Amateur Game Design and Homebrew Thread

>Why should I homebrew?
/tg/ products are fairly unique in that it's actually pretty simple to make them these days, with a plethora of products to assist in making and playtesting your game. Making your own games helps understand why games are made the way they are, as well as being fun to do.

>What you should post
Ideas for games, games you're currently making, updates to your own games in broad strokes, and any homebrewing for existing products that don't get much attention. Discussion about the above is welcome. Post good, be good, and look over others products, they care if someone looks more than anything. Eat a dick Moonshine manchildren.

>Resources for the aspiring developer
>https://anydice.com/ (A fantastic resource for checking probabilities)
>https://miro.com/ (A online whiteboard with tools to help organize yourself)
>https://www.notion.so/ (Similar to the above, but in a bit cleaner format for those who work in larger teams)
>https://rolz.org/ (Impromptu playtesting at its finest)
>https://www.youtube.com/user/georgephillies/playlists (Game Design Lectures)

Here is my shit upscale of B/X / downscale of Worlds without numbers. Always really apreciated how the BECMI character sheet was formated. simple, clean and readable. very much unlike the clutter of Worlds without number. THis is essentiallythe BECMI character sheet but with the addition of "RS", which stands for reserves, which is essentially WWN's strain. Its your dedicated bean counter you can use to slightly nudge a roll one way or another. But it also acts as your negative HP, so if you use it, you sap away your survivability.
I feel that makes it feel a little more concrete then a totally abstracted metacurrency. Its your reserves, physical, emotional, etc so you weaken as you use it.

>>95869914
og becmi CS for reference.

I made like 500 pages of 5e content before getting burnt out on the system itself.

>>95869914
If we are just talking about little osr tweak ideas, I thought it would be a good idea for HP to recover equal to your level per day rather than just 1. That way it will always be a signifigant amount of time, but each day also grants you a signifigant portion of your hp back.

>>95869914
what forces a luck save?

>>95869889 (OP)
hello again, fellow amateur designers
I'd like to share the most recent update of my rulebook
>version 0.3.1.
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vkZ1w5zs8q8Haw1bjrxuqms1zYNy2JeR/view?usp=sharing

now that the rules for the card game are "finished", I'm taking some time to rework some ideas for my previous project, a card-based skirmish miniature game
I've updated the design, here's an example

>>95875211
Sorry, I meant to say Flagwaver, not Flagweaver

thats it. its been months, something MUST be done. I WILL finish the current version this week come hell or high water. screencap this post.

Is having a lot of status effects (burn, fear, ect) that can stack with abilities that have conditionals a good idea, or will it just be to complicated and hard to keep track of?

>>95877918
Depends on how they stack and what each effect does. If each effect is different, keep it to one instance of each on a player/character.

>>95878498
For the stack its each time it will activate when a condition is met (turn end, taking damage, per movement and so on) to keep the tracking number low. I plan to only have around 2 maybe 3 different instances of a status effect on a character at one time but what you plan out and how the game turns out are two different things.

Work on your games or else

>>95877026
Based accountability anon

bump

>>95878816
Ugh, tell me about it. I always start out trying to limit those extras, then 5 pages of them later...

I've been posting on and off for a few years about trying to make a TF RPG I'm wanting to do partly as a gift idea for a friend (so done up like an RPG or wargame starter box) and not having much luck.

I decided earlier in the year to give it another go with a fanfic idea I had 20+ years ago of TFs waking up in WW2, and got some decent writing down for it. About a month after that, I was grappling again with how to get it printed and while driving had this idea on changing the theme - so now I have giant transforming robots from space fighting in WW2 after crashing here thousands of years ago, that aren't transformers and have had a bit of worldbuilding done. As well, I have rules - just not 100% sure yet how complete they are or how they'll play.

But I have a lot.

>>95882151
Got a slightly rekindle in working on it, but kinda got bummed over after I realize most people won't play it.

bump

>>95873621
you roll it to avoid something based on pure chance. the theory is that as you level up you become more of a main character and have more plot armor. The practice is just for the gm to use it when there is a chance for something, but its outside of your direct control.

is this thread bound to die? it won't last a month, not even a couple of days at this rate

>>95869914
Something that could be done with the reserves resource is that although you could use it activ or reactively, it could be more economical reactively. thus to resist something o to go into negative hp 1 reserves equals 2 to a saving roll or hp. While if you want to boast a skill or damage its only +1 to a skill roll or damge. So it really feels like you are eating into yourreserves when you use it actively, and so that an attacker in an engagement cant just go 1 for 1 with a defender when they are trying to save themselves from mortal peril.

>>95898345
That reminds me of a system I wanted to try out. where everyeffect essentiall had 2 "levels". A full version and a resisted/minor version. The full version is often crippling, while the minor version is just impeding.
In 5e where boss monsters might have legendary resistances to just flat out negate effects that might stop, poison, blind etc them, instead, most boss monsters can use a resistance to transfer a major effect to a minor one. so instead of stop it slows, instead of reducing thier attack by 4 it reduces it by 2, instead of blinding it reduces vision to 30 ft, etc. So its still often worth casting a spell or inflicting a condition bosses outside of purely burning legendary resistances. Same somewhat goes for characters, though they tend to just have enough resources for 1-2.

>>95875211
I think you did a good job on the visual design. The icons are clear, prominent and not muddled while leaving a good amount of space for the image. Though I could see the superposed stuff on the bottom might interfere with some bottom heavy artwork.

After creating a couple magic custom sets, I have decided to step up and just make my own card game. I am still in the concept phase; here are some elements: randomly decided combat with dice, hidden information on the battlefield: some cards enter face down and so, the back of the cards is important and there will be different types of card backs: it will have to be played with transparente sleeves in order to make it clear what type of permanent it is and its cost. The setting is a war between gangs where law enforcement will also intervene

can someone tell me if this playtest looks comprehensible?

https://imgur.com/a/vdLWUX1

>>95901200
yeah, it seems fine to me. looks like you're going with stripped down 5e that will play faster and with more map abstraction? seems like it would be good for car trips and stuff. i didnt see where you said how many actions i can take a turn, but otherwise it seems pretty coherent

>>95903679
Thanks. It's sort of a stripped down 5e at this stage, but I'm probably going to go an entirely different direction as I develop the game a bit more. Mostly, using dnd classes and monsters just seemed easiest for a playtest.

>i didnt see where you said how many actions i can take a turn
it uses an action point system similar to pf2e or dc 20, called "effort". As in dc 20, you get 4 effort per round at the end of each of your turns, and can divide it between actions and reactions (called triggered actions) as you see fit.

I might need to change the action system later though, as this ended up being a bitch to balance

>>95875211
>version 0.3.2.
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s2OkCefsbjUzVAZO7c4ldr9KblKh64tg/view?usp=sharing
I think I've reached a point in which I don't know what else I could improve
is this rulebook perfect? surely not, far from it...
but there's nothing else that needs changing IMO

what do you think?

>>95903948
Ah i see. I dont think it needs it but just to be safe, should you clarify that effort is a resource that CAN be used more than once per turn?

>>95899213
Sounds interesting, but why dice? One of the things that makes TCCG elegant is that you only need cards. Like random from the deck alone is already enough random.

Will it be just a skirmish or something more political with various approaches to achieve the victory? Like rock-paper-scissors = influence-money-brute force?

>>95905316
The combat of the game is a firefight between random gangsters, and when fire arms are introduced a deterministic resolution of comparing abilities or power and toughness, I don't think it is going to give you a good representation of the confrontation, there has to be more randomness. There is also the idea of the losing side gaining access to law enforcement actions against the winner, so bad luck in the shooting part isn't going to be a total defeat and loss of resources. The combat will go like this: each side will throw their two dice at the same time (unless one has an ambush advantage and that only gives you one unopposed shoot), each side is aiming for a seven, and firefights continue for a limited amount of rolls (I am thinking 5), natural 2s will give advantage to the opponent while natural 12s give you advantage. The advantage means that 1s and 6s become 2s and 5s, a second advantage means that 1s, 2s and 6s and 5s become 3s and 4s, making it more likely that you hit a 7. See the grid in the image.
At this point I am just generating random cards to play to get the feel of the mechanics.

>>95904089
I'm currently working on some decks
it's quite hard not to ape Magic, but I need some sort of reference, and premodern decks give the correct "feel" for the game
pic is totally not Lord of Atlantis

>>95905755
It sounds so complicated for a 2d6 roll.

i need some naming help

so i've got 3 levels of spells, or you could think of them as degrees of complexity/speed. i need names for 1 and 3, but i dont want to just copy DnD with cantrips and rituals if i can help it, but im stuck

1: instant spells, require only a quick uttering of a magic word, very minor effects. shit like magic missile level effects. think like the harry potter wizard duels where they are slinging spells at each other like pistol shots, quick flicks of a wand or staff and a simple magic word. need a snappy word for this

2: incantations. spells which have the character draw or scribe out a spell sigil full metal alchemist style, adding optional glyphs which augment the spell and increase its difficulty and cast time. the names for this level are solved

3: long spells. takes anywhere from minutes, hours or days to complete, these are the big complicated spells like creating golems, town sized protective wards, scrying or divination, etc. this is the other one i need a name for

worst case scenario i can always fall back on cantrip and ritual but i'd like to avoid those words if possible

>>95908803
Tricks and miracles

>>95908803
without knowing anything else from your setting, here are some suggestions
>1
Spark, Dart, Snap, Hex
>3
Magnum, Weave, Arcanum, Conjury, Litany
but I'd still suggest Ritual, it gets the point across better than the others

>>95908803
Honestly, don't worry about it, the terms DnD uses are already generic enough and exactly what you are trying to get across, that you'll just drive yourself insane trying be original for the sake of originality.

