/gdg/ - Game Design General

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If anyone is interested or remembers Skyresh Guy, that's me now! I dropped Skyresh. I'm working on another take at Shadowrun's concept (cyberpunk meets fantasy) alongside a friend, and we're doing some pretty solid process. Right now we're referring to it as Datalyst: Cyberpunk and Fantasy, or DCAF, but it's most likely going to be changed later down the line.

If you know me, you probably know I fucking love making charsheets so I'm preemptively working on dcaf's charsheet right now until my dude shows up.

What are you working on right now?

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>>55065873
I'm trying my hand at GMless scene creation. Improv game for 3-5 players. In this instance in the context of hardboiled crime fiction. So far I have it where when you build the city and get important themes every player chooses one of five different questions and they correspond to a role in establishing scenes. Multiple if they are lacking five players:

>What are the people in the city like?
>What does the city look like?
>How does the oppressor interact with the city? (oppressor is rolled for previously)
>What are the laws like in the city?
>How is this world different from our own? (A wildcard option)

When the investigation begins and everything else is established a player would choose a lead they have and narrate their character investigating it while all players use their roles to narrate the elements of the scene. For the player who owns the turn they would play their narrative role and their character. Assigning roles in creating the scene was my attempt at not putting all the responsibility on one player to improv a scene at first and foster worldbuilding better.


For assistance, I give the suggestion to start building scenes by choosing your lead and then stating what you will be trying to do, where, and with who. From there everyone else can start working together to build the scene together.I'm not sure if this structure is necessary but it's my suggestion.

Now there is more stuff to be done in the scenes but I just want to make sure people can start building and establishing scenes collaboratively without much trouble. I'm doing my first playtest with this in a few days and I just don't want it to be a monumental failure. Any criticisms?

>>55065873
A single point of failure for all resources is a bad idea.

>>55066349
elaborate

>>55066469
I think he meant that single google drive link.

>>55065988
Sorry to hear that you've dropped Skyresh. You had some great stuff going with it, artistically.

Still chugging along on Hellsgate. Sadly, real life has been taking precedence.

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5e D&D Weapons that aren't just die numbers.

At the moment, I've been using using an amalgamation of various Scifi-D&D5e conversions. (Starwars 5e, and Hyperlanes, and 5e Ultra Modern)

But as usual, those are either too simple, or too complex for my tastes. So I endeavor to marry the two, breed them and hope for an evocative half breed more to my tastes.

>>55071223
One idea for that, assign Attack and Defense modifiers to the weapons. Nothing more than +1 / 0 / -1

I don't recall 5e weapons, but in PF the Longsword and Battle Axe are both 1d8. Boring.

Instead place a defensive bonus on the Longsword (AC +1 while wielding it) and an attack bonus (+1). Either decrease the Longsword's damage or increase the Axe's damage to compensate (The Axe would leave nastier wounds).
Another example is giving flails a defensive penalty (You want to parry with THAT? Good luck) and upping their damage.
Awkward weapons can get an attack penalty, and so on.

>>55065873
>What are the advantages and disadvantages of making a system tailored around a specific setting?
Testing is an advantage because if given a fixed setting the testing parameters are more similar between sessions/groups than testing the same system in fantasy as opposed to hard sci-fi or modern horror.
Disadvantage is that if you tailor it too hard to the given setting, porting it to other settings is more complicated.

>>55071223
>5e D&D Weapons that aren't just die numbers.
What did he mean by this?

>>55071831
Likely he meant die sizes.

How can I make the perfect game?

>>55071919
You can make a game that feels perfect to you, but you can't please every demographic. What makes a game perfect for you, only you can tell.

>>55071940

What if I don't know what I want?

>>55071919
There is no perfect game, only perfect games.

>>55072030
You'll have to work it out.
Try to narrow it down. Surely you have some preferences? What do you decidedly not want? For whom are you doing this? Yourself, your immediate group? A s big as possible a group of prospective buyers?

>>55071919
That thought is a misconception. Games are a temporary diversion that will become boring at some point, even if well-designed.

>>55072030
Then you're ill-equipped to design a good game.

>>55069888
Well, there's something good about this for skyresh though, i might be able to grab the system once it's done and easily mod it to support the setting! Not everything is lost, but I won't be working on it as a standalone anymore for a good while.

What do you fellas use to make your character sheets??

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>>55073436
I use Adobe Illustrator myself, with some pretty good results >>55065988

Sometimes I just use spreadsheets to test values though! Kinda like my PF character here. Those are nice to have if you're still in the development process of your game to know what things will and will not go in the final character sheet before you start designing them, the amount of space the elements will take based on how much info you put into them, and stuff like that.

>>55066469
Now if this google account becomes suddenly inaccessible, we have nothing. Before, we might temporarily lose one cached item, which we could ask for in thread and receive. Now we'd have to dig up the old copypasta, hope that the files were updated in both places, and so on.

>>55072642
That's true. It also can help moving onto something else, and then coming back later with fresh eyes.

>>55072030
No one really knows what they want until they see it juxtaposed with their lack.

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Material Culture Bump. Got these in the mail recently, pretty happy with the quality - they feel like FFG promo cards... Not quite as nice as Magic cards, but far better than the nasty Chinese cardstock.

>>55081331
Any more close ups of the cards?

>>55071831
>>55071918
There is no functional difference between one weapon which deals 1d6 damage and any other, except in terms people don't really care about (cost - people don't often actually buy mundane items - and weight, which people generally disregard).

I took weapon keywords from the Star Wars RPG as one idea to make d20 a little more interesting for the martials, for example:

Defensive X (if you are targeted by an attack, you may as a reaction use a weapon with the Defensive property to parry, increasing your AC reactively by its Defensive value)
Penetrating (ignores specific damage type resistance, but is still subject to magical resistance or immunity)
Cleaving/Area (a Cleaving weapon may deal half weapon damage to a second target within range and adjacent to the first target, if the original attack roll hits the second target, even multiple times per turn - Area is the same but all adjacent targets instead of one. This only counts the weapon's own damage, so stuff from e.g. Great Weapon Mastery or Sharpshooter don't affect it - only what you roll on the weapon's dice + your statistical damage bonus with it)

By adding more interesting properties in this way you add functional differences to weapons. It's design-intensive but allows mundane items to be near as interesting as magical ones, which is great for lower-than-average-fantasy games. I've also considered making Feats more minor and giving you one every attribute increase i.e. in addition to rather than instead of it - so feats which play into specific weapon properties become viable design space (Defensive Duelist allowing you to add a roll of the weapon's damage die to your AC as well when using the Defensive property, for example)

All that being said, I figure I might as well just not play D&D. So I'm writing a bit of Dragon's Dogma-inspired fantasy right now for Genesys when it comes out. I've gotten obsessive about my workflow, though.

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I did this as sort of a trial in game design, both graphic and logistical. It's rewarding that the game system runs, and that a game can be carried on from start to finish without any need to patch up the game on the fly... although it's full of unbalanced combos and dead cards that I didn't see coming. A lesson for us all: no matter how well you design your system, it won't survive first contact with your players.

>>55082342
The lighting in my house is crappy, but here's a selection. All the art is free domain, which is a plus.

>>55084304
They're looking pretty good.

I want to make a combat system based entirerly on narration and freedom of action by the players. If you try to finish a fight early by going for a weak spot, you can, but you'll have a really hard time doing it. You can weaken and injure foes first to make finishing them off easier.

Preferably, this all be done with one basic mechanic.

>>55084555
Thanks! I was a bit iffy about colour-coding and embedding the keywords, but I think they look good on the card, and it works well for streamlining the system.

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Grids? Hexes? TotM? Why?

