I made this general solely to urge myself to continue working on homebrew stuff.
But maybe it can help you as well!

What are you working on right now?
Any issues? Lacking inspiration? Smashing your head against a creative wall? Or just having a hard time getting all these pages done?

>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)

I'm looking into actual book design now that my writeup is about 90% complete, and I'm a little overwhelmed with that. Master Pages, formatting, organization, etc. Not sure what to do about it.

>>96266090
A first draft only has to exist. Slam it down, get your two columns and then try layouts you see in other books.

>>96266090
Adobe InDesign. Lookup artist on behance who specialize in layout design using InDesign. It may spark tons of inspiration. And also >>>/lit/

What are you working on right now?
Making a SCP Skirmish war game

>>96266960
A spirit cultivation TRPG. Cultivation is basically a fully diagetic form of leveling up, so it's a little surprising that there isn't one.

>>96266337
That pic is a shining example of what not to do.

>>96265985 (OP)
Working on a ttrpg project and I have the basic rules to be testes but its really hard to find play testers. I am starting to considerate just roll combates scenarios myself.

Also having issues regarding health system. Like I have pinned down how damage and hitting will work but not sure about how health should be handled, if its going to be rolled after damage or cummulative.

>>96266960
Trying to figure out if division is too complicated.
Basically you have a deck of playing cards, not poker the Spanish type, and you flip a number of cards on your stat and pick the highest, add or subtract modifiers, then divide that by the target's defense to see how many losses they suffered.

I'm waiting to hear back from a local store about what's allowed at their board game designers night, because I guess a TTRPG is technically not a board game and I don't want to show up for a bunch of people expecting to play Catan 2.0 or whatever.

I've playtested it a bunch with some friends, but at this point I need to make sure that it makes sense to someone who is coming at it as a completely blank slate and not have the designer sitting at the same table to provide commentary and clarification during play.

>>96265985 (OP)
>What are you working on right now?
Scaling back several mechanics because I let my gun autism go too far into the simulation range. Because I overdeveloped so many different aspects to match it, I'm stuck having to choose what can and can't stay.
>Any issues?
The way armor was set up was done entirely in service to different bullet calibers, and now trying to scale that back is messing with it.

>>96267861
Cumulative damage? Can you elaborate?
I imagine taking several hits is already cumulative.

>>96265985 (OP)
>What are you working on right now?
polishing the rules, still
after rebranding the game, from horror to urban fantasy, there were a lot of changes to be made and mechanics to adapt
trying to keep things as simple as possible, while not loosing track of the central metaphor of the game "The Deck is the Battlefield"

>Any issues?
Not an issue per se
I want to enter a game design contest by September, and the rules limit the maximum number of characters (without spaces) to 20000
and I'm having some trouble keeping the rulebook under that limit, my current character count is 20267
I hope they are lenient and let me compete anyway

>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1skv6DSYLF6U8fgid2kN9tKg2aSw6hvM3/view?usp=sharing

>>96269938
Good luck with the contest. Why the change from horror to urban fantasy?
I guess urban fantasy can be made horror anyway.

>>96270198
>Why the change from horror to urban fantasy?
initially, the game was intended to be a love letter to Hecatomb
but horror became a little too much to stomach, and I didn't have fun designing it...
so I thought it could be a little more entertaining to turn it into urban fantasy, and easier to market, if the chance ever arrives

bump

Oh hey amateur game design thread, I had a question in the alternative wargame thread but it may be up your alley:
>>96273775
>Reactions feel like it would make for much more dynamic games, where there is not really any down time where you wait for your opponent to act.
>Plus, it feels a lot closer to the way combat would work.
>Is there a reason why most games seems to want to steer clear away from it? Even something as simple as... I don't know... considering shooting between characters equipped with guns as an opposite roll, unless the other decides to dodge instead
Is there something I'm not seeing?

>>96266960
I currently working on a scifi pen and ttrpg based on a D6 only.
The basic idea is that the player are robot and there bodyparts are there skills and levels.
So every item found is a mini level up.
And oh boy i already got a well to detailed list.
I already have a full body, a biorobot and parts of nanites.
Currely i working on PSI system just to cover supernatural stuff and special enemys.
Why that? emm... i like this trope. System shock done a oddly good job having it without pushing it. I want to do the same.

i try my best to get a mix of blames mega city with aesthetic of ancient Rome. I do not know if there is a scifi rome out there but this one will be my scifi rome.