I want to offer my player a sort of minigame for when his character is hacking, something that should require at least a little strategic thought on his part, so it's not just one or two computer skill rolls spread out over a few turns.

Any ideas or recommendations?

>>95918984
Something like Poker with dice or Soliteur. But personally I would just role-play it with several choices and rolls.

I am conflicted on a TTRPG I want to make. I personally lean towards something more serious in tone and what is possible in the game, while my friends and modern TTRPG crowd in general want to play something wacky and deattached from reality. So I feel like to make something people acually play, I need to make something more generic and escapistic. What to do?

>>95919740
I thought about poker as an option, roll20 already has a built in card deck after all, but idunno.

>>95919772
If you want to make something people actually play, you might be shit out of luck anon, regardless of your personal stylistic preferences.

>>95869889 (OP)
In this period that I have summer leave I always take a project with my brother to do nerd stuff, last year was painting all our pile of shame and we did it, this year he's talking about making an homebrew or a big adventure to write. Maybe we do it maybe we don't.
Anyway the idea of our homebrew was a game with interesting mechanics:
>The games are only one shots or bishots
>The lore has a explained mechanics on why you make one game with only one character
>Mix of sci-fi tropes and hard sci-fI
>2d6 system and statistics inspired by gurps, skills from other games
>The GM is a player and still a judge in-game so can prevent players from doing murder hobo or similar(explained in lore)
So this what we were cooking. The lore basically is mutant or bio mercenary that their genetic code is so fucked up that after their cryo freezer is opened they start to melt and the GM is a IA that assist and support them like a robot dog from the Boston Dynamics or a capsule from metal gear peace walker that monitor them and can end them more quickly or not, they are recruited to do shit specifically for one sesion. The homebrew is thought for games that don't have time to play complete campaigns, but still have that mix of crunchy and lore but not like 300 pages but we are thinking a booklet with lore and rules of about 30 pages max, we got inspired by escape the dark sector, rogue trooper and many dark sci fi stuff. Maybe will never see the light or maybe it will.

One thought that's come back to me a number of times is using something like Exalted's Virtues as qualifiers for something riffing on the D&D Alignment system, so there's partially-objective measures of specific moral elements yet the overall ethical systems and associated afterlives remain subjective.

Maybe an abstracted demography using an organizational affiliation mechanic for religion prevalence dictating the pull of respective theologies, then on death one's personal affiliation plus some differential in virtues is checked for which afterlife they go to. That way, small cults teaching an absence of virtue go to prevailing punitive afterlives, thus giving cause for bad actors in them to create such cults to gather supporters in their vicinity, but at the same time exemplars of counter-cultural virtue sets get a decent chance at what they're preaching especially when they found their own settlements.

Could roll into theogenesis, where sufficient supporters following a founder who passed the check raises said founder into one who can act from the afterlife. Figuring out a break-point for ancestor-worship being of practical value would be a bit complicated.

>>95906198
I think I'll try to give the game a more "urban fantasy" theme rather than focus solely on horror
it will be easier to generate pictures, and surely it will make easier to market the game when the opportunity arrives

thoughts on this type chart?

>Faith has Resistance to Occult
>Faith has Vulnerability to Nature and Science
>Nature has Resistance to Faith and Occult
>Nature has Vulnerability to Science
>Occult has Resistance to Nature and Science
>Occult has Vulnerability to Faith
>Science has Resistance to Nature
>Science has Vulnerability to Faith and Occult
>Mundane has no Resistances or Vulnerabilities


inb4 "why are they unequal" nature and occult are mutually resistant. Faith and science are mutually destructive

>>95869889 (OP)
Here's a bump on me, gamedev anons.

>>95932727
I think you should use this chart to ask questions about how these forces function in your world. Is the relationship between science and faith a matter of one being more or less real than the other, can science create Gods? Can faith make reality "less" real? Why is science seperate from nature, what is nature's essence other than stuff science can quantify? Stuff along those lines comes to my mind and I think it could add more personality to your world and the way these forces are used by characters.

bump

I was working on a game where one player is a cavalryman while another is their mount. The main problem is thinking of fun things for the mount to do, so I tried making them fantasy creatures. It ultimately devolved into your standard generic combat except with the gimmick that one player can't move. Another issue was that each page was just me explaining fantasy tropes to justify mount abilities.
I'm thinking about taking the concept of a team based cavalry game and reworking it into a game where the players are individuals in a tank crew instead. It could be good practice for understanding what my original idea might need if I decide to pick that back up. If anyone has any comments or similar games to check out for either of two I described I'd be thankful.

>>95939775
Why not two players as one mount?

>>95939775
It has to be played with written instructions by the players only, so they need to intuit one another's intentions.

Bumpity bump

>>95928246
I'm torn on which direction to take my game.
Should I stick with the original horror theme, or pivot to something more like a generic urban fantasy setting?

Some thoughts:
>Image generation is harder with horror.
AI tools have a harder time producing consistent horror visuals. That said, this isn't a dealbreaker — all images are placeholders and will eventually be replaced by proper illustrations anyway.

>Horror is harder to market.
Not everyone enjoys horror. Some outright avoid it, and there's a risk it could limit the game's appeal. I keep thinking of Hecatomb and how it just vanished.

>My game's core themes lean horror.
The color philosophies — Hunger, Curiosity, Passion, and Fear — feel tailor-made for a horror setting. If I switched to urban fantasy, I’d probably need to rename them. But to what? No idea yet.

>I'm not actually a horror guy.
I like the idea of horror, but I’m a bit of a coward and I don’t have much experience writing or running horror stories. Urban fantasy would be way more comfortable for me to develop.

>Urban fantasy might be out of fashion?
Feels like the general public still leans heavily toward classic medieval fantasy. I’m not sure there’s much hype around modern/urban fantasy these days.

I may need to ditch this pokeclone idea. something about elemental power type charts seriously fucks with my OCD

>>95945535
Same, kek. But the fact that it has been done successfully in the past, like MtG, means that it can be done again. And maybe i am the man to square the circle and unlock the beautiful symmetries of neo-alchemy.

>need to make a bajillion random tables (game is solo so they're necessary for the gameplay loop)
This is the last big thing I have to do before collating all the poorly written, disparate rules into an actual draft document. I keep procrastinating it though. Wish me luck, anons.

>>95945535
>>95945672

I think the best option is to do these

Fire consumes Air, Air evaporates Water, Water erodes Earth, Earth smothers Fire

Fire boils Water, Water extinguishes Fire

Air flies over Earth, Earth burrows under Air

no idea how to fit all the other opposites like wood/steel, light/dark, life/death, space/time, good/evil, magic/science, etc.

>>95944207
now that we are talking about elemental alignments, I've updated mine
let me know what you think

>Gray – Dominion
>Control through fear. Power through silence.
Dominion is the force of structured authority, wielded by syndicates and institutions that govern the city. It feeds on fear and obedience, imposing order through dominance, not justice. Its power lies in suppressing dissent, commanding loyalty, and manipulating from the shadows to keep control unchallenged.

>Blue – Deceit
>Truth hurts. People lie. True power resides in deceit.
Deceit is the force of misdirection, subversion, and hidden intent. It thrives in ambiguity, whispers behind screens, masks over motives, riddles in plain sight. Those aligned with Deceit manipulate systems, exploit cracks in logic, and weaponize knowledge. In a world of perception, Deceit creates lies as sharps as truth.

>Red – Passion
>No masters. No brakes. Just the fire in your chest.
Passion is the force of unfiltered emotion. Rage, desire, creation, and rebellion. It burns through rules, reason, and restraint. In the city’s undercurrents, Passion is riot and revelation, the spark behind uprisings, the heartbeat of movements, and the flame that refuses to die when the world turns cold.

>Green – Ancestry
>The past is not gone. It speaks through blood.
Ancestry is the force of shared memory, ritual, and belonging. It binds generations through tradition, story, and spirit. Those aligned with Ancestry draw strength from the past to shape the present, honoring what came before to protect what remains. Power flows not from dominance, but from communion.

bump?

it's over, isn't it?

>>95955632
The board is dead.