>>55085196
TotM

because I can break out into game with just paper, pencil and dice right the fuck away

>>55085196
What's TotM?

Grid though. Hex is great in theory, but in practice it can be wonky.

>>55085327
Theatre of mind, just eyeballing it.

So, for reasons I'm not going to go into, I've been thinking a lot about focus, specifically the focus of my game. I got into thinking about the existential or meta aspects of my design and I went looking for resources. I found a particularly interesting and actually useful checklist that, while mainly for RPGs, could be used for most of our projects with proper tweaking.

http://www.genesisoflegend.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Game-Design-Sheet-Fillable.pdf

It provides a nice snapshot of what your game is "supposed to be", so it can be compared to your own work to see whether or not you've kept your focus (or will need to change). Also, it can be compared to other works as sort of a quick, elevator-pitch style intro.

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I think I'm finally happy with the combat system of my arena skirmish game.

Each attack lets you roll with specific d6 dice. There are 4 different dice. Worst to best they are yellow, orange, red, purple.

>yellow
0-1-1-1-2-2
>orange
1-1-1-2-2-2
>red
1-1-2-2-2-3
>purple
1-2-2-2-3-3

Let's say a mighty fireball attack lets you roll with 2 red, 3 orange and 4 yellow dice. You roll and get part 1 of pic related. You split the dice into groups with a value of 3+ to determine damage. As you see in part 2, one of the red dice alone does 1 damage because it already has a value of 3. The others need to be paired up to get 3 with one of the dice being the remainder. In the end the attack deals 4 damage because there are 4 groups of 3+. It doesn't have to be exactly 3 so if you pair up two 2s it's still 3+ and thus 1 damage.
But 3 is just the baseline. You can equip armor or simply have tougher units that will have an armor value. Let's say the unit has an armor value of 1. That means that in order to deal damage to that unit, you'll have to pair up your dice to reach a value of 4 instead of 3. Using the same dice, it would look like part 3 of the pic. As you see now the attack only deals 3 damage.

So far I'm pretty happy. The system is very simple but I like that it's not too swingy. The dice are fairly consistent and the pairing-up mechanic makes it so damage is usually within a pretty narrow window meaning results won't be too random.

>>55086257
Oh what I forgot to mention is that you can upgrade units/attacks over the course of the game. For example that you add an extra purple die to each attack of a unit.

>>55086257
I like it. Dice curves seem on point as well. Generic system, or are you catering it to a specific game?

>>55086722
Thanks! It's for a specific board game idea I have.

>>55085974
I notice the sheet doesn't allow for a GM-less game, not that I want one. But it is biased in that the numbers of points to allocate don't permit all design decisions. Or it isn't biased and just fails at math.

>>55087856
The person who made it filled in a sample for dnd 4e and didn't follow those guidelines themselves so I doubt it's all encompassing.

But, those numbers ranges do help you think more critically about your game. There are plenty of people who might think "well, all of these are important so I'll fill them all in" without realizing the purpose isn't to make a 27pt RPG, but rather know where to focus your deepest and most interesting mechanics.

And, if you're making a GMless game, you probably already have an idea on how to allocate responsibility. If not, you're already designing outside your scope

What are the best d100 game systems?

I'm looking for inspiration and/or stuff from which to steal.

>>55086257
I really like your system. It involves a lot of dice without being lolrandumb. Though maybe try to limit it to three different dice instead of four and just make the power difference between them a bit bigger. Also not sure about 0 on yellow. But honestly cool idea with the pairing mechanic.

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I'm still trying to hack at this combat system. I think it could work really well, but when I think about larger encounters where the DM wants to bring in lots of enemies my confidence is a little shaken. Does it seem like a lot more work for a DM to keep track of? Is it time to stop going for simultaneous turns and just stick with turn-based?

On another note for people who are sick of seeing me pop in with my problems, would you guys prefer 8.5x11 or 6x9 for TTRPG books?

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Mapping in hex for tactical small-scale combat is kinda wonky, but not as difficult as I thought. Huh.

>>55090070
Dark Heresy is like the benchmark d100 RRG. It has a lot of bloat, but the bones are good.

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>>55094110
tentative cover rule concepts, or the illustration of a rave?
you decide!

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>>55096378
Took a few seconds to see what this was for
I'm not enthralled about the greater perimeter on the left cover instance...

>>55098197
We ended up scrapping it in favor of "if you can draw a straight line between attacker and target and there's something in the way, they're covered" and decided to limit the use of the grid to areas of effect, movement, distances, range, etc

>>55098233
This is a good way of doing it. Only thing I'd make note of is what happens if the line runs along of edge of a hex, like which one it counts as crossing over.

>>55099474
We consider the hex to be an abstraction of character positioning, so for this further abstraction we consider the line to be drawn towards where the character would be in the area of the hex, rather than on the center of a grid unit

>>55100630
>>55099474
What I meant to say is - these lines arent tied to grid restrictions.

>>55084304
>all the art is free domain

Holy fuck, where did you find these? I'm looking for some art for my cards myself.

>>55100771
Mostly from: https://pixabay.com/

Good luck though, I spent hours scouring this site just to find ninety or so decent images.

>>55100771
Also post up those cards when you develop them! I try and give feedback to the RPG guys as anon when I can, but I'm more of a card/boardgame player, and I'd like to see a few more projects like that going in these threads.

What about penalyzing clones?

I mean, when talking about D&D4 or Strike! the concept of alpha striking is usually to use clones to end the battle quickly by unleashing the most damage in the first round.

What about a rule to only allow one of an Encounter Power per battle? So if Andrew used "BTFO" Encounter Power, Bob can't.

This assumes that the only way for Andrew and Bob to have this power is to have the same class, and choosing it from a pool of 4 available.
Maybe not banning, but imposing a dire penalty, since the enemy already saw this once yadda yadda. This opens up for the same PC using the same power twice instead of hard limiting it to once per battle.

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>>55103026
Options I can think of...

- Don't allow same class
- Don't balance powers based on frequency of use
- Larger powers require "charge-up" via using smaller ones/just surviving a few rounds so that they tend to end, not start battles

Quick background, the PCs are modern drug dealers trying to get a foothold in the city. I want to make the other factions feel "alive" by rolling random interactions between them. Using a few stats;
> finance, reputation, loyalty and combat ability
To represent the faction. I would roll with a few stats added and subtracted vs the average of the roll to see which side gains more territory or members.

>combat of one -combat of the other to see who takes over a few blocks in a shootout
>loyalty to see if the loser has members leave
>reputation to see if the winner gains members

Anyone ever try a random faction interaction system? Any ideas for potential "stats"?

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simple dicepool homebrew, D&D3.5-like-ish, though I've long left D&D for inspiration.

made for kids and drunkards, beer'n'pretzels game

critique welcome and appreciated, steal/copy anything you'd like

>>55105182
Have reputation and presence.
Reputation is always toward some other faction. Presence is about owning territory and power.

I'll use d20 as example
Presence is rolled as a bonus.
Reputation adds to the roll against that faction. High roll is always better.
Add situation modifiers. Maybe the Red Scorpions like violence (+ to roll), but the Virgin Nuns not (- to roll), so even with the same reputation, the total modifier can be different.

On phone so excuse anything.

>>55104385
The charge up idea could be interesting for other systems. It's just adrenaline from any given vidya, but it would have an interesting effect of implemented for both magic and martial classes.

>>55095695
Thank you, kind anon.

Was the d100 WHFB RPG any good? From what I understand they were rather close in design.

Thoughts on casual deception games like Werewolf (and One Night variation), Mafia, Secret Hitler, etc.?

