Thread 96265985

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.

>>96292293
Which spells do players have access to? I was looking through and I didn't see anything about how to become a spell caster. So do all characters have access to all spells?
Also the term magic user is used in one section and spell caster in another. This only really affects navigating via ctrl+f.
Also if this is intended for beginners, they may be confused by the HP->Wounds->Fatigue system. It isn't that clunky but it could be confusing at first.

>>96297147
I must admit that this is, perhaps, the most recent change in the rulebook, and it seems it doesn't quite work as well as expected
you may be right, instead of taking full damage even if the blocking fails, the defending player could receive that much damage minus the toughness of the blocking minions
it seems I still need to think more about it

>>96299467
>I really don't get why.
Assuming you mean for slowing things down, it's an extra roll and possible decision point for players.
If you had a game where the target of an action can choose to React between say, dodging, blocking/parrying, shooting/swinging back, or something else, there will be a slight hitch whenever they become a target and have to choose whether they will react, and then resolve their chosen reaction.

>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.
The downside is slowing the game down and, despite not adding much complexity, still adding complexity.
There's also a secondary design issue where you have to start asking whether it's actually worth it to React or not. If Reacting is too good, gameplay in general will slow down because nobody wants to make the first move. If Reacting isn't good enough but shares resources and does the same thing as just acting, it becomes pointless.

I can't speak authoritatively about GFF, as I've not played it and couldn't say how this affects its rules in particular, though at a glance that reaction system heavily punishes shooting twice and rewards shooting first for only one token.
However, I've designed two of my own systems entirely around reaction-based combat and can tell you that they don't run fast despite being wildly different in scope due to reactions, and it took a good amount of time, playtesting, and reworking to get the reactions themselves into a robust shape that was neither broken nor useless.

>>96299467
Fundamentally because coordinating two people is far harder than coordinating one person (ie yourself). It's why Kings of War has the active player do literally everything: switching control is overhead and takes time. The more you do it the more time it takes. And that's without the reacting player making any decisions. Which they can't do in advance.

>>96302590
>>96299467
Oh, and also,
Reactions don't actually add anything to that setup. They don't make it more engaging, and they don't add any depth, it's basically just one more thing for less experienced players to hem and haw over.

For example, the basic decision flow chart pretty much remains the exact same:
If your unit is in range, check if it's in cover/an ideal firing position. If no, shoot and then move. If yes, shoot twice.
Adding in a reaction just means you're going to always shoot back (Assuming they can't react to your reaction, this is optimal as it denies them the potential to grab cover). Or if you can't shoot them yet, you will just move towards the nearest cover or to close the gap. It doesn't change much besides adding more things you have to do.

This is probably hard to judge without knowing what I work on.
Thinking about throwing out the subclasses of the beastmaster and the druid. The first can tame creatures categorized as beasts, the latter can turn into some categories of monsters. Both have a limit based on their Charisma-like stat, so they need to sidegrade themselves a bit. It's a class-subclass heavy system that also aims to give a lot of freedom to develop characters mechanically.
The issue? I don't know. Don't really know what issues I'm having. The druids shapeshafting could be trimmed down a bit. It's a magical effect and thus enemy spellcasters can banish it. It gives some freedom via allowing the druid to change the attack type to an element. Instead of just turning into a wolf, you can turn into a thunder wolf and cause thunder damage with lightning claws. Which I think is awesome. And this game is supposed to be about allowing powerfantasies.
Balance could be an issue, but I also think balance is a spook. And there are ways to counter these (from the GMs perspective). The beast of the beastmaster acts with the character, the beastmaster needs to spend a combat action to give it new commands.
I think it's just the impression from other games and how anons talk about these archetypes, and how these abilities tend to be lame, a hassle or sometimes overpowered. My instincts don't like them being in the game, my intellect doesn't see the issue until playtesting shows some issues.

>>96301496
Im working on an update that ill be posting in a few days - magic requires a perk to use. Trying to tighten up the lingo

>>96265985 (OP)
Just finished a Foundry VTT module for Primrose which contains all the shit to run it plus some extras. Otherwise I am patiently waiting for my new cover from my artist.

Working on a card game, inspired by yu-gi-oh, duel masters and harry potter. A magical school, where young students duel each other for fame and respect. It has alot of backstory. I am even writing a story around it. It all got a bit out of hand in the last couple of months. feature bloat, lots of characters and enough chapter ideas for atleast 3 full books. It has alot of 90s flair, with punkish attitude, goth girls, leather jackets and delinquents at school that zap each other with lightning bolts and start fires. The school tries to control the drama with duels, the only way the kids take rules seriously. It evolves into a sport among them. With a wanted list and a leaderboard. A new boy enters the school and is overwhelmed by the strict hierarchy. Rich kids, with rare and expensive cards rule the campus. All the while the underdog misfits try to rebell and overthrow them. The new kid finds friends in the detention group of punks and nerds. Later comes more world shaking stuff. With ancient black magic, corrupting the youth, illigal cards, cursed artefacts and world ending monsters escaping the card boarder.

Page 10, huh...

up!

>>96304276

It's the Primrose anon!

After the Foundry module, do you have more plans for Primrose in terms of sourcebooks/adventures, or are you happy with what is there now?

>>96265985 (OP)
My game is becoming increasingly unhinged. the SA in this is the derived stat for Silhouette Area.

I've recently finished some of the auxiliary character creation rules for my game. Does it feel readable/usable? Do you think you could do it?

>>96283009
>>96273929
>How to not overwhelm your player with options and choices becouse at one point they will have access to alot of stuff.
SCP dude here. Guys its quite simple, really. Just don't let them have a lot of choices, its that simple. Let them start with like one item or thing and then let them find one of two things every now and then. They can sell it in a store, but oh no, the store only has like, 3 options to choose from. Think of it as playable character creation, its the intro. The real game begins when they have all their things you expect them to have. But they went trough something already. Maybe they aren't sure what they want maybe their build doesn't survive its that simple. Think of it as lvl 0 DCC funnel. In all my fantasy games players start as villagers. They pick a race and a job they did. They get like, 2 things from their job. usually a skill and a weapon, and thats literally it.
also Robo Roman dude, your game sounds interesting, could you tell me more?

>>96309102
>Doesn't sue the catalog
ewww... Post more of that witch girl to redeem yourself

>>96312597
Pls change Traumatas to Traumata. It is the correct plural of the world. The extra s at the end makes it weird.
The font is a bit hard on the eyes and the letter size is too small for me.

>>96312283
There's already like, 4 source books 90% done that I plan on releasing after the physical release of the core book.

The first release will likely be the magic system which involves your usual guff like spell casting, enchanting, super natural creatures and the lot. After that each species is getting their own book paired with advanced rules that didn't seem necessary for the core experience. As well as new species like hedgehogs, otters and shrews getting their own books. There's also beavers but Im undecided with that one.

>>96266960
4x/Pax is coming together, made some changes to the theme that really make the game pop. Manufacturing it would also not cost a lot which is pretty cool.

I've also been spending a little more time on a stock market card game but a recent release people are talking about has the unfortunate issue of looking similar despite not playing anything like it, so I've gotten a lot of feedback of "oh this is like that game" and then people play it and are disappointed it's not that game, just because of the presentation of the setup.

My worker placement game is getting good reviews from my playtesters, most of the feedback is about marginal stuff, so I'm excited to see it take off.

Haven't made any progress on the 2p asymmetrical war game or the COIN game based on an anime license, but I've got enough on my plate this month.

>>96265985 (OP)
for next time

>>96312597
awful font
dont use " "below" ", use something like within, encircled by
add an example with steps and colors
in fact, create a dozen examples that cover common classes that players can take to get familiar with the system and not get bogged down before they roll a single die

>>96312597
Clarity is super important here. Having lines between columns, clearer text, increasing the space between text boxes and maybe ever so slightly increasing the font size will go a long way in making it more readable.

Also that opening like doesn't inspire much faith, I think you could tweak it to be a little be reassuring.

Hello everyone
I've been working on a homebrew TCG for the a bit over a month and I'm thinking I'm finally at a point where I can start sharing some things. It is a dueling game inspired by MTG, but also inspired by city building games or logistics games like Transport Tycoon Deluxe or Factorio.
Each player starts with 20 Capital is attempting to get to 50, or reduce their opponent to 0. Capital is also the currency used to play cards. Every point you spend may move you further away from victory, but the income you gain from it may be exactly the amount you need in the future to snag the win.
Each card will have a Cost to play, and many cards will have a Revenue and Expense. Each players turn after drawing a card they add up their Revenue, subtract their Expenses, and add the Profit to their Capital. There is no combat phase, but players may still influence each other through a variety of cards. Sabotages may remove expensive Productions or Investments, a Contract card that stays in play may prevent you from building anything on the Locality you just placed, or a card may attack your Capital directly.
How cards can be placed is also important. A Resource card provides somewhere for an Infrastructure card, which in turn provides a number of slots for Production cards. These Productions and Infrastructure may themselves have a slot available for Investments which will augment their stats. Locality cards are population centers which will have a slot for Infrastructure and also a number of Demands. If you have a Production that matches a Demand, the Locality provides Revenue.
It may seem like it would be a pain in the ass to monitor all those numbers and do the math, but the way the cards are separated in to their own Supply Chain by Resource or Locality, it's very easy to use something like a D6 to individually mark the expected profit from each chain each round.

The early prototype has been playtested and a few of the golden moments I was hoping for have occurred. Players have been excited to play another game after the first one concluded, and many of the games have been within 1 turn of either player winning. One notable game, I had enough income to win on my next turn, but if I didn't my opponent would have it on his next turn. He drew the exact card he needed to destroy one of my Productions, which in turn made me 1 point shy of the 50 I needed, giving him the win. This has given me the confidence to proceed with the idea
.
At the moment I have 210 cards designed (minus artwork) between 6 Colors and a White/Colorless. Each color is matched to a Resource which is their guiding theme.
>Food - Yellow
>Iron - Black
>Timber - Green
>Power - Orange
>Knowledge - Blue
>Luxury - Red

And the different card types are:
Resource - Supports Infrastructure / Allows cards of same color to be played
Infrastructure - Supports Production
Production - Provides Revenue / Bonuses
Investment - Additional Revenue / Bonuses
Localities - Supports Infrastructure / Provides Revenue
Event - One time use cards mostly in your benefit
Sabotage - One time use cards mostly against your opponent
Contract - Cards that stay on the field offering persisting effects

At the moment, each deck is 50 cards, 4 copies of each card allowed (1 for Uniques). Multi-color decks are encouraged through multiple cards and the Demand mechanic.

>>96265985 (OP)
Alright first draft of my not!spells for Primrose. Idea is that the setting has no explicit magic but music acts as a subtle substitute. Im open to ideas because I want to add more.