>>95956627
it's a great excuse for me to work on my game!
I've almost finished designing a whole deck in the time between posts
apparently, changing the theme of the game into a more generic urban fantasy has been a pretty good decision

>>95956699
so here it is

one last push

I'm writing a bad homebrew and struggling with how to calculate damage. I'm trying to stay as far away from rolling as possible, only using it for the most critical stuff.

I figure players LOVE dice, they CRAVE dice, they NEEEEEED dice, so it should be extra showy and crazy when required, so I don't want routine damage to incur it.

Are there any novel systems for calculating on-hit effects I can rip off?

>>95873621
I'd say either in literal games of chance (i.e. gambling, or narrative stuff like "you feeling lucky punk" moments) or you get to do a save against it at the cost of some resource. So in pure game terms, you can be resistant to everything and have plot armor, but only for so long.

>>95964425
>Are there any novel systems for calculating on-hit effects I can rip off?
What's the game about in general, and what dynamics do you want it to model?

>>95964436
It's meant to be absolutely pure crunch, sorta like how GURPS is adaptable to any setting. The original concept was to "properly" model modern long-range vehicle combat, so weapons are mostly made up of tokens that guarantee a hit if the token can legally move into the target. (the tokens are simple dont worry its basically "it can go 5 squares/250 meters/etc, shooter picks where it goes once the token's "turn" comes up)

It's loosely inspired by Paranoia's "5 second turn" where you declare actions in secret, but less mean spirited. action order is determined by what actions you actually declared, which cost a resource, and whoever has the most of the resource goes first. Certain things are resolved synchronously with special rules for conflicts regarding the end state, e.g. all moves are done at once, and resolutions are only necessary if two units/tokens/a unit and a token are in the same space. Tokens representing weapons fire always go last in the round.

I'm not sure how to handle all the Bad Stuff that happens if a missile successfully slams into you, or worse, two units moved to the same spot and now two tanks have slammed into eachother. I could juts say "the missile did 4 damage because that's what the points were spent on" but that seems anti-climactic for a system in which shooting at things on the move is inherently very difficult and hits are going to be fairly rare.

>>95964485

I mean, if you're getting into the nitty-gritty of it, you're probably tracking facings, no? So the unit that impacts (i.e. whichever unit collided on its front end) is basically just doing a ram attack, and units both impacting probably have some sort of size/toughness to compare? Without knowing what your intended stats are, it is a bit hard to say for certain how to handle it.

Maybe check out Battletech for some additional on-hit effect type things?

>>95966966
I had a thought of just comparing mass for vehicles (though that begs the question of "how is mass purchased/derived" and ignores how things have like, crumple zones and differing shapes and elasticity and shit) but also I was hoping to solve the "missile strikes target" problem before the "target strikes a fucking wall" problem.

>intended stats
I'm still not even sure on these. For vehicles, most stuff related to movement because I figured armor/hp/etc should come from how damage is done. I was trying to rejigger it to be reasonable to play with characters being units instead of being strictly vehicles too, so I didn't want to design around the nuances of crumple zones, exotic suspensions, and sloped armour when the "unit" being hit might be a guy in fantasy plate mail.

>>95967665
>the "unit" being hit might be a guy in fantasy plate mail.
>he doesn't have crumple zones in his armor

Any good PvP mechanics for battles you guys know about?
I've been playing with an idea for a PvP low magic gladiator system but I realized that few pvp systems I know about are kinda politics and trickery based, more of a social game than a battle game, granted that I just started my research and have only seen Paranoia and Shinobigami and the latter while cool can still be rather imbalanced. I think I can include trickery in game but I'll have to think harder, like finding a way to make bluffs and feints work in battle without a simple skill to do it.

>>95973719
having to expend resources is probably a good start. not literal wager battles but just like any other pvp in any other genre, it's all about when and how to commit the resources you have. if it's just D&D battle it comes down to rolling dice.

bump

>>95974220
Yeah, I've been deciding how the resource(s) will work, probably something that you'll spend for bigger moves but can also use to defend and replenishes slowly, so if you can land a big movie and wound your opponent it's worth it but if you miss you're screwed. It might lead to turtling builds being stronger so I'll think more about it.

>>95973719
I'm considering something like a card-based system where players declare a stance before the round begins, using a card, but the card has a flip side that could read 'feint'. So if an enemy plays the 'pressure' or 'offense' card, but a player sees through it and refuses to take the 'parry' action, the enemy is forced to flip their card and reveal it was a feint - or, reveal that it actually was a real attack, and the player is hit. To turn it around, a player could take the offense stance, but when an enemy parries, they flip their card to reveal the offense was actually a feint, and the parry is wasted.

>>95977043
That's a pretty smart design, I can see wasting someone's parry would allow you to use something like a "quick action" card or allow you a free attack or something similar.

>>95977043
I don't like the idea of cards with explicit reactions to specific actions; it could end up a little too rigid.
I'd keep it to spending a resource to turn an attack into a feint, and the defender can spend a similar resource to parry/dodge/etc. It's a little more dynamic and tying it to a universal resource makes people wary of spending it frivolously.

Consider a fighting game, we'll call it Shameful Cog. In playtesting, I attack you; you can choose to parry or not, then I can reveal that the attack was fake anyway and your parry was wasted. Okay, that's it, end of interaction. Over time, I see that the solution as a defender is to ALWAYS parry; it's a gamble either way, and best case I avoid damage, worst case I waste a card that can't be used in any other context.

We go back to the drawing board and use a points system of Tension Tokens. These tokens can be used to do a parry, or to power up an attack, among other things. I attack you; you say you're going to declare a parry and spend 5 Tension Tokens for it. It turns out to have been a fake attack. I do the same thing again. And again. Now, I spend 25 Tension Tokens to power up my attack, knowing that you're at a deficit of these tokens. Because you've spent so many, you can't even try to parry it and just eat the damage.

Then in the next playtest session, you just eat all the little damage, but decide to parry all my big attacks. I see this, and sometimes commit a bit of resources to make attacks knowing I can spend mine to make you spend yours, and control when you are able to parry, but now I can't make big attacks as often. So I can decide to rarely feint, and make it a 50/50 on the big attacks I spend stuff on. So on so forth, it makes it more of a mindgame or at least active decision-making whether to feint/parry or even use that same resource to truly commit to an attack (that you might be intending to spend even more on for a wack-ass mixup!)

>>95956831
another deck, this time about the color gray (Dominion)
I must admit I had much more trouble coming with a cohesive theme for it compared to the green deck (Ancestry)

now for the red one!

>>95980274
Are you smoking crack again?

What do you think of my skill list? I hope it covers anything in a medieval-fantasy setting:

Athletics
Awareness
Crafting
riding
arms
courtly
fierce
investigation
high knowledge
low knowledge
history
balistics
stealth
strength
survival
will

Im particularly happy with dividing social stats and intellectual knowledge into two each. Courtly is being propitiatory and sticking to decorum, fiece is being forceful and direct. High knowledge concerns achademia and learned subjects like high theology and philosophy, while low knowledge will tell you where to find secretes or where farmer bill tends to herd his goats.

I think 16 is a good amount.

>>95985791

Probably just a personal preference, but I feel like "vulgar" instead of "fierce" would be a better opposite to "courtly" in terms of creating an evocative difference between the two.

quick question
how do you feel about inserting your cards into the opponent's deck? and how do you feel about moving those cards once inside the opponent's deck?

>>95986841

First point is interesting, I think some of those digital card games have done that (I can only think of LoR and Caitlyn's traps off the top of my head, since Teemo specifically adds a modifier to existing cards). You'd just have to design around different sleeves making the cards obvious, so it wouldn't necessarily be a great surprise mechanic.

Can you elaborate on moving the card in your opponent's deck?

>>95986841
Delaying the opponent by one(1) card draw doesn't seem very impactful.

>>95987185

You could do stuff like "as long as this card is in your opponent's deck, increase mana costs by 1" or "you can only search your deck above or below this card" as theoretical examples.

>>95987075
>>95987185
thanks for your replies
I'll try to answer them properly tomorrow

>>95987217
Why not just make it a normal card that is on the main field then

I guess being in the deck means you have to draw down to it, but you can just say on the card itself "This card enters play and cannot be removed until opponent draws X cards/an number of cards X times/etc"

>>95989108

It has a bit more a tactile feel, which could be novel in an otherwise crowded space. Plus, "You can only search your deck above this card" has a bit more oomph than "you can only search the first ten cards of your deck." Plus it lends some variability. It feels like a gambling archetype thing.

>>95944207
>>95956831
>>95983710
>>95949051
Very cool cards here - the setting for Disturbia is intriguing, very cool of art and flavor text so far. (I remember the meat-grinder card getting posted sometime in the last month).
>>95983710
For more ideas for gray cards, consider hyping up the control aspect for gray's lore. I'm picturing They Live as inspiration - secret behind the scenes manipulation, normal people reacting to someone who discovers the conspiracies and thinking the person has gone nuts. (The scene where the shanty town is taken out makes me think of a conflict between gray and the elves depicted in green cards).

