you have *that* model, that theory, what do you do with it? Tell people their games are bad because they're too Skub-ist for your tastes?

If you want to use it to design better games just start designing a game and playtest it as much as you can, that's really all you can hope for.
You're clearly critical of the pitfalls and shortcomings of existing games since you're looking for this. So I'm sure you have some idea of what you'd want in a system.

Get to writing.

>>54906201

No, because the whole field of study is trapped in a cycle of getting co-opted by shitty internet message boards that will take any theory no matter how useful it could have been and reduce it to "my game is better than yours."

GNS was a great theory brought down by a bunch of assholes who wanted to use it to argue their own pet points rather than actually use it to describe reality, where games that appeal to wide swaths of players are greatly more successful than ultra-forcused games that have only a single point of appeal.

>>54906382
/thread

>>54906382

In my experience it's a whole load of bull. But to be fair not many Those Guys are gonna try to play something like Kagematsu.

>>54911676

You have no idea what a That Guy is.

or you are one

>>54906961
You're not the boss of me now, and your not so big.

>>54906201
The forge and anything related to it is undistilled shit

>>54906201
Most of my programming career has been about filtering input, trying to take what the user entered and clean it into something usable for computation. I had to imagine what the most imbecilic user would enter and make the program handle that.

While it is mostly automated in the digital world, a lot of RPGs leave this interpreting task up to the DM, making the game hinge on the DM's ability.

Rules about stats aren't strong enough filters for input. Rules about what players can say when- those could be. But too tight, and they would stifle the fun of the game. I have yet to encounter a RPG system that does this.

>>54908325
If you're still defending 4th edition, then you were terrible at using it as a system. Everything on the battlefield was constantly throwing down modifiers and that shit gets kludgy fast and their business practices were shit.

>>54908325
>thing I liked was unpopular.
>clearly it must be because of ignorance, they simply didn't understand why it was better than all the other games!
The arrogance of 4rries is truly boundless.
Or maybe d&d players simply wanted a more simulationist game with less of a disconnect between player choices and character choices than 4e offered them.
Personally I have mostly moved on to Unisystem and gurps. But I could play fate if the mood strikes.

I dunno, but I think applying dialectical approaches in game design has potential.

>>54906201
Yes. It is whatever combination of narrative, game play, materials, and snacks makes for an engaging game for you and your group.

>>54913706
It's not what the players can say, it's what the players can _do_.

And this is basically the approach PbtA uses.

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>>54906577
That was part of my problem with Fate. It's a simple, straightforward system overexplained using weird and confusing language. So people think the system is weird and confusing

>>54915073
How would one go about doing this?

>>54909847
Exactly. It's the same reason why student films mostly suck. Theory is all well and good, but it needs to be grounded in experience to be of any use. It seems like hardly any of these people have done anything anyone cares about, and even when they have it's usually out there, high concept stuff. I have nothing against art games, but how many Noumenon campaigns are you really going to play?

>>54913816
>If you're still defending 4th edition, then you were terrible at using it as a system. Everything on the battlefield was constantly throwing down modifiers and that shit gets kludgy fast

That's just not my experience. I prefer 5e's simplicity on some level, but 4e never crawled to a stop like that for me.

> and their business practices were shit.

Why should I care, I pirated everything.

>>54916219
But that example is terrible. It explains how choosing fewer issues will affect the game.

>>54916683
But that's completely obvious

>>54916219
This is true. In rewriting the core rules for other players I managed to cut it from about 300 to 50 by just simplifying the language and not trying to explain every possible effect of a choice.

>>54916718
So? Lots of gamers seem overwhelmingly capable of missing the obvious.

Besides that, do you want everything written with the clinical sterility of a legal document or something?

>>54916757
>So? Lots of gamers seem overwhelmingly capable of missing the obvious.
So make the explanations as simple straightforward as possible while conveying everything they need to. That's how you actually keep people from missing important details. Doing it the way they did makes readers MORE likely to miss the point.
>Besides that, do you want everything written with the clinical sterility of a legal document or something?
What does that have to do with anything? And are you seriously going to pretend this is quality writing, even without the overexplainations?
>>54916756
You're doing the Lord's work, anon. Always meant to do something similar

>>54916756
Would you be willing to share that?

>>54916756
I just use FAE, it's like 30 pages already and cuts most of the bullshit.

>>54916860
Can it be cut to 10 pages?

>>54916870
... possibly?

Thinking about it, you could bulletpoint it really dense.

>>54916860
Funny story, I couldn't get through Fate Core because of how terribly written and convoluted everything was with pointless jargon and terminology, then I read the FAE SRD, realized it was literally the same fucking game without the bullshit jargon bloat, and suddenly Core made a whole lot more sense.

>>54916870
You can cut it down to like 2 pages, honestly. FAE's 30 pages is STILL bloated to fuck.

>>54916897
Yeah, I prefer FAE massively, even with the kinda busted approaches.

Slim game you can add to >>> big game you need to slim down.

>>54906382
Ironically enough, that was a major forge discussion under the theories of "System Matters" and "Players Matters."

IE: What you said falls under the Players Matter school or RPG theory

>>54916914
Approaches are super easy to "fix," too. Just use other Approaches, boom, done.