>>96273867
It adds a layer of complexity that a lot of people don't want to bother with. At least, that's what I gathered from the multiple times I was told as much when describing the reaction system I want to use for my games.
I'm still going to use it, because my game is for me, and people are going to cry "too complex" until I've sheared off everything I want anyway.
There are plenty of "pass-fail, leave it to daddy DM" D20 systems out there already, and I want my game to be something with more meat on it.

https://litter.catbox.moe/t8abmh7y5osdu2iv.pdf
I created this system after the rules got kicked around in my head for a few days.
I have wanted to do something with the concept for a while.
This might be less then bad.
>Okay, but what is it
It is a rpg that is intended to play satanic themed poke'mon games

>>96276091
Wait I'm stupid
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n-1modQv37TvNVi-fd2CTBlGYj43dIPnMUU_GcO5tXQ/
Here's a link that doesn't download anything

>>96273867
Real answer: It's hard to design for.
Alternative (not-really-pertinent-but-technically-true) answers: It adds too much complexity, slows the game down, is easily exploited and broken

>>96273867
Infinity uses Reactions (called AROs) in its gameplay, and it really helps make things stay interesting during both player's turns. The cost is that each turn is slower than it otherwise would be and you're always paying attention in case anyone activates an ARO.

>>96265985 (OP)
>what are you working on right now?
A card game called Grim Pact that's a mashup of a number of other cardgames with a dark fantasy theme. Give me tips on making the card design itself less visually bleh, and more visually distinct from Dual Masters.
A ttrpg system that's very minimalist generic fantasy. You guys probably wouldn't like it cause it uses 5e as a big reference point. https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/2dzM39puR-nY
And a couple different capaign ideas, most fleshed out one being a westmarches campaign set in limbo when the pcs have to fight to get their lives back or end up passing on.

>>96278061
>dark fantasy theme. Give me tips on making the card design itself less visually bleh
something I wanted to try myself was to develop a dark fantasy card game using the aesthetic style from Vermis
pic is not mine, I took it from reddit, but it looks very similar to what I was trying to achieve

>>96265985 (OP)
>What are you working on right now?
Still working on my mecha wargame. Core ruleset is "done" but I'm horribly stuck on the unit design.

I want some customization because building custom mechs is cool, but I can't quite come up with something that feels right. Just profiles with loadout choices feels lazy. Tons of options per hardpoint turns into analysis paralysis that gets sifted down to a handful of actually useful builds. Have been wracking my brain for a middleground and can't come up with anything.

Deeper than that I have a fear that the game just isn't what I want it to be. I wanted to make a mecha game that played into the Gundam/ArmoredCore feeling of fast mech duels but while I think my core rules are solid, they don't really evoke the right thematic feel.

Not really feeling good about the project. I even commissioned artwork to try to inspire me to finish but thus far not helping. Feeling pretty burnt out on design since I put all of my other projects away and moved away from my playtesters.

>>96273867
As others have noted, reactions add complexity and time demand. A lot of games don't want that kind of complexity.

Reactions also make balance much tougher to figure out. Infinity has a very permissive reaction system (usually any model in close range or with LOS gets a reaction) which means you need a ton of terrain, otherwise the active model simply faces too many reactions to survive. There are lots of implementation questions with knock on effects: Do you allow one reaction or each? Can a model react multiple times? Can models use their reactions as free chances to move up the board?

I do think reactions tend to make a game better, but it is not trivial to implement a good reaction system.

>>96281471
its me >>96273929 roman robot game dude.
You seen to encounter the same problem i had.
How to not overwhelm your player with options and choices becouse at one point they will have access to alot of stuff.
Dont give up! Just think about "innovation through limitations". Create a handfull of "hard proven archetypes" like we have in real world with the main battle tank and the infantry support vehicle. Give them very limited slots and a "maintenance" base price. If the player want more gun or armor on it he can do making it but has to pay a higher price (time&money) and maybe overbuild it for some missions with critical timeframes.

In my system: what does my players stop building octobot with 8 gunarms? The level cap of the generators.
They have to decide, 8x level 1 guns or 1x level 8 gun. One has many attacks but low damage (armor could eat alot of it) or one final blast that if missed would be a very big waste.

Want to tell me more about the rules that make you think: "Good rule bad for speedy feel"? Maybe you just missed the right wording. Words in rules are very powerfull!

I'm currently working on a d100 roll under system thats going to be fantasy themed, and some feedback I have gotten on my attribute scores so far is that the generation method feels very swingy currently. Can some people here offer me advice on what I could possibly improve?

So far I have these methods. Players can roll 610 seperately for each attribute. Depending on what you roll you can take 10 points from one attribute to put it into another if you want a score to be higher for better rolls.