Also, the Chief of Research seemed cool. If I were you, I'd be tempted to stick in random horror/sci-fi cards here and there, but I get it if it's easier to make a setting around urban fantasy. (The visual style of your cards and the art style you're going for would definitely work for any modern horror and CoC/Delta Green type stuff too).

Someone probably came up with this or something similar; if not, here's my take.
>Streamlined dungeon crawling or SDC.
>A Cataclysm happened and destroyed the surface; now everyone lives on floating islands in the sky. You can have as few as one hub island to operate off of while exploring sky islands.
>Sky islands have dungeons on them, ranked 1 through 5, with difficulty scaling across the islands with the higher ratings. Rankings are determined by how much mana is seeping out of the dungeon. Higher-level dungeons (4 and 5) may require special items for entry.
>Generate dungeons using premade templates and RNG so DMs can easily pump out dungeons as needed
>Dungeons can have up to 100 floors, but most don't have more than 5 to 10. By tweaking the seed for generation, any kind of dungeon can be made.
>There will be 6 different elements and 6 different styles of dungeons that can all be mixed and matched for a total of 36 kinds of dungeons, on top of the rank, as well as RNG at play for the layout. This should give plenty of variety for dungeon creation, and the system will be plug and play, so custom modules can be added to allow for more elements and styles of dungeons for even more combinations.
>The culture of the sky island hub will encourage exploring the dungeons, so every session will be "Go to this dungeon, hunt for x objective". The objective could be treasure, a monster, or whatever else you want.
>Players will be transported to floating islands via airship (because airships are cool). At the start, players have to pay a fare to ride, but as they get more money, they can buy their own airship and even get a fleet of them together to get passive income.
This SDC concept is for people who don't really care about grand narrative stuff, and just want to explore cool dungeons and get loot. While a narrative can be added at the discretion of the GM, the module is built around getting players into dungeons with as little muss and fuss as possible.

>>95990139
People who just want to loot dungeons can already do that without sky islands. The world could be fine if it was tacked onto a robust and clear set of dungeon crawling rules, but on its own I'm unconvinced.

>>95990252
You start giving people a world to explore, and they'll get distracted. This is a dedicated SDC game engine that would encourage back-and-forth travel from town to dungeon without other distractions.

I do have an airship fetish, so I'm effectively shoehorning that into the world to have it accommodate my tastes, but it also closes the loop in terms of exploration. It locks the players into direct transportation between hub cities and dungeons. If there's already a popular SDC system people enjoy, I'd be keen to learn about it (and steal all of its good ideas and integrate them into my system).

>>95987075
>>95987185
>>95987217
>>95989108
>>95989666
alright, let me explain what I meant in >>95986841

>how do you feel about inserting your cards into the opponent’s deck?
in this game, minions are "summoned" by placing them face-up into the opponent’s deck, a number of cards from the bottom equal to twice their Agility stat
when they draw cards or advance to secure positions (create holdings that produce resources), your minions enter the field and attack that player
one of the most important concepts of the game is that the deck is a battlefield, but instead of placing units on a grid or board, you’re hiding them behind the enemy lines
it’s about simulating that feeling of creeping threat and tactical positioning, using nothing but cards
it creates a kind of hidden ticking bomb, the enemy is eventually forced to draw and confront your units on their turn, when they least expect it

>how do you feel about moving those cards once inside the opponent’s deck?
you can also pay a minion’s Rank (by discarding cards from your hand) to move one of your deployed minions thought the opponent’s deck, a number of cards equal to its Agility, like a player would move a miniature on a board
it’s a way to accelerate when your ambushes go off, or strategically time them to overload the opponent's defenses.

I used to think that top down and bottom up approaches to card games were equally valid, but the longer I think about the more I'm starting to believe that bottom up is superior, leads to better design and more interesting fluff, even though top down seems to sell better on the short term

>>95990331
>You start giving people a world to explore, and they'll get distracted
Except we're explicitly talking about people that just want to dungeon crawl. They don't care about the wider world by definition. You don't need special fluff to just ignore shit you don't care about.

>>95990663
You can only reduce things down so much. Hence, "streamlined" in the acronym. If there's nothing else but dungeon crawling, I lose interest. You can just have Dungeon Crawling, which is fine if that's all you want. I want a little more, but a system that cuts away most but not all fluff in traditional open-world TTGs, streamlining the adventure.

Like I said, if you think there's a system that does what I want to do, show it to me.

>>95990742
But you're talking about a setting, not a system. It doesn't take a specific setting because you can just ignore as much or as little of it as you like.

>>95990765
Still can't name a similar system then? Thanks for playing I guess.

>>95986247
Vulgar, in its original sense of "common" is a good word for it. though I dont necissarily mean vulgar in the common usage of "gross", but more forceful. A barbariance prince might have a high degree of forceful charisma thats not necissarily disgusting, just more raw. Its supposed to be an etiquette-rawness sort of social scale rather than a clean-dirty sort of scale.

>>95991011

Yeah, that's essentially what I was referencing in terms of "vulgar" as "common," but I totally understand not wanting to get is confused with the modern definition.

>>95990418

That is a very interesting concept. I think it has a lot of potential, though it's hard to say without having the full rules in front of me.

How large is a deck intended to be? I may have missed this from a previous thread, but it looks like 30 from the example cards you provided. I guess my concern is that might be too small to really get interesting with the summon system (especially regarding the discard to advance creatures), but I suppose that's something that will come out in play testing. Though also from the card text, it looks like there's some sort of mana-equivalent?

>>95991185
>How large is a deck intended to be?
yes, each player has a deck of 30 cards, with up to two copies of any card (except for legendary type cards that are unique, and only one copy is allowed)

for what I could test, this is the most appropriate size, as it allows minions to be deployed at the bottom and move upwards in a few turns, which, in turn, means that the more players draw and advance to secure resources, the faster enemy minions appear

and yes, there's a mana equivalent
players don't rely on a single type of card to generate resources, like it happens in Magic with lands
instead, players can "advance" with minions by paying their rank cost (which consists in discarding cards equal to that minion's rank) or play location cards
when they do, players create "domains", which represent holdings or secure positions in the battlefield that offer the player enough leverage to play cards and deploy minions
domains can be sacrificed to generate resources, referred to as advantage in the game

it sounds much more complicated than "tap land, add mana" but it works well enough once you play

>>95990793
Similar to "not yet existing"? Yeah, my game.

I thought it would be interesting if there was a "wager" phase at the begining of rounds in combat

basicly, its when you add and subtrack various stats if the GM thinks its reasonable. like "Can I increase my initiative if my next action is at a -2" or "Can I increase my damage if I go last this turn?" or "can I increase my chance to hit if I take a -2 penalty to my own defence?" or "Can I try to throw sand in his eyes before the battle begins for a -2 to hit"?

Before anything happens, so you cant do it in direct response to something in the round proper.

>>95991539
Isn't this exactly what skills, abilities, and effects are for?

>>95994671
those are usually ultra specific no? like you have a specific skill for parrying you get in character creation or level up instead of something else like "piercing". While I am talking about something possible ofr anyone and something that is not activated when you need it, but when you anticipate it before the start of a round.

another bump before I'm off to work

TES anon here. The bulk of the game is done, just need to test more and iron it out. Really need to get a bestiary started next.

>>95999934
SNIPE

>>95990418
I still don't like it. It just seems unergonomic is all.
Like, what if the card has some super speshul effect, but you don't have it memorized and might want to look at it to remind yourself? Now you gotta go fishing in the opponent's deck. It just seems like a pain in the ass compared to playing it "normally" and using counters to express a countdown timer. (And then because it's counters, it might interface with some other mechanics and create Emergent Gameplay™)

Also if you want it to be a deck-building game where the pipe dream is to sell boosters in card shops, and it's not just a standalone box set with a few premade decks in it, repeated use of the mechanic will lead to a long clean-up where you have to painstakingly sort cards that were played but not "deployed" out of the opponent's deck. Again, not bad gameplay, but it seems like it would lead to a lot of non-gameplay pains in the ass.

>>96001371
>I still don't like it.
that's alright, thanks for your input

I agree that this idea has more cons than pros, but I just wanted to see if they were manageable
I need to test more, it seems

>>95999934
Doesn't UESTRPG cover all that?

>>95983710
>now for the red one!
-- Why is the dwarf on the rubble?
-- He likes to be tall.

>>96005138
>It gives him a wider range to hawk his phlogiston and phlogiston accessories

Last year I shared the collectible card game I'm working on.
https://unfinishedgames.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Muck-rules-doc.pdf
https://unfinishedgames.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/basic-card-set.pdf

I've since created a digital demo.
https://unfinishedgames.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/MuckAlpha2-20250628T110827Z-1-001.zip

It's gone through a lot of iterations. I remember the first version was always an eternal stalemate, because I didn't realize that there should be a distinction between momentum and progress. The losing player should be able to win the momentum back if they play well, but that shouldn't undo everything that happened in the game until then.
I think the current ruleset works pretty well. There's three different kinds of strategy to pursue, which are all viable, and players have the creative freedom to come up with ways to play them.