Ive already got a couple in the works or which one is called "Jam session" which boosts the bonuses from eating food

>>96303021
I don't see any issues with what you are describing. Just run with it.
If there's any issues, they will pop out during playtest anyway

>>96269938
I was thinking about changing the winning conditions of the game
what do you think about the following ideas:
>players begin with 0 "life points"
>once per turn, a player may discard 4 cards to gain 1 "life point" which is referred to as "scoring/completing an Agenda"
>a player may only lose the game if their "life points" are brought to less than 0, so having 0 points doesn't end the game immeditaley
>a player may only be damaged through combat, as they are not targetable and thus can't receive direct damage

>>96312703
Hi robo roman dude here.
>Guys its quite simple, really. Just don't let them have a lot of choices, its that simple.
At first, I would agree, it's easy if you just have a classic character system with level-ups and the like. Once you opt for a system focused on items and equipment, things get a bit more complex. If you give them too much, future battles become too easy, but if you give them too little, they become the system. Looting and leveling is a big part for many players.
> could you tell me more?
Status of my system is medium well done. If pushed to start a game i would be able to create a robot with faction, a bit of lore/past and basic limps/equipment.
I struggle a bit with weapons (single and auto fire ones) but nothing that isnt iron out in testplay ones i manage Psi and hacking first.
Currently there are 6 types of robot:
Android: think of dorothty from big O or other human shaped robots.
Mechas: Classic big bulky workbots
Droid: skeletons from kenshi come to mind.
Chimara: from mutant beast and purpose built biorobots. Rainworld is a good source of many of my ideas i had with this type.
Nanites: Tiny robot swarms that form a limp with the ability to reshape at will.
and cyborg: Human flash with wires. At best its cloned human flesh... or some poor soul got borged.

All this types are here to be mixed and matched to give the players fome frakenstain esk robots to enjoy a blame esk world.
Any questions? i can rant all day but it realy helps me if i get some outside questions. Maybe i overlooked something or just understand my own system a bit more so the rulebook is not alien to read.

>>96318621
instead of "life points" let's name them "hold"
so a player may increase their hold over the city by scoring agendas (discarding 4 cards once per turn) and their hold can be undermined by being defeated in combat

>>96269938
>>96318621
reminds me a bit of netrunner with mtg-esque combat. Glossary might be a bit long for the first set, maybe organize it by topic/concept.

I'd try it at a FLGS.

>>96318928
>I'd try it at a FLGS.
I would if I could
but the owner of the only FLGS in my shithole of a town has "politely declined" to let me test my game in their shop
so... yeah, I'm shit out of luck

Been working on a combat system. What I have so far is
>Enemies and Players sum up their advantages (things like "I have the high ground" and "I'm willing to die here but my opponent isn't")
>You roll dice equal to advantages, and compare it to a combat table
>Assign 1 die to be your action
>Higher results are stronger
>You can replace your result with a weaker one if you don't like it
>There's also a RPS system that grants you advantages if you choose the 'right' type of action, which can be used to increase your damage/damage reduction or prevent enemies from using their own special abilities.
There are 3 types of action on the table: Attack (dealing damage), Clash (Deal a little bit of damage and block a little bit of damage), and Defend (block some damage)

My issue is damage is static, and by default attacking deals 2 damage (very occasionally deals 3), Clashing deals 1 & blocks 1, and Defending blocks 2, but if you roll high you get bonuses to those numbes.

Some preliminary testing has made obvious the issue of there being many stalemates. If someone rolls Defend they automatically block attacks that aren't of a higher value and can block clashes of even higher values, meaning a lot of rounds have nothing happen. I'm not sure whether to decrease defending values to 1 or rework things from the ground up. Anyone have any thoughts?

In a game where your race or class doesn't decide what your starting hp is gonna be, what are some methods you could use to generate some starting health points for characters? Basicly in teh game I'm working on instead of picking a class you basicly build up your class by hand picking various skills that match your vision.

>>96273867
>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.
Dynamics and Downtime are retarded buzzwords. Complex rules slow your game down and generate much more downtime than
a simple but streamligned design will. Long turns are only a problem if you have ADHD.

>Plus, it feels a lot closer to the way combat would work.
Quite the opposite. For the entire history of human combat operations, two principles have been the basis of all military strategy:
Hit the enemy in a coordinated way, and
Hit the enemy is a way that prevents reaction or response.
Any game that's not about a drunken bar brawl or a dual between gentlemen fencers should lean its hardest into enabling the above principles. This action-reaction nonsense steams entirely from people watching too many simplified youtube documentaries.

>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
Because it adds nothing. Mechanically, how does it differ from Alternating Activations? What actual strategies does it enable? How does it rise beyond just being a damage tax or a denial option to some actions? It's pointless nonsense that only looks good on paper.

>>96320105
Health increased based on the skills you pick up. Physical skills increase them more than something like knowledge skills.
If you get more skilled, you get more powerful. If you get more powerful, you should also be harder to kill.
>>96320053
To be quite frank, sounds like a huge mess. Seems like there is not much agency going on after you already rolled your initiative. Nothing like characters being able to manipulate opponents or simply do a risky, but potentially more rewarding breakthrough to avoid stalemates.

>>96320105
Obvious one is randomly determined via a hp roll. Do you not have attributes with the skills? If you do, you can still base it on those. You could also make it available for purchase at character creation, so you can choose to have more skills in exchange for lower hp and vice versa. Or you could just say fuck it and give everyone identical starting hp.

>>96281471
Mechwarrior 4 Hardpoint types?
That way, each machine still has a clear identity, but depending on your weapon list customizing gets much faster.

>>96320177
>To be quite frank, sounds like a huge mess. Seems like there is not much agency going on after you already rolled your initiative.
I think you might be right. You can still choose your action in terms of agency, the roll represents the idea of spotting an opportunity for an action in the midst of an exchange, and either doing that or forgoing the chance for something weaker. For example
>Roll an 8, that's "Heavy Attack"
>Narratively, you spot an opening for a powerful attack. You can take it, but if you think you might want to block an incoming blow you can take a "Weak Defend" action instead
It's meant to simulate duel-like scenarios, where both sides decide what they're doing and then reveal. You can use the advantages mentioned for predicting the right option to do things like boost your damage or foresee what your opponent will do so it's easier to counter.

Are sanity mechanics stupid? I want characters to have to manage their hit points and sanity but I can't think of a way to implement losing sanity in a way that makes thematic sense and is rules-light.

>>96321596
Everything is stupid to pseudo-intellectuals, they'll claim sanity points are a insulting overabstraction and doesn't take into account the complexity or seriousness of mental illness while researchers literally utilise spoons and cookies to gauge sanity depletion.

>>96277024
>>96302590
>each turn is slower than it otherwise would be
>The downside is slowing the game down
that's an interesting assertion
because it's not that the game is slower
there's simply more gameplay
you're essentially doing two turns combined into one
of course it's going to take more time if there are more player actions
why does it feel "slower" when it's basically the same thing as alternate activations, only the moves of the opposing players are intertwined instead of arranged in blocks?
I would expect reactions to reduce the total number of turns, but those turns to be more eventful, so it should all average out

>you're always paying attention in case anyone activates an ARO
that's the point, isn't it? you want people to have to pay attention, that's why you've added reactions in the first place

>>96316773

Will there be a category for just singing/oratory? It might be fun to have an effect that forces an opponent to focus on attacking you while making them less likely to hit by taunting them in rhyme. A distracting doublet, if you will.

>>96321792
My problem with sanity is that in games like Arkham Horror (both the card game and the board game) fighters have low sanity while investigators and magic users have higher sanity but low stamina. Shouldn't fighters be more confident than regular civilians?

>>96321596
>I can't think of a way to implement losing sanity in a way that makes thematic sense
are we talking "comprehend something not meant for mortal minds", or boring old "mental illness"?
if former, then couple ideas:
>losing sanity makes enemies stronger (because your char is imagining them to be more fearsome than they really are)
>losing sanity gives enemies new abilities
>losing sanity gives you new abilities but removes some "normal" ones
>losing sanity means your equipment becomes magical
>losing sanity means your equipment stops working
all of these are implied not to be changes in objective reality, it's just real to your character and therefore real mechanically
the underlying logic is that "insanity" means becoming more attuned with the occult and less attuned with normalcy
eventually the whole world transforms into a magical fairyland, because that's all you're able to perceive

>>96321909
cont.
this has the added appeal of insanity not being exclusively bad
sometimes you want to lose sanity to gain access to abilities
but the designer can make the value hard to control, by being swingy and unpredictable
which brings to mind the idea of walking a fine line between genius and madman

>>96321889
When it comes to "mental stability roulette" I'm going to bet the people who DON'T see active combat regularly are more mentally secure. They don't call it Post Traumatic Sane Disorder, anon, being on a battlefield is built in sanity damage.

>>96321909
Such mechanics could have it be obscured but real, where exceptional results are entirely objective but the near-totality of the causal chain is behind the veil of distorted perspective. The associated game-over state could be getting lost to a truly separate world matching the distorted perspective, perhaps bearing an inverse counter-culture of engineers occasionally landing in the "real world" by similarly getting utterly lost to overanalysis.

>>96321958
Another aspect relevant to Arkham Horror is that occultists focused on things that actually work will have training specifically tailored to the mental stresses of their practices and criminal investigators have some support structure for Horrid Shit while in its 1920s setting the general consensus still thought soldiers were expected to simply "tough out" the horrors of war.

Trying to make a game with player facing rolls. A little stuck on whether to force the player to roll vs enemy actions or having enemy actions be built into the player's action roll
>Option 1: The player rolls to attack and hits. The enemy then attacks them, so the player now needs to roll to defend.
>Option 2: The player rolls to attack and misses. As part of the consequences of the miss, they also automatically take damage as their failure is the enemy's success
I like Option 2 in theory, but it has the problems of
>Whenever you fail, you fail twice
e.g. if you swing from a chandelier, fail the roll, and then fall, you get the consequences of falling AND the consequences of being hit by a weapon.
>Falls apart with multiple enemies
Multiple foes means either your failures are 3 (or more!) times as bad instead of 2x, since each failure means the consequences of failure, and two separate enemy attacks. Or it means you have to go back to option 1 for the second enemy.
>Doesn't work if the player doesn't roll
If the player decides to, say, drink a potion they don't need to roll anything. No roll = no result = enemy does nothing unless you do option 1.

Naturally that points to option 1 as the answer, but I really, really, really hate
>Attempt action > fail > nothing happens
As a sequence. I want to avoid an endless cycle of Miss > Successfully Dodge Attack > Miss > Dodge. I don't like "nothing happens" being an option for potentially multiple rounds. Option 2 at least means that the moment you roll SOMETHING has to happen, whether good or bad. Meshing them together in a "Option 2, but in a scenario where that doesn't work use Option 1 instead" way feels really mess.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to deal with this? Most player facing games I'm familiar are more narrative/abstract (a la PBTA), where even simple things like drinking a potion might be a roll of some kind. My game is just (slightly) more simulationist, which seems to be the root of the issue.

