I'm considering the possibility of using d6 dice pools rather than the d20 roll-under since i'm using a stats-heavy system anyways, is there anything i should take in account when designing dice pools, like limits or how often hits and misses go?

Only dice pool games i've played have been shadowrun and vampire and i can't remember shit about vampire

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I will dump my homebrew and make you a deal, /hbg/: give me some feedback, and you can email your PDF to [email protected] and you WILL get some good feedback, I promise. Though it might take a little while.

i have made a 2d6 roll under system that is similar to GURPS. I am curious how much shit it is. I am guessing a lot.

I made it because 2d6 roll-under was faster to roll than 2d6+adds and allowed me to do stat + skill more easily.

I want to implement a Toughness / Wounds system like that in Savage Worlds, or in the d6 system such as MiniSix. Dunno quite how to do that. Would it be weird seeing as the system is roll-low but damage would be roll-high? I guess it would be either way.

My problems with what I've made so far:

> you have to do some formula to derive base melee damage from Strength
> opposed rolls suck in roll under systems
> dodge against ranged attacks is annoying

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>>44359892


I'll dump my previous homebrew for comparison. It's main flaws were lack of stats (Strength as a skill felt weird for various reasons) as well as just a general emptiness to the character / creature stats.

For example a character was basically:

Novice Legolas
Skills: Shooting 3, Awareness 1
Traits: Elf

There was no way to represent a clumsy zombie or weak kobold. I wanted stats ranging 1 to 3 but the choice was either all-physical stats, or having mental stats that were basically useless. Or having Intelligence as a stat, but getting rid of character points and having separate pools of points.

SO I ASK:

/hbg/, do you like character points ("you get 100 character points to build your character"), or do you like separate point allocation systems ("you get 4 points for attributes, 5 points for skills, etc").


Also, for an autofire system, would you prefer multiple rolls at a penalty, or a small bonus to hit, and extra hits depending on margin of success? What if it was a 2d6 system? 1d10 system? Rolling 2d6 over and over and adding a bunch of modifiers feels slow. Yet autofire as a bonus to hit feels unrealistic and makes "spraying and praying" the best option with an automatic weapon most times. When in reality it isn't.

The autofire mechanic is important because it has a lot of bearing on whether I use a single die or multi-die system. Because 3d6+adds is fine if there aren't a lot of attacks floating around. But if you are making many attacks, you don't want to spend hours adding 3d6 + a bonus + penalties + any other modifiers. That was part of what I loved about Savage Worlds: you just read your result right off the dice. Then they added a ton of modifiers and kinda screwed that up.

>>44359904

Another thing I've kind of considered is a stat-based game, like apocalypse world. The problem is that I don't like high Dex = high Shooting automatically. In fact that is also part of why I have avoided a stat + skill system. But part of me is looking for something that would be fun to "stat" fictional characters in (like Savage Worlds is) and also provide a simple method for task resolution.

>>44359924

Basically, my biggest design struggle right now is, a skill-only game is very simple, but leaves characters feeling kind of empty and over simplified.

At the same time, trying to make a system with both stats and skills requires either:

> some kind of relationship between the two

or

> a use for every stat

The only alternate relationship between stat and skill I've found is that of Savage Worlds. There is also "stat determines how many points you get for that stat's skill" (i.e. Strength 4 gives you 4 points for Strength skills) but that method has flaws.

At the same time, you could just dissociate stats and skill entirely. But I've only found strong uses for 4 stats:

Strength: Augmenting melee damage / health
Dexterity: Augmenting defense / dodge stat
Intellect: Augmenting skill points (though this means throwing away character point system)
Fortitude: Augmenting health

>>44359951
I suppose the question is: Do you need any more Stats? If you want to do a Skill based system, just do that, with Strength and whatever else as Skills instead. I fuddled around with a system for a quest in which your character was solely defined by Skills, including Strength, Endurance and all that. I then had players add the two most applicable skills together for checks.

Just an idea.

>>44359904
Personally, I prefer seperate pools, but that's just because I think it builds more rounded, "real" feeling characters. It's also a bit easier to balance.

And I'd go with Bonus to Hit and Margin of Success for autofire. The way classic DH did it. It makes sense to me that if you just pour lead at a problem, eventually you'll hit, it's just a matter of how much. But that might be for everyone.

Unknown Armies does a thing where you normally have a damage cap on your DoS's but Autofire gives you a penalty to hit, but removes the cap. So that's an idea, but I don't know if it would work for your system.

>>44360217

That's what I had, sadly. Stats as skills. And that is what I currently have as well.

Two issues:

1) The default amount of points in a skill is 0. So 0 should represent average Strength. But below average Strength cannot be represented in that case.

2) Normally skills can be increased pretty high, to 5 or 6 ranks, or more, allowing for "legendary" characters in Fighting Lockpicking etc.. However, this gets unbalanced if Strength augments melee damage. It also seems weird that your starting character cannot be at the height of human strength because of soft caps on starting skills.

It's like starting with an 18 Strength in D&D, but the actual cap on human potential is 25. It feels weird, and both of these issues make me feel like stats and skills should be divorced.