Another method is freely being able to distribute something like 350 points over your attributes. This game I'm working on has 12 divided into three groups of four. Since its going to be a hack of an old school game with similar attribute setups. I feel this one could have a higher number of points to use for better distribution.

I'm stuck at the weapon specialization part. Is something i want to incluye and i want it to be something you earn by using a weapon.

It's easy to do it with a sword, as the inherent risk of Melee makes the reward worthy (i was thinking either counting the critical hits or giving pcs a 1 in 6 chance to get the specialization on a level up if they used said weapon most)

It's hard to do it with bows or other ranged weapons as they can basically be shot from safe distance with relativelly no risk, and Will in practice end up with the whole party be bow proficent eventually, magic users, hobbits and commoners alike.

Maybe the best choice is to restrict specializations to fighters and elves only... Still i feel is too easy to grow bow proficiency. Any ideas?

>>96281471
You could go with a happy medium between full custom mechs and 'pick your class: mech edition'.

Give each mecha a predefined 'assembly' based on their limbs. You start with the chassis, which is hard-set as the unit's core. Then their mobility is attached to the legs, weapon use to the arms, utility to the Head (or something).

Each of these assemblies can have limbs from other units. Like your big melee tank can swap out his shield arm for a gun arm from the sniper unit, for example. However, it should come at some kind of cost. Increased point cost, less effectiveness, reduced health, something like that. You can limit options by forcing mechs to be restricted to limbs from their own size. You could limit it even more to be restricted to limbs from their own 'class'.

Or maybe each limb has some kind of 'energy draw' and the chassis controls how much draw you can use. That way, a speedster archetype's legs legs (being his primary aspect) requires a ton of power. Or something.

I know I'm being pretty general with this, but it's an idea that popped into my head when I read your post.

>>96283072
Freely distribute results of the rolls.
If you want to make your character the smartest, then you have to take the highest result and make that your intelligence. For example.
>>96283092
Restricting specializations always feels artificial to me.
Sometimes, ranged is just very good. It's just an inherent fact. There are, however, ways to make melee useful as well and something worth getting into.
>various modifiers can inhibit the precision of ranged combat (cover, weather)
>poor armor mitigation
>crossbows can punch through armor, but have a low rate of fire
>all a ranged weapon can do is fire their missile
>meanwhile, with melee weapons, you can do all manners of combat techniques
>teleporting, flying, quick enemies
>abilities and spells that enable opponents (and players) to get into melee range quickly

>>96283072
what is the natural range of stats in your system? what is the average? can they be increased after character generation?
why did you chose a 6d10 as the dice rolled? why not make it 10d6?
What are the stats even?
Also please allow free distribution of stats if a players wants to
>>96283092
I think the best way to do weapon specialisaton is to allow for specific maneuvers only for specialised characters. For example anyone can swing a sword but a specialised character may be able to bind opponents weapons, disarm them etc

>>96283228

Attribute can range from 1 to a 100 so the higher the better if you want to roll under your stats. I could try 10d6 instead. I went with d10's at first since thats the main dice people will use in the system to decide rolls and results. All attributes and skills can be increased either by making improvement rolls at the end of a session or by seeking training within the world of teh game.

>>96278241
That would definitely be more of a unique indie card game. Mine's just mtg if I liked it more, basically: any card as land, attack as an action not a phase, clearly defined and kept-to theming, no silly bollocks.

>>96281471
>Just profiles with loadout choices feels lazy. Tons of options per hardpoint turns into analysis paralysis that gets sifted down to a handful of actually useful builds. Have been wracking my brain for a middleground and can't come up with anything.
The "sifted down to actually useful builds" is natural. It's what happens even in the real world. What you can do is battle it the same way - paradigm shifts, when some new technology or even an engineering solution makes existing builds suboptimal.

Make 3-5 parts or technologies that if introduced would demand different design choices to defeat them. It doesn't matter that the tools to beat them may exist within the basic toolbox, just that they are not the same you want to use against mechs without them.

And then each player/side gets only 1-2 of them.

Most primitive example of something like this:
Basic defensive system - armor - gives damage reduction X
Advanced defensive system - energy shield - has Y hit points and divides incoming damage by Z to a minimum of 1

To defeat armor you want heavy weapons that deal a lot of damage per shot, to defeat shield you want some light machine guns with high rate of fire.
_________________________________________________

With each side/player having 1-2 of them they need either to come up with all-rounder builds, which in a good system would be sub optimal, or they need to build a way bigger park of specialized machines to counter each of their possible opponents, but too high of a specialization makes them really vulnerable to possibility of opponent just going with basic tech and trashing them.