Any card enthusiasts interested in stress testing the game and finding out if there are any broken combos?

>>95956831
>>95983710
Badass design!
Have you playtested it yet?

>>96007786
thanks, anon
I appreciate your kind words

yes, I've tested the game quite a lot, but, sadly, all by myself
I desperately need playtesters, but at least I can say that the game works
it has its quirks, some things are slightly different from other card games, so I'm worried that the learning curve could scare off potential players
but, in any case, I'll try to design a deck for each of the four colors, so I can explore as many mechanics as possible

>>96008067
stupid question but what size did you print your cards? Is it MtG sized to fit on the sleeves? I want to print a few cards for a homebrew food system I made for a game I gm but I forgot about it until this post.

>>96008067
I would suggest you actually playtest it with one very simple deck before trying to have legacy MtG numbers of cards and mechanics in a system that relies on a few core features that are either direct ripoffs of MtG or are purely there for flavor

>>96008067
>Anarch Flagwaver
>Whenever Anarch Flag Weaver...
You should slap your proofreader with that card
Or with the whole deck.

>>96009597
It's AI, please understand

>>96009623
No excuses, slap the computer if you must.

>>96009661
Are there any TTRPGs that actually simulate hacking instead of reducing it to "roll for 'computers' "?

>>96009139
>what size did you print your cards?
yes, it's Magic sized (2.5 x 3.5 inches)
in fact, I'm using some blank poker cards as the base, and then print the actual card on regular paper
it's easier

>>96009558
perhaps I've gone just a "tiny" bit carried away... I'm passioned about the project, what can I say?
I try not to completely ripoff Magic, but I believe I need some sort of "jumping off" point, and Magic in general (and premodern in particular) offers just that
even though my game is not a 1:1 copy of Magic, it shares some communalities with it

>>96009597
>>96009623
I'm only using AI to generate picture for the cards, as placeholders mind you
everything else, from the names to the designs, is all mine even the mistakes
I am actually ESL speaker, so there are some nuances that still scape me... my apologies
rest assured, I'll give myself a good thrashing for being so careless

>>96010120
>ESL
unironic realpost
produce the game in your own language. the world needs more content made in the creators' native languages instead of doing it all in english to get worldwide appeal

>>96009952
Its not really related because it's a vidya but maybe it will give some inspirations: Peripeteia has the best hacking I've seen in a videogame, there's a free demo you can try and it's fairly extensive.

>>96010671
>has guns in it
BRUH
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1510/Uplink/

>>96010759
You misunderstand. The hacking in Peripeteia is... special. I don't want to spoil it, but when you figure out how the minigame for it works you will laugh your ass off.
No it is not "realistic" hacking, but it is fun.

The point is, make hacking mechanics fun and not just another die roll, QTE, or entire autistic subsystem.

>>96010983
>Does any TTRPG simulate hacking?
>yes heres a video game but i wont describe how it works (how it works is you brute force it)
unbelievably retarded post

>>96010287
I'll consider it
thanks, anon

>>96009952
Shadowrun makes it whole another subsystems with its own flowcharts and multitude of rolls.

I'm thinking about making a system where PCs are mechanically defined by skills alone, with each skill rated 1-20 and success is roll-under. Character creation would start with all skills at 5 (except magical and special skills, which start at 0) and players would get X amount of points to spend. A complete character sheet would look something like
>Melee fighting: 12
>Shooting: 8
>Running: 6
>Weight lifting: 15
>Arcane magic: 2
>Etc.
A more combat-focused game would have many different skills for different weapons and fighting styles, a magic-focused one might have a skill for each spell or arcane school, and so on.
Has this been done well by someone else before?

>>96005126
Yes, of course

>>96011589
Dominion rules? (https://dominionrules.org/)

>>96011162
You can go either
>Aesthetics inform design
or
>Design informs aesthetics

Taking concepts from various places helps.

IE throwing down a bunch of dice into a tray based on some dex/speed attribute, and then picking a number of the rolls based on hacking skill (or int or something) each turn, with the DM having a hidden/rolled numerical code of a number of places = to the difficulty.

So someone with 10 speed and 5 hacking would throw 10d6 and from those pick
>5, 6, 4, 2, 1
The "code" the GM has behind the scenes is a difficulty 3 with random rolls of
>551
He informs the player that he got the 5 and 1 correct and it will take another turn (and thus throw) for the last digit.

This means that if you have drugs in the game that hackers hopped up on cybercoke and nootropics would be worth it as well.


You are an uncreative retard.

>>96013087
bot post

I'm in the throes of making a Game Master's Guide, just so I can write down some general tips for myself/my TTRPG system I've been crafting.

I'm trying to think of good topics/format for a GMG (Or DMG).

-Examples of Rulings
-Examples of RP Scenarios
-Do's and Don'ts of GM'ing
-Exploration Rules: Hexploration, Dungeon Exploration/How to keep track of time
- Magic Item/Spell Creation Rules
- Magic Items & Magic Item Tables
- Random Encounter Tables

I have this big scattering of various ideas that ought to be in a GMG/DMG, but it's exactly that: Scattered.

Any ideas for what topics you'd like to see in a Game Master's Guide?

>>96008067
Teach your game to chatgpt. I'm working on a TCG right now, after teaching it the rules it has been immensely helpful in testing. You can have it run 100 games and give you summaries of strategies that unfolded, make a few tweaks, then do another 100 games

>>96016134
>guarantee your game is slop

>>96016779
Why? Have you released a game developed with assistance via this method before?

>>96012642
Not exactly what I had in mind, but it's been a very useful read. Thanks!

>>96015182
Something I wish I had when I started GMing is a guide to prep: interesting factions and how to run them, in particular.

here's the last of the four mono-colored decks
this deck has been the most difficult to design by far, and I may change it in the future
but that's something at least

>>95956831
>>95983710
>>96018742

Feel free to tell me to fuck off. Is there any crossover between tg game theory and video game design theory?

>>96011589
Very similar to Warlock/Warpstar, though it also has WFRP inspired careers to structure skill progression. And I don't know if it's roll-under.

>>95869889 (OP)
Can i get some feedback on my game? I think its ready for playtesting. Let me know if its interesting and if its a good idea to run this on /qst/

https://files.catbox.moe/mjv7hu.pdf

Abstract:
This is a game I hacked together rolling some dice with my sibling. The inspiration is that I wanted to write a dungeon and spend time with them and play a game. The goal is to competitively carve out some territory and gather a hoard. Please suggest rules clarifications, balances, glaring issues, and feature creep or simplification. If there’s a specific dungeon geometry that you can’t make with this game, suggest a feature that could make it.

>>96016134
I sincerely doubt chatgpt is genuinely running game simulations under the hood. It's a text predicter, it probably hallucinated being a game tester and gave you a result that sounds real.

>>96020352
>>96016134

>>96020352
I did catch it having trouble actually making 50 card decks. It's not foolproof and it will make some fuckups if you allow it.

Even after telling it to double check the math it couldn't accurately create a deck of 50 cards until it was specifically told to add the math up line by line

>>96020352
>>96020975
chatgpt is not true "AI" in that it doesn't really "think". it's just an advanced form of markov chain generator, which have existed for ages. While useful for language-based tasks, ones requiring strategy that doesnt inherently use natural language are very challenging for modern "AI" implementations.

Ironically, even for math tasks, it sometimes fucks up because it doesn't actually do the math -- it looks at the likelihood of certain numbers/phrases appearing so it does math about as well as the average writer in its data set. Which is to say, not very well, and probably providing meme answers to certain questions.

You would really have to build and train your own local model for it, but at that point, you may as well just figure out the actual rules and math/logic of the game similar to writing a chess bot or similar.

>>96021187
I was able to get it to do the math properly, just needed to find the right words for it and have the presence of mind to question it's results.

It can provide a turn by turn gameplay, provide instant feedback on balance changes, and provide a way to test things before going through the effort of printing a full physical Playlist set that will get marked up and iterated immediately

Any good systems for spell crafting? I'm considering going from a more basic "you have these spells which do x" to "you have these effects which when added may do x" but I don't know how to go about this in a way that's mechanically sound, so I'd like some examples.

>>96021187
>chatgpt is not true "AI" in that it doesn't really "think". it's just an advanced form of markov chain generator, which have existed for ages.
The calculation methodology doesn't preclude "really thinking" given there's large chunks of that neuroscientists are still clueless on, the issue is that this prevents true self-reflection as an internal process that together with the instabilities forces a LOT of longer-term operation to function on the equivalent of a mostly-literate retard with near-total anterograde amnesia taking extensive notes to re-read at every step. Which is as horribly inefficient and error-prone as it sounds.

>Ironically, even for math tasks, it sometimes fucks up because it doesn't actually do the math
Actually, there's research papers showing that LLMs form approximate calculation methods out of their language processing. Which are a big part of why it's bad because they aren't concrete logic and end up with bizarre constraints.