I'm working on a similar style game where everyone is a crew member of a space station, with different areas of expertise and there are X number of saboteurs. I'm trying to get around the player elimination, without having the game only last 1 "round". Right now, the idea is having "tiles" that represent sections of the ship. Once a tile gets compromised, it's removed and after a certain number get compromised, the rest of the ship goes down.

Only problem is I can't seem to find a way for saboteurs to go about doing this each "round" without it being super obvious (deducible?) who they are. Anyone with suggestions or experience with those types of games?

Things I should consider? Things I need to keep in mind?

>>55071724
I don't understand the interaction between this and the 1d20 system vs. AC. Can you explain?

>>55085196
Depends on what kind of game I'm running / playing.

I've enjoyed D&D in different ways using both Grid and Theater of the Mind. I prefer DMing via Theater though, just because it makes describing things / narrating action a lot easier and more flowy, without being restricted to a grid.

>>55111689
have you played The Resistance?
sounds a lot like what you're describing
hidden "evil faction" that tries to sabotage without getting caught

there's no player elimination, only "you're no longer trusted so nobody will give you the opportunity to sabotage"

>>55111834
I have not, I'll check it out.

>>55111689
If you've played the Battlestar Galactica board game, there's a mechanic there you could borrow. Every player has a number of skill cards, you need to pass a test to repair a system or whatever, every player puts in a skill card secretly, then they're shuffled and revealed. Theoretically, the saboteur throws off the test by secretly putting the wrong skill card in, causing the test to fail. Players then need to decide who amongst them can not be trusted.

>>55112943
I actually really like that. Instead of a skill, I can do something akin to "effort", or even a "tool" that everyone pitches in.

>>55113242
And if your players have 'different areas of expertise' you get this interesting game where the saboteur needs to pick his moment carefully, or be discovered. If there's a test that only Engineers can contribute to, and there are only three Engineers, then the saboteur throwing that test off will narrow the pool down to three people. Rather than give himself away, he might choose to actually help that test, so that later he can throw off a test which calls for the entire crew to contribute, or which requires engineering+security, making him harder to detect. If failing the tests with smaller pools of potential contributors have consequences beyond just advancing the saboteurs agenda (like: if you fail this test by 5 or more then...) the disadvantage to everyone might make it worth the risk of revealing yourself, balancing the game.

Whatever direction you go in, it sounds like it's going to be a fun project!

Thoughts on games that limit each class to only one player? I've been waffling on this for awhile now.

On the one hand, this encourages a more dynamic party wherein each PC has their own chances to shine (and thus each player gets the spotlight at some point). On the other, players might be disappointed they don't get to play the class they want. That said, I think that's not too big a deal, if you're coming to an RPG deadset on a specific character I think you're doing it wrong.

>>55114429
I think meddling isn't needed in this case. Many groups will implement this naturally by themselves. And it's one of those rules that I would anticipate to be discarded frequently if it strikes the players fancy. Also consider that it inhibits themed campaigns like thieves guild or witch coven and so on.

How many weapons is too many?

Making a sci-fi system, and what started out as a basic armory has turned into a massive list of variants and upgrades. It's gotten to the point that I'm considering cutting the armory down to barebones again and making an Armory PDF of optional rules for people who want it.

I've already done the same thing for the Ship Design rules, since the core book shouldnt have an entire chapter devoted to an aspect of the game that will only come up in certain games

>>55114530
I can only say that it should be weighted according to game priorities, proportionate to other areas of equal importance and adjusted for standardization versus unique rules ratio between individual items.

>>55114611
Fair enough. Sounds like I should cut it down then.

>>55114659
Since there is precedent you can just stick the cut material beside the ship design rules.

>>55114530
I ended up making rules to build your own weapons, so while I can list a few of the basics, the creation rules take care of the rest of the possible combinations and variations. Depending on how unique you need various things to be, that might be another option to reduce space.

>>55101314

For sure. I honestly need to finalise the effects/costs and add images and I'm sorted.

Nandeck makes it such a fucking breeze.

>>55085203
You can't draw grids?

>>55094110
Why break the grid? Those better logically occupy 4 cells, instead of just aesthetically.

>>55114429
Careful about that. A sword & board fighter shouldn't deny other player to play an archer fighter.

>>55065873
>at point in development of a game where all thats left to do is actually arrange everything in a coherent manner so people can play the game.
>this is somehow the most difficult part.

Well fuck.

>>55065873
I have a question. Is using base d4 a bad idea? Long story short started with base d20 but the numbers got to big to manage so i divided everything by 5 to make the numbers smaller.

>>55118053
Have you tried d10 first? Best to work your way down in smaller increments first.

>>55118073
Well all the threasholds were by 5. So i thought it best to just get rid of that and have it so each number actually matters.

>>55118053
A totally asinine observation here, but d4's just aren't that much fun to roll.

>>55118945
Agreed. Even then, I want a Zelda RPG that uses d4 painted like the triforce

>>55118945
Yeah. I think im going to just find a way to work with d6s without changing to much of the system.

>>55118195
The issue with really large numbers is that you need a ton to make a difference, like d%+skill needs atleast 35 to be a noticeable improvement.

The issue with small numbers is that a +1 on d4 is a crazy improvement.

Unless its a dice pool system, then it may work but like this guy said;
>>55118945
D4 just ain't fun to roll.

>>55065873
The main disadvantage would be "portability", or trying to make a system that is truly multi-purpose. X-Wing is entertaining as a game of spacefighter duels but it would take a fair bit of hacking up if you wanted to use it for, say; a Fury Road game.

The inverse is true, and overly generic rules can make for a system where powers may be "bland" or falsely equivalent to one another.

So, I'm getting overwhelmed by the math portion of trying to figure out something for my secret role / social deduction game. Each player is a member of a fictional space parliament. In the game, every player is given a character card that has different things like what planet they're from, and what their affiliation is with. Each player also has ties with certain lobbies / factions.

There's a stack of cards that has fictional Bills that affect certain planets, and are sponsored by different lobbies. The players vote on each bill, and at the end of the game, each player gets a token based on how many bills pass that are sponsored by their group. Whoever has the most tokens at the end wins.

During the game, you can out someone (each player gets one accusation, and only one accusation can be made between bills) for being affiliated with a group, and if you get outed you get nothing.

For this many variables, how do I even get started tackling balance, making sure everyone has an equal chance of winning, not making it obvious on how to deduce someone's intentions, etc.

I've been working on-and-off on a general combat system, with Warstack as a working title since it uses an Interrupt Mechanic loosely based off MTGs stack. I originally wrote this as "Alternating Activation 40k," but am looking for it to be more general-purpose. This is the current draft: Points, scenarios, etc are not in, and I'm still focusing on the "turn structure" aspect for now.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N0bbT2a0y_THicAgRS1SxKZA9ZKtDmJpDsiDSyKAkAQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

Let me know if there are any weird RAW issues you see with the current implementation. I'm looking to add more "examples of play" text too.

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As a relatively new anon to /gdg/, I'd like to announce a project my friends and I have been working on for the last three-odd years: Rules of Creation. It's a 3d6-based system that seems to fit a high-fantasy setting well and trades some realism in its mechanics in order to make combat more straightforward and easy to remember, and it's somewhat inspired by tactical grid-based video games like Tactics Ogre, Dofus/Wakfu, and Final Fantasy Tactics.

The main draw of the game is in its character creation mechanics; most of the pages of the rulebook itself are a toolkit for building a character's race, class, and techniques (spells/weeaboo fightan magic moves/etc.) from the ground-up. Our goal was to make chargen as customizable as possible without slogging down the players/GM with too many confounding options, and let a regular old human with a sword and shield be just as viable and interesting to play as a sapient floating book that casts runic magic through its own pages. The game itself is still in its testing phases and there are a few unwritten portions (mostly in the Skill Tricks chapter, because there are 192 separate skill tricks to think up and balance), but it's currently ready to play and we've already completed two shorter campaigns and one year-long one to test it. We're looking for feedback and testers, or more specifically we need to know exactly what parts of it are terrible so we can start rewriting it.