>>96321889
You dont get the mindset of cosmic horror anon. A regular joe will nope out at his first eldritch horror but people who are used to seeing shit or study and learn abut shit, will be more resistant to it

Need a sanity check on my resolution system
>3d6 roll under by default
>Positive or negative bonuses are additional d6s
>If positive roll additional d6s, take the lowest result, and sub it for the base roll's highest result
>If negative, take the highest result and sub it for the base roll's lowest result
For example
>3d6, roll under or equal to 12
>roll 3, 4, 6 which is 13, so a failure
>have two positive dice, so roll an extra 2d6
>roll 1, 5
>Can take the 1 and swap it with the 6, so the initial roll becomes an 8 and succeeds
I feel like it's a good idea, but I've been working on a system with it for so long that I may have stockholmed myself. The logic is that rerolling the whole thing felt a little too good/punishing, and this allows multiple degrees of ease/difficulty instead of a binary "reroll all dice" and "reroll no dice"

>>96322117
if you split it into 2 actions then you have the system of mythras/Runequest 6 that employs action points and it takes one both to attack and to react so most combats go that each attacks once and defends once. There are some characters with 3 action points (based on stats) that have more versatility

>>96322197
To be fair to him, if I'm remembering call of cthulhu correctly then in that game being more intelligent makes you worse at resisting the sight of eldritch horrors. I think the logic there is that the smarter you are, the more aware you are of just how utterly *wrong* the horror you're seeing is. Like the difference between "that's a scary monster" and "that monster's very shape violates several supposedly immutable laws of physics and mathematics".

>>96322043
Yeah also in the Arkham games they'll lose sanity almost as quickly as the fighters because they'll come into contact with the occult more.

>>96321840
In the Rat supplement there's plans for a new instrument which are sea shanties that are believed to have super natural qualities. Its called shantism and it'll work a little differently as instead of dropping dice to add multipliers, it's based on how many people are singing the shanty.

It'll have stuff like mocking someone to the point they cry and leave and bonuses to stealth tests since I want to reference this
>https://youtu.be/WdJg6Duzzf4?si=YkV94hlk9V-wH1bs

>>96322213
This is just
>roll (3+X)D6
>take the 3 lowest/highest
but with extra steps. It's very common and usually called advantage/disadvantage.

>>96321795
>because it's not that the game is slower, there's simply more gameplay
Same difference, ultimately. If you add in five more rolls you have to make to see whether you hurt the guy you're shooting at and how hard, you've added "more gameplay". If you give every model ten action points instead of two or quadruple every player's base unit count, you've also arguably added "more gameplay".
However, quantity is only a quality in war and economics.

>why does it feel "slower" when it's basically the same thing as alternate activations, only the moves of the opposing players are intertwined instead of arranged in blocks?
One answer is that it brings up more decision points and slower resolution. You can't simply speed through every action, because you and the other player(s) are both able to influence the consequences of said action.
As the reactor you also have to pay attention more (I'll get to the issue with that, don't worry). Players who simply aren't experienced and used to procedure will need more time to think and weigh their options to determine the best course of action.

>that's the point, isn't it? you want people to have to pay attention
No, the goal is to have fun. The ideal for a reaction system is to result in more complex decision making without slowing the game down too much, which in turn should (emphasis on should) result in more dynamic gameplay. In a wargame, this would mean a clear winner won't emerge as quickly, there's more to winning than list building and following obvious procedures, and you don't have to feel helpless while the opponent kills unit after unit like in say, Warhammer.

I did rewrite the 5th edition rulebook once and found out that Alternating Actions already get rid of that helplessness though, while trying to add in Reactions didn't really do anything except drag. It's not inherently bad design, it's just *hard* to design a good Reaction System.

>>96322117
I honestly think option 2 is fine:

>>Falls apart with multiple enemies
>Multiple foes means either your failures are 3 (or more!) times as bad
that's only an issue if you give enemies free attacks for unrelated actions
if you swing a sword and miss, it should give that particular enemy a free swing at you
if you fall from a chandelier, it should give you a temporary disadvantage but no immediate enemy attacks

it also means attacking twice is twice the risk, which is fine
and also means the player can do the lone samurai move where they wait for the enemies to swarm him and then defeat them while barely moving, using reactions, which I think is cool
it's okay for defense to be stronger, because you're giving up initiative, so there's a tactical decision there

>No roll = no result = enemy does nothing unless you do option 1.
that needs to be fixed though, aye
ultimately you need to have some pressure on players to act
if you make the enemies completely reactionary and without agency, it will feel more like a logic puzzle than a two-sided conflict

>>96322117
Offer accumulating benefits on successful defenses.

>>96324932
>>that's the point, isn't it? you want people to have to pay attention
>No, the goal is to have fun. The ideal for a reaction system is to result in more complex decision making without slowing the game down too much, which in turn should (emphasis on should) result in more dynamic gameplay.
I feel like you didn't really disprove my statement, there
obviously I meant that having to pay attention is supposed to make the game more fun
because a complaint you hear often is that waiting for your turn is boring if you have nothing to do
it might be true that alternating actions solves that issue, but that doesn't say anything about whether reactions do
your only actual argument was that "trying to add in Reactions didn't really do anything except drag", but you still didn't explain why, you just used a synonym for "slow"
expand on why reactions don't solve the helplessness/boredom problem and then we'll be talking

>>96325075
>I feel like you didn't really disprove my statement, there
It wasn't a statement about "proof" and can't be proven or disproven. It was a question of what the point is, and the point is to have fun.

>obviously I meant that having to pay attention is supposed to make the game more fun
On its own, how so?

>because a complaint you hear often is that waiting for your turn is boring if you have nothing to do
This is true, but it does not inherently mean having something to do fixes the issue. And the issue itself only arises if you have lengthy turns.

>but that doesn't say anything about whether reactions do
They can, but the drawbacks are considerable and it's hard to make them good enough to work. In a wargame, I think it'll almost always be preferable to shorten turns and alternate actions.

>but you still didn't explain why
Everything preceding that line was part of the explanation for why, as all of the aforementioned problems occurred (it slowed the game down, it added more decision points, but it doesn't make it actually more interesting/fun)

>expand on why reactions don't solve the helplessness/boredom problem
This has never been the case, as it's less that they don't solve it, and more that they're just a poor solution to it. Reaction systems ought to exist for verisimilitude alone (For example, in WAP), or as a central design conceit that the entire game is built around.

>>96325108
>it added more decision points, but it doesn't make it actually more interesting/fun
why?

>>96325195
>why?
Partly it's the same reason adding five more dice rolls to resolve every action doesn't make something more fun: It's just more stuff to keep track of and do, and doesn't succeed at giving you interesting decisions to make.

>>96325202
You must be playing some really bad games to not have reactions give you interesting choices. In Infinity you can have your entire game plan change because an enemy unit sets up an HMG with good sight lines. Every turn requires considering not just what you can do, but what your enemy can react to, and that requires choices.

>>96324895
You aren't actually taking the 3 lowest or 3 highest. Two dice of the original roll will always stand, regardless of how low or high the others are. So it's 3d6+3d6 take the lowest two from the first roll, and lowest one from the second roll. If your first roll is
>6, 6, 6
and your second is
>1, 1, 1
The final result is
>6, 6, 1
Instead of 1, 1, 1. It's a lot harder to model on anydice, but the concept is having multiple advantages or disadvantages becomes less swingy, because 6d6 lowest/highest 3 get a little close to guaranteed success/failure for my tastes.

>>96325262
>You must be playing some really bad games to not have reactions give you interesting choices.
You seem a bit unsure as to what games we're referring to here. We're specifically using a modification of GFF as an example, and I'm going off a modified 5th edition of 40k as an instance of where simply adding in reactions failed to create interesting gameplay.

>Infinity
Infinity is fine, and from what I've seen was built around reactions from the ground up. Though others have pointed out, it does run slower. Whether that trade off is worth it depends on who you ask.

As an aside, if you want an example of a Reaction system that doesn't really damage nor make its game more interesting, just look at WAP.

>>96325289
>We're specifically using a modification of GFF as an example, and I'm going off a modified 5th edition of 40k
whoah there pardner
no idea where you got that
I'm speaking about the potential of reaction systems in general
it might very well be true that reactions don't work in your specific hack, but that cannot be generalized to all games
especially if you're going to try to artificially limit the scope of the discussion

>>96325321
>no idea where you got that
Why, from here >>96299467 where the discussion began.

>I'm speaking about the potential of reaction systems in general
Yeah, you did seem a bit confused and thought I was saying reaction systems don't work, despite my emphasizing otherwise. Which would be quite silly if I were, considering my own homebrew systems tend to be designed around reaction systems.

>>96325347
>Why, from here >>96299467 where the discussion began.
yeah, and earlier it was about infinity, in the actual first post
so there's nothing wrong about bringing it up

>>96325364
And nowhere did I say it was wrong to bring Infinity up.

Again, you seem very defensive and confused as to what's actually being said and discussed here.

>>96325371
and you're being condescending, but I'm trying to be the bigger man and avoid quarrels

>>96325489
>and you're being condescending
If you say so.

>but I'm trying to be the bigger man and avoid quarrels
Since you keep willfully misunderstanding what I've said, you don't seem to be. And if that were true, you wouldn't have made this post. The best way to avoid quarreling is to just stop talking.

>>96325262
nta but this is just wrong. Reactions are inherently rules overhead and don't give more depth by giving you MORE choices. You are basing the idea that having more choices means more interesting choices, and that just simply isn't the case in games, if anything the opposite is true. You can already do anything you want, that's called having free will. Games are the limitation of decisions and giving meaning to those limitations through incentives. There are games built around these kinds of decisions that are good, but for every good implementation of a reaction system there are 20 that are overbloated and unfun.
>>96325489
Nobody who is the bigger man ever has to say it, they simply are.

>>96325273
then its 3d6 reroll lowest

>>96318799
>system focused on items and equipment, things get a bit more complex
They don't really, all you have to do is scale enemies (as you would do in any RPG really) or a better approach, give enemies the same items So that they can seem different while being still based on this same thing.
Also I was under the assumption that items may be just things they add to their bodies. Im guessing some gear will be exclusive then? Also while Rainworld is cool Chimara seem a bit out of place to be a playable race.
As for weapons, what do you struggle with>> I can try to help but you would need to give me persicse detail

>>96327857
Yeah, that makes it way simpler. Though having additional dice kinda feels better to roll than just rerolling the same die 3 times. I need to weigh up the feel potentially being more fun vs rerolling being a million times easier to explain in text

>>96328350
>Im guessing some gear will be exclusive then?correct and here an exsample: Some gear like glasses and helmeds cant be worn by mechas while reative armor plates arnt good for more human shaped robots.
>Chimara seem a bit out of place to be a playable race.
At first i thought too but then i notice that with this option i can open the path for supermutants and odd beast-cyborgs. I think it could work.
> I can try to help but you would need to give me persicse detail
Problem is: how to make single- and autofire wepaons work well without making the system to bulky or complex.
Currently you hit if your sensor-dices are bigger then the targets cloak-dices. The cloak valure is not infisibliity but how well you spot an opening.
After an hit you throw the damage die and subtact the number form the armor of the target to get the final damage.
Level 1 one handed weapons do 1D6 damage at the moment and with each level gain 1D6.
But i cant for the life on me create good scalble autofire weapons. On one hand the sensor die could also add "more hits" but on the other each hit could be so weak that simple armor is eating it right away.
I maybe just conflicted, confused or outright refuse to steal someone elses clever mechanic for auto and semi fire guns...

bump

>>96329972
>But i cant for the life on me create good scalble autofire weapons. On one hand the sensor die could also add "more hits" but on the other each hit could be so weak that simple armor is eating it right away.
What's the problem with that? Most systems that use margin of success just use it to determine how many hits will land. Sometimes dividing it by weapon quality modifier or something. If your weapon caliber/power isn't good enough to beat armor you probably need to carry bigger weapons or use them against unarmored targets.