>>96021698
>The calculation methodology doesn't preclude "really thinking"
I meant it as it doesn't form abstract rules independent of language: it just searches for the most likely next token to slap down given the history of tokens in its current statement/chat. The AI for a grunt in a vidya or a chess playing bot doesn't "really think" if you want to get all metaphysical, but it does think in that it has a series of rules based on the task at hand.

Instead of going "I should play Card X to defeat Card Y because Rule 7 says that will happen", it just goes "After doing enough random shit, playing Card X after I see Card Y tends to end in a win". It doesn't have actual planning or objectives the same way something like a chess bot would actually be "thinking" some number of moves ahead or a shooting game enemy "thinks" "I am being attacked; cover protects me; I should move to the nearest 'cover' node on the map".

Go look at that Claude Plays Pokemon thing if you want an example of the sort of "thinking" LLMs do.

>>95870104
Sell it, word press or pdf style.

>>96021698
I had it explain to me why it had the faulty logic
>I want to explore why you've continuously failed to follow the simple, strict 50 card limit for a deck. Are you prioritizing synergy or full engine construction over the hard card limit?

>It’s not because I’m ignoring your rule — it’s because I’m over-weighting other goals:

>Engine completeness + synergy balance took priority
>When constructing these decks, I’ve consistently aimed to:

>Ensure a balanced ratio of Resources, Infrastructure, Production, Localities, Workers, Investments, Sabotage, and Events.

>Make sure there are enough cards to create a functional supply chain

>Maintain internal combos

>Because of that, I often wrote decklists by category and lost sight of the total aggregate count, especially when adding “just a few more” utility or sabotage cards for coverage. That’s design laziness.

>Automated batching process (pseudo-buckets) is flawed
>I was effectively grouping them:
>“Add 20 engine cards”
>“Add 10 monsters”
>“Add 10 support”
>“Add 10 flex or redundancy”

>Which often broke 50.
>I then incorrectly trusted summary counts instead of re-auditing line by line. That’s on me.

>Simulation models tolerate over-sized decks
>In the sim engine logic, I don’t actually penalize decks if they have 54 or 56 cards vs 50. (They simply have slightly diluted draws).
>This let errors slip through without “breaking,” since you wouldn’t notice until doing strict counts.

>The real cause: Prioritizing "perfect curve" over strict constraint
>I kept optimizing:
>Enough low-cost Resources & Infrastructure to avoid bricking early
>Mid-tier scaling
>Finishers

>which means I stuffed slightly too many cards for perfect curve coverage — instead of cutting down to exactly 50.

>How to fix it going forward
>I need to flip the priority:
>“Strict 50 card constraint first, synergy second.”
>Build from the limit up:

the absolute state of AI slop proooompters. Just get one of your friends to playtest it with you.

>>96022121
>I meant it as it doesn't form abstract rules independent of language: it just searches for the most likely next token to slap down given the history of tokens in its current statement/chat.
Forming abstract rules independent of language is HOW it searches for the most likely next token. Over in the multimodal models, the researchers located the function for identifying the Golden Gate Bridge shared by both the LLM functionality and image recognition, verifying this by locking it to high activation resulting in it declaring itself as being the Golden Gate Bridge.

>Instead of going "I should play Card X to defeat Card Y because Rule 7 says that will happen", it just goes "After doing enough random shit, playing Card X after I see Card Y tends to end in a win".
...No? If this were true, it couldn't function beyond the internal context window, but instead it ends up managing to encode longer-term coherence in intermediate steps. The actual issue is that proximate functions can't be filtered out to force the finalized runtime model into a specific ruleset, resulting in very low efficacy from the relevant functions being drowned out by descriptions of other rulesets.

>Go look at that Claude Plays Pokemon thing if you want an example of the sort of "thinking" LLMs do.
Go look at MuZero if you want an example of a neural network intended to learn game rules.

>>96022672
>I had it explain to me why it had the faulty logic
The text output cannot address the internal weight processing. The architecture is fundamentally incapable of that, to such an extent that the ones designed to attempt to identify LLM function have use different foundational algorithms and require the researchers to interpret what the functions identified are.

>>96020181
this is purely human. i designed it myself.

>>96023556
>...No?

>>95918984
blackjack, or a craps style push your luck using a d4 and d8 instead. hit the dc without rolling a 7. abilities could allow rolling a seven once or modify the dice you use.

>>96023556
>The text output cannot address the internal weight processing
But the issue was explained and a way to avoid that issue going forward was discovered.
>n.. no it wasn't
Okydoky

bump!

>>96024261
>But the issue was explained and a way to avoid that issue going forward was discovered.
The point is that the system giving you the "explanation" being incapable of addressing the actual causal factors means that the "solution" can't be persistent. It MIGHT function better with that in the context window per train-of-thought optimizations (which are quite far from a guarantee), but it WILL return as that text drops in priority or out of context.

>>95986841
as you might have noticed, I've been working on a card game where you “deploy” minions by stuffing them face-up into your opponent’s deck. The idea is that they lurk there until drawn, then jump out and attack. Kinda like hidden units in a skirmish game, and that's cool in theory.

Problem is, I wanted them to move inside the deck. Like, reposition a few cards deeper or closer to the top depending on their agility stat, basically mimicking battlefield movement.

But, it turns out moving a specific card around inside a face-down deck without accidentally revealing other cards is a complete nightmare. Shuffling isn’t an option, peeking is cheating, and even careful fingers end up spoiling stuff.

The problem gets worse if I don’t let them move, because they can take forever to show up... and the whole minion system ends up feeling sluggish and pointless.

So now I’m stuck between “cool idea that breaks the game” and “boring version that actually works.”
fuck my life, I guess

>>96031753
>But, it turns out moving a specific card around inside a face-down deck without accidentally revealing other cards is a complete nightmare. Shuffling isn’t an option, peeking is cheating, and even careful fingers end up spoiling stuff.

>anon who couldn't understand that LLMs don't actually internalize statements himself could not internalize statements well enough to devise a rule set and test it once or twice in his head to see if it has any obvious failure points (or at least fail in a funny way)

just play them face down and use a counter that depletes by turn or total card draws or something.
>but then what if i lie about it/how do i know when it's time without letting them know it's time
the counter counts up instead of down. use a d20 or a pile of old pennies or something and just stack em up
if you activate a card early, it is instantly destroyed. if you activate a card late nothing happens but also you didn't have a potentially useful monster out for several turns. shit now you have emergent design, what if there is a way to force activation and some cards usually have a reason they can't be at max usefulness first turn (like how MtG monsters can't self-tap 1st turn; make it explicitly until the controller's immediately next end of turn opponent forces an activation during a big maneuver to spend some extra damage on something that can't fight back, or even better activates something that just dies because it wasn't ready)

>>95908803
Thaumaturgy is an actual word so you can use that royalty free

otherwise I would just name them after whatever action it requires to take in combat

>>96032200
>every anon is now the llm guy
You're not as smart as you think you are

>>96032200
thanks for your input
to be honest, I only use AI for two things
1. to generate placeholder illustrations
2. to help me write in English because, as an ESL speaker, sometimes I have difficulties articulating what I mean in a clear enough manner
perhaps you are mistaking me for someone else?

so, anyway
I did, in fact, test my idea, just to find out it doesn't quite work as well as I thought it would
and, now that you mention it, I once thought to use tokens in a very similar way as you describe it
minions would come into play with "distance tokens" on them, and they would move to remove them from themselves or add more to the opposing minions
but, after giving it some thought, I decided to use as few components as possible, for simplicity's sake
imagine a deck or a strategy that relies heavily on creatures, the player would need a staggering amount of tokens to keep track of the distance between them, just to know when they can or can't attack

>>96032248
bot post

>>96019380
yes, but i won't explain them because all my vidya design experience is in level design so that's all I can expound on at length. but it has overlap in stuff like resource use/balance, the typical things players find fun (can be reduced to "having an effect on the world/situation"), control limitations and creativity using them (you're playing on paper or with cards and have to respect that, but can do funny stuff with the physical materials if they permit) etc

>>96032273
>use a calculator
>entire thread now and forever is just LLM posts to some schizo

>>96032267
>a timer is the same as a distance marker
You are simply retarded.

>>96032357
you are not very kind, anon

>>96032365
at a certain point, the only criticism left is that something is simply bad at its core. your game sucks and you are approaching the design in dumb ways that only create problems and solve none. scrap it and start over

>>96032384
I mean... the game is playable, most of its mechanics work
except that one
I don't believe there's need to that drastic

>>96032432
He's bitter because he assumed you were me and got spanked

>>96032432
>it's Magic: The Gathering except summoning creatures is unsupported
gg

>>96032460
it has to stand out somehow...
and...
...
generating mana is different too...


so...
yeah

I had a retard drunk thought;
>>95964485
>how to do damage in a novel way when weapons fire is auto-hit and represented by tokens moving around the board
>players have Action Points/Time Units/etc. that are expended to do basically anything in combat
Weapons directly damage your AP/TUs/etc, doing so by a flat value determined at character/item generation. That value can go negative.
Let players spend their stats (str/con/etc)(temporarily, heals with long rest/visit to repair bay/other narrative reason) to gain a few AP/TUs/etc at at 1:1 ratio.
doing nothing on a turn costs a paltry 1 point. You *must* at least take that "action" to continue being alive if you do nothing else. (All other actions include continuing to breathe)
So you can spend some stats to go the extra step or alpha-strike with lots of expensive actions, but smarter play is to spend them to not die.