>>54906201
WOTC did some market research in the late ninties and discovered there's 5 types of gamer and 8 values that make good games. Unlike the theories put forward by the Forge these findings were based on actual surveys and examining data instead of making shit up and calling anyone who plays games you didn't make braindamaged. GNS and other 3-value systems BTFO.

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/BreakdownOfRPGPlayers.html

>>54916923
Yepp, that's what I do.

Add Discover action, tinker with the Approaches, use the Brainstorming rules from Atomic Robo, possibly add some world specific subsystems and you are ready to go.

>>54909847
I agree that putting theory into practice is a necessary step, it's just that I like thinking about theoretical underpinnings of practice, more in basic terms - what is an RPG, and why people play them, and I just haven't found satisfying answers. (I understand that there are no complete answers).

>>54916935
Too bad there's no way to access the raw research data, the graph and the interpretation are crappy - strategic vs. tactical? c'mon

>>54917025
Strategy and tactics are two different things, anon.

>>54916935
IDK about the 8 core values part. I absolutely had players who just zone out when the stuff they don't care about is happening. Saying it's the most important thing for everyone seems contrary to my experiences.

I think the version with playertypes that the 4e DMG had (and IIRC so does the 5e DMG) seems like a refinement tempered by actual play experience, and is a bit more useful.

>>54917098
... on a second thought, when I consider that most of their poll targets were hardcore D&D players, it makes a lot more sense.

>>54916756
Link?

>>54916935
>calling anyone who plays games you didn't make braindamaged
Ahahaha, what?

>>54917174
Faggot wannabe devs on The Forge honestly say that people who don't like their "genius" speshul snoflake narrative bullshit flavor of the month homebrews are "brain damaged."

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>>54906201
> Does good RPG theory exist at all?
Yes.

>>54906201
the G/N/S part of GNS theory is useful

>>54906382
what does that have to do with good game design or game theory?

>>54906976
>>54907167
t. plebs who dont understand what a RPG is

>>54916935
>blindly believing in the cluster analysis of some WOTC faggots
no, thanks, i'd rather go with GNS modes which have been useful in understanding my own preferences and that of my gaming group, as well as the games we play.

>>54917033
but how many of those asked do understand that clearly?

>>54917761
Depends on if they were asked questions like "do you prefer A or B?" with A being strategic situations and B being tactical ones, for example, or if they were directly "do you prefer strategy or tactics."

If the former then it doesn't matter because the preference is a conclusion drawn from their answers, if the latter than probably not because people are stupid.

>>54917174
There's a breakdown of the whole brain damage thing here:
https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/remembering-the-forge/

>All of the people who indicated a strong interest in RPGs identified eight "core values" that they look for in the RPG experience.

>These 8 core values are more important than the segments;

>that is, if these 8 things aren't present in the play experience it won't matter if the game generally supports a given segment's interests - the players will find the experience dissatisfying. These 8 core values are:
> Strong Characters and Exciting Story
> Role Playing
> Complexity Increases over Time
> Requires Strategic Thinking
> Competitive
> Add on sets/New versions available
> Uses imagination
> Mentally challenging

>>54917845
> Complexity Increases over Time
> Requires Strategic Thinking
> Competitive
> Add on sets/New versions available

The survey was done with D&Drones, what did you expect?

>>54917845
What the fuck that's not even remotely true. Was this a fucking in-house survey where people parroted bullshit to not lose their job or something?

>>54917854
>>54917859
my best guess is that they surveyed both the D&D and the MtG population

>>54917845
I feel like "strong characters and exciting story", "Role playing", and "uses imagination are all the same thing. You could also clump strategic thinking and mentally challenging together. Same with complexity increases over time and add ons/new versions available. "Competition" really seems like a specific brand of DnD autism because it should be cooperation.

>>54918150
Could competition not refer to challenge? Outside of other players or DM, you're still competing against the monsters, game rules, story situations, etc.

>>54917668
Except not only do the terms predate Forge, but Forgefags bastardized their usage, and renamed "dramatism" into "narrativism" for little more reason than to feel more special.

GNS Theory has zero merits, and anything you can think of that COULD be useful out of it are all concepts it ripped from other sources.

>>54918194
It's possible it could just be referring to "conflict."

>>54918359
That's the word I was thinking of.

I don't know if the survey uses the best terms, but I think the concepts are probably pretty accurate.

>>54916216
PbtA rules try to slot player ideas into different Moves. That's taking the digital approach and trying to force it onto the tabletop. If anyone actually wanted to play this, why wouldn't they just play an MMO? It's more convenient, no prep time required, easy reset, hints, and so on. Saying that may enrage people who have invested time and money into such games, but that kind of filter is just not indicated for RPGs.
And any RPG that does it would be made better by easing back from it, which they regularly do by publishing splatbooks. What I'm talking about is a kind of retrenching back from that, because that is too specific.