The most straightforward solution Roll -> MoS or MoS/X determines amount of hits -> Make damage rolls
If you want to make it more complicated add ability to spray bullets in wide area to give a bonus to hit, but at a cost of higher MoS divisor.

Should I use alternating activations or igo-ugo where all the actions happen simultaneously so it doesn't matter who goes first outside of moving?

>>96333182
Pretty sure that igo-ugo actually exacerbates the value of first as a wave of value can significantly deplete the other side, but alternating activations does cause some design constraints on disparity between individual unit power lest the same big value swings skew the fight from the first few moves and the unit count of each side lest you end up with a big block of no movement in the case of tightly-packed elites versus mook horde. Unless you work out the overhead for activating a big unit allowing several weak ones to go before your next activation.

>>96316179
Nice, I've been in a spiral trying my own indirect-direct resource tcg, it's a rough proposition. Especially when Res Arcana is the prime of example of what should be my perfect game but I absolutely loathe it
Yours might have faired better, but I had a similar 'currency as mana but also win/losecon' like your Capital and it ended up being the pinnacle regression toward the mean. First games blow outs, next game blow out, then eventually just this very boring back and forth dragging out. It's a neat concept that unfortunately doesn't feel nearly as enjoyable from the player perspective, kind of like life decking imo
Fwiw I switched to a smaller range with a 'lock in' mechanic, kind of like Keyforge if you could choose to unforge your keys, and that ended up being a lot more interesting.
Unfortunately the rest of the interaction levels weren't and hence it went on the back burner
also I'm retarded and could not stop switching back and forth between industrial and market themes every time I refined a mechanic

Also I must be indeed retarded as I'm at like design #50+ and I still don't understand how to really do thematic top down designs yet. Every time it's like square pegs into circular holes and nothing translates well at all.
Meanwhile every bottom up design gets a hint or two of theme and it sings with it. Not complaining, but it is kind of frustrating old concepts feel incomplete and returning to them I stray once again away from the intention.

>>96332634
the thing is i dont know how to put this in a simple scalble way.
One handed single fire weapons should do 1D6 damage and need the users sensors to hit.
Two handed single fire weapons have 2D6 and a small aim bonus to counterbalance dual single hand weapons.
Each level of a weapon increases its damage and other conditions by 100%.
So level two pistol does equal damage as a level 1 rifle while being one handed.
How do you think i should make the automatic weapons?
Level 1 uzi with each point of success being 1 hit while level 2 goes two and so on? Something like that?

>>96335567
>Unfortunately the rest of the interaction levels weren't
What types of interactions did you have between the decks? Did you have an equivalent of a combat phase?

>>96335681
>Level 1 uzi with each point of success being 1 hit while level 2 goes two and so on? Something like that?
Right now it seems like your best bet is making automatic weapons have low damage per shot but being able to lay down a lot of hits on the target. So they should lag 1-2 levels damage wise behind normal weapons (depending on how armor scales), but could do a lot of hits at the cost of going through ammo like an alcoholic through a liquor store.

Number of hits should probably be gated by sensor dice and amount of ammo you are willing to expend. If you decide to do a long burst and whiff it, that's gonna sting.

So attack sequence goes:

-Decide the length of burst in ammo
-Sensor vs Cloak
-Roll MoS hits for damage, but no more than amount of ammo spent

>>96288465
That is absolutely batshit insane, I'll have to take a look into it for the sheer curiosity, thanks for the recommendation.

>>96269938
I'm cutting down the rulebook
from ~21k characters down to ~13k.
trimming the fat, cutting redundancies, and make it more readable
but I'm starting to worry I'm chopping too much.

>>96335813
No more of a resource 'drafting' phase where players were taking turns tapping to affect a shared market and thus affect each other indirectly
The problem it fell into was a very black and white play style - you either beat each other up for necessary resources or you were on your own island completely self sufficient once your engine got rolling. That clued me in the engines needed some self-degradation instead of just increasing maintenance costs (which was my answer to not having combat)
But that put the pivoted the focus fully on the resource draft and it became very obvious that "get resources > play cards > get resources" is as deep as you can make it. Sure having multiple resource types and interweaving the action economy on costs made it seem interesting, but at its best it was yet another tableau builder
I like my tableau builders, don't get me wrong, it's just too much of a default design for indirect interaction games that when you add all the TCG layerings of tapping, upkeep, deckbuilding, it all feels like baggage instead of informing the full design

>>96339188
And fwiw there's also the side effect of me really digging into why certain euro flavored games work well for me and why others do not
And the generic 2 brown for 1 white cube pushing was a style that works fantastically with this sort of design and one I absolutely do not care for
So I figured shouldering the bgg and tcg sides was a bit much and started focusing on the former so I could rentertain the latter.

>>96316208
Are you the anon who was bullied out of using AI pictures and just doodling by yourself?
Your fire is looking nicer, kinda pointillism

>>96302590
>work on something
>realize that I'm doing two things in one but they could be divided and it'd probably work better
>separate them
>work on one of those
>realize the same
>repeat
I'll never finish anything

>>96339384
The only thing you should care about finishing are sessions and campaigns. When it comes to systems you can spend forever working on them, whether it's making constant sweeping additions and overhauls or just fine tuning and tweaking things.
Either way, so long as you're using it for what it was meant to do, it's paying off.

>>96321596
MoSh has a stress counter for failed rolls, each one adding one stage to the possible table results. The more you fail the more stressed you are, the more stressed you are the worse the fallout when things get bad.
It includes some mental health terminology and I've never seen anyone complain, the other anon is probably stuck a decade in the past when people criticized 90's games for having a table where getting hit in the head could make you gay or a drug adict.

>>96325028
>that's only an issue if you give enemies free attacks for unrelated actions
but then you have a scenario where someone is surrounded and only being hit by the one dude he's trying to attack while the other two stare. Fighting movies do it, but even then people complain.

>>96335681
You're allowed to make bullets do flat damage.
Just roll to hit and add a critical tier that does the peak realistic damage a real gun will do, that way you still have a sniper doing their job.
That's how the Blade Runner game more or less does it for that noir detective one shot is all you need vibe.

The current design for my skirmish wargame uses HP, with most units having low double-digit values of HP. I'm thinking about switching to a system where all damage is save or die to reduce bookkeeping. Would keeping track of HP like that for around 10 units be annoying to you?

>>96339715
That depends on how much stuff you need to roll and keep in mind.

Don't forge that BT is also a skirmish wargame that has HP tracking done per part of a mech. So even with 4 mechs per side you have effectively 32+ HP counters to track.

>>96339188
I think our games are much more different than initially believed. Resource draft sounds interesting, but it is not part of my game. In my game resources are a part of deck building. In order to play a card of a color you need a resource of that color in play, but once that resource is down there is no limit to how many cards you can play. There is no way for the opponent to remove resources, and you still want more of them because they provide space for your Infrastructure which provides space for your money making Productions
While you are able to make your engine more powerful, my game focuses on the dueling aspect by introducing cards that have direct effects on your opponent.
>>96339370
Yes at this point its better to keep playtest/prototype blank or with doodles
>Your fire is looking nicer, kinda pointillism
Thank you, I need to fix my style. Large amounts of random lines are not a replacement for a single well placed stroke

>>96339844
Combat is two opposed 3d6 rolls to determine hits, but with the HP system damage is all deterministic so it's just two rolls per attack.

>>96339846
>Large amounts of random lines are not a replacement for a single well placed stroke
oil painting is all about a million seemingly random lines. If you look at someone doing it looks like they're having a breakdown until a painting starts appearing.
And you're not aiming to be a pro, just do what feels right and keep doing it.

>>96339879
That's true as well. What's tedious is even coming up with the concept. How do I doodle something like Bad Press?
Pic related is 1 copy of every card in the set. To have my full prototype set I needed to do that 4 times

>>96339853
Then it should be alright.

>>96339436
which is why I wouldn't use reactions exclusively
the other enemies can just attack during their own turn instead of staring
but this might not be what anon had in mind

>>96339715
Planet 28 gives everyone 20HP or so. I hated it, but it seems to be passably popular.

My big one is I'm writing a system agnostic guide on how to make an amazing and memorable campaign.

It's a ground up for how to determine what system might be best for the game you want to run, how to structure story Arcs in a way to maximize player engagement and narrative strength, etc. It's half original thoughts and ideas and half stuff I've cribbed from a dozen sources (including /tg/), but the theory is that if you take my design template ad follow it step by step it should be nearly impossible to run a 'bad' game.

>>96266960
Debating picking up an old project that's been on the backburner for years.

I am building minis for a wargame ala 40k.

Later I want to make a wargame system for them, but I have no idea where to start. For now I have some soldiers and my second batch is coming along nicely. For something like 40k, where do you recommend I start in the design process?

>>96344752
Play existing games. Preferably several quite different ones. Then modify them and play more.

>>96344752
Don't play existing games. Too much referencing stifles creativity. Just do what comes to mind and try to figure out your rules yourself without preconceptions. Only after that play other games and take what rules you like from them.

>>96337415

>-Decide the length of burst in ammo
>-Sensor vs Cloak
>-Roll MoS hits for damage, but no more than amount of ammo spent
this could work. Would be the frist time i have a "callout" rule but who knows how this can turn out ones i manage to put it in words.
thanks

>>96339465
>That's how the Blade Runner game more or less does it for that noir detective one shot is all you need vibe.
will look into that too! thank you too.

>try to come up with combat system
>play a skirmish game that is close but absolutely better in every way
sigh. maybe I should just try to port that game into a full-fledged TTRPG

any one already made a RPG that uses cards instead of dice?
always felt like people intuitively understand cards more than dice

>>96345420
Doesn't Pathfinder have a card only version of the system?

>>96345420
the best that comes to me to mind is gloomhaven.
But what do you want to achive with a system like this?

>>96345416
What's the game anon?

>>96347740
Kill Team 21/24
specifically using successes to strike or block in melee. I was doing pure comparisons instead of successes with no option to kamikaze

>>96345420
I think Wyrd's RPG, Through the Breach, uses their card system.

Slowly getting a somewhat rulebook put together.

>>96350846
rethink the fonts, anon.