>>44360269

I will have to ask /k/ about the autofire thing, but I am glad it makes sense ot you from a game standpoint.

I am glad you like separate pools, though. My only issue with them is that I wanted a point-buy system to include races, and I am wondering how to fit those in without character points. I am guessing I will have them be bought with attribute points, and they will be listed under Traits like they already are.

Thanks for the feedback. I'd like to see your text file for your system whenever you get a chance to send it.

>>44361425
That makes sense, maybe keeping them separate would be better than.

As for the separate pool thing, Song of sword/the games it's based on has an interesting system. Basically you have a number of points and you use them to buy different "pool" sizes. Like, you can spend 2 of 10 points to get a certain number of Skill points, and then 3 more to get a certain number of Stat points, then 4 on Traits and the last 1 on race or something like that.

It gets a little layered, but it may be worth looking into.

>>44359892
And to answer the "roll high for damage, roll low normally", just go for Degrees of Success. The lower the number, the more DoS's, the more damage you do.

So, after a while of work and nearly finishing Trenchbreaker's rules, I've realized I need a way to explain the game to everyone that doesn't rely on me typing stuff up anew every time, so I've rigged up a 1d4chan page.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Trenchbreaker

Just throwing this in here.

I'm currently working space fantasy rpg. Right now I'm focus on fluff before I work on game system itself.

Right now I need to write some major government factions. I currently have four major faction; Imperium of Man clone, Communist/Star Trek Federation, Megacorp and Undead Empire.

Any suggestion for cool factions?

>>44362213
Cybernetic plague that infests both peoples' brains and computer systems and slowly turns them into more vectors for the plague.

It's a good justification for why you have people on your spaceships instead of just sending automated ones; the automated shit tends to come back evil, but the plague has a harder time infecting people.

>>44362261

I have similar idea with cybernetic plague but instead it is demonic corruption that could corrupt magic based computer.

I'm planning to have spaceship mage who specialize on using spaceship system, everything from weapon system, force field, sensor system, jamming and even hacking.

Anyone have a link to that bioshock homebrew?

So, did some solo testing with the new Skill system, runs good for most things, but I'm thinking of having the limit only pop up occasionally, during high stress scenarios.

Additionally, had to completely overhaul the math for combat, but somehow ended up with a very similar method. I dropped the limit, gonna save that for special attacks, and I have Parrying as a straight opposed check, and blocking as modifying damage taken, rather than the attack roll in any way, it was the only way I could make it make sense. Unfortunately, my current set-up makes combat drag a bit, but I'm unsure of that's because of the fact that I am testing without Traits, which spice combat up considerably or just because the available scope of damage is too small.

Right now the math is
>Effect (what number shows on the die on a successful attack) + Finesse' or Might" - Foe's Agility' or Endurance"

Cont

>>44364050
Armor rating and Weapon Affinity will for in there eventually. However it is causing a few problems.
>It makes attacks generally miss as Skills go from 1-5, meaning they'll have, at most, a 50% chance.
>I can't decide who should pick which attack/defense attribute is used? Either Attacker picks when they make their attack, or Defender does when they declare their defense (Might/Endurance for blocking, Finesse/Agility for Parrying)
>I can't find a good way to have blocking affect anything passively without either having to have additional modifiers (Attributes added to damage) or doing wonky fractions as if Protection is higher than whatever attack skill they're using, they'll just negate all damage.

An idea I had is have attacks be 1d10 limited by their skill, but no actually failure range, parries are tested with Skill as the number to roll under, and failure a possibility.
Blocking would be Protection as a flat number that Effect is reduced by, only if the actual roll is lower than it. (do if someone has 5 in Blades, and someone has 4 in Protection, from 1-4 the attack is negated, 5 the Effect is reduced by 1, and higher the attack has an Effect of 5.

Thoughts?

For terminology sake
>Scope: The number that must be rolled under
>Limiter: The maximum Effect you can gain from a roll
>Effect: The actual number rolled, used to gauge how successful a check was. Usually Limited by the Limiter

>>44361623

That's a good idea. Might not use it as is, but I will definitely work the idea into my thinking.

Intelligence determining skill points is kind of like that, but perhaps I can make more parts of the system that way.

Another system I was thinking of, would be your stats determine your points for each skill category (like Strength 5 gives you 5 points for Strength skills, Dex 3 gives you 3 points for Dex skills, etc.) and you can spend points between them at twice cost. So say you spent your Dex 3 on Shooting 2 and Fighting 1, but you didn't want to use your Charisma 2 points on Charisma skills, you could instead spend them on Fighting but at double cost, so only getting 1 point from your 2 since you're not spending them on something Charisma related. With a limited number of stat points, it should be relatively balanced, and with stat caps you wouldn't be able to dump all your points into stats anyway.

Example: 10 points to spend on 4 stats. You have Strength Dex Int Charisma, just for simplicity. You choose Str 4 Dex 3 Int 2 Cha 1

You spend your 1 Cha point on Persuasion, you spend your 2 int points on Lockpicking 1 and Repair 1, and you spend your 3 Dex points on Fighting 2 and Shooting 1, and your 4 Strength points you use "cross attribute" giving you 2 points, which you put into Driving 1 and increasing your Repair to 2.