In the digital world, if I get odd input, I can do a number of things. If the input choices are very slim, I can try to correct the input and store it, but usually for those kind of inputs the UI provides a dropbox that limits what you can choose. (That's the choice similar to what PbtA is doing.) Or I can reject the input/ lack of, and demand fresh. In tabletop rules that hasn't been seriously explored, everything has been brokered as a "Yes, And" kind of improv, where the result often is "you try it and fail badly" or "you try the highly implausible action and of course it succeeds." Since the players succeed or fail by the fallible GM's descriptions, I'd like to see what would happen if the rules stepped in at the point of the player's suggestion and helped make it work without pidgeonholing it. Then the game would be driven by how creative the players can be. How many times do GMs complain that their players are boring!

>>54920732
PbtA tries to drill into you a "fiction-first" approach - you look at what is happening in the game, then you decide which Move that best fits, rather than picking moves videogame-style. I find it often doesn't quite work that way because the Move terminology tends to prompt you to think move-first, fiction-second rather than the other way around.

Blades In the Dark, which if I'm remembering right started out PbtA before it became its own thing, does much better at conveying this idea than most PbtA games.

>>54906382
Most of the time you’ll have meh people playing a game.

>>54920732
There is an error in your assumptions.
Moves are not inputs. They're methods that the MC uses to process the players' inputs.

>>54906382
>you can't have good RPG theory because of this RPG Theory that says that design matters less than the quality of people

okay

>>54921417
Yeah, so his own theory concludes that his own theory is bad.

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As with most social endeavours, RPGs are a hideously complex thing. Other social things like that has had huge amounts of research done without anything really helpful being found, so don't expect much here.

Instead if you're making a system you need to sit down and think about things on your own. What are your goal's here? Why are those your goals? How do you reach them? How exactly does the methods you pick to reach them help? Have you actually reached your goals? Then more specifically, what exactly may this or that rule results in when you play? Is that what you wanted? Why does it do that?
And so on and so on.

Things like the GNS can help provide a framework here, giving you a starting point for all of this thinking. How important is the story telling part to you? What level of realism are you aiming for? How important is it that the rules are consistent and streamlined?

We can't make science of this shit any time soon, but you can approach it analytically, turning it form a subconscious to a conscious process where you actually have some idea what it is you're doing.

>>54920786
Exactly what I'm talking about.

>>54921369
That makes the problem even worse. In the situation where the player knows what slotted method she is using, she has some idea of what results she can expect. But hiding the method from the player makes it completely unpredictable for her, only for the GM. At which point you have to ask, is the entire game merely being played for the GM's benefit alone.

>>54917958

You are almost certainly correct. One of the biggest problems with market research is that it looks like a statistical study but isn't because obtaining a truly random sample is going to take too long, cost too much, and result in 99% of the effort going towards answers that can be summed up as "literally what?" Whereas "surveying" an existing fanbase or hobby segment is cheap, easy, and feels like "great feedback."

The result is that no matter how noble the company sets out to be in their research, inevitably the result they get back is something in the vein of "D&D fans like D&D because they like things that are shaped like D&D." Which is obviously no surprise: the people in the hot tub like the temperature the hot tub is at. If you want to know how to grow your company, talk to the people who used to use your product but quit.

>>54917835

Holy shit, that is a great summary of the whole forge thing in general. I'm just going to start directing people there.

>>54920732

Ultimately, you can create a game that rewards specific behaviors in specific ways but you can't save people from themselves. Shitty people are going to have shitty experiences.

>>54921815

... You probably also want people who would play your game but don't.

... I was that for 3.5, as a dumb kid who enjoyed Diablo 2 and probably would have played 3.5 if it wasn't super clear how much less attention martials got.

... That and Diablo 2 making multi attack stuff not less accurate, but cost resources.

>>54921792
>But hiding the method from the player makes it completely unpredictable for her, only for the GM.
Good thing the method is open infomation to her, then?

>>54917753
People say similar things about horoscopes. Doesn't make them right. GNS theory is crap. It's popular for the same reason Cracked.com was. It gives the illusion of being comprehensive while actually being simplistic enough to understand after about 3 minutes.

> Complexity Increases over Time
This is a basic tenet of storytelling, ya dingus. The story starts small and basic and grows from there
> Requires Strategic Thinking
So you never try to plan ahead when you play RPGs? Is every character you play a complete idiot, or is it just you?
> Competitive
Competition doesn't have to be interparty
> Add on sets/New versions available
OK, I'll grant you that one. That one explains a lot about 3e.

>>54921918
You are playing around with semantics.

If the player is not told up front what "move" the action he is describing will be slotted as (like back in the days of "this book is only for game masters, players may not read it"), then any positive feedback for a player's choice is eventually eliminated by a "black box" effect. He has no idea whether he is getting better at the game or not, so his input might as well be replaced by a coinflip. When he says, "I examine the chest," he has no idea whether the game rules see that as bad or good. He can imagine how his character would do it, and he can describe it, but his description means nothing when the rules parse to "Touch=trap sprung; no touch=not sprung"

If the player is being told up front, via rulebook (like 4e), that these are the actions you can use, then the creativity is limited to when to act and how to string those actions together. That doesn't deter bad actors, and it hampers good creative people. Decide where your flavor of the month system fits into that.

Almost all the players I've met have come to situations where the GM says, "I can't make this work, choose something else." It's almost never derailed a game, and it allowed some games to keep going that would have collapsed. So I wonder if there's a way to slate the rules to encourage this without turning the GM into an auteur, or if it goes too far.