>>96350846
if the cards are meant to be held in hand, then move their names and maybe cost to the top
otherwise the player won't be able to see them

>>96351924
The cards are meant to be stacked on top of each other so that would block the names and cost out to their opponent
>>96351706
Yea fonts aren't final it's mostly the layout and getting all the information across that's a pain

>>96269938
>>96338519
do you guys mind reading the newest iteration of my rulebook?
I need some fresh eyes to take a look and see if I've cut too much information...

please, compare
>OLD
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1skv6DSYLF6U8fgid2kN9tKg2aSw6hvM3/view?usp=sharing
>NEW
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N3PbeD4KG8BXDRKSCXLVsm8S-1zCUDdx/view?usp=sharing

in the newest version there are no example sections, but I want to add some in a future revision

>>96352099
it says you're supposed to draw 7 and keep them secret
sounds like holding in hand to me

>>96352780
Holding in hand so they're not in view of your opponent specifically. But it is ambiguous and could be seen as keeping secret from everyone

Bump.

>>96356461
dont just bump, ask questions or post images to keep this thread alive!

I'm trying to think of a way to skills for a d100 game fun and interesting to use, besides improving the number to make rolling under easier, what are something I could do to make skills worth investing into? Like maybe if you put x amount of levels or ranks into a skill you unlock some kind of ability or bonus besides improving the number.

>>96359884
Players can alter the face of one of the dice (1's or 10's) by up to the rank of the rolled skill. Whenever the player rolls a number associated with the skill, it applies a bonus effect. Players can choose to roll a number of dice up to the rank of their skill then pick and choose which applies, declaring which is 10's and which is 1's beforehand. Hard to give useful ideas without any theme or other mechanical context to go off of.

>>96359955

I'm working on a fantasy inspired world and so far my skills just gave you a success if you rolled under them. So these suggestions can at least give me some freedom in giving them a bit more creativity depending on what I want the skill to do. One other idea is basicly if you get certain skills to a set rank you unlock standerd things like extra attack or a variety of spells, sincem y game idea won't have levels but skill training instead.

>>96359884
use talents as an additional xp sink that require certain ranks in certain skills to be allowed to be bought.
Then retroactively apply them toskills rolls.
For example x ranks in the acrobatics skill and the hidden blade skill allow for a cinematic takedown when jumping an opponent from above successfully ala assassin's creed style so that it aint the ranks that give the bonus ability but simply allow you to get one.
This makes it much more simple to staple whatever kind of abilities, skill tricks etc you want on a solid d100 chassis that i assume you re gonna base your game on.
Unrelated to d100 games but 3rd edition of dnd had a supplement that used skill tricks that can also be used as inspiration.

>>96265985 (OP)
Im almost done with a 200+ page 5e adventure that goes to lvl 7.
Takes place in cormyr and the little feedback i got is very positive.

How the fuck do I market myself? Reddit doesnt give a shit, 0 replies on X.
>Picrel book cover

>>96266960
A Pokemon d6 dicepool RPG. Most of the TTRPGs I've seen for the franchise have been either trying their hardest to be crunchier than the actual game or very loose with little rules beyond the absolute core.

>>96360789
Just put it up in all the relevant places like dtrpg and maybe 5e specific places that arent completely predatory (if any exist). You market yourself by making stuff that people like and then checking out your new stuff. It is incremental.
Unless you have money to throw for advertising which mostly doesnt work.
I think conventions are the best way to sell yourself and your stuff along with a yt channel which is the most high effort thing you can do.

>>96360789
post the first ~3 levels for free

>>96265985 (OP)
A skirmish wargame about metro33/Stalker setting, with the main gimmick being NPC monsters and Light rules.
I know what i want to do, i struggle putting into a cohesive text tho

>>96364577
draw what the game being played looks like on paper, identify what each component is

>>96266960
I'm making a spiritual successor to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

>>96360820
I love the idea of more pokemon ttrpg
But please don't use d6

>>96364902
nta but what's wrong with d6 dice pools?

Are there any rules lite and/or quick narrative combat systems out there I can crib from? Player facing preferably. So far I only have Ironsworn as a reference. I want combat to exist, as it's narratively significant, but it's not a game *about* combat so I don't want it to be too time consuming or intricate

Anyone made a tabletop game in the style of Dungeon Keeper. I've got a rudimentary framework and a player for a one on one game. The player is my patient girlfriend[\spoiler].
I'm happy with how it's going but if anyone else has something I can peek at I'm happy to share my work.

>>96365166
Fucked up the spoiler. That's embarrassing

who has actually gotten strangers to try their game? gen con just happened, cmon.

>>96365166
Do you mean an RPG or a board game? Board game would be Stonespine Architects - though you would need to add sabotage and invasion mechanics since it is mostly about dungeon building.

As for RPG you best bet is probably Mutants & Masterminds. It has some good advice on crafting villain lairs that could be easily turned around to player side. Especially if you have the player work with some indirect control tools and non-perfect minions. Plus M&M can be easily scaled to any power level and is easy to add in custom materials, items and so on accounting for how hard are they to break.

>>96365251
I consider rpg's to be complex board games so it's all the same to me. I'll check out Stonespire. Which edition(s) of MaM should I be looking at?

>>96321792
>researchers literally utilise spoons and cookies to gauge sanity depletion
Wait, what?
Could you elaborate on that?
>>96321596
>I can't think of a way to implement losing sanity in a way that makes thematic sense and is rules-light
I like the way Trail of Cthulhu handles it:
>Sanity is distinct from Stress (and HP)
>Stress is what builds up when you see messed up stuff, or when you are the target of violence. You can clear it by spending time cooling down
Although if you want to make it feel more tragic, you can make it like Delta Green, so that spending time with loved ones helps you regain stress but degrades your relationship with them over time.
>Sanity on the other hand is how much you know of the true reality of the universe and the mythos. As you start understanding how precarious and insignificant human life is, your ability to live and be understandable by others slips away. You can't regain it.
If you want a real-life example of what sanity loss, check out any serious journalist who starts investigating UFOs. Like Ross Coulthart. Starts with "hey there's something actually serious there" to "the history of the last 80 years needs to be completely rewritten, there is an ongoing cover up that's bigger than the Manhattan Project" to "REALITY AS WE KNOW IT IS A LIE, UFOs ARE NOT ALIENS THEY ARE INTERDIMENSIONAL ENTITIES RELATED TO OUR LATENT PSYCHIC ABILITIES"
Having these two makes a lot of sense if you run a Lovecraft-themed game, but you could get away with just a stress bar.
If you want to make it simple but realistic, I would put it this way:
>How much stress point you have at the beginning is random, really
>If you reach your stress limit, you permanently lose a a certain amount of maximum points.
>Having healthy relationships helps you recover the stress better. So although you don't choose your number of stress point, how you build your character can make you better at handling stress in the longer run

>>96321596
Penalties in rolls (or a specifil type or roll, like social) are a very simple way to do it. In-world, it means they have difficulty to focus in the task at hand.
For example, every 3~5 Sanity lost they get a -1 (adjust according to your game mechanics).

>>96364902
Pokeanon here. What's wrong with d6?

>>96365126
Depending on the vibes you are going for.
If you want over the top creative stuff, check Wushu https://danielbayn.com/wushu/
For more grounded stuff, check GURPS one page https://gurpsland.no-ip.org/pdf/One-PageGURPS.pdf
If you want something more about about inter-character play, check out RISUS or D.O.G.S.
But ultimately, if you don't want to make it a focus of your game, a combat system can boil down to either:
>Roll (combat ability) to attack. It's a normal roll using the normal rules you use in your game
>Opponent rolls (combat ability or defence ability) to defend. It's also a normal roll
>If attack is successful and defence is unsuccessful, damage is dealt
>If not, then try again next turn
or
>Opposed roll of (combat ability), using the normal rules for opposed rolls
>Loser gets damage
Depending on what the rest of the game looks like, you may even skip the damage and just straight declare the loser out of combat, then manage the consequences of that using whatever system you have in place to manage long-term negative consequences dealt to a PC.
Oh, hey and another anon just posted this, a few days ago: https://itch.io/jam/one-page-rpg-jam-2025

>>96365108
>>96366023
Ever played 40k?
It's all d6 and that means the balance is all out of whack because they only have 6 numbers to work with. The difference between a 2 and a 3 is huge. If you use any other dice pool, you have way more options and nuance to pick from and that ends up leading to, imo, a better and more balanced game

>>96366234
I haven't. Might look into others but it might throw the current math I've got going on in half to switch to d8, d10, or d12. Also, of not that it's not entirely just dicepools, but modifiers doing a lot of work as well.

>>96366247
How high are the modifiers going to go given the highest you can roll is a six?

>>96366300
I'd say generally around 30?
Skills and attributes can have Minor Skills (2d6+mod) and Major Skills (3d6+mod). Moves naturally range from 1d6 to 8d6 depending on strength and secondary effects.

>>96366327
Okay that doesn't sound as bad as I was thinking when you said the whole thing was going to be d6 based

While not my thing in general, i Love how Ryuutama managed to reduce all weapon categories into six. I think its on the rules that Maces/Hammers go with Axes into STR based weapons.

It might make not much sense from a Weapons VS Armor paradigm, but it works to give each weapon an utility and a personality to their bearer; as at the start you must choose to expertise in one of those. I think it does a great job for its genre.

I think i am doing the same for my JRPG inspired game; though probably changing the categories a bit: Light blades seems a little pointless, when a knife can actually go under the "improvised weapon" rules. Maybe I could make room for a split on polearms, in order to make room for one handed spears or separating longspears from greataxes.

>>96366618
>separating longspears from bardiches and such.
Fixed

>>96366591
Modifiers can likely go higher as I'm tweaking the numbers. The current idea is that a Target Number of 50 is "near impossible" even at max level without the use of stat boosting moves, circumstance dice, and/or helping trainers or Pokemon.
Base stat modifiers are found through dividing the stat by 5 and rounding up. HP isn't decided through stats but rather are decided by your two classes.
Current focus is on classes and their specializations. I'm trying to strike a good middle ground between PTU's love of front-line trainers while not making trainers manhandling Pokemon vastly superior. Each class should have five subclasses.

>>96265985 (OP)
Taking a shot at classless rules/mechanics for D&D, using the latest 5e as inspiration. The end goal is to have players focusing as much on their character's development as the adventure they're in.
No idea if anyone has done something like this before.

>>96366917
I'd suggest looking at Eclipse: the Codex Persona, a third-party d20 sourcebook from the tail end of the 3.5 days that makes an effort at it for the SRD material of 3e, 3.5, and d20 modern that includes how the existing classes from those would be handled at the back. Though as is usual for a d20 third-party sourcebook it has like a hundred pages of new shit not actually related to its advertised point.

>>96352650
I'm having serious trouble trying to fix a problem that has recently been brought to my attention
it appears the game is prone to "flooding" attacking creatures, without much strategy involved...