With caps I think it could be good. Biggest pitfall would be trying to cross-spend a stat of 1, because you'd be stuck with half a skill point.

>>44362179

Looks cool. I remember trenchbreaker, I'll favorite your page so I remember to check it out sometimes.

>>44364212
That's another idea. I tried something similar with my system, but ultimately didn't like the way it was working and moved towards something different, mostly because I wanted fluid Attribute/ Skill interaction. Not a bad idea at all though.

Ok, does anyone have resources on 1700s economics including the pricing of common goods and general trade practices?

I-I'm asking for a friend.

>>44364333
you could always in /his/ - they seem to be in touch with most resources regarding those things

I'm trying to think of a way to make equipment more modular. For ranged, not that hard, but melee, its a little harder, since individual model's hitting strength into the weapon's stats.

An idea I've got is stadardized stats, and the special rules to make up for the difference; models larger than Size 2 gets +1 to damage for each size over 2, models with Strong add +1 to damage, etc.

Do people generally prefer "Build-Your-Own-Weapon" systems, generic weapons or gimmicky weapon?

So like
>"Long blade, long handle=Long sword"
Vs
>Longsword (Stats)
Vs
>Longsword (Special trait)

>>44367017
I like the idea of building your own weapons, but having a couple pre-statted. Something like

>damage type(s)
>weapon weight (dagger, greatsword, etc)
>special traits

Is how I'd do Build-a-Weapon system.

Are there any non-combat-based homebrews, where competition is resolved in some other way?

>>44368138
My system has a mechanic for essentially resolving debates, however in practice it plays out very similar to combat so...

The issue, I feel, with most systems is that combat gets all the cool mechanics, and so it generally ends up being the most fun to play. Additionally, many groups prefer to just roleplay out things, rather than need a codified list of rules.

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christmas just hit on my timezone 40 minutes ago so

merry christmas, /hbg/

i hope your projects reach fruition and you never lose hope to reach what you want

Man these threads are hard to spot as the OP image keeps changing every time.

>>44368964
but that's common in threads anon
it's hard to find because it's always dead on arrival and gets bumped an hour after it reaches page 10 in less than 20 minutes with someone dropping their 50 page pdf

>>44369013
I think we need to
A. Bump with actual comments on things that are posted and
B. If a thread dies. Wait a bit to revive it, so people have time to make new things to present and
C. Encourage more setting info to be posted, it's important too.

>>44370087
someone threw the idea out there of merging the worldbuilding general with this one but as a whole we decided it would be kind of chaotic

I'm currently making a system where checks and rolls are based on physical contests like arm wrestling and such.
Do you guys have any ideas for more physical contests to keep things fresh?

>>44370112
Balancing brooms on your fingertips longer than the other guy.

The Shell Game.

>>44370104
A fair point, a little bit if setting info wouldn't be too out of place though, I should think.

a friend is giving me some shit on having stat caps because according to him it "hinders progress from the players"

the reason i have stat caps in the first place is because each step in the ladder means something, and because i have a limited amount of success ratio to cover up

he still maintains that skill caps makes it hard for one character to become unique because the difference between a gigantic demigod from outer space and a retarded peasant are 5 or so points away

what are YOUR thoughts on this, /hbg/?

>>44370112

That's actually pretty neat, man. Hope it goes well!

>>44370675
Make it possible to raise your stat caps as well as raising your base stats. If your system has levels, leveling up should raise stat caps occasionally.

>>44370301
Yeah, nothing wrong with a little setting posting. Only reason I'd avoid straight up merging with the worldbuilding threads is because they tend to turn into just map making.

>>44370675
5 only means little if the scale reflects that. If we are talking a 10 point scale, that's a 10% increase in efficiency for every point. That's a lot.

Don't be afraid of limits, some mechanics need them for balance. So long as you have other ways to make a character unique, than a hard stat cap wouldn't ruin it.

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Christmas bump.

>>44359892
Would you mind if I ask why you didn't modify an existing roll under system instead of making a new one? To save time and stuff.

>>44359904
I think I like 100 character points more since it gives more variety in how you can build the character. Since the points are shared you could dump as much points as you are able into traits that you want to stand out.

Prolonged autofire is usually for suppressing enemy movement so they stay behind cover. With that in mind, you could have some sort of a "easier to hit in plain view, harder to hit behind cover" mechanic. And not just the typical modifiers for firing at a target behind cover too, but really make it hard to hit, since they're aiming on autofire. Damage wouldn't need to change since a single hit isn't any less deadlier than multiple hits.

Bumping, so the thread survives until I get back.

>>44362213
A neutral nomadic space faring race thing. Pleasant race to deal with, most stay with the tribe but some do venture out. Frequent trades with the various other factions, usually whoever they trade with has the economic advantage. Moves around on a huge capable of ramming planets sized space thing.

>>44370675
I don't see his point. It all depends on how the system is built. In Nobilis, the difference between a bog standard mortal and a Noble who can shoot down the moon with an arrow, is a scale from zero to five.