>>96283287
I guess you dont want to roll a d100 and all it a day, especially since you allow starting stats to only go up to 60. I think the 10d6 solution fixes your swinginess issues making people get much more average stat lines. Another way to do it if you want to stay focused on the d10 is to give a flat bonus and roll a lower amount of dice, or to roll more and keep the best results like dnd used to do

>>96283627

This is good advice, thank you for the tips. I do plan to have some racial abilities or skills that can also influence dice rolls as extra options but that will come later once i figure out the dice rolls and character creation first.

>>96283527
>>96283103
pic rel is how I did it in the 1st version of the game. Choose a chassis, then each hardpoint has a list of options. Only one option per hardpoint so I could limit the possible range of combinations.

I think this was a decent start and in line with what >>96283103 suggested but it suffered from a problem of clutter and the aforementioned problem of too many combinations of options nobody would ever take. Right now I am thinking more chassis selections, with fewer options per chassis but those options are more meaningful, with less generic stat boosts. The problem is coming up with an interesting range of options for each hardpoint.


>>96283009

I made a bunch of design decisions that in my mind made the strategic balance better but leave it thematically confused.

I have a spotting mechanic with sensor ranges to mitigate long range fire and terrain requirements. I added electronic warfare to allow Mechs to play a support role in more combined arms approaches. I added shields to make it harder for big sniper/arty to wipe the board without skirmishing support. All of these things in my view made the game better in terms of strategy but they're not in line with the power fantasy from faster paced mecha franchises.

>I should look for some copyright free art
>spend hours and hours through days taking captures from magazines without renewed rights
>I should edit this pictures so I can use them
>spend days slowly cleaning pictures with too much resolution for how much ram photoshop eats up
>have a folder with enough pictures to fill hundreds of pictures
I might have adhd

>>96283072
You could include a rolled array like so: You get a 40+2d10, 30+2d10 (x2), 30+d10 (x2), 20+2d10 (x4), 20+1d10 (x2), 2d10. Allocate first, and then roll.
It guarantees you'll be able to get some things, while forcing you to have a weakness, and still incorporating some random chance, and averages at 390 total stat points (6d10x12 averages at 396).

>>96267861
don't test too much by yourself or you'll start making it harder and harder to understand for people who haven't spent as much time as you with it.

>>96268958
>Scaling back several mechanics because I let my gun autism go too far into the simulation range. Because I overdeveloped so many different aspects to match it, I'm stuck having to choose what can and can't stay.
check Phoenix Command from the 90's. It wanted you to calculate the effect of wind on your bullets
(System Mastery covers the Lawnmower Man book for that system if you just want to hear someone talk about it)

>>96283072
Mothership used to have 4d10 for stats in the beta and then switched to 2d10+20. You don't want to give that much range between players because you motivate having players rolling the same skill and nothing else because it's the one that works. And in exchange you add nothing good to the game.

https://jumpshare.com/s/6i8PzQLyxGV3XJPkU6m1

I'm currently making a system tailor made for a game called Haunted Hotel that's intended to be run by me for a couple of my friends. curious what people think about it. ill draw maps of the place, make more mechanics and draw all of the more relevant characters.

the setting is in a remote old mining town in a valley surrounded by pine forests, the hotel recieves a constant supply of mysterious out of town guests

>>96288053
>All of these things in my view made the game better in terms of strategy but they're not in line with the power fantasy from faster paced mecha franchises.
Sound good so far. Tryed to give the gear "levels" and perks that have "+1" on stuff to hammer down the player is one step ahead of the enemy?
Some minor things like that can hammer home how much powerfull the players are compared to the enemys.
Keep also in mind a good power fantasy is linked to the threat that needs to be overpowered. If you think your system is good but boring try giving the enemys toys that throw it on its head.

what game is your guide/inspiration by the way? maybe we can work something out from there.

>>96265985 (OP)
Something i was interested in was instead of a classic death spiral where you get worse at shit as you get damaged, instead you become more vulnerable to things. you dont start failing more, but you do get effected by things more. so your options dont decrease as you get hurt, but you are more liable to be hit by things.

in dnd terms, you might start put at armor class 16, but at half health you go down to 15. you still have an equal chance to bludgeon the ghouls head in, but now you are more vulnerable to the ghouls attacks as well.

>>96291300
That sounds like a not fun situation to be in.

(I'm doing something similar, but people have an ablative stamina pool that takes damage first).

>>96291377
why not fun? people like the feeling of getting worn down (at least some, thus why death spiral exists), so how can you get the feeling and mechanic of getting worn down a bit without impacting the success of your choices too much?