I don't know how should approach this
or how could I add more skirmish miniature game mechanics without having to rework the entire game from scratch

the game works, I know that for sure, but it's not very "rewarding"

I'm quite lost, to be frank

>>96366234
Never played 40k, but a lot of d6 dice pool systems don't need much direct numerical adjustment. Direct addition or subtraction is rare with the resolution system, typically you either add/remove dice, or you add/remove the number of dice needed for success. When you're working with it like that using d6s is fine

>>96366680
I'm looking forward to you continuing this project, can you tell me anything more about it? Plot lines or anything like that? Have you figured out a system for catching?

>>96367150
Currently the idea is that there's ten levels, although I'm unsure if that's mechanically feasible. It's something from the system I'm basing a lot of this off of: Explorers! (PMD system) but I'm unsure if it'll make for a good capstone level.
Nothing plot-line wise but the current idea for the theme is the early anime, where you could stumble upon whatever. With that, it's low-priority but I do want to make it easy to generate new locations. The 3.5 generators might come in handy, since Pokemon towns tend to be smaller than what they are in real life.
Catching has no rules yet. Although I plan on Pokemon sheets being somewhat light and for there to be no PDF of pre-built Pokemon, catching can trivialize a lot of random encounters by giving you the ability to essentially remove a Pokemon from the field for the cost of a Potion. For similar reasons, I'm not adding actual breeding mechanics.
Right now, my priority is on Trainer Classes and their Specializations (subclasses). Afterwards, it's going to deciding how Pokemon should work.

>>96367048
I believe I've found a way to curb attacker-flooding

face-up minion cards come into the field when drawn or revealed from their owner's deck
but instead of attacking immediately upon entry, they enter the field "tapped", and the player must pay their Rank cost by discarding the appropriate number of cards from their hand
if their cost is not paid, they remain tapped and "visible" to both players, targetable and vulnerable to damage
and, at the beginning of their controller's next turn, that player discards each tapped card they have in play

I think this way could force players to decide with which minions they attack, and it prevents zerg-rush style attacks

>>96367415
I had another idea
instead of limiting the copies of a card to an arbitrary number (either 2 or 3) I'd use a point system by which each card could "cost" a number of points to include to the deck depending on how powerful or overall useful is considered to be
a player has to have exactly 30 cards and 100 points worth of cards in their deck

this way, a player could choose to have many copies of expendable low-level cards, several more expensive cards, or a combination of both in any measure they want
this point allocation system doesn't solve anything by itself, but it makes the game more similar to other miniature games

not only that, but I could give cards a base point cost and add multipliers based on their stats, rank, and abilities, so the player would have to calculate each instance
this way, I could easily change and adapt the cost of specific values and multipliers in case the cards are deemed too broken, making them more expensive to add rather than banning them outright (only if sanctioned play ever becomes a thing)

>>96366234
40k's issue is that its a D6 pool system that is trying to pretend each die has the weight of a D20.

>>96365273
Both have a lot of official and unofficial materials for them so choose what you want.

M&M 2 is closer to its D&D roots.
M&M 3 is a more refined system where basically everything can be done as a power. (Though some things really shouldn't, like time travel)

>>96266960
Currently I'm working on a document for my Modern Fantasy TTRPG that includes the reasoning why certain Species can't be used with the Half-breed subspecies option (lets you hybridize two species via a species parent and a subspecies parent for lots of customization), as well as detailing (clinically might I add with as little explicit text as possible) the reproductive properties of each Species, and the appearance of all of the half-breeds of that species.

For the record, the system has 21 total Species playable, with 17 of those options being compatible with the Half-Breed Subspecies option. Each Species has between 3-4 Subspecies options. That's... a lot of permutations

I also intend to include very basic rules for reproduction, just a contested check or something, as a variant rule for GMs who want to add some soap opera drama after a fade to black and a one-night stand from the horny bard player (bard in the system is the half-caster specialty of Rogue so yeah).


But mainly, I'm working on coming up with appearances for all of those hybrids.

I also added an experimental variant rule to that document where you can turn it into more "traditional" fantasy without the modern stuff, which also adds some new equipment that can still be used with the core rules.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cI5OOT9cxjvHyTIwYd74CttJ8NsEJY1-?usp=drive_link if anyone's interested, this is the system. The new doc is currently hidden from public view due to me not being done with it. It's not required to play the game however.

>>96368660
Consider if you will, that I am a mortal being with a finite amount of time on this earth who is not going to read two editions of a rule set (+official and unofficial supplements) for the chance it might be helpful for a low stakes game of pretend I run for my partner. Given that are there any specific books or sections of MaM you think would be helpful for me.

>>96265985 (OP)
>What are you working on right now?
Working on a Dragon Ball TTRPG.
I didn't like any of the other options so I figured I'd give it a shot myself.
Combat's mostly figured out but I've got some more testing to do before I start adding stuff like transformations.
Then I have to test and balance magic and figure out if I want to bother with a technology-based progression path after everything else is done.
>Any issues?
I need to get my rules in order, so we can playtest my latest boneheaded rework of the stamina and health systems. My players will have need of a reference, but writing the rules out makes me want to kill myself.
I really should've just stuck to a google doc or something, because fitting shit on the page is awful.
>Lacking inspiration? Smashing your head against a creative wall?
Other than actually writing stuff out, I suppose more than a couple of things don't really work in a way I'm 100% happy with.
I may need more modifiers for signature techniques and stuff to fully cover what people would want to do with the system, but that's hard to say without it coming up at the table.
>Or just having a hard time getting all these pages done?
You better believe it.

>>96370046
Than I'd suggest going with 3e.
You need Players Guide for basic mechanics and Gamemaster's Guide for all the villain advice and optional rules you may want to use, including mass combat.

With Villain Archetypes chapter for bigger minions. Since it maps almost perfectly on them with how much they should be butting heads under the DK rule.
And Challenges and Villain Lairs would be what you want to get ideas on how to implement DK traps and buildings (you also have some of that in Player's Guide, plus some vehicles as a benchmark).

Hero society chapter and other similar stuff is useless to you for obvious reasons.

>>96266960
Legally distinct Zoids team based skirmish using squared/rectangular based front to back templated movement. I've got the movement mechanics at a spot I really like. I'm now flip flopping on how the rest of the mechanics work, particularly, the randomization because I don't want to just do dice. This is my bottleneck because I know there will be things like heat and speed and shooting and melee and maneuvering reactions and things of that nature, but it's hard to dial those in when I don't know what the core system mechanic is going to be.

I have toyed with using cards, like just a deck of 52 (possibly 54 with jokers)cards. This would eliminate the need for a proprietary set. This also opens up the possibility of an ace mechanic were ace pilots get special uses out of the aces, maybe treating it as a wild card or something. I think that's neat, though its more of a happy bonus than a driving factor to making a system.

My current testing is a target number system with degrees of success and failure. I like this because there is a lot of manipulation that can be had. Bonuses and negatives could affect the required number, but also the fail/success threshold. An average difficulty could be 12 with a threshold of +/-3. That is to say an 11 wouldn't succeed, but it wouldn't fail, but an 8 would fail in some way and a 16 would excel in some way. Something routine could have a +/-8 where you have to really fuck up to fuck up.

As for the cards themselves, I'm currently leaning on using pairs of cards kinda like blackjack, and getting a pair of something, either a suit or number, would give you a bonus success, so you could avoid a failure even with a low score or offset heat penalties ect. This where I've hit the wall here because I'd like each pilot to have their own hand, but I'm not sure on action economy and contests. It's a neat but frustrating question.

>>96372723
Gonna continue with OP questions. Sorry for using this to sort of think out loud.
>>96265985 (OP)
>Any issues?
I like the idea of each pilot having their own hand, and I'd like this somehow represent their action economy. In a vacuum, that simply means each card represents an action, so then what about reactions? If they wish to dodge or evade, does that use a card? Probably. What about getting attacked? Does that also use a card? That feels like a good way to handle "stress" in a fight. So then what's the magic number of cards in hand?
>Lacking inspiration?
No, I've been inspired for years. This year, I've actually sat down and really out work into it. In working on it, I've actually come up with some basic lore, too.
>Smashing your head against a creative wall?
Yes. I have the basic idea for turn structure including speeds, min/max movement, breaking, maneuvering, ect. This is a good thing because I feel like it's the most important part of the game. I'm having a blast just moving little bases around. The issues are now with overall turn structure, action economy, and contests. It's the crunch. It needs to be simple yet involved.
>Or just having a hard time getting all these pages done?
That's tomorrow's issue.

>>96368037
>40k's issue is that its a D6 pool system that is trying to pretend each die has the weight of a D20
...Could you elaborate on that?

>>96266960
>SCP Skirmish war game
Care to elaborate Anon? This intrigues me.
>>96372101
Cheers mate.

>>96372723
>>96372779
Leaning in to the poker hand thing and using card draw/trade based mechanics to play with the action economy might be cool.
For example it could help simulate the fantasy of sitting back in a Gun Sniper or Command Wolf type mech waiting for the perfect shot then going all in to ensure a hit using a full house or a straight or something.
More skilled pilots could recover from that or get into the proper state to pull it off more quickly due to better card draw or more trade in opportunities.

Anyway I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

just playing around with some new designs, just because

>>96373454
and what I had before, for comparison

Some playtesting with the knowledge and luxury decks. Good amount of player interaction and options. Plenty of room for high skill play.

Excited to get this set up in TTS so you all can get your hands on it

>>96373536
new one is much better

>>96266960
I've been dicking around with the idea of a skirmish wargame set between WW1 and WW2 where the world powers are in a mad dash to grab as much unnatural super power as possible. From deal with the fay, armies of priest, onis, chineses zombies, warewolf, golems, etc.
Basic human troop is the easiest part I could simply grab as a base one of the many historical WW games. My issue is to scale those mechanics to lets say a warewolf or a zombie horde

>>96374824
I agree
the most important information (the costs in black) is now much easily visible while in hand

>>96373231
Adding more cards could be interesting, though I don't want to go literal poker hands. I think 2 cards is plenty. Hell, I think initial skill check should just be a single card + stat, but I don't know where that card should come from. Probably the deck. I've also thought about making the deck shared or each player only using 2 suits worth of cards. Still messing with that part.

The question is when an action is performed, a card is needed, where does it come from? The answer might be both. Set one face down card from each pilots hand to be their action card, then when you perform an action that needs a test, flip from the top, then, you choose a card from their hand maybe.

Action limit might be a factor here, too. I don't think there will be phases per se. What I do know is that if you're moving at a speed, your first action has to be a move action(cruising, banking/turning, evading, braking), and you only get one per turn/round/cycle whatever. I thought about making that its own phase, but I think it gets weird with pilots standing still. Other actions are things like shooting, using equipment like boosters, heat venting, aiming, and maybe doing objective stuff. Simplicity says you get x actions, which costs a card.

>>96372797
I don't know how bad the modern version gets with it, but most editions have way too many examples of single die rolls mastering a lot. Things like a single heavy weapon hit one-shotting a character through instakill, vehicle penetration rolls, things like the 3rd ed. Dark Eldar Shadowfield, where as RAW, you had to roll each save individually until all are passed or you fail one.