I'll drop a link to a google doc with the entirety of the rules here, but I'll also be giving a short summation of the various chapters/mechanics in this thread because I honestly don't expect you to read all this shit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oy0SYFegTmTTrXqmXFwh6vqmLiQ4jTNaharHakebepg/edit#heading=h.k4ahb7u57ywl
Please feel free to leave critiques and questions in the google doc itself if you do end up reading it.

>>55121214
The first thing would be to make sure the planets all have an equal number of cards affecting them and similar things.

Keep track of what sub elements are on cards and make sure there is a balance between the totals per sub element.

>>55121861
How do I approach that if the number of players vary widely, like from 6-20

>>55121949
A| You can balance the maximum amount of cards and hope that shuffling will distribute them evenly enough when using a part of them.
B| Always use all cards, what does it matter if you don't get to the bottom of the draft stack?
C| Make little marked subsets, 1 per player, balance them.
D| Write the cards to be contextual/targetable/universal.

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>>55121736
The first large piece of customization the players and GM are introduced to, and the mechanic that largely set the stage for the rest of the system when we were making it, is race creation. So far we've seen players create living blobs of magic that explode and regenerate on a hair trigger bob-omb style, tree-people whose fruits can revive the dead (lots of different tree people actually, for some reason), giant spiders that magically control their own silk in place of hands, crystalline sharks that swim through earth instead of water, various races from the Final Fantasy games, and of course several flavors of human as well as a few more 'standard' fantasy races such as aztec gnolls, tengu greasers, and naga sky pirates.

That said, making a race is as simple as spending an allowance of points (and refunding points with drawbacks) on various racial traits. Each race is afforded 3 Physical race points, which are used to buy characteristics like gills, wings, elemental resistances, the size of the creature itself, if it can eat rocks or naturally generate a resource, echolocation or the ability to see in the dark, things that are physical in nature. They're also afforded 3 Communal race points, which is spent on mental or social characteristics such as a racial disposition towards certain skills, a telepathic hivemind, the ability to understand animals, or hating another race enough to deal extra damage against it. You can also gain up to an extra 5 points to spend on either category by taking racial drawbacks such as requiring water to breathe or having no arms.

The list is fairly expansive and we're always looking for new traits to add, though unfortunately intangibility/etherealness as a racial feature has been shot down due to being able to easily invalidate too many problems. It still gets brought up from time to time to discuss/debate, but at the moment ghost characters are a no-go, sorry.

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>>55122356
The second customization mechanic to tackle is the class system. Instead of a set list of classes, like fighter, wizard, rogue, etc, players create their 'class' by mixing picking an Origin and an Aspect for their character. It's simpler than race creation at the start of the game, but it's also what decides all of your future mechanical choices.

Your Origin decides your starting stats, as well as how they can develop over time. More importantly, it also grants you a very broad specialty, like being able to buy skills very cheaply or the ability to passively regenerate your MP when it falls below a certain threshold. The four origins are Adventurer, Expert, Mage, and Warrior, all having their own specializations. Unlike Aspects, which can be changed by spending experience points, Origins are a permanent choice.

Your Aspect essentially determines the rest of your class features, or more specifically the list of class features you get to pick from. At the moment there are nine Aspects, though there used to be a few more. Picking an aspect gives you that aspect's Base Ability, which is a core feature that is usually mechanically unique and free to use such as the Farstrider's ability to create portals or the Hemic's ability to not fall unconscious until they're dead (which is far more useful than it sounds). You also get an Ability at first level and every level thereafter, which is picked from your Aspect's specialized ability list or from the common ability list.

Origins and Aspects are designed to pair well enough in any combination to make a large array of character options possible, or at least we hope. A Warrior/Hemic could be an undying berserker sort of, whereas a Mage/Hemic could be a blood-mage that uses their own HP to cast spells. Even two characters that share an Aspect and Origin could play entirely differently depending on their Ability choice.

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>>55123273
Next in the book is Skills and Skill Tricks. In Rules of Creation, skills are generally bought with XP independently of the character's level, letting you specialize or spread yourself out as you like. Generally it's common for different characters in a party to have different levels, and a character's power-level is measured by how much XP they have instead of the levels they've bought with it.

The current skills are Athletics, Awareness, Craft (Alchemy/Armaments/Engineering all taken separately), Academics, Guile, Negotiate, Survival, Stealth, Steer, and Thievery, though the list has been pruned and added to over time and is still being worked with. Besides their basic uses, there are also Skill Tricks, which are like feats you gain as you keep investing XP into one skill. At low levels of investment, this is usually a specialization like a bonus to Stealth when you're in certain environments, but most higher-level skill tricks are new mechanics entirely, often combat-relevant such as the ability to knock someone unconscious with an attack if you've successfully hidden from them beforehand. In addition, each skill has a Capstone skill trick for investing the maximum amount, which generally push the boundaries of the skill itself such as using the Steer skill to drive boulders or using Thievery to steal a geographical feature like a lake.

Skill Tricks are probably the most expansive addition to the game, since there are twelve skills, three tiers of skill tricks, and five skill tricks per skill per tier. Adding in a capstone for each skill makes a total of 192 different skill tricks to write and balance. The good news: we're almost done with that! The bad news: there's no telling how many accidentally unbalanced skill tricks there are without testing them. Also we've been considering putting Survival on the chopping block.

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>>55123585
I've mentioned Techniques a couple times, so I should probably explain what those are in more detail. Simply put, they're the system's equivalent of spells or special attacks. Anything from a fireball to swinging your sword harder than usual to swinging your sword so hard you cut a rut in the ground a mile long. Techniques are generally built from scratch, are unique to each player, and they're usually changed and tweaked very often, sometimes every session or so. You typically can't change your techniques during a session, but there's no cost for doing so when you have the opportunity.

Techniques have a TP (Technique Point) value and an MP (Magic Point) value. TP is essentially the allowance you have to build the technique in the first place, and you get 5 TP for every point of Talent stat your character has. For example, a fireball that travels a short distance and explodes in a small burst could possibly be made by buying the Medium Range (1TP, 5MP), Small Radius (5TP, 10MP), Extra 1d6 Damage x5 (5TP, 5MP), and Fire Damage (1TP, 0MP) technique components to put into one technique that would require a total of 12 TP to build, and cost 20 MP to cast.

The technique system is constantly being tweaked, balanced, and added to, and it's probably the most complicated/finicky part of the game, but we have an automated character sheet for RoC that lists every option for technique-creation and calculates the TP and MP costs to make it much easier on the player.

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>>55124253
Finally, there's Rites, which are the newest mechanical addition to the game. Originally, there were technique components that weren't entirely combat-relevant, such as illusions, teleportation circles, stuff like that. The problem was that it turned "being useful in combat" and "being useful out of combat" into a zero-sum game, as you had to choose whether to invest your precious TP into hitting someone harder or being able to draw magic tattoos to give people fashionable rabbit-ears. So we chopped off anything not strictly combat-focused and turned it into its own mechanic, which became Rites.