>>54922500
>If the player is not told up front what "move" the action he is describing will be slotted as
He is told up front what Move applies to his action.

>If the player is being told up front, via rulebook (like 4e), that these are the actions you can use,
He is not told which actions he can use.

>>54922500
>If the player is being told up front, via rulebook (like 4e), that these are the actions you can use, then the creativity is limited to when to act and how to string those actions together

One of the actions in 4e is "make up an action not detailed here".

Arguments about the viability of such actions, it exists and patches that hole.

>>54916947
> Tinker with the Approaches
Any suggestions or links?

>>54906976
A good story is by definition a shitty RPG. Every played with a GM who railroads everything? He's doing it because he wants to tell a "good story."

>>54917664
Super useful for young robots who are interested in getting into RPGs.

>>54913706
Maybe that's because RPG players are not computers?

>>54911676
>Kagematsu
Obviously not. Games with lots of content centering around obscure parts of Japan's past would never appeal to a socially stunted gamer.

>>54928802
A good story isn't the same thing as a strong narrative. And most railroady GMs are terrible story writers.

>>54906201

Here's my two cents: What you ultimately need to think about for tabletop RPG's is "assumed style of play" and how well the rules allow or enforce that. What do I mean by assumed style of play? Easy: what the game expects of you.

D&D is a game that expects you to be a party of fantasy adventurers going on crazy adventures where you fight monsters and collect gold and loot. You can argue you don't HAVE to play that way but you kinda ignore the game's focus and what you're left with is a barebones system of rolling D20's adding numbers against other numbers the DM decides arbitrarily.

How good a system is at allowing a style of play is up for debate along with the notion of "good players". Good players will understand the style of play immediately and go along with it, but this is assuming all players are 100% perfect at reading a game's intent and playing along which lets be fair is not realistic.

Some players will want to see if they can play with convention. Or perhaps see if they can use a mechanic a particular way. Or maybe even homebrew something. The problem is how much this will cause something to collapse in on itself.

>>54927192
Uh, I had a good list somewhere from some other game... Jade Empire? Don't remember, sorry.

But really, just change it to fit the setting and tone you are going for. Ripping it right out of PbtA games often works. I want to try it once with MtG color wheel.

Or just make fucking sure players don't stretch Smart.

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>>54927192
Try some of PDF related.

There's also this:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/135165/The-Accelerated-Book-of-Approaches

Honestly changing approaches is the easiest thing ever, just come up with a list of different ways to do things. Boom, done.

>>54932818
>Or just make fucking sure players don't stretch Smart.
The Clever approach desperately needs specificity. You can justify literally anything as done "cleverly" and without the potential and implied consequences that come with doing things using any other approach. It's bullshit and boring.

>>54931606
>D&D is a game that expects you to be a party of fantasy adventurers going on crazy adventures where you fight monsters and collect gold and loot. You can argue you don't HAVE to play that way but you kinda ignore the game's focus and what you're left with is a barebones system of rolling D20's adding numbers against other numbers the DM decides arbitrarily.
You fail

DnD works just as well for little anime girls participating in tournaments for cooking the best tea. What DOES define DnD is a medium to high variability and high potential for character growth. That's the mathematical core of it. If Hercules wrestles Bob from Accounting and Herc rolls a 1 and Bob a 20, Bob wins, but otherwise his chances are really slim and Bob can't even attempt 90% of the things Herc might realistically succeed at.

Compare FATE. With some luck and a FATE point, Bob can do must the shit Herc does. But in a Herc vs Bob fight, Herc has much lower chances to abysmally fail because variability is much lower compared to DnD.

So the thing you have to think about when choosing a setting is not "is this fantasy with looting" but rather "how likely do I want critical failures/successes to be, how much stronger shoud the strong be over the weak" etc. That's the core of a system

>>54933094
>DnD works just as well for little anime girls participating in tournaments for cooking the best tea.
You fail.

>>54933108
nice argument there, retard

>>54933125
>thinks D&D "works just as well" for anything other than high fantasy dungeon crawlers
>calls other people retards
lol

>>54933147
>I fell for the DnD-is-bad meme and don't understand game design
lurk more

>>54933201
>puttings words into other people's mouth
>AND thinks he understands game design
wew

>>54933265
>still acting retarded
apex kek

>>54933350
>gets BTFO'd
>still calling people retards

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>>54933365

>>54933365
>BTFO'd
pick one (1) of the following:
>using acronyms without knowing what they mean
>not retarded

>>54933383
>legit tried to say D&D is "just as good" at anything other than the only thing it's good at.
>thinks he has any ground to stand on

>>54933411
>I have never played Mutants and Masterminds
>I have never played Star Wars SAGA
yes, stop being a retard. DnD and by extension D20 systems work for any genre where high variability is appreciated. I wouldn't run a gritty noir detective story in it, obviously.
However, believing a game mechanic is defined by the superficial content delivered along with it is utmost stupidity.

>people STILL fall for one guy trolling with "D&D is good for everything, you are just dumb!"

ffs

>>54933483
It's so obvious, too. Next he'll bust out the old "it's popular so it's the best blah blah blah" garbage.