>>44362213
I wish to hear more about your undead empire.

>>44364081
When you say "it" makes attacks generally miss, do you mean armor rating/affinity? Or just the general math?

>>44366880
That seems alright, maybe use keywords that can be applied to the models to make it easier what bonuses they get?

>>44374894
The math in general, sorry for the confusion.

>>44375220
In that case that might not be such a bad baseline if it is for unarmed and unmodified attacks. It would be up to the weapons to increase the hit percentage.

For picking attributes, you could have the Attacker declare which attribute to attack and which attribute the Defender uses to defend with, but the Defender can forcibly change the attribute to defend with at a small penalty, maybe give a bonus if they succeed. Sort of like how sidestepping a blade is pretty easy, but I want to parry it instead even if it's harder. Neither bonus nor penalty need to be that bad, the penalty could just be a -1 because it's slightly difficult to get into a proper stance to defend, or the bonus is just an opportunity give a smug smirk to the attacker.

'Blocking as an additional Limiter' is might be nice, since it would make sense that active defensive maneuvers reduce an attack's effectiveness. So it would be roll a number under Scope, gain Effect based on difference result of roll and Limiter reduced by Block I think?

I don't think you should flip flop around with which attribute to use as the Scope in case it gets confusing, but then again didn't you plan on mix-and-matching Scope and Limiter anyway? Or was that only for skill checks and not for combat?

>>44374894
Yeah, it seems like an opportunity that would greatly benefit from general or universal special rules.

We'd probably do better traffic-wise if we quit putting some approximation of "these threads are a sinking ship edition" on the first line of the OP.

>>44375589
My issue with it, is it implies a person is completely missing a person who is not mounting a defense at point blank range. It's one thing if a person can miss someone with a ranged attack, but weird is a person trying to punch a guy just has a 50% chance of outright missing. The Active Defenses, are designed to make hitting harder or less effective, as just pinching someone tends to be relatively easy.

I like the idea of a penalty and bonus for choosing a defense your attacker isn't expecting, and it gives an interesting design space for Traits that augment that.

Blocking vs Parrying is more "Parrying always reduces, but rarely negates, Blocking has a higher chance to negate, but it's all or nothing." So blocking negates if you roll under it, and then just kind of shifts the limiter up and reduces the effect by that amount.

So a 4Protection vs a 5 Blades would negate on 1-4, reduce by 4 on 5-8 and a 10 is Max Effect. Whereas a 3Protection would negate on a 1-3, reduce on a 4-6 and 7-10 is Max Effect.

Alternately, I could just have anything below that number be negated, anything else is full damage with a trait that modifies it.

Thoughts?

>>44376122
noted

>>44376122
Its a niche topic, its going to be slow. We might get some more traffic if we re-named it something like "Game Design General" and encourage discussion other than working on personal mechanical issues.

>>44376652
that's actually a neat idea
i used homebrew originally because it seemed like the most fitting term /tg/-wise
but that actually is a much better name and might bring in some more traffic since we're mostly creating games from scratch rather than creating house rules out of existing games

anyone else up for the name change?

>>44376694
I'd be down.

>>44376694
The term 'game design' doesn't exactly fit, but if there isn't an alternate suggestion that fits better, I don't mind the change, it might help draw in the 'doesn't make their own game but likes to comment and think about other people's stuff' crowd. Would help create a clear specific topic for the general to be about too.

>>44376254
Hmm, if the person isn't mounting a defense at a point blank range, then it could mean that they're caught unawares. Maybe in a situation where the target is Unaware, gain a bonus to hit chance? Otherwise 50% seems about right if a person is actively dodging and stuff.

Switching the effects of Parrying and Blocking might make more sense. Parrying is pretty hard and messing up would deal full damage, while with Blocking since you have a full thing between you and the attack, the attack would usually hurt less even if it hit.

Keeping the 'reduced effect' thing would be beneficial, that way it wouldn't too large of a logic jump between skill tests and combat, unless you want those two to be distinctively different.

>>44376823
Well the "mounting a defense" part is represented by them choosing to block or parry. But I get what you mean. I just feel like a chance to outright miss, in addition to the attack being block-able/parry-able slow combat down too much.

The issue with swapping the way they work is I don't feel like the actually way the mechanics play out would fit as well. Presently you Roll for Parrying (active) and have a fixed number for blocking (passive), the mechanic FEELS like the action, but you have a point that the outcome also needs to represent it better. It's a hell of a conundrum.

I don't mind Skills and Combat being a little different, as long as the same basic rules apply (roll as high as you can, but generally under this number).

>>44376823
do you have any sugestions, anon? i mean we have plenty of time to discuss since we're not halfway through this thread anyways

>>44376823
>>44377006
Perhaps something like Game Maker General would be apt, since we're making games. Alternatives could include

>Game Creation General
>Table Top Maker General

I feel like using the resolution system of Simple D6 on my small homebrew for short games, which is essentially:
>Roll xd6
>See highest roll. If you have more than one 6, eac surplus 6 adds +1 to the roll.
>Pit against DC, difference is degrees of success.