Rites, unlike Techniques which can be fluffed to be whatever you want them to be, are strictly magical. Also unlike Techniques, Rites aren't heavily customizable; they're simply prepackaged magic ritual effects that you buy with RP (Rite Points), such as a teleportation circle that allows one to travel between waypoints, or a warding rune that repels certain creatures. RP is gained and spent much like TP, except you gain 5 RP for every point of Essence you possess instead of Talent. As it stands there are seven types of Rites: Alteration, Construction, Divination, Illusion, Protection, Telekinesis, and Teleportation. There are also a few miscellaneous rites, much akin to (and in some cases directly emulating) cantrip-level spells from D&D.

What ended up being interesting about this new mechanic is that it meant everyone has access to Rites, and even the poorest dirt farmer can know a thing or two about making a bug-repelling charm or can learn to make his hand glow, which makes RoC probably fit a high-fantasy campaign setting better since convenient magic is so widespread.

That's the entirety of my rambling for now. We've done all the testing we can on our own, and we really need feedback from people outside of our social circle!

>>55065873
So, I know its late in the thread but Ive just brainstormed a initiative system overhaul. First a little background, so feel free to skip to the next block. In Barbarians of Lemuria initiative is one of four combat stats that supposedly have equal weight, but all it does is add to your initiative roll and therefore what order you go in. Obviously this means that initiative is not prioritized, and I aim to fix that. I dont want to completely break the action economy so Ive decided to design the system to cap at 2:1 maximum improvement.

At present each turn players go in initiative order and make an attack/action and a move. What I would do is add a clock in the background which steps every turn by the player's initiative value. The clock will "ping" and award a usable point every time a player clocks to a value equal to the number of combatants. these points can in turn be spent to take an extra action, with the caveat that you can only spend one per turn. Example:

>Combat with 3 players and 5 enemies.
>Player has a fairly high initiative of 2
>turn 1 their clock ticks to 2
>Enemy is killed
>Turn 2 their clock ticks to 4
>Turn 3 their clock ticks to 6
> Another enemy is killed and their clock pings for a point.

Anybody seen something like this before that works better? Are there any ways you can think to streamline it?

Having a real hard time correlating effects of cards with costs, especially given I have two currencies the player has to juggle.

Wat do?

>>55128069
Set your weakest basic effect to a cost of 1 and use that as a comparison for other cards?

>>55128069
What are these two currencies, and how do players acquire them?

>>55122356
>>55123273
>>55123585
>>55124253
>>55124944
This is the closest thing I've seen to my own game in a long time. It's almost worrying.

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>>55128171
>>55128182

May as well show you the cards, and go from there

>>55128182
Top one is money, aka how much it costs to buy the part

Second one is energy, aka how much to equip the part.

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>>>>55128255

Great minds think alike, I suppose. We tried to balance out-of-combat investment with in-combat investment, and allowing a little cross-contamination between the two without making everything a zero-sum game. Then the mixing and matching of Origins and Aspects, so that you could have a broad array of characters coming at the same concept from different directions. Skill Tricks, so that two people can actually have the same skills while still having different skill sets.

Still, if you've thought on similar lines, anything you've read so far that you would change?

I'm probably going to make a mostly freeform magic system for my next game, it uses mostly DM fiat and a simple roll + level to determine a normal potency level.

Originally, I was thinking that wizards can just attempt any kind of magic effect they want to, but I feel that may be a bit overwhelming and not that interesting as I first believed. So I think of adding a sort of 'spell' system by using magic words that people learn, so once you learn the word for fire you can do any magic involving fire, etc.

But the question is, what should be the words? My players are pretty familiar with D&D so should it be that game's spell categories? (Abjuration, Evocation, etc)? Should I use elements instead? More mystic sounding stuff?

>>55122323
>>55121949
>>55121861
>>55121214

The overall theme / main concept is "Dr. Seuss Meets Parliament", wherein the aesthetic is silly names, words, and bright simple colors, but the main gameplay is voting on things, and depending on what things pass, some players get money. Whoever has the most at the end wins.


So, as of right now the goal is a minimum of 6 players all the way up to 18 players.

Each player gets a Planet of Origin card (6 different planets, 18 total cards). Each player also gets a Special Interest card (3 different Interest groups, 18 total cards).

At this point, all the players go through a deck of 24 cards, each with the name of a different "Bill" or "Law". The body of the Bill/Law doesn't make a difference, but each one affects any number of planets either positively or negatively, and is funded by certain Interest groups, while hurting others. One by one, everyone votes on different Bills, passing or failing them. At the end of the game, count up all the bills passed...and get tokens (each with a different value between 5k and 50k credits). Whoever has the most credits wins.

Throughout the game, any player can make exactly ONE accusation of another player being bought / allied with / bound / involved with a certain Interest group. If they're right, that player loses their connection with that group and no longer gets bonus tokens at the end from them. If they're wrong, the accusatory player sits out of voting for X amount of cards, or something, I dunno.

Does that sound retarded?

>>55129529
So in an 18 player game, you'd get six factions of planets (made up of three players each) and three factions of interest groups (made up of six players each)?

Is there any tension between what's good for your planet and what's good for your interest group? I mean, I know a bill might negatively impact a planet, but what impact does that have on the player(s) from that planet during the game? What's to deter a player from running their planet into the ground?

>>55129687
>So in an 18 player game, you'd get six factions of planets (made up of three players each) and three factions of interest groups (made up of six players each)?

In that scenario, there would be a lot of overlap. Someone might hail from Planet Z, but have ties to Interest Group Theta, while another person from Planet Z might have ties to Interest Group Alpha.

The ultimate goal at the end is to help pass as many bills that you feel like would give you the most money, at the end. I feel like that would be the incentive to pass things that positively affect your planet, right?

>>55129722
I'm having a hard time picturing it, but that doesn't mean much.

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I'm working on a lighthearted rules-lite osr-inspired dungeon crawl rpg. It's missing a lot in terms of content but yeah, wouldn't mind some critique.

>>55131836

Why would you use randomized stats when it came to using d6's? The range is tiny. A person with a +1 to a stat and a person with a +3 to a stat have a different probability of success of 33.34% since the person with +3 has +2 over the other person. This is more then in standard D&D where the rarest possible stat difference of +3 to -3 would be 30%, but your system makes it extremely likely, almost guaranteed something like that would happen.

This is a massive difference and would be equal to a starting character in D&D having a +6 in a stat, while the other characters can just randomly have nothing. In games like OSR where characters have random stats they should be small and manageable, which is why the maximum stat bonus is +3. It's very poorly designed from the start.

>>55131891
Yeah, it's kind of intended to be high variance, though I've considered just changing it to "assign a 1, 2, and 3" as the standard generation method.

The other side of it is that when playing, the items you pick up are going to very quickly offset your natural abilities, and the characters themselves are all very easy to kill, even with high Ability Scores. It's not exactly meant to be an ultra combat-heavy game which is more-or-less where ability scores really matter.

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>>55065873
Pros of a specific setting system
>Connected to the world makes the overall system feel unique as the setting in question.
>Characters feel apart of the world
>There are mechanical benefits to role-playing or at least knowing the source material

Cons of a specific setting system
>Constrained by the limits of the world, "No Magic" means there will never be a magic system in place and such.
>If the setting is dull, the system feels dull
>Certain systems in the world lose their mysteriousness if you give it mechanics, you may run into a OoTS scenario where the characters know the mechanics behind certain "Mysterious" elements of the setting

Overall, there is nothing wrong with writing around a specific setting, the setting just has to be strong enough to hold everything up.

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>>55118027
It's a great feeling when you have it all arranged though, feels like you've really accomplished something.

Then you notice a small error and rewrite everything . . . again.

Being a game designer is suffering

>>55121736
I wanted to bring up the parts of the system that are under the most construction right now, and the places where we're especially needing feedback from players.