I do know the modern version uses way too many +/-1 modifiers for a D6 system. For a D6 pool system, modifiers to the actual rolls and not the pool size should be rare.

>>96374958
Glorious alpha gameplay. Just moving stuff is fun. Need to find some random 3d prints to use

bump

Hi gents. Making a TTRPG heavily inspired by MYZ, Mythras, Harn, and other more simulationist faire.

System is a D6 dice pool, with 6's equaling success. Goal is for fast interpretation of resolution (there is a built in "yes, but..." "no, but..." complication system as well)

Running a few test fights with the table tonight but have some questions:
>What, in your opinion, should fundamental attributes count toward success? Should strength be relatively equivalent to training? Part of me struggles with the concept that a well trained "average man" can beat a poorly trained "strongman".

> What do you think would be an elegant "momentum" system? Right now I have a system where # of successes are added as "bonus dice" to the next roll, creating a sort of forward momentum. However, it's a little book-keepy to keep track of successes.

>How long is "too long" for combat for you? I'm trying to get 1v1s down to 15 minutes at most.

Google doc link:
document/d/1_koQVicPawdZgot7xVmJhwlXvowNgp6ovPZdAPYS170/edit?usp=sharing

>>96382365
I don't like your core mechanic, since by your own calculations it turns the whole combat upside down. Normally it's experienced and powerful combatants that go for ties in combat, since they have the skill and ability to actually pull it off, while novices flail around and a lot of the time manage to hurt each other at the same time, since they don't know the fuck they are doing.

Overall your core mechanic is basically WoD which was notorius for being swingy when things actually came down to comparing dicepools, which is why players tried to abuse their supernatural powers to remove the risk of doing it in unfavorable or more or less even conditions and either tried to remove the opponent ability to roll outright or put them in a position where their available dicepool was really small. With your desire for opaque mechanics and maximum theater of mind it makes any planning in combat incredibly hard and the results would be frustrating, similar to WoD for obvious reasons. And it gets worse the higher the skill of the combatants.

>>96267142
I am constantly surprised there is no xianxia TTRPG system along the lines of Er Gen's work. I guess part of it is that at a certain point fights become a contest of will and philosophy (i.e. dao) which is hard to model in TTRPG game mechanics.

>>96382611
Interesting. The statistics felt good: the larger the pool the more likely you are to roll at least one success (inverse exponentially, which is surprisingly similar to how we learn things), multiple successes, etc.
It gets swingy with the smaller pool.
Similarly ties become less likely as skilled fighters can jockey for that little bit of advantage.
I see what you are saying, though. I think more skilled fighters should be rewarded.

Do you think ties should go to the better trained fighter? (In most opposed systems ties tend to go to defender) what mechanic do you think provides more satisfying outcomes?

Thank you for taking the time, genuinely. Please let me know how I can credit you.

>>96382365
anon, i like all the systems you mentioned but i dont get how you managed to arrive here.
You cant be both simulationist and opaque at the same time. The way you have structured combat makes no sense to me. You add a vague desired exploit in every attack, you use the most swingy system to resolve dice rolls known to man that comes with a billion problems but most of all that lack of consistency that is always part of simulationism.
Your action economy system is skewed af towards the faster fighter since defending is not as good as attacking (unlike mythras that you cribbed the action points from) so in a simple melee of 1v1 even in a larger combat the initiative winner attacks twice and defends once.
You ask for players to declare a desired exploit without naming the mechanic but the action but you have a super detailed list of exploits and yet you have a randomised hit location (with a worse distribution than mythras because you shortcutted it to a d10 from a d20) when in combat the first thing you actually do when targeting an opponent is targeting a specific hit location. Your dodge straight up sucks with the potential to drop prone if you dont roll a 6 and you make it like it's some desperate maneuver when in actual combat lightly armored combatants dodge hits all the time as it's their major way of defending themselves along with parrying.
Also the way your endurance works makes me feel like it's a race to the bottom especially with how swingy the system is (considering my experiences with exalted where rolling 6+ dice every round would still net zero successes consistently, to the point where fights were a slugfest of failing all the time while rolling a ton of dice)

I cant comment on the combat actions/exploits/equipment values because hat would require a more studious read than i can afford right now.

>>96382365
>>96382980
cont.

Your injury systems feels weird and opaque as well and a little too punishing causing a potential death spiral, that along with the initiative winner's advantage feels very skewed and in general i dont see the reason for these more opaque rules.
This system feels to me like something that wants to simulate heavily armored late medieval combat in a gritty low fantasy (if fantasy at all) setting and i dont feel like they held at all when stapled onto a simulationist chassis with a very random resolution system (sorry that half my gripes revolve around the system but dice pools suck way too much and i ve only felt that they were done almost acceptably in wild talents)

I dont want to hate on your system. I simply think it need more thought behind why each mechanic is the way it is and how well they integrate with each other because i feel like i m watching Frankenstein's creation

>>96382926
>Do you think ties should go to the better trained fighter? (In most opposed systems ties tend to go to defender) what mechanic do you think provides more satisfying outcomes?
That highly depends on the desired feel of the system. Considering that you mentioned simulationist games that strive for verisimilitude best mechanic would be one where Abilities define maximum potential on the action and Skill determines how consistent you are at it with some space for rising above your raw stats.

Examples:

Silhouette - Ability is a bonus on the roll, Skill is the number of d6 you roll and take highest, if you roll more than one 6 you get +1 to the result for each one after the first. Low skill characters give swingy results, but still can pull off high results if they have the stat to back it up, but high skill characters are incredibly consistent and can reach beyond their stats - at 5d6 you can in theory get up to +4 on the result when the base stats are -1 to +5 normally.

Roll under systems - There are many different ones, but for example let's say roll Xd20 with the result that must be lower or equal to stat with the human average being 10. But otherwise the bigger the better/ If you have 0 skill you roll 2 dice and take lowest. Say a character with Strength 12 and Athletics skill 3 would roll 3d20 and would need to get a result on the roll that is higher than the DC of the action - if say he is breaking a flimsy door DC would be only 6-7 and there are good chances he is going to do it on the first try.

Another option would be to use different sizes of dice for Abilities and Skill determining how many you roll, but taking only the highest. Though I don't remember off the top of my head the system that uses this option.

>>96382980
>>96383021
>>96383037
This is excellent feedback. I really appreciate it.
Gives me a lot to think about/ work on.
Question: isn’t a dice pool statistically less “swingy” compared to flat/percentile systems?

>>96383058
Yes but there is a big but at the end of that sentence. You see, rpg's dont have you rolling hundreds of times per session. Average statistic probabilities are based on the law of big numbers which is not applicable to any rpg so you get a good theoretical statistic probability but since there are a lot more moving parts it is far more swingy in practice

>>96383058
I would unironically prefer the numbers stacking and every 6 points granting you one success, but i dont want you to force to change your system to something untested because i dislike it.
Also please check out wold talents since its does dice pools kinda well and different and you might get inspired

>>96383058
Depends on the type of dice pool and the flat system in question - flat rolls could be accompanied by non-linear modifiers on the roll which would make the results very different.

WEG for example just sums up the results of all the dice in the pool. It's very consistent for high competence characters and incredibly brutal for everyone else. To the point that engaging outside your areas of competence is an open invitation to get destroyed, brutally. Which is why martials are some scary fucks in there - if you don't have the skills or some serious static defenses you may very well not even get a first turn.

>>96383091
I might be confused here. There’s a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6 on every die. You can derive specific probabilities based on the size of a dice pool, right?

It’s all just a probability of rolling 1,2,3, etc successes which, granted, is non-linear. But it’s way less swingy than, say the fact you have exactly the same probability of rolling a 1 or 20 on a d20.

>>96383110
That’s interesting. When you say numbers stacking do you mean adding the result and having every interval of 6 count as a success? I’ll definitely check out wold talents!

>>96383118
This is a good point. I think Green Ronin used this sort of thing for their Game of Thrones RPG as well. I’m mostly trying to speed up looking at a result and knowing if you succeed. Additional tends to slow things down.

Thanks again’

>>96266960
Queen's Blade but dumber

>>96383834
>I might be confused here. There’s a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6 on every die. You can derive specific probabilities based on the size of a dice pool, right?
Yes, except in your system number of successes also matters.

For example for 5d6 you have a 40% chance of rolling no successes and 40% of rolling 1. With other results being way less likely.
In D&D as the most prominent example of d20 you either succeed or fail and how much you succeeded or failed on d20 rarely matters. In your system rolling 1 success can still be a failure and 0-1 are the most likely results on 5d6.

>>96383834
what >>96384019 anon said is also a major problem in your system. Getting 3 successes is almost impossible mathematically and all the other problematic nuances

>That’s interesting. When you say numbers stacking do you mean adding the result and having every interval of 6 count as a success?

Yeah, that's what i meant. if you roll 4d6 getting 13 total you got 2 successes etc

we're like 3 posts away from just using this aren't we

(but for real try D4s instead)

>>96382659
Renegade Immortal and Seal the Heavens were large inspirations for me making the system.

As far as will and philosophy and 'dao' fights go, I don't currently have things set to the scale where that kind of stuff goes on. That's what I've been considering 'realm 6' play, and I've only got things up to 5.

You can get to the point where you can choose a dao like 'freedom' and leverage it (using a fate point/benny/edge analog that's renewable but hard to get) for huge boosts where your dao is relevant, but it isn't a strong system for esoteric or strange sorts of things.

I could see myself aping Fate Aspects for extreme late-game characters, representing them fighting with literal karma and narrative weight from the heavens, but that's more of a stretch goal to aim for later on.

How would you incorporate martial arts/hand-to-hand combat?
I sort of like the way the LISA games do it, but Im having trouble visualizing alternatives.

>>96386892
Incorporate it into where?
GURPS already has it. And for different systems it would be done differently.

>>96387035
>Incorporate it into where?
Its an open ended question; whatever anyones working on

Grinding out prototype art

>>96266960
I'm working on a tabletop RPG that plays sort of like Magic the Gathering in way. The idea is that you have 1-4 players with a class deck, a DM with a dungeon deck, and each game takes about 20-30 minutes to play.

The players' party is exploring a dungeon and fighting encounters along the way drawn from the DM's deck (Containing monsters, traps, etc) to try and make their way to the dungeon boss. Each encounter is a room in the dungeon and awards the players loot should they complete it, represented by allowing them to draw from their deck afterwards. Their deck contains weapon, armor, utility, spell/feat, and consumable cards which are equipped to their character before each new room.

Each room the players complete, they're rewarded with loot to power themselves up, but each encounter gets more difficult represented by the DM drawing more cards for every new room. So the first room in the dungeon might have the DM draw only seven cards, the second is nine, the third is 11, etc. If the players don't find the boss in a reasonable amount of time, they will be overwhelmed.