>>54933483
2/10
try to be more subtle by formulating the beginning of your post more rationally, but use a more inflammatory strawman

>>54933519
So you DO know how to formulate a good troll post! 7/10, good job.

>>54933527
>>54933540
>Everyone who disagrees with me is the same person
Aaaaaaand next on the checklist.

>be me
>designing a game on my free time
>use vidya as the majority of my inspiration, also familiar with a few actual tabletops
>decide to read some established systems because its good for more inspiration
>now my game just looks like I tossed 3 editions of DnD, Ars Magica, FATE, PbtA, and Eclipse Phase into a blender
what the hell

>>54934108
sounds disgusting and intriguing, more infro pls?

>>54934199
Background
>Introduced into the hobby with 3.5. Bought 4e but never got to play. Like 5e best.
>Read a bunch of homebrews and smaller games like Dogs in the Vineyard, but they didn't have much specifically useful.
>Intentionally sought out Ars Magica because I wanted a similar magic system.
>Started designing.

I used a lot of vidya as inspiration because I was much more familiar. Vidya inspiration includes Chrono Trigger, Pokemon, Monster Hunter, Diablo, Borderlands, Guild Wars 1&2, and a few others. A lot of the vidya inspiration was for small things or methods. Chrono Trigger inspired the stats I use, Guild Wars 1 inspired an armor mechanic that I scrapped to put in another game, and stuff like that.

Actual game info in next post (I want to try and fit it all in one post, but I also feel like context is useful).

>>54921538
>sane post about putting reason and structure into the hobby
>no replies
That's the board I know and love.

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>>54934302
Players choose an archetype which determines stat growth. Pic related. At each level, players can also add +1 to a single stat. Stats are capped at 20, so spreading growth is encouraged. At level 20, you can cap your best and worst stat, your top 3 stats, or average everything at ~12, among other options.

7 Stats for combat:
Power: determines # actions per turn
Defense: determines actions known
Accuracy and Evasion: contested roll, determine quality of hit and modify damage
Magic: determines MP which governs spell complexity
Magic Defense: Determines # spells known
Speed: movement speed and something else like initiative
Names are placeholders, will get more thematic names

Spells are created by players. Effects cost flat amounts of MP and can be altered by Metamagic as a multiplier. The math of a spell might look like:[Fireball] Range 2(3)MP + Fire Damage {2d6}2(2) + Projectile 1 = 11MP total.

Weapons are also crafted based on type of handle, "damaging portion", damage type, etc. Add all those together to get a complexity score which determines damage from 1d4-1d12.

Armor acts as extra health in addition to how you gain feats. Armor has skills associated like Monster Hunter's armor or Breath of the Wild. Currently, you graft/craft armor from monster parts and gain relevant skills from the monsters.

Magic and Martial damage is mathematically balanced while l utility will be equivalent. That balance is a huge design focus.

Non-combat and RP rules aren't done yet. I don't exactly know what I want to do with them, but as I read PbtA and Fate, a lot of their mechanics are very close to what I had brainstormed.

The associated setting is Human-only, but Bad Stuff happened so everyone is a chimera. Magic = spirit philosophically. You can be more beastial, more spiritual, or both.

Between what I have and what I intend to have, its the feel of DnD with mechanics that are less granular than Eclipse Phase, and less freeform than Ars, PbtA, and Fate.

>>54934302
>>54934512
Damn son, it's like a "babby's first shitty homebrew" checklist.

Now don't let that discourage you though, everybody starts out making the same mistakes.

>>54934556
Saying its bad without explaining why is pretty useless.

What's bad about which parts? Also, what kind of games (literally or conceptually) do you like? (for context)

>>54934623
The problem is what you have there is basically word for word the same thing literally everyone makes for their first homebrew. I did it, other anons did it, everyone who wants to take a dig at designing a game does it. It's literally a "first homebrew" checklist.

That's all the explanation there is "everyone makes exactly THIS game for their first homebrew," which, honestly, is kind of a weird "collective conscious" thing that's super interesting in its own right.

>>54934652
I disagree, there was a guy yesterday who made a lot more first homebrew-y thing.

This one looks... well, it's complex, which is definitely a "first homebrew" symptom, as well as "build all your own shit" and mana systems... err. okay, it's pretty first homebrew but it may not be terrible.

>>54934669
And level based with no real reason to be, and stat and equipment systems straight out of flavor-of-the-month video games, ect.

It's a checklist.

Doesn't mean it's bad.

But it's a checklist.

>>54934512
Okidoki. I'm an actual published designer, stuff I've written is in print. Time for a harsh, piece by piece review. Maybe you'll ignore it and keep being bad. Maybe you'll improve. Either or.

First up. You seem to have basically just thrown together lots of influences for different games without thinking much about an actual focus for the game. The first thing you need to do, before coming up with mechanics and settings and stuff, is sit down and work out what your game DOES. Work out your concrete design goals and then put mechanics in only to push the game towards those goals.
I'm not seeing any of this in your posts. You don't seem to have a vision beyond 'combining stuff I like in one game'. That's going to result in an incoherent game with no unique identity.