But if I want character's ability scores affect this, it seems bit difficult since static mods are rather huge.
Maybe use d10 instead, adding +1 on 9 and 10?

Question: how do you feel about dice pools that just take in even and uneven numbers rather than things like shadowrun that have specific success and failure ranges within the dice themselves

i'm considering it but i'm not sure

>>44377535
If you're just taking even and odd numbers as success/failure, it's a 50/50 chance no matter what die type you use. Honestly, I think it's a pretty nice and simple mechanic if you're going for a dice pool system. It's a lot better than forcing someone to use Fate dice and it's arguably a tiny bit simpler than having to compare against a static number.

>>44376652
"It's going to be slow" is no reason to shoot ourselves in the foot by scaring people away, though. Also up for the name change, not exactly for it but by no means against it, worth it for shits and giggles.

>>44377670
i was thinking about it a few days ago because you can grab any dice and check the number, given that the maximum number is an even number and throw them en masse rather than forcing people to buy a ton of the same dice

but i'm only considering it just in case i want to increase stat caps or modify core rules rather than using the roll-under i'm using right now

>>44359796
You may wish to consider Roll & Keep.
This allows you to adjust the expect-able number of successes on a highly granular basis, make even small adjustments matter as much or little as you need them to and could even cut down on total pool size, something that's especially important on higher levels of physical play.

More technical analysis:
http://anydice.com/articles/legend-of-the-five-rings/
http://divnull.com/blog/2009/roll-and-keep/
>>44335246
> passing a DC makes them super unreliable
Is that a problem? Considering that warriors do need to roll as well? Other things are probably true; I tend to play systems where skill resolution can be involved and therefore it's somewhat expected.

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arise from your grave
we still have some nomenclature discussion to partake in

>>44377769
this is some pretty good info, thanks SS

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Hard:Suit isn't dead. I've just been fiddling around with an unrelated setting as a break.

Crit tables have still got to be fully written out along with proper experience rules.

Are these current rules more or less playable otherwise? It'd be helpful if some one could take a look at the current rules here and suggest things i'm missing or might be a good idea to add.

As always i'm open to criticism, suggestions and ideas

>>44379359
>this is some pretty good info, thanks SS
You're quite welcome.

Have a R&K d6 system.
http://freeronin.com/gr_files/SiF_Fastplay.pdf

I strongly suggest using their adjective ladder or a variation thereof; It encourages GM to think outside the linear fail/pass/pass gud triangle and ensures players have a true sense of progression from even a single die afforded them.

If you're going with attribute + skill you could include a sidebox recommending each player be given two colours of dice, one black, one white.

White dice are skill dice, black are attribute dice. A player receives as many black dice as their highest attribute. This serves as a tangible mnemonic and allows them to roughly estimate their character's competency level.


Maybe challenge fate by using Points/Dots and to represent dice rolled.

Anyways, just my two cents. I am rather drunk so some/all of this might be 100% bull. Merry Christmas.
Oh, and thanks to the person dropping some sanity mechanics on me last thread.

Cheers!

>>44367017
Probably something like >>44367768 said, maybe a roll table too for lazies like me. Gimmicks are a nice spice to use at the side too.

On that note, how do you guys figure out what keywords to use in a build-your-own-item thing? It's easier when you have a "weapon" category, and most of the keywords must be applicable to swords, axes, bows, crossbows, or hammers equally. But what about when it's an "item" category, and it has to be applicable to potions, shields, rope, ladders, books, etc.?

>>44367017
I was originally going to use a tag system that covered everything pretty well but trying to balance that thing was horrendous

lists of individual items or categories might be a chore but in the end it's much more easier to balance and use things individually rather than trying to make every possible outcome not gamebreaking

i'm using gimmicky weapons right now because they're pretty fun to pull off and because item uniqueness is one of the gameplay pillars i'm going for, but also because when i've played with gimmicky weapons in other games it felt quite better than just "Longsword (Stats)"

>>44376944
I think if it takes less than 30 seconds to resolve a round of attacking for one player, it's probably fine. There's plenty of titles where combat takes much longer. Plus there's still the Traits and Weapon Affinities too.

If by slow you mean takes too long to finish the whole sequence however, maybe to make things feel faster, misses could trigger a role change between attacker and defender? You can have the attacker attack a fixed number of times N, which is determined by something. If it hits, damage is dealt, and the round ends. If it is blocked, then they can continue attacking up to N. If it is parried or misses, the defender immediately becomes the attacker. For multiple-vs-one situations, it would still work the same, except the multiple side would take turns attacking once each before switching roles, unless on a parry or miss.

Alternatively you could have them do a quick counter attack once whenever they miss instead.

>>44377006
Having any word related to development would draw more makers than commenters... Feedback & Critics General maybe? Tabletop Feedback General, Game Feedback General, etc.

>>44383310
those might be a little TOO broad for what we're doing here

we should get some kind of record of all these things
http://strawpoll.me/6364795

also, to get something to discuss, why don't we have "thread topics" on the OP like /srg/ does, regarding any broad topic that might help people out and keep the thread alive instead of plain bumping

>>44383310
The issue is really the time it takes to end combat.