Probably the most often changed/rebalanced section is Skill Tricks. As it stands, skill tricks are a nebulous mix between specializations and bonus combat options. Most low-tier skill tricks are simply adding a bonus to certain uses of a skill, while higher ones are essentially Techniques that trade away any semblance of customization in favor of being free to use. In our last campaign we've even seen a character eschew the use of techniques entirely in favor of using skill tricks in combat.

Problem is, there are almost two hundred skill tricks, and try as we might to test out the system ourselves, there's always going to be skill tricks we didn't realize were more powerful than we intended, or that synergize with other mechanics to break the game. It's essentially become my role in the test group to stumble on the most broken combinations of the game, but there's no chance I can discover everything myself.

If anybody has read over the Skill Tricks section of the rulebook, are there any glaring flaws or potentially broken uses of certain skill tricks you can find?

>>55128479
Just read through the Doc. Well, I read through the rules and skimmed the listings. I don't think I'd change anything. I can see the direction you're going with this and understand the reasoning behind your choices.

For comparison, I can link my Google Doc here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1frnVfaLjiXbRfg5K6M7bLHp5ZpaLv7bdnDk6vTEHnWM/edit?usp=sharing

Its only a small collection of notes, as I recently had to upend a lot of what I was doing. The notes contain a lot of info about fluff and mechanics and are more up to date with the state of the game and my design intentions. I'm sure you'll easily be able to see the similarities between our projects.

Still waiting for art.

I am conducting my fourth playtest campaign, I am editing some of the details in the game to be more specific and clear, and trying to figure out my layout.

The thing should be ready soon, but it's getting really annoying because I have no idea what to do with it right now. I should probably make some ready version and put it on airs in case someone wants to play it, I guess.

Any suggestions?

>>55133756
You could always mock-up a version with hilariously bad MSPaint drawings in place of the real ones, get all your templates ready, basically draft everything up for the time when the art comes in and you can just drop it straight in. Plus in the meantime, people can playtest your distribution copy.

Who's your artist, btw? Deviantart commission?

>>55134035
My artist is Pilgrim, a drawthread regular. A swell guy, all in all.

Not on my main comp now, can't drop it, but I've seriously made tons of versions of it by now, half of which are in /gdg/ archives somewhere.

Might leak an artless version around the internet in case someone downloads it. Don't want to do the layout for the art yet, due to extreme size constraints (I'm working on A5 so the whole thing can be printed on A4s and stapled together), I'm really bad at estimating the amount of space the images would take in the end. I also don't have a lot of art for the game (there will be 9-10 pieces of art total, the game is probably around 40 pages total with the images added)...

By word basis, there's like one picture per like 500-600 words, so it's not that bad, but I use a rather big font (at least for now) to beef up the game a little. Selling a 20 page booklet just doesn't feel right.

>>55083511
>no functional difference

if I know the setting I am playing in will be populated with certain monsters, there is absolutely a functional difference between dX weapons, and that difference is damage type, and that difference is enemies taking half or double damage based on the weapon I've selected

I understand you are advocating for even more interesting weapon properties, and agree that making mundane items more versatile is a good thing, but this mechanic does exist somewhat in 5e

>>55134364
>this mechanic does exist somewhat in 5e
It also exists in 40K Roleplay, ASOIAF, Runequest, also Song of Swords iirc

>>55134170
Nice one. Pilgrim does good work.

>>55131836
I don't really play RPGs, but I appreciate a nice layout when I see one. These are some well formatted and well written rules. I think it would be more interesting if players got to allocated their 1, 2, 3 as you mentioned somewhere else, rather than rolling for them.

>>55128069
>>55128450
As another anon mentioned, the best way to set your in-game economy is to determine what your cheapest/weakest card will be, and then build it up from there. A good way of doing this is breaking down all the variables your cards introduce, and then guessing how much they're 'worth', adjusting them up or down through playtesting until you get the balance right.

So on your sample card, first determine what an extra [ARM] slot is worth. Is it worth +2 to the monetary cost of a card? Does that mean that 2 extra [ARM] slots are balanced at costing 5? (1 +2 for each [ARM])? If so, what is a [LEG] slot worth? A [CHEST] slot? Once you break all of this down, balancing the cost of your cards will be easy.

One tip: things that deal damage should always be at least one cost cheaper than things that grant life (assuming the goal of your game is to deplete your opponents life). When they're equal value, or when life is cheaper than damage, your game can become a grind.

Here's an art resource you might like as well. I've used some of this stuff here and there, it's great for drop+dragging together a nice card in no time flat.
>http://www.noblevalerian.com/resources/casual-card-game-resources

Thoughts on this dice game?

Archery!

First to 5 hits wins. A d6 is rolled to determine the difficulty of the shot. Players roll at the same time to meet or beat the shot. Each player can either A: take a shot by rolling a d6, or B: take their time and not roll, but get an additional dice to roll with next turn.

Hi guys! I need some opinion on this:

after rolling stats, characters can get one skill.

>Weapon Master (you can perform anime shit with your preferred weapon, area attacks, long shots, or just deal double damage)
>Warrior (you get double HP)
>Acrobat (you can perform uncanny jumps and anime style evasion)
>Ninja (You can be stealthy where no other could)
>Witch (you can spend downtime or HP to call forth a spell; it's likely to have side effects)
>Specialist (criminology, medicine, engineering, survival, etc. You always have knowledge and tools related to your specialty or you know where to find them)

I'm pondering if is really necessary dividing the acrobat and the ninja. Should I give them some more agency? It feels a little overpowered if I merge them in one.


also, dropping some idea I have:

ninja also let's you dissappear from scene on a succesful roll. You don't have to specify where, you're just "somewhere around". You can later spring from wherever you want, providing it makes sense. Even in scenes that you're not supposed to be, like when a PC goes in secret to talk with an NPC or whatever.

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>>55134035
>>55135432
This is the final artless version. I won't be making any substantial changes save some minor editing anymore. Maybe add some words to the terminology bit, but that's it. If not, I'll just cover that space with a picture or something.

Ironically, now that I've been working on this tiny game (It's still just a bit under 7000 words total) for 10 months - while I can admit that the game has some merit to it - I'm pretty sick of it at this point. For a game planned to be my backup from now on, I sure am tired of it before it's even out.

Well, perhaps I will get over this and see the game for what it is once it's released.

Any ideas where to drop this artless version to?

>>55135485
Thanks. I'm not really a writer or designer so it's good to know the way I've laid it out makes sense (though on a second reading, I can see that there are several errors. One sample character was duplicated instead of 3 unique ones.)

I'm struggling with assigning stats. The way I've been running the game (just once so far), characters die semi-frequently. My intention is to create a dungeon crawl wherein all the characters are essentially level 0 peasants and they slowly pick up more gear throughout the session to help them become semi-competent adventurers. On death, the player rolls a new character and gets to pick up whatever is recoverable from his/her previous dead character (like many rogue-like video games).

If the players assign their scores, I'm afraid that the whole aspect of "making do with the cards you're dealt" falls apart because on-death players will simply assign their new character ability scores that work optimally with their gear, and then stay locked into those ability scores for each new character they create if the last one dies.

Essentially I'd like to craft something where players sit down and have fun playing with goofy and potentially sub-optimal characters and dying is at least a semi-fun aspect of the game because you get to roll up a new guy who may have great ability scores and work awesomely with the gear you picked up or may be a total dunce.

I realize though that sort of playstyle is probably horribly unappealing to players looking to build an optimized character.

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>>55137362
Now, scrolling through it, those inward black lines (which I use to staple the thing together) look horrendous, as if the whole thing was off-center.