(continued below)

>>54934652
>>54934669
Most first brews I've read are generic and freeform
Even more second brews are generic, rules-lite GURPS competetors.

When I think of my game I keep thinking about Legos, which is why I have so many "build your own" pieces. Eventually I want to also include dungeon generators and ape Mythic so that I can play entirely by myself because honestly, that's the only way I'll be able to play at all.

An additional point about Magic: MP fully refreshes each round, so MP is purely a limit on the complexity of the spell. If you gain additional actions through the Power stat, you're still limited by your max MP, but you could cast a 6MP spell five times with full investment. It would come at the cost of your other stats.

>>54934702
My thought process usually goes:
"What would my game look like with X concept?"
"What do I know that already does something like this?"
"How would I translate this to tabletop first, then my game specifically?"
If it fits well then I keep it until it doesn't. The armor system that was inspired by GW1 used to be a core part of the system, but I realized it would fit much better in a post-apocalyptic setting with other mechanics that played well in a post-apoc world. Now arguably, equipment creation would also fit well in a post-apoc/survival setting, but I thoroughly enjoy creating and building things so why not have it in two games. Balance patches and Errata are some of my favorite things in gaming.

Whether or not they're mechanics straight out of fotm games is debatable. Armor skills from MH and BotW are extremely different, and my theoretical rules would be different from each. Just like with Fate and PbtA, I literally just read those systems from this thread, but I already had my own ideas about how I would implement them. Doesn't mean they're 1:1 ports.

>>54934839
my body is ready

>>54934556
>>54934702
Could you guys elaborate on the 'first homebrew' checklist? Just for shits and giggles I'd like to compare it to my first.

>>54934839

Your setting is very generic fantasy, and your system is a clunky rules-fest. D&D already exists and has that niche thoroughly dominated.

Your combat seems like a complex tactical thing. You've balanced different combat options and are rigorously controlling effectiveness by level. Meanwhile, 'non-combat and RP' rules are apparently being influenced by fate and PbtA, which I assume means it's a vague narrativist story-fest.
These two approaches are polar opposites and don't play well together. Players who like tactical complexity and builds and so on will find the narrative stuff utterly boring as it's too vague and freeformy. Players who like storygames will hate the complex combat stuff and not bother to read the rules. Either way, 50% of the game is wasted on a big chunk of the players.
Modular weapon design sounds like a recipe for really dumb shit and players breaking the system at the expense of plausibility.

Freeform magic is going to be a total disaster, it always is. Unless you're running MtA (where the game is about freeform magic exclusively), but mage is its own problem in that learning how to play requires a fucking PHD. FOr everything else, freeform magic means arguments as players and DMs argue about what's doable and what isn't. Except now, you have to do a bunch of maths before you start arguing.
Stat progression rigidly linked to classes is restrictive as fuck. You seem to like options and creativity, but then you prevent players from advancing characters how they want.
On top of this, your system seems fucking broken. A stat that just flat gives you more actions a turn? Really? It's your god-stat, VtM proved this in the early 90s. On top of this, a stat that restricts 'actions known' basically means that you're locked into a certain combat style, preventing players from altering tactics or being imaginative. It will get fucking boring fucking fast.

>>54933094
You described d20, not dnd.

>>54934850
>Most first brews I've read are generic and freeform

I guess it depends on the generation.

First homebrews being "fixed D&D" are very, very common, so much that "d20 fantasy heartbreaker" was a commonly used term for a while on design forums.

>>54934880
Your setting could be cool. I mean, it could be, I don't really know. It's not reflected in your rules in any tangible way that I can see, which kinda misses the point of having a unique setting.
Again, this seems like a failure in the brainstorming/design goals stage. It's just a collection of 'cool stuff I like'.

So, overall, the design is overly complicated in ways that will result in balance issues (a stat for more actions/turn) and arguments at the table (freeform magic) and a munchkin's minmaxing paradise (those weapon rules). Except for the bits where you seem to be going all loosy-goosy and vague and narrativist.

You don' have a described cycle of play for it. It's not clear what you actually DO in play, or how one mechanical/fictional thing is meant to feed into the next.

You don't actually seem to have a vision for this. You don't seem to know what you want it to be. If you want this to be good, you need to prune the shit out of it and then sit down at the drawing board and work out why your game is going to be different to the rest.

Oh, and as an aside, video games are a terrible source of inspiration. The mediums are totally different, and what works in one doesn't in another. As a concrete example: high mathematical complexity is fine when it's calculated for you by a computer. When it's done each turn of combat by nerds (some of which might not have read the book properly, or be distracted, or had a couple of beers) it's a disaster.

My advice is to pick a game you like that's a) simple enough that you can grok the dynamics easily and b) not so delicately balanced that altering any of it makes the whole edifice tumble down. Brainstorm some other things that engine can do (so rather than dungeon-crawling fantasy, maybe you're sci-fi adventurers on an abandoned space station), and come up with bullet pointed things you want your game to be.
Then modify and hack the game you picked until it works for what you want it to do.
Simple.

>>54934921
When I was in jr high the big "first homebrew" thing in my local area was "tabletop JRPGs," which then slowly shifted to "tabletop Diablo" and "tabletop Morrowind" in high school, followed by "tabletop World of Warcraft" in college.