The swapping attacker-defender roles is interesting , but kind of janks with turn order with multiple attackers, as it's hard to keep track of individual relationships between multiple groups. I'd rather have a higher frequency of hitting/damage and focus on allies buffing allies for regained stamina and things like that.

Multiple attacks are also kind of a big improvement overall, as each round takes place over ~3 seconds. Counter attacks are a thing, and in fact I'm including a large amount of options for players who want to focus solely on counters/defense a la English style swordsmanship, as well as the German style of ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK.

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The last first version of Realms of Triumph is done. The only real question is what image should I use as a cover picture? I feel like the one I currently have doesn't quite work. We were also looking for a new tagline. The old one was "Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours?" And I absolutely hated it.

>>44370675
If the stat caps makes sense for the character, I would probably be fine with it. Example: the slime race have a Punching stat cap of 1, because slimes can't hit things. Being able to move that stat cap around would be nice, and would make the character somewhat different from a character with a similar build, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

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Rate my west north america

>>44383429
Homebrew Feedback General? I kind of don't want to use the word homebrew since it might be hard for others to associate their own thing as a homebrew, but at the same time it's such a nice word...

Homebrewed, Houseruled, and Homemade Games General? Using past tense feels iffy though.

Thread topics would be nice. Maybe link back to posts in the previous thread that never got any/enough replies?

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>>44387914
I feel the same way about the homebrew word
Changing it would probably generate more traffic because homebrew might be automatically associated with house rules and system modifications (making some people just woosh over it)

but at the same time i don't want to lose the homebrew part because it sounds so nice and comfy AND because it's actually the correct term for player-made games

maybe something mixing the game design aspects with the term like Homebrew Creation/Design General or Homebrew and Game Design General could serve the purpose of bringing more people in while leaving the hb part in

Homebrew Design and Discussion General?

maybe the only real problem is >>44368964 and the thread is just hard to spot, I could always make a small thread logo and slap it on a few images and upload them to an album somewhere to get more catalog attention

Okay, working on a card game. Here is a bare bones rundown.

>Two players
>One (called the Defender) lays out "Challenge" cards before game starts, face down
>The other player (Attacker) has a group of "hero" cards that must overcome the Challenges
>Requirements for Challenges are basically a printed number that corresponds to a skill printed on the hero cards that must be matched or beaten
>Shared turn with certain turn steps devoted to one player or the other
>Hero cards have a life counter to track their HP
>Attacker has a small (10-20) card deck for each hero card, can draw any amount from any of their decks as long as they don't have more than 5 cards in hand after drawing
>When a Challenge is contested, each player may add modifiers from their hand to try and win the challenge
>Challenges don't leave play until beaten
>Attacker wins if all challenges are beaten, Defender wins if all heroes are defeated

Thoughts? Obviously there is more to it but that is the general idea.

>>44377769
Different anon, but thanks for providing us with those links on Roll & Keep. I'm pretty big on making relative success rolls rather than traditional roll-over/under/whatever absolute success ones myself, and I found those articles fairly helpful in my own design process.

Requesting games with high levels of weapon customization. Ideally dice pool or die size progression (a la Ironclaw) based.
>>44389927
>I'm pretty big on making relative success rolls rather than traditional roll-over/under/whatever absolute success ones myself,
This is way important, in my opinion. Not only does it help the narrative side when there's gradients of success or failure, the hardcore character builders will also find that their efforts are being rewarded to a far higher higher degree.

In short, both "camps" win. One die size lets folks pick it up quickly, the numeric rather than success-based nature renders a result that can be quickly interpreted while still being granular enough for builds to be important.

>Different anon, but thanks for providing us with those links on Roll & Keep.
You're quite welcome. Praytell, what're you working on?
>>44387914
Amateur Tabletop Creator General?

>>44390234
>Amateur Tabletop Creator General

Just change the "Creator" to "Design"

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>tfw my style is way too cartoony for the feel i want to give, even in color doodles

stop smiling you piece of shit space elf
i hate you so much goddamn

i guess my options are narrowed to getting gud at art and making it myself, investing time in finding an artist that draws more seriously than I, or bringing the seriousness of the setting down a notch

>>44390461
I really like your art style, so which ever option let's you to keep it.

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So I made this for a 24-hour RPG challenge a good long while back, and finally bothered to clean up the layout into something presentable, plus some typo fixing and shooped up a character sheet to go with it. In retrospect, maybe I should have named it "Legend" instead but oh well.

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>>44390234
>This is way important, in my opinion.
On a personal level, I wholly agree with everything you've said - I'd add though that while I generally prefer relative success mechanics myself, absolute success mechanics have both gamist and narrativist merits of their own.

Take 40k with all its over-the-top grimdark, for example - if over-the-top grimdark's your cup of tea, you're probably going to get a lot more mileage out of the chaotic scenarios that all-or-nothing rolls are likely to produce.