So say you have 10 points after your spending for the turn, and a weapon does 20. You're at -10, so either you die next turn, or you spend 11 total points of STR/CON/INT/WIS/etc to get the necessary one AP to keep breathing. Naturally, you can't spend stats beyond 0, having negative strength overall makes no sense. Leave it up to the player to explain how spending those points saved them, if the group cares about that kind of thing.

I think it would even aid fluff and roleplaying; if you're a bard embroiled in life-or-death combat, you're not going to be playing your lute at your best if you keep spending CHA to not die. Or, you're very practiced bard and a powergamer irl and CHA stays up but you dump STR to represent a fey-like dodging of attacks to keep shredding that not-guitar, but now you can't bonk anybody with your emergency mace when you need to. But either method of Not Dying can only be kept up so long, and should impart the proper vibe of getting tired the longer fighting goes on and making big hits be a Fun crisis to resource-manage when they finally happen.

was thinking about the idea of combat as a skill challenge, but it feels like I'd run into a situation where negotiation or skill tricks are just flat-out worse at solving encounters

>>96037420
>but it feels like I'd run into a situation where negotiation or skill tricks are just flat-out worse at solving encounters
What exactly makes these two options qualitatively different from how a skill challenge is supposed to be resolved within the system?

>>95869889 (OP)
Ive had an idea knocking around in my mind thats somewhere between a skirmish wargame and an rpg, I think id call it "Lance". In reference to the medieval squad centered around a heavily armed men at arms/knight. In it you take control of a lance, which consists of usually like 5 men, plus or minus 2. Your PC, some kind of heavily armed noble or someone of enough means to be indiependently wealthy enough to have thier own lance, a junior combatent, something like a squire who fights alongside you, a ranged servant like an archer, then 2 non combatants who take care of your group.

So a party of 3 players will really be a group of like 15. having elements of small group management and small group tactics. You and your lance act on the same initiative, so you can do combined arms under your own indivigual control, and you can command your non combat servents to retrieve weapons for you or to watch your flanks and warn you of danger, or retrieve you if you get injured.

I think it would be an interesting dynamic that isnt explored that much in either skirmish games or rpgs. closest thing I could think of is hirelings in osr dnd

bump?

So, I'm making a board game to play with my family. A pretty simple Trivial Pursuit/snakes and ladders/Mario Party type thing where you move around a board to collect prizes (hats in our case) doing challenges to progress/get extra turns, mostly trivia questions and the odd physical/party thing. Are there any canonical examples of this to take inspiration from? I'm planning for it to be pretty casual with stuff like teleporters, penalty and bonus tiles and challenging other players for their prizes.

>>96032487
you know what, it's not all that bad
the game is completely salvageable, I just need to turn back the decision of placing minion cards sideways so the top card of their card is visible
and that's it

back to work!

Are there any trick taking tcgs?

>>96039406
This is a good premise, but execution will be everything. Write up a draft and let's check it out

How would you guys incorporate a TCG and Skirmish/Miniature game together? I've read through Maledictions manual and it seems like their whole schtick is that its a standard skirmish game but you use cards for offboard interactions, such as targeted spells/attacks buffs/debuffs and equipment.

Could it be done differently to that?

>>96053532
Think up some condition where using a deck for reinforcements makes sense?

>>96053532
Is it still a skirmish game if the cards themselves (and their positions on a grid) represent units/combatants without miniatures, or is that not exactly what you're looking for?

>>96053532
There's multiple ways. Malifaux uses (playing) cards as RNG in place of dice with card manipulation (including substituting values with those in your hand) being a big part of it. Conquest (wargame rather than skirmish unless you're playing First Blood) has you set up your unit cards as a deck and you activate units in the order they're drawn (you set the order each turn but there's some wrinkles). Other skirmish games like Marvel Crisis Protocol have cards for extra one-use effects outside of the specific characters' abilities, so you could add something similar if you want randomness. Activation order, resources, RNG, extra effects, environmental interactions, there's a lot of ways you can combine the two.

>>96053532
I had an idea once that I never fully fleshed out that used a hand of cards as your groups AP. When you activated a model, you could either chuck a card for a generic action, like moving or making a basic attack. But each card had specific actions or spells that you could use if you met the requirements instead. For example, you had a card that if you had activated a model with the spellcasting ability can use the fireball spell on the card, or a model with a two-handed weapon could use the smash attack on the card, instead of just making a basic action.

The idea was I wanted some randomness to the magic, since the game was centered around primordial dinosaur gods.

>>96032357
counterpoint: it takes time to move distance

retard

bump

>>96062851
Counterpoint: bump bump.

I need some opinions on my ideas of how to make an updated version of taikyoku shogi that happens to be realistic to play.

My current ideas on changes are.

Make the board grid smaller, likely 10x10.
Make the pieces be just 12 diferent types that repeat 16 times.
Pick randomly from a 12 number random throw or 12 dice, each piece.
Then repeat it 16 times.

Maybe make the initial layou be similar to shogi, and keep 8 + 8 rows of random pieces and then a middle row with the king at the center.

Make each piece be just a TGC card with the name of the card, a drawing of the waifu of each card, and then some indication of her movement.

Since there's only 12 diferent motions to remember, it should be a better design of the original.

I saw a post a little while ago about some autist wanting something between a skirmish wargame and an RPG and it got me thinking about it. Since you could just do something like start with WFRP, then recruit men and use Mordheim or WFB rules anyways, I think the appeal would be something that used the same rules at all levels. The problem with that is obviously that resolution is done at different scales with different rules for a reason which I suppose goes without saying. On the other hand, skirmish wargame level combat resolution could maybe work still without being outrageously cumbersome in a TRPG with 2-5 players plus GM.... maybe. I'm merely toying with it now, but what do you guys figure the big problems that would need to be solved are for this kind of system?

I have nothing to contribute yet
but I don't want this thread to die

>>96074086
>something between a skirmish wargame and an RPG
So, Inquisitor? Or Laserburn given the detail and expectation of making scenarios for your mates.

>>96079836
I'll look into both of those but I think I'm aiming for fantasy slop so it might need to be a little different. Or maybe not. Thanks for the recs.

>>96080757
Arcworlde from Warp Miniatures is a pretty free form fantasy wargame. I know one of the core rules was how to come up with your own actions on the fly.

Relicblade from Metal King Studios is another very RPG influenced wargame, with a lot of those elements, like equipment and item management, that wargames tend to simplify.

bump

>>96080757
>I'm aiming for fantasy slop
Rangers of Shadow Deep.
Sellswords and Spellslingers.

Not that Pathfinder 1e is really something that doesn't get attention, but I am bored and I am sorta interested in what the other guy is making.
So a semi on topic bump.
Also I recently had ideas or maybe cravings of restless inspiration to do a similar thing Mirrodin.
Sadly I can't post the full PDFs of my work, but if there is interest. I'll find some way to do it. As always love hearing your thoughts

don't die, please

I'm going to make an Escape from Tarkov board game

Actions:
3 actions per turn
normal move costs 1 action
normal attack costs 2 actions
minor action costs 1 action
move again 1/2 speed costs 1 additional action

Pay the Pip Cost from your Private Pool, then resolve the action.
>Attack
You must be in the same Location to Attack. For each Attack, remove one model from the target unit.
>Defend
Place the dice spent on Defending with the Defending unit. When a Defending unit is Attacked, remove first the dice as models. You may not have more dice as models than models as models. Defending lasts until the end of your opponents next turn.
>Suppress
Place the dice spent on Suppressing in an Location adjacent to the unit Suppressing. Lasts until the end of your opponents next turn. Units moving into a Suppressed Location suffer an Attack for each die in that Location. Units may avoid the Attacks from Suppression if by Spending Move Numbers to remove Suppression Dice. If placed in an Occupied Location, that unit instead must spend Move Numbers equal to the Suppression Dice before it can move out of the location. Suppression Dice are removed when Time Changes.
>Prepare
Create a Side Pool accessible only to the unit that Prepared out of the dice used.
>Move
Move a unit one Location for each Number. May not use while Engaged
>Charge
Move a unit once for each Number, then Attack with the remaining Dice.
>Disengage
Move a unit one Location for each Number. May use while Engaged.
>Overwhelm
Automatic Action that happens when a unit is enters an occupied location via Time Change. Remove pairs of enemy and friendly models until there are no more pairs.

So, my system is one of those with a plethora of Options (in the form of classes, spells/techniques, professions, etc) which are seperate from the Mechanics (rules stuff) and Content (lore stuff, bonus advice and tools for GM use like roll tables).

Problem is, the Options completely outnumber the rest of the system, Some chapters will be a few pages long, and then other chapters could be way bigger- a dozen or so. So I'm really not sure about how I should organize the system's handbook.