I don't know where else to post this but I created my own TTRPG and I need people to give me honest brutal feedback. I don't have a reddit account, so please help me good people of 4chan.

https://wolffguy.itch.io/bannerfell

>>96292293
I don't think it's particularly bad, but I don't know why I'd play this instead of Into the Odd or one of its hacks. You say it's classless but there are 4 options that define a good chunk of your stats, that's a class by another name, The luck mechanic is nice, it's good that you had a variety of uses.
The art looks like shit. The excess detail makes the bare bones formatting look bad. Dividing them with a blur makes it worse, it looks 2000's. A lich and a dragon don't sell dark fantasy,

>>96292626
That's true, think I should just get rid of the birth signs all together?

>>96291766
Because being worn down in order to be more vulnerable just means you die faster. That's the full consequence of this death spiral. It effectively means that the more damage you take, the... more damage you take. It's a mechanic that doesn't have a purpose on its own, but will add extra cognitive load every single time something is used on you, when the end result is just that characters have less health than they pretend to have.

>>96292938
I didn't think it was that bad, just a bit too much. Make them modifiers on rolls or something smaller but noticeable. You could take inspiration from DCC.

>>96293033
but it also means your opponent dies faster. in effect as things go on, the more likely actions are to succeed, both for you and them.

>>96293168
Which means that for both allies and enemies, you're changing this modifer every time anything takes damage, and all this modifier does is effectively make things easier to damage.

That's a lot of cognitive load for 'give characters less health'

>>96293144
Will look into it, I made this over the weekend and sent it to some buddies to playtest (without me) so I have no idea how it will work irl right now. The idea I had originally is that this game could be played with some monopoly dice for beginners and maybe an experienced gm, but you're right the birth signs might be a little too much

>>96269938
I read through the PDF and had a question - if I read the example right, when the defender loses the fight, they still take full damage, meaning they paid for a further disadvantage when doing nothing would have cost nothing and let them keep the cards in hand vs discard cost. I think maybe having the damage reduced by toughness or at least stop the willpower gain if defended would be a better mechanic to make it a more strategic choice of saccing cards to prevent a bigger point gap vs let the point gap grow but have more options on your turn. Another option is maybe make it a race upward to a goal vs reducing the opponent, since you are fighting to increase your influence vs remove the opponent, like Lorcana.

>>96293180
Works perfectly fine in Mutants & Masterminds.

>>96297147
thanks for your question, anon
I'll try to answer it tomorrow, if you don't mind
it's bed time where I live

>>96298106
>Mutants and Masterminds
>Works

Jokes aside, this works because you have no other stats or attributes you have to change, just the resistance penalty. This would add extra steps to every character to adjust the penalty, adjust the health, add conditions, etc.

If it's a *replacement* to health, that works perfectly fine. If it's in addition to health, then it makes either this mechanic useless, or the health mechanic useless.

>>96275280
>>96276152
>It adds a layer of complexity
>>96277024
>slow things down
I really don't get why.
In a lot of cases, "reactions" could boil down to "rolling shooting simultaneously when two miniatures are engaged in a gunfight", and maybe giving an additional choice for the defender.
If we take Grimdark Future Firefight as a base and just add these changes:
>Each unit gets two "activation token" each turn
>They can use one token to shoot, or move 6 inches. If they use two shoot actions, they get a +1 to hit. You can't use the shoot action unless you have two tokens.
This is exactly the same rules as normal, except presented in a different way. Now for a first twist
>When you shoot at a figure, if the figure still has activation tokens and can shoot, it can use an activation token to shoot back. Both attacks are resolved simultaneously
This basically still doesn't change anything to the rules, just the order in which actions are resolved. Now here comes the real twist:
>The figure being shot at, instead of shooting back, can use a token to move up to 6"
>If this move would put the figure out of line of sight, the shooting action is resolved as if the target had cover (+1 to its Defence roll)
This doesn't add much in terms of complexity, but makes both players much more engaged at every step. I really don't see any downside to it.
While I'm at it, I'll throw in something which isn't related to reactions, but still bothered me last time I played and could increase the pace of the game:
>Figures can be moved simultaneously if they are grouped (not one of them is further than 2"), or moving so that they will be grouped at the end of their movement
Yeah weather or not they will be able to shoot simultaneously, too, is a trick question, but there's tons of ways this can be solved without fundamentally rethinking the balance of the game.

>>96266090
Hire a graphic designer. Seriously, don't try to master 1000 years of printing technology just to get a book out.