>You're quite welcome. Praytell, what're you working on?
Cheers, man. Right now I'm working on a roleplaying gamemode for Garry's Mod that combines GMod's scene-building capabilities and multiplayer capacity with a traditional tabletop environment. Pic related - I'm pretty much done with the bits of it responsible for the user interface, database I/O as well as basic networking, but now I've reached the point at which I actually have to flesh out the details of the tabletop crunch I want to implement (ignore the attributes/aspects/etc labels in my screenshot, they're just placeholders).

As you can probably guess from the fact that I'm still thinking about fundamental stuff like dice mechanics, I've still got a fair amount of work ahead of me. My overall plan's to go somewhere halfway between a simulationist and a narrativist system; combat's based on initiative points doubling as action points, and character stats anchored to Dogs in the Vineyard-style aspects that make it easy for players to create low-powered characters that accurately reflect their concept even if they aren't particularly familiar with the rules as a whole yet.

>>44391789
40k uses all-or-nothing rolls just because of the amount you have to make. The fact is when you have to roll something like 10 dice at a time, you can't take degrees of success into account without bogging gameplay down to a crawl. This is pretty common in wargames, due to the amount of characters each player controls.

>>44392292
40k as in FFG's line of 40k roleplaying splats, not the wargame itself.

Not that I disagree with what you've said at all. Wargaming's a very different environment from personal-scale roleplaying and the benefits of relative success mechanics arguably aren't even all that big when you're more interested in how an entire unit of mooks fares on the battlefield than in how a fleshed-out character does in a story in which they're part of the ensemble cast.

>>44392418
Ah. I'm not familiar with the FFG games.

>>44392470
They're using a pretty straight-forward percentile dice system. You take your basic attribute, determine its effective value by factoring in skill ranks, character actions, difficulty buffs/penalties, and whatever else comes to mind, then roll. If you roll less, you succeed, if you roll more, you lose. There's a few things that also factor in your margin of success/failure, but they're are and even high-level characters tend to have a sizable chance to completely fail at whatever they're doing with no outside input being required.

Alright, taking some advice from earlier, here is what I have for Combat Mechanics

Combat Rolls:
Attack: 1d10, Scope is Skillx2, Limited by Skill

Defense:
Decide when attack is declared, but before it is rolled.

Parry: Opposed Skill Test, Effect reduced by Effect on 1-1 basis, if parry fails, secondary effects are triggered
Block: Roll reduced by Protection, if attack not completely negated, secondary effects are triggered

If Net Effect is =<0 attack fails

Fatigue: (Effect+Finesse' or Might") - (Foe's Agility' or Endurance" + Armor Rating)

So parrying reduces the EFFECT, blocking reduced the ROLL. I also added a failure range, but once someone is Skill 5+, they can not fail the attack.

Thoughts?

>>44393736
>Thoughts?
Are you writing a game or a physics simulation?

>>44394539
A game preferably.

Are the mechanics too complicated or is it the termanology? Right now it's just Roll a number, reduce by either a fixed number or a rolled number, add a stat, and subtract foe's defense to get the damage you dealt.

Not any more complicated than the usual fare.

>>44394652
>A game preferably.
That's not a game.

>>44394769
Care to elaborate? This is only about mid-level crunch compared to a lot of systems.

>>44394652
What are we calling the usual fare? I think the form of the explanation is making an already overcomplicated system seem even more complicated. Try representing it graphically and maybe you can create the illusion of simplicity.

>>44394904
In what way is it over-complicated? There is hardly any math and only 2 dice rolls max?

don't you die on me

I will put up my tripname.

>>44373839

I'm planning adding various nomadic space traveller to the setting. I'm planning to add space dwarves who run a corperation.

>>44374383

The undead empire is one of the major faction with least allies but quit surprisingly they are very democratic and citizen have good standard living. But when people die, their corpses will become properties of the goverment and they send those corpses to skilled reanimators.

They use soulless undead as labor force and soldiers, but they still need living being for any tasks that require thinking. The soulless undead are controlled by necromancer, vampire or lich.

Undead with soul are either revenant or lich but they are much rarer. The vampires are actually living being and they can't turn people into vampire but they can procreate as normal human. The vampires don't die or hurt from sunlight but their innate magic become weaker.

>>44394904
Declare attack
Opponent declares defense
Roll a d10
>if the result is under your skill, use that number, this is your Effect.
>if the result is over your skill, but under Skill x 2, treat it as equal to your skill, this is your Effect.
>if the result is over your Skill x2 you miss.
If opponent blocks, reduce the number they rolled by opponents Protection
If opponent parried, roll 1d10
>if over their skill, they fail
>if under their skill, reduce their Effect by that number.
Opponent takes fatigue equal to Net Effect + Attribute, reduced by their Attribute + Armor.

Not hard or confusing.

Glad to see this thread is doing well over the holiday weekend! I've been totally crunched for time this week and will be next week too, but once it's done I'll be jumping right back in here.

>>44397358
And that's... As simple as the usual fare for you? Is the usual fare GURPS, or fatal, or something? I'm not saying it's bad, but It's cumbersome as fuck compared to what's actually commonly played

>>44398046
It's basically Unknown Armies or Dark Heresy but without the second separate damage roll and less modifiers.