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>super excited because something actually works as intended
>later on realize why it won't work in the long run
>try to fix its glaring issues
>I can't fix it

what are some woes you've faced while designing stuff, /gdg/

Is this *enough* for the base of a secret role / social deduction game:


* Each player is given a card that has a Star or No Star; they keep that hidden.
* Everyone has to vote on what is considered the winning side, Star or No Star.
* Everyone votes by putting their card face down in front of them, with their choice pointed towards the middle.
* All cards revealed simultaneously.
* Goal is to be on the team that has less votes / less people choosing that side.
* Third party that wins if everyone votes one way or the other.

It's a simple bluffing game that introduces prisoner's dilemma / social deduction to kids. Also based on The Sneetches. Thoughts or criticisms? Suggestions to make this better / build on it? Any emergent strategies?

>>55142945
> Each player is given a card that has a Star or No Star; they keep that hidden.

The idea is it has ends on one side, one with Star the other with No Star. The player can choose either or. They don't receive one card that has only one option.

>>55142970
Could be interesting but would fall apart as soon as a majority of players or a small group of players start "teaming up" every round. This sort of thing is avoided in most similar games because they're given random pre-determined roles or teams at the start so people can't just trust their friends to each other win.

I think you'll need to try it out and see how people behave when they can just flip flop at any time and are with the same group round after round after round. I think you'll start seeing the clique mentality start making it boring but this is all just my speculation.

>>55144300
Hmmm I see what you're saying. My main focus was thinking of a way for less extroverted or outspoken people to still be able to implement a strategy or participate in "deception"

>>55085882
or when the GM gets cranky, "time of the month"

>>55065873
>>55142581
If a mechanic or framework does not work, I do a "DM test". I roleplay out how the player and DM's conversation would go with only the rules I have confidence in at the moment. Then I add things to shore up the DM's response.

Excitement-driven development is a phase. My development cycle steadied when I broadened my understanding of games outside the RPG hobby.

>>55142581
I deliberate too much on naming skills. Making sure each one covers a sufficient amount of utility without becoming overlapping or overly useful is the true pain.
Worse yet, in much of my design I feel there needs to be some kind of symmetry, forcing me to make more or less of what I may truly need.

>>55140017
That is cleaner. What are the conditions for uploading to Drive-Thru RPG?

So I've been thinking about and playing with some action economy ideas. How I'm thinking in my game is that models will get 2 actions per activation, in the form of normal actions that count as one, double actions that count as 2 actions, and free actions, which don't count as an action for the limit, but are limited to only being able to perform each free action once per activation. Basic moving or attacks are normal actions, overwatching or charging is a double action example, and pivoting on the spot without moving is an example of free actions. Some things will get more actions per activation, like 3 actions for heroes or vehicles.

The big part of it I was looking at is the charging action. Most games do charging as a combined action of movement, followed by a melee attack, usually as with a bonus to it, to give incentive over just making a normal move and attack; or in some cases, its a limiting factor to entering melee, you can only attack in melee after charging in.

How I was looking at it as when you make a charge action, you get to make a normal move, followed by either 2 melee attack actions, or an additional move action and then a melee attack. The idea is instead of giving a flat bonus for charging, you still get the incentive in the form of 3 actions at the cost of 2, with some flexibility in either getting an extra move or an extra attack, depending on what you need. The downside will be things like you can only charge if you weren't engaged before making the double action; you can not backstrike a model, even if you reach behind them; and you can only make melee attacks with it, especially in Hellsgate, where range is prominent. That's also kind of the idea for making charging enticing, since the current system heavily favors range, since melee is dangerous to both parties. I may give a buff there to cover the concerns of being attacked back in melee.

Does this sound like a good way to do charging? Or should I stick to more classic ways?

>>55149887
I don't think there are any specific ones. That's where I'm putting it up first, before doing a small print.

>>55142581
My basic problem is that I'm really good at designing 1v1 combat (Or at least have really novel ideas for it), but pretty bad at anything bigger. When you add more characters, it just falls flat.

I managed to fix Misfortune's combat somewhat, but I'm still salty I couldn't implement the escalation idea I had.

Perhaps in some other game I'll drag that idea out again, maybe it will make more sense when the problem is not rolls, but resources...

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Posting a mockup of >>55128450 using the resources posted in >>55135564 to bump the thread. I get bored and need the practice.

>>55150737
Go for it, at least for the moment. In a situation like yours, I'd go for innovation over tradition. There's a great benefit if it works out, and not much loss if it doesn't since you can return to more well established iterations.

>>55142581
I've tried several times to make a game, but one of the first things you've got to do is figure out your primary rolling mechanics.

I've gone through four or five different variations. Sometimes I can get more done, but I always find problems and go back to square one.

>>55153398
do
>>55146125

>>55142581
>prime number comes up as secondary characteristic of mechanic
>prime numbers connect like shit to other mechanics by nature

>well it could work, but the numbers aren't pretty
>autism intensifies

>system is my ideal tracking framework, it feels natural to just freely interpret roll results and fill into the mold
>fail to translate that into tangible mechanics that aren't a baroque nightmare

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>>55150999

How was escalation supposed to work, again?

It's a shame that the combat doesn't scale well but I'd help if I could.

I've been challenged to make a one-page tabletop rpg system that voters everything for players and DM/GM. What do you think of this as a Base?

>Six aspects: Martial, Magic, Acuity, Personality.
>Assign a d4, d6, d8, and d10 to each of those skills.

Checks
>DM assigns a DC to any check on a scale of 1-10.
> Roll a d10. Roll appropriate skill dice. Add total to beat DC.


Combat
> Monsters "HP" equals how tough they are = how many times they have to get hit to die
> weak = 1 successful check, Tough = 6, Boss = 10

Thoughts so far?

I have a mechanic where a certain class can cook meals that give different buffs depending on the ingredients they put in it. They can unlock different methods of cooking but I'm having trouble finding good bonuses to give depending on the methods used.

I figure soup could keep you warm for extended periods, or roasting could boost damage, but its hard to think of something for EVERY method. I need ideas for different effects.

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I made this class for Dungeons and Dragons 5e. How does it look balance wise and what could I do to give the class more flavor/fluff?

>>55158819

Forgot to write that at 1st level they are vulnerable to silvered weapons.

>>55157144
>>55157144
Bump.

Meant 4 basic aspects.

>>55158294
A bit cheeky, but look up the cooking skill in WoW and steal liberally.

>>55156152
My old escalating system (combat stacks I called them) worked really simply:

You just roll contested rolls, and the winning roll always works as the baseline the opponent's next roll must exceed (there were rules for rerolling and adding extra dice to your roll), and if it does, it becomes the next baseline the opponent must again exceed.

The problem is that I couldn't integrate groups to it in any sensible way. Even though the last version I came up with is pretty good, it had problems.

>One person (the one with the highest number) is decided as the stack leader, and others provide support. The others give bonuses to the base roll of the leader, and only X (the number of opponents) bonuses can be given to any roll.

The problem was that with a group of 4, the total number could climb way too high way too fast. This mainly was because group bonuses were theoretically identical to the base roll in worth.

Maybe I could've reworked it to only give 1d6 bonus to the base roll. It might've fixed the whole thing, but I'm kind of digging the way I handle it currently. However, it kind of grinds my gears that the combat system has complex subsystems like fatigue and turns, when previously it was so goddarn simple.

Maybe I'll give the stack system a new chance in the next edition. It had the right kind of charm I wanted for the game... And with a little more work, it could've been good. It also provides an extremely easy way to handle larger combats, where the difficulty escalates constantly and the players must take more and more risks to get stuff done.

Damn, I want to rework the Stacks system, but I'm like less than a month away from release and my gears are grinding at 1000rpm.