To find the boss of the dungeon, players must sacrifice some of the loot they would've gotten from clearing an encounter. This is a set amount of card draws per player that are skipped. Since loot draws are awarded based on encounter difficulty, this can be very detrimental to do early, but as encounters get bigger, it becomes more and more trivial. However, finding the boss earlier means he's easier to defeat, so the players should try and take him on as soon as they feel they're ready.

Most of the weapons/equipment are roughly equal to each other, as in one weapon is just as useful as another. Most are situational and complement each other to encourage the party to take a wide mix of weapons and utility items to cover each others' weaknesses.

>>96383058
>Question: isn’t a dice pool statistically less “swingy” compared to flat/percentile systems?
Typically yes. It depends on your systems specifics.
Pop the rolls into a dice calculator like anydice or https://www.unseelie.org/cgi-bin/dicepo.cgi Then you'll get an idea of averages and how swingy they are. Personal feedback on how "swingy" a system "feels" isn't useful because people can't into math, and someone who rolls poorly a few times in a row is gonna hate your dice system while someone who rolls well will praise it.

>>96387137
so almost a rouguelite. could be interesting

>>96387419
Yeah, basically. Just a very, very condensed RPG that gives the players the feeling of getting loot and growing in power like a normal campaign but in a very short timespan. I wanted a game I could play with my coworkers on our lunch break that escalated quickly.

A lot of traditional card games don't really give the feeling of progression, a buildup, and pacing. Modern MTG often ends in a few turns, usually ingloriously for one player. I'm assuming the first "room" of the dungeon would almost always be universally easy to get the players involved and make them feel like they accomplished something, although all rooms would be a resource drain that's really the slow killer. Go through too many and not only are the encounters harder, but you just won't have the spells or such to beat them anymore.

I think managing resources in that way is good to ensure players don't lose too early. They'll try and gauge just what the minimum they need to spend to win an encounter will be and often misjudge, either using too few and taking more damage than they would've or too many and hurting their chances in future fights, but there always exists the option to panic and blow as many as you need just so you can see tomorrow, so to speak.

>>96387490
>>96387137
So it's a co-op munchkin

>>96387516
Yep, almost down to using a placemat to display your class equipment/spells.

>Creating a d100 list of weapons for a random table for a project
>Completely run out of steam by 70, unless I want to start adding really obscure foreign weapons that people need to Google
I already have some somewhat obscure and/or foreign weapons on there, but since it's meant to be a useful reference I don't want too many "huh, what's this?" entries. Not really the usual type of question that gets asked here, but I figured I'd check if anyone has tips or resources.

>>96387706
Song of Swords had a very comprehensive weapons list that is for sure more than 100 weapons long combining all melee categories. I m sure you can find some inspiration there.
It is supposed to try and simulate the reality of medieval and renaissance weaponry but to what extent it accomplishes that i cannot attest as i am more familiar with the bronze and iron age

I think my next project will be an educational deck-building game about the Catalan cork industry from the XIX and early XX century

I want to take Shadows in the Void and modify it into a game of scifi submarine combat.
Ironically, most of the hypothesis about space combat made by this game (heavy on stealth, missile combat-centric....) are much more fitting for submarine warfare.
I'm doing this for my own use, but maybe release it on the internet in case other people may be interested. For free, obviously.
What's the best practice, for this kind of stuff?
Like, should I ask for permission from the original publisher? Should I release something that only lists the variations made to the rules, so that you still need to get the original rules for it to make sense?

>>96394571
Damn.. the game isn't available anymore. Neither on their official website, nor on Wargame Vault.
So weird! It looks like a really tight game.

>>96374907
I'm spending far too much time in something that doesn't matter
but I like it

Bit of a resolution system conundrum. I've found roll under (undecided on d12 for quickness and ease on what's supposed to a relatively light system vs 3d6 for the consistent curve) to be good for what I'm going for. Specifically, I'm using stats as resource pools, so I can introduce degrees of success by comparing rolls to both current stat value and max value

My issue is roll under tends to be really sensitive to modifiers. Characters in my system have powers, and I'd like them to be able to improve rolls and also to have situational modifiers. Having just one seems fine, I can do +1 die for either resolution method, but doing +2 (for both powers and situational bonuses) skews probability way too much. Gives close to 1% chances of success on the low end and ~99 on the high. Should I just say fuck it and ditch situational modifiers?

>>96396057
finally, I'm satisfied with how the card looks
for now

>>96400477
/tg/ may scream at me, but you could use a dice with bigger numbers to have more leeway when it comes to modifiers. I cannot imagine a game without situational modifies, players doing reasonable, smart and tactical things should get a bonus for it. If you use a d20 for roll under, your system should be able to stomach some +1, +2, even a +5.

This might be crazy but i want to create something similar to the skill tree featured in final fantasy 10. Has any tabletop rpg done something similar to this or would this be a crazy endeavor.

>>96401795
moving things around
which version do you guys like the most
>the one with the stats on the side of the illustration (in this pic)
>or the stats floating in a bubble over the picture (>>96401795)

>>96265985 (OP)
Tactics action:
Additional action that each side can take once per round. Must be in the form of a skill check or save, so no (direct) attack or spell. It can be taken any time in a round, but the party has to agree who is taking it. Allows for that one guy to try that one special thing without wasting an action. meant to make more dynamic situations.

>>96404858
FFG's Star Wars did something similar to that with force abilities and class lists, as far as I remember, though those were done independently rather than all together in one sphere grid. Might be worth looking at anyway.

>Got a decent portion of character creation rules done
>Now I have to find out a good baseline math for enemies

>>96404514
I know using multiple forms of dice alteration is taboo, but I've started to consider
>normal circumstances (things like your opponent being prone, sneaking in the dark, etc.) grant a minor +/-1 modifier
>supernatural circumstances (i.e. a character using their powers) use (dis)advantage where you roll twice and take the better result
Rolling twice is more potent than the mod, which emphasises the unnatural strength of their abilities (and the abilities of enemies), but it also means that players need to think in two dimensions. Sure you can use your powers to get a bonus, but to get the maximum bonus you need you also need to consider what mundane advantages your characters can create using your creativity/wits, not just what's on your sheet.

My main issue was that the chosen resolution systems could handle one type of bonus (roll an extra or add +1), but fell apart if they stacked. Having them work differently makes the numbers play just a little bit nicer.

I was a bit scared of swinginess when using the d20, but if I do some more prodding and still don't like things your suggestion of bigger numbers to lessen modifier sensitivity is likely best.

>>96406130
Why not make enemies the same way you make characters?

>>96406653
There's still the math portion but.... You might just be right. I could just make them Half A Character unless they're important. Shit.

>>96406674
What I did for mine was figured out how an 'average' character would be built at each level, then turned it into a kind of array and wrote down rules of thumb for how to modify characters. Someone especially good at one thing will get a +2 to one stat and a -2 to another, that kind of thing. Then GMs can just pick level, decide how focused/unfocused they are on a specific stat, and then give them abilities or skills based on the character.

bump

>>96405063
>one would imagine sisyphus happy

>>96408839
please reword "when this X comes into the field"

>>96408985
how should you phrase it?
what's the problem, exactly?

>>96406616
>I was a bit scared of swinginess when using the d20
you realize its still a flat curve to use a d{4,6,8,10,12}? theyre just as "swingy", but less granular.

>>96409003
NTA and I don't play card games, but isn't "enters the field" the common lingo? At the very least it's more concise

>>96409228
>but isn't "enters the field" the common lingo? At the very least it's more concise
I suppose... but the difference is minimal
I'll consider it

Anyone have systems with particularly, fun, interesting, or otherwise noteworth power backfire mechanics? Things like spell backfire tables.

I'm trying to work out a power backfire system for my game, but it's about psychics and most of my knowledge of such systems are fantasy ones. Some of them can be converted ("you cast fireball on yourself" works for pyromancy), but a lot of such tables include things that are a bit gonzo for your telekinesis backfiring, need results that are just a little more mild/grounded/scientific than "your head turns into that of a goat"

>>96410276
Should psychic powers have a backfire system beyond Scanners-style headache/nosebleed/brain burst feedback? I'd have thought the main distinction between magic and psychic powers is the latter isn't a mysterious power but more an extra dimension of bodily function. Failing to throw a ball might drop it on your foot or strain your arm, but won't ever burn the ball to ashes. I'd expect telekinesis to be similar.

Assuming that:

1) The map is going to be done by a proper artist.
2) The descriptions of the NPCs are going to be in a separate section.
3) A table for random encounters is going to be somewhere else.

Would this be sufficient for something for you to use in an RPG you're running (and pay money for)?

The actual descriptions

>>96410276
>>96411312
Depends on the mechanics behind the magic of the setting
Dark Heresy psykers for examples the backfire table goes from:
>The Gibbering: The Psyker screams in pain as uncontrolled warp energies surge through his unprotected mind. He must make a Willpower Test or gain 1d5 Insanity Points.
to
>Warp Feast: A rift in reality is torn open and the Psyker is sucked into the warp with a little burping noise. He is no more.
Since the source of any magic in dark heresy is the warp the generic table can be wild as hell and those power go from fireball to bend a spoon with your mind. The difference is how much power you draw and as a result how likely it is to explode and fail spectacularly trying to bend a spoon.
So in your case the question would be how does telekinesis work?
Does it draw power like any other magic or is it something completely different if so how much different?

>>96411312
>>96412491
>Should psychic powers have a backfire system
"Psychic powers have awful consequences" isn't uncommon in sci-fi. Often they're "your brain gets fucked" though, or "you become super ultra powerful by bypassing usual psychic restrictions, but this fucks your brain"
>So in your case the question would be how does telekinesis work?
>Does it draw power like any other magic or is it something completely different if so how much different?
The premise is every living thing has psychic potential, but it awakens naturally very rarely. Anyone with it can do cantrip-level (using fantasy terminology) things without issue: a telekinetic could make themselves a coffee from across the room, a clairvoyant always knows what time it is and which way's north, a telepath can say "hey what's up" without speaking etc.

But when you go beyond those baseline limitations you need some sort of tradeoff. My current idea is powers cost points from a resource pool by default, but draining that pool literally drains your brainpower, so it's harder to achieve any mental tasks. Or, to avoid becoming a stumbling idiot each time you send a telepathic chain email, you can build up 'pressure' instead of depleting mental energy. Whenever you use your powers you'd roll a die, and if the result was equal to or less than your pressure, there'd be some sort of backlash effect.

The idea was they wouldn't all be inherently negative, but they would all be chaotic, and based on the type of psychic power you possess. So a backfiring on telekinesis might net you "You apply superhuman strength to your task", which is good if you were lifting something or fighting something, bad if you were trying to grip your ally to stop them from falling or handle something delicate from a distance. Though I would also like generic ones that apply to all powers like "The power you used targets everyone in the room, regardless of how many people it normally affects".

>>96412327
>>96412331
If ti had a very thorough description of each of the places (im talking a page each, listing notable NPCs or specific locations in that area) yeah

I have nothing else to offer other than my bump