You can see a pattern here.

>>54934945
>video games are a terrible source of inspiration. The mediums are totally different, and what works in one doesn't in another.
You want to see a real good example of this idea, look up the formulas for how the stats in the Pokemon games are actually USED.

>>54934974
The right videogames can be a good source, you just need to take the parts that can fit in tabletops and realize that the players are not computers. It also helps when the game is already a bit table-top like.

Taking the cover system from XCOM works pretty well, for example.

>>54934880
>Freeform magic is going to be a total disaster, it always is
It doesn't look all that freeform to me, to be honest. Looks like he's planning to fairly rigidly define certain key words as effects and metamagic.

>>54934880
non-combat and RP rules aren't really influenced by pbta and fate, I just thought they looked similar from my own intimate viewpoint. Also, those rules don't actually exist yet, but that's a different problem. The intention was to keep it a bit more rigid, as I'm not a huge fan of freeform myself, but I liked the idea of [action]+[action adjective] as a skill system.

Magic isn't nearly as freeform as in Ars. You have an finite amount of effects that perform specific functions all limited by their cost. You're free to add effects and metamagic together up to the hard cap of your max MP. I also forgot to mention that spellslots exist so that you aren't mathing out a spell during combat. You can create new spells during downtime, but in combat you can only cast from your list. Modular weapon design works similarly. Everything mechanical is hard-coded.

Stats came from the idea of Nature vs Nurture. You can't control "genetics" or "the past", but you can affect the future. The free point per level allows for the creativity while the class archetype starts as a springboard.

Power and Magic are, at the moment, mathematically balanced. A spell cast with 20 Magic is equivalent to 5 actions in damage or utility. Also, just having actions for action's sake isn't very beneficial without contributions from other stats. I still have a few defenses to solidify, but once that's done if playtesting says its broke I can look in a different direction. I also didn't mention Defense (which determines actions known) also affects armor, which is where you get your known actions from.

All the above were designed with encounter preparation and opportunity cost in mind. Hopefully that's a bit more explanation.

>>54934945
I'm still very much in the brainstorming and design phase. The pruning and distillation will continue to happen. Other than the balance related comments (which are more a function of my lack of explanation than anything) I pretty much agree.

As far as videogame inspiration, I'm not porting vidya math. One of my favorite things is to show people the formula used to catch a Pokemon (pic related). Now, if I felt like I needed to make a pokemon catching mechanic, I'd probably do something like: 1d100+inverse target health+ball modifier vs Pokemon level. A lot less granular, but worth sacrificing for tabletop. Another example: The armor mechanic I used from GW1? Literally just hit location targeting. GW1 has 5 hit locations, Head, Chest, Hands, Legs, Feet. But, each location can be hit in multiples of 12.5% (or 1d8. Head=1 Chest=2,3,4 Arms=5 Legs=6,7 Feet=8). That can go straight to tabletop without any extra work. Even the idea of High and Low hits works by adding a -1 or +2 modifier to the roll and enforcing the minimum and maximum range. When I say I take inspiration from Diablo, its for their skills and interplay rather than their exponential damage scaling that goes into the trillions.

Overall, I'm still trying to figure out the focus as I go through the mechanics. It might not be the best way to design, but its a way, and I'm not afraid of killing ideas and mechanics that no longer fit.

Thanks for the critique though. I'm saving relevant pieces of the thread for later.

>>54935140
>defense and armour determine what actions you can do.
U wot m8? That's frankly bizarre.
Plus limiting actions to only those from a limited list is going to make things real repetitive real fast. This isn't a video game, you don't have to hard-code all your options.

>just having actions for action's sake isn't very beneficial without contributions from other stats
Are you absolutely sure? ABSOLUTELY sure? Doing more damage from an action adds to your effectiveness at dealing damage, getting to act again multiplies it. Getting more actions that are less effective is still almost certainly better (unless the actions are so weak as to be meaningless) as you can dominate the action economy and have far more tactical flexibility. Plus, if one player has 2 actions a round and another has 6, that second player gets to play three times as much game.

>all that stuff on magic
so you've got mechanically complex spell creation for players that lets them build whichever combos they want. This is almost certainly going to result in the aforementioned minmax paradise. And, frankly, it sounds like spells and weapons basically just do the same thing: you put some modular stuff together to get an action you fight with. What's the point?

>everything is mechanically hard-coded
why would you not just play a video game? Or run this as a skirmish wargame or something? The single biggest strength of rpg's is to allow for and reward player creativity, and you sound like you're cutting into that. 'You can the things defined by these mechanics' is not freedom, it's constraining player choice to pre-written options.


But this is beside the point. You've just got a big ol' pile of mechanics. What are your design goals? What is your game's USP? What, essentially, is the point? Until you have an actual vision for what your game wants to be, all this is meaningless.
So far, you only have 'a game with complicated combat' and that, frankly, is a saturated market and hard to do well

>>54935284
don't get me wrong, I think it has potential to be good, but at this stage you really, REALLY need to sit down and have a concrete vision for what your end product looks like before proceeding, or else the result will be an incoherent mess.