So a physicist friend pointed out to me the biomechanics of small creatures, and I wanted to develop a game mechanic to reflect this. The idea that ants can lift several times their body weight, but still are objectively weaker than larger creatures- should apply through all size scales including halflings. Likewise, their acceleration is tremendously better since they have less inertia. This applies to their weapons usage too- both swing inertia and bow draw length. Less damage, yes, but in theory considerably faster.

So I wanted to give halflings faster/more attacks and some kind of movement benefit and carry weight benefit, despite being objectively slower and weaker.

The problem is this implies an inverse relation for larger creatures, which being balanced around medium sized means less than one attack per round or less than one move per round results at sufficiently large sizes.

Any ideas for an elegant solution to this problem?

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Started this with simple as possible dicepools. Mostly conceptual and a little bit messy.

bamp

>>55151077
Thats fucking baller mate cheers.

>>55165375
D&d speed factor or greyhawk initiative deals with this.... Also it's kind of common sense

>>55085196
TotM. I was super poor when I first learned to GM. Ran games at other people's houses, often in sofas or without adequate tables, and could only use what I was willing to schlep a few miles in southeast summer heat. I don't have to do that any more, but it's habit by now to run games light on excess books and doodads if I can.

>>55150999
Group v group is easy enough if you have counter incentives against the default optimal strategy of concentrating damage. 1v1 is hard for me to make interesting, and group v 1 is something I haven't seen done especially well in general.

>>55142581
Combat, the numbers either work amazingly well, but it's a crunchy nightmare, or it's fast and boring with fucked numbers

>>55172151
Quick minimalist combat works best if its embedded in something like good dungeon crawling or stealth. Something that makes the decision to fight or the failure to avoid a fight matter.

Bimp

>>55169485
Ah cool. I hadn't kept abreast with the 5eUA.

But it wasn't quite what I'm getting at. Not "get your action sooner" but "get actions and movement more frequently" would be the biomechanical consequence, see? Which also implies a medium creature gets actions more frequently than a large, who is more frequent than a huge, etc.

Trying to homebrew a restricted 3.PF (yeah, I know, but it's that or play with myself) dungeon crawl system that incorporates "anyone can use magic items" to fix martials, "casting causes exhaustion and rests are rare" to fix casters, but doesn't devolve into level 2 fighters being too dumb to take a running jump and anemic mages being too sickly to use spells.

My draft concept is:
Stamina
A character has a number of Stamina points equal to their Constitution times their level. Stamina is expended by performing certain physical actions, and passively at the rate of 0.5 per combat round and the floor’s depth per approximately 100 squares moved. (Estimated stamina costs per room are provided with the map.) Stamina is restored to full during a full rest with food, and to half during a partial rest with or without food.
A character with Stamina below 0 may take only partial actions, and may not take actions which list a Stamina cost. A character whose negative Stamina increases beyond their Constitution immediately falls unconscious.
A character attempting to cast spells or use items with a Mana cost higher than their current Stamina will instead spend Stamina, but they may other continue to freely spend from their Mana pool on lower-cost effects.

Mana
A character has a number of Mana points equal to their Wisdom times their level. Mana is expended by casting spells or using magical items. Mana is restored to full during a full rest with food, and to half by meals consumed whether resting or on the march.
A character whose Mana is below its maximum cannot take actions with a Stamina cost higher than their Mana, but may continue to spend from their Stamina pool on lower-cost effects.

Who's done this better that I can just copy rather than keeping that abortion of two crosslinked half-stats?

>>55174824
Oic

Yeah, I've been trying to figure out myself how to translate that I to a pnp game. Have you played Final Fantasy X? That's almost exactly what I'm trying to envision as far as combat

>>55175392
There was a thread about similar things a couple days ago.
You can borrow a Snakes and Ladders board (or anything with a lot of sequential numbers), and have players move along it by gaining a number of spaces based on a speed factor every "round".
FF, any of the FFs after 3 to various degrees of default autopause and visible granularity, used this with each entity being able to act when they reached the end of the board and some actions having their own speed factors replacing the character's entire next turn (IE, your halfling would just have a speed factor double a human's.)

More suitable for a system with wild differences in speed factor between participating entities that have similar nominal DEX is to create a system where actions cost a specified number of AP rather than resetting you: when you reach the end of the board, you may be able to spend 5 AP on a halfling dagger, 10 AP on a halfling sword or human dagger, 15 on a halfling greatsword/human sword/ogre dagger, 20 on a human greatsword/ogre sword, etc.

Allowing characters to spend as soon as they have the AP can reduce the number of abusive double-triple-quadruple moves available at the start of combat to a high speed factor character, at the cost of allowing that same character to abusively store actions.

Are there any chess or stratego like games that involve attacking via range like, I don't have to move my piece into the space of the enemy piece, or certain units can kill from afar?

>>55175392
Yeah, played FFX

>>55175736
I was in that thread. I believe I recommended 2e Combat & Tactics as an example that tried to do this, but failed because it was tedious. Basically initiative filled up like an action bar in FF games, modified by weapon speed factor. Full attack was still a thing, but each attack got staggered through the round and even into the next. As I recall playing it, it didn't work very well in practice, though looked attractive in theory.

One proposal I've thought of: Have a %chance based on size to gain or lose an action. So a medium plays as normal. A halfling has an X% chance to get a bonus action each round. An ogre has the same X% chance to lose an action. Giants get 2X% to lose. Tiny creatures get 2X% to gain.

Action economy never goes above 1.5 for any given round, but the frequency increases with smaller creatures, and 0.5 for larger.

Alternately, tiny creatures roll 2 dice at X% chance and each can give them an action. Huge creatures can lose 2 actions but only a 1/X^2 chance. Problem is then a colossal creature is rolling like 8 dice to lose actions, so I don't like that as much.

This obviously begs the question: what is the ideal value of X?

>>55176012
A lot of the problems with that implementation seem to have been integrating it with other splats' assumptions. A ground-up abandonment of rounds, partial vs. full attacks, etc would clean up a lot (and we're also approaching the technological point where iOS/Android companion apps are only niche bad rather than full autism bad.)

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Will a word processor like LO Writer do the job for getting a manual formatted?

I imagine anything can pull off a nice document if you know how to use the tool, though I'm curious about what software suites people depend on to make shit with.

>>55175892
Bump

I'm working on a stratego like board game that's 2v2 and uses hexes. Goal is either eliminate all enemy units, or get one of yours to the enemy's "gate" (board is hexes in a roughly diamond shape (loosely based in Enders Game battleroom)).

9v9 pieces, in which you take the beginning turns placing them one at a time on your end of the board in a given range (say, the first few rows). On your turn you can move a piece or attack with it. Attack is done with a d6. Only attack in a straight line, and you have to meet or beat the number of tiles between attacking unit and target unit. (4 tiles away, roll a 4+ to hit). A hit incapacitates an enemy, and another removes them from the board.

Anything immediately broken about thus?

>>55178876
Dudes used to photocopy typewritten docs. Sky's the limit.

LO is annoying AF to use, consumer-muhbookreport word processors like it and Word are relatively bad at automanaging indexes and footnotes for you, and taking six months of your life to master Pagemaker will make it look like a Wizards splat rather than a Green Ronin splat, but on a very basic level if you can keep that hog from crashing long enough to type your shit and don't mind manually handling references it will be good enough.

>>55178876
I wrote rules in OpenOffice. If you're patient, and you finagle things until they're just right, you can do everything the more 'professional' software suites can do without the hassle of buying/cracking it.

>>55071223
Remove weapon feats and give weapons of a similar class a special ability. Heavy weapons can now deal X amount of bonus damage in exchange for giving opponents a bonus to attack or something. Light weapons can make extra attacks with penalties, certain weapons can trip, etc.