Right now I've kind of got things intersped through the book: For example, the class stuff is right after the character creation. The item creation professions and their stuff is right after the chapter on equipment. Spells and techniques are right after the rules on learning spells and techniques.

Think it's fine like this, to yo-yo back and forth between longer and shorter chapters? Or should I try organize the heavier and denser stuff to one place, like the back of the book?

>>96110398
I would do it like this: the book should at first be written for someone that wants to play for the first time. No big dump of information without the preparatory explanations necessary to understand it. The order of the book should make the first reading logical and clear.
Then you have to evaluate how difficult is it to search information in the book during the gameplay. Make sure that no important information is written only in small introduction chapters separated from the rest and hard to find. If necessary the need of the player exceed those of the newcomer.
Apart from that i see no issue with alternating dense and brief chapters, after all convenience comes before aesthetic in a rulebook.

Cutting whole mechanics out of your card game because they are extremely tedious in practice stings but it has to be done

>>96032267
Anon do it like this. The piece moves every turn. You can shift the card on the time board backward and forward

>>96111821
it's like a gangrenous appendage, it has to be removed before the infections spreads to the whole system

>>96111954
thanks for your suggestion, but I think will try to do it another way
you see, some of my tenets as a game designer are not to rely too much on components, and to focus almost exclusively on cards as the medium to convey mechanics
if I can solve this conundrum without having to use extraneous components, I will

in fact, I've been testing, and I believe I may have found a solution
instead of placing creature cards face-up in the opponent's deck, the player would put them into their OWN deck instead
this way, mechanics and strategies that allow the player to draw more cards could make creatures appear and attack faster, tying the mechanics to the theme of the game, and its core metaphor "The deck is the battlefield."
not to mention, it prevents a player to fiddle with the opponent's precious cards
in essence, is a much more convoluted way to express "summoning sickness" so instead of using tokens to represent time or distance, you use your deck to represent such concepts
it needs some more work, I guess... but I believe it's a step in the right direction

>>96112317
Do you have a bunch of mechanics that involve shuffling the deck? For instance, search for a card then shuffle. If so, what are you going to do to prevent shuffle-cheating with the face-up creatures?

Thoughts on these rules for a card game?

>>95877026
oh god it has NOT been a week
that said i ran into a lot more math than i expected and it seems to have paid off because a mote of inspiration just struck the back of my head like god's own brick and i desperately need input

SO
i need to decide between two ways of handling combat attacks and weapons

>A (old)
strength is damage and skill is penetration, so you can have brawlers and experts who excel at different levels of armour, with generalists in the middle.

>B(rainblast)
attacks are handled the same as skill checks, and your damage comes straight from your weapon. it's a massive simplification win that collapses a dozens pages into one, but it brings everything back to a single number so build diversity collapses (at least temporarily, BUT it frees up a tonne of brainpower for feature creep elsewhere)

you know what i think ive sold myself- fuck curves and fuck abstract weapon and armour values. i cant believe i fucking learned excel for this shit

>>96116169
>Do you have a bunch of mechanics that involve shuffling the deck?
not yet, at least

I haven't thought that much about it, but, in case a player has to shuffle their deck, face-up creatures should remain facing up and be shuffled the same as any normal card
but, given that the core concept of the game is "the deck is the battlefield" there shouldn't be that many effects that force a player to search and/or shuffle their deck, that's why I think I'd prefer scouting effects, like revealing a few cards from the top, similar

do you have any tenets that guide your designing process?
any red lines you've decided you shall not cross?
a hill you would die upon?

mine are
>Minimalism - The game should use as few components as possible, primarily relying on cards.
>Tabula Rasa - All players should start with an equal presence on the board, like a blank slate.
>Equal Footing - Players shouldn’t have unique characters, abilities, or advantages at the start of the game.
>Symmetricity - Every player should use the same types of components, ensuring interactions are always symmetrical.
>Abstract Integrity - The positioning of components (like their orientation or placement) shouldn’t affect gameplay, except for simple mechanics like tapping a card to show it’s been used.

>>96120046
besides personal taste, mechanics in rpgs should be stripped down as much as possible. crunch serves absolutely zero purpose except allowing the few people who play the game to jerk themselves off over how intelligent they are to be able to memorize basic math procedures. the point here isn't for the game to be approachable by everyone, but to cram as much content and remove as much tedium as possible from a session. it's hard enough to organize a group as is. and if you manage to do it, good luck convincing your players to try out your 300 page long homebrew. the absolutely PERFECT game is easy to learn while allowing for the same amount of situations to play out as a crunchy one.

>>96120046
Rather, I have goals
>playability
It should be easy to physically play the game. The more competitive the game, the shorter it should be. Rules should follow naturally, and anything that doesn't should be set aside as a "variation". (No En Passant; Bishops and Queens can Castle. The purpose being that the rules are easy to learn, and can be learned to completion by playing, then once you've hit that point, if you want more, it's there.)
>maximumism
In the musical sense; making a game out of smaller games. Everything you're doing in the game should be a game, and a part of the game. That first part may sound impossible, but what I consider a game here is really broad. What actually fucks me up is the part after the comma, as tying everything together while keeping coherent sure is a task.
I think all the really good minimalist games have already been made.

The trick is balancing playability and maximumism; every "tenet" I have exists as a means to this end. I guess I do have a tenet, though it isn't intentional, that being that the theme/setting comes before mechanics. The one time I tried doing it the other way round I ended up keeping the theme but changing even the type of game, meaning I effectually did it the way I always do it just took way longer.

>>96120344
What do you think about a game where the core concept and rule/rules are very simple, but each character sort of pays XP to get abilities? That way, a player who enjoys messing with how abilities interact and playing with all sorts of little tricks can do what they want, while a different player can just focus on boosting their stats.

>>96120046
Simplicity is key

Never played a ttrpg but this homebrew stuff seems fun

Divinely Chosen
Those who walk the path of the Divinely Chosen place their faith in a singular, all-powerful creator, one of law and order. Whether that being is truly listening is a matter of faith, but the Chosen believe their prayers channel holy power into the world.
Restrictions
They can only wield blunt weapons and small bladed weapons.
The Chosen may only wear light armour (such as leather or padded).

Lone Prayer
Once per turn, the character may spend a full round praying instead of taking other actions. On their next turn, they may roll a d20 and apply the result to a chosen target within 20 feet.

The caster may choose to invoke the inverse of the prayer to cause harmful effects.

The caster may add or subtract their wisdom bonus + half of their level (rounded down) to the roll.

This action can only be used during combat.

1-5
Nothing happens.
6-8
Target gains +1 to their next attack roll. (-1 if inverse)
9-11
Target gains +1 to their next damage roll. (-1 if inverse)
12-14
Target gains +1 AC vs the next attack made against them. (or suffer –1 AC if inverse).
15
Restore 1HP to target (or take 1 damage if inverse).
16-18
Restore 1d4–1 HP to target (minimum 1). (or take same damage if inverse)
19
Restore 1d6 HP (or take 1d6 damage if inverse).
20
Roll twice and apply both results to the same target.


If the result of the initial prayer was greater than 5, the caster may choose to test their faith further. They may roll 1d20 again to determine how many targets the prayer affects. Targets must be within 20 feet.

1-5
The more demanding prayer is unanswered. The original effect is lost.
5-10
The effect applies only to the original target.
11-15
The effect applies to two targets.
16-18
The effect applies to three targets.
19-20
The caster may choose to apply the effect to any number of targets within range. Each target may receive either the normal or inverse version (caster's choice per target).

>>96128793
it depends on how powerful the abilities are, but honestly it sounds like players who opt for the stats are missing out on half the fun. increasing a number isn't as exciting as being able to do something nobody else can.
you could go the way of randomization and give players the option to roll on a table for a new ability, or roll several times then choose one out of that list. that's what I did before realizing pretty much everything I could think of should be doable by any person with basic training

>>96120046
All actions must be resolved by 2 or less rolls.

>>96120046
For my small-scale fantasy naval wargame:
>Simple Procedures
The game itself is going to be fairly complicated, but I don't want a Shooting Attack to require consulting three charts and taking half a dozen rolls. Each action should be simple to execute.
>"Feel" vs Simulationism
I want the game to have enough sailing rules (like wind direction, changing sails, etc) to get the right "feel" but avoid the aforementioned endless charts that a lot of naval wargames use to capture that.
>No Cards, Minimal Tokens
I personally dislike the trend in wargames now to have a separate deck of cards with special abilities and rules. I liked it better when these rules were baked into the unit or its equipment. Likewise several skirmish games around use a dozen bespoke tokens, which make it harder to pick up and play if you haven't bought a big box set.
>Miniature Agnostic
>"Generic" Fantasy
I want to be able to use the rules for all kinds of fantasy settings or concepts. Wizards, Dragons, Airships, etc. I'm trying to make sure I have a decent 1:1 for other fantasy games, so you if you have old Man O War minis you can pretty easily convert them over