Try to answer these questions clearly before proceeding to the fun bits where you write mechanics and setting:

>what is the core activity of your game (IE: combat, exploration, freeform spellcasting, social maneuvring, etc etc) (in your case, probably combat)
>how are you going to make that core activity rewarding and interesting?
>what other modes of play are there? How do they feed into your core activity?
>who are your PCs? What is their place in the world?
>what motivates your PCs to engage in your core activity?
>how do your mechanics encourage PCs to engage in your core activity? (IE, if fighting is dangerous, why do you mechanically want to fight? Do you get XP for it? Is it nessesary in order to feed? Ideally, this ties in nicely with the previous answer)
>Why does your setting make the game about your core activity?
>Why is this game different to all the many other games about [core activity] in [setting]? (IE: if it's a fantasy game about fighting, why would you not just play DnD?)
>who is this game for? You and your mates, or are you gonna publish it? If you're publishing, who is your target market?

Once that lot is fixed in your mind, you can start to come up with concrete bullet-points of specific goals you want. IE (say) rock-paper-scissors style combat where some fighting styles counter others. Or high lethality even outside combat. Or whatever. But, if you don't have a strong-as-fuck foundation in the initial goals, your game won't be good.

>>54935284
>forgetting pic for 12 mintues

>>54935387
>armor
Its like, craft/graft a bunch of bird/dragon parts. They all give bonuses to fly. Get enough and now you can fly in addition to walking. Quality of flight scales with thresholds. There's basic actions that you can always do like move, attack, sneeze... Armor and armor skills are intended to be additional, martial sources of utility. Also, those names are placeholders/relics from earlier brainstorming sessions. The stats will get more thematic and fitting names to avoid disconnect.

>actions
Full attacking is only useful if you need to do HP damage. Moving every action deals no damage. If all you know is moving and attacking, that's fine but you don't have a role when those aren't needed. If you want to do more, you'll need to make an investment which takes away from other areas that could be useful. I run through mental playtesting constantly about this aspect, and I still feel confident its in a good spot.

>magic
5 attacks (max investment) with a 1d12 weapon (max damage) is 60 max damage. Spells can also hit 5d12 damage at max investment if its purely a damage spell. Or, you could max invest in both martial and magic and do 5d12+4d12, but at the cost of no investment anywhere else and needing to be in melee range to nova. I still have some defensive numbers to modify, but that should remain a significant threat. There's a hard limit on nigh everything numerical (like 5e's bounded accuracy) and I balance around any combination of minimum, maximum, and average numbers.

>hard-coded
why do people play rpgs and not watch a movie or write a fanfic? My sass is seriously only at like, 5%, but still. I mean, yeah, it could be a wargame, or some nebulous inbetween of wargame and ttrpg. I'm still trying to figure out the focus as I go. It's probably kind of an artsy way to do it, but with rigid math. Maybe like the vector graphics of rpg design.

>>54906201
Your job as a GM is to try and make everyone have a good time, including yourself.

>>54935658
>some nebulous inbetween of wargame and ttrpg.
look up GW's game Inquisitor. You might well like it.

File: Strike!.jpg (338KB, 590x764px)

338KB, 590x764px

>>54935697
Honestly, these types of games are occasionally pretty fun.

>>54935507
Here's what and how I can answer so far.
>Core activity
Combat (gathering resources through combat)
>how is it interesting
combining limited skills/actions
>other modes of play
Exploration and discovery. New areas have new challenges to learn and overcome. Usually that's things wanting to kill you.
>PCs and motivation
Hunters/Gatherers. People need resources, and resources are difficult to get.
>Why engage in core activity?
Combat provides mechanical growth from xp and resources.
>Setting
Points of Light. The wilderness is dangerous, and there are no new resources in civilization. PCs (and NPCs) can grow directly from the environment, which makes hunting for specific things important.
>Why is it different?
I'm not really aware of any ttrpgs like this. The idea could be run in a bunch of different systems, but nothing that I know is designed around it.
>Audience
My mates and I. I could publish it but it wouldn't be for profit or prestige.

And I'm glad we got to questions like these. They're very thread relevant.

>>54935827
HAHA, you picked the worst possible example for whatever point you were trying to make.

>>54906382
This is like saying it's faster and safer to walk somewhere sober than to drive somewhere drunk so cars don't matter.

RPGs are a tool. Using a good tool poorly is never going to be as good as using a bad tool well, but tools can still have relative quality. One tool can be better than another. The best tools mitigate the failure of poor usage and allow the creation of better outcomes with greater ease.

>>54920786
How does Blades in the Dark do that?

>>54934419
This entire discussion profoundly misunderstands what RPG theory is about. The instant the topic came up the usual gang of idiots jumped in and assumed that any study of RPGs would just be an extension of trying to prove which system is "the best."

>A badly designed game with good people playing it will do much better than a well designed game with shitty people playing it.

The fact that this was one of the first comments absolutely proves that no one here understands theory at all. Maybe some of you should read a fucking book that doesn't have elves in it.

>>54938032
School tried that. Doesn't work out so well.

>>54928802
Well yeah a lot of shitty GMs suck because they want to force their "good story" but his point still stands, it's about making an enjoyable story all together. He never said it was the GM's sole responsibility.