Alright, any suggestions on how I could tweak it? I'm considering just dropping the attributes and stuff to the roll, an just having straight Effect.

>>44398153
I'll think on it, going off break in 10 and I'll probably meditate on it on the clock some, too.

>>44398251
I'd appreciate, it's rough being told "this is shit" and not knowing why or what to do.

I'm trying to figure out proper stats for a star wars home brew. I got the generic ones, strength dexterity, wisdom, consitituion, and then force sensitivity.

Everything is working out alright, all the stats do the implied things as the title says but I want to give melee characters a few burnable abilities that they can do to deal extra damage instead of just the boring roll fest gas pedal to the floor every attack and nothing changes.

My problem is, I was going to call this stat stamina and each skill eats so many points of stamina, but I'm having difficulty with the decision to make it a primary stat, or a secondary stat. And if I made it a secondary stat, what would I incorporate it into? I assume if I did Constitution the players would just amass a shit load of HP, say fuck strength, and see no point in it and become melee casters only relying on hard hitting skills rather than being a burst of damage to end an encounter quick.

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Just finished my new and improved rules. I do hope this is pretty good; I tried to keep it as short as possible while still getting some points across. I don't think I'm missing anything important for a retroclone?

Making a small homebrew system for short games in homebrew settings. So far system has become eerily like FATE: 4dFudge + mod vs. DC

I am bit troubled about three things.
>Combat resolution
Players have sort of staggered wounds-strip.
Stamina, minor, major, mortal.
Stamina is sort of buffer, replenishes in 30 minutes, allows to avoid some attacks. Minor/major are actual wounds.
Each empty category inflicts penalties, and bigger wounds heal slower and first.

As far as rolls would go,
>Attacker rolls 4dF vs. def. EV
>If degree of success + weapon pow >= DR, wound is inflicted
>+4 is crit, automatically hits and wounds.
Does this sound relatively reasonable? I don't know how it would necessarily scale.

>Skills
Not sure how to handle these either. Static value, but how would ability scores factor in ( probably range of -5 to 5? )

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I need some feedback on the magic system of the homebrew I'm working on.

it uses a 2D12 roll over system where each D12 is measured against a target number after modifiers are applied.

>>44384218
Maybe a picture of a party looking over a realm triumphantly? You'll have to communicate with the artist to not have it look too cliche though. As for taglines, what emotion do you want to hit people with when they read it for the first time?

>>44400099

Seems like you put a lot of work into it but I have two complaints.

First is the spell names. You used Cantrip, Jinx, Hex, and Conjuration but these are more levels of power then anything. jinxs and hexes do not necessarily need to be minor curses in this system nor is Conjuration creating something; I personally think this is very misleading and kind of random.

Secondly, and more importantly, I think your target numbers are way too difficult. I'm not sure how you're doing your roll modifiers but at a basic level your 'easy' skill check would be a 1/4 chance for a success and only a 50% chance for a partial success. Hard is even worse because you can't even succeed hard normally without a huge amount of modifiers.

Started working on a board game today I want to make. I'm calling it "In the Shadows of Giants."

It's basically a fantasy world where after a cataclysm of sorts there are only "small races" which were sequestered in their own part of the world by a huge mountain range. Now they're branching out and finding things left behind by the big races that they never really knew existed.

Thus far I have the following races planned for the base game: Gnomes, Dwarfs, Goblins, Ratfolk(who I might try and come up with a better name for) and Fae(forest spirits, Dryads and the such). Down the line(if I actually get the game off the ground) I want to introduce a Lizardmen race, and maybe a race of warrior Corgis(because fuck you, Corgis are awesome).

Basically the game will be about expanding out, exploring and trying to claim territory while finding relics of the giants which have vanished. I want it to be a dice game in the sense that instead of using models units are represented by dice which, when purchased, get rolled to determine what they'll do. So a basic unit might have various faces representing different unit sizes through different attack and defense scores. Maybe have some faces representing troops being allocated to gather resources or whatever. Still in progress, obviously.

What do you guys think? Would you be interested in such a game?

>>44400320
>First is the spell names. You used Cantrip, Jinx, Hex, and Conjuration but these are more levels of power then anything. jinxs and hexes do not necessarily need to be minor curses in this system nor is Conjuration creating something; I personally think this is very misleading and kind of random.
Those aren't spells more like spell levels. Think of them like gears on a standard. The first gear will be slow no matter how much gas you give it. To get more speed you need to go to a higher gear. You see?

>Secondly, and more importantly, I think your target numbers are way too difficult. I'm not sure how you're doing your roll modifiers but at a basic level your 'easy' skill check would be a 1/4 chance for a success and only a 50% chance for a partial success. Hard is even worse because you can't even succeed hard normally without a huge amount of modifiers.
My modifiers are very huge... ;)
I would post the whole PDF but it's like 40 pages long.

>>44400523
>Those aren't spells more like spell levels. Think of them like gears on a standard. The first gear will be slow no matter how much gas you give it. To get more speed you need to go to a higher gear. You see?

I understand that, but the names still don't really make sense. The order should go from weakest spells to biggest spell; for example you could do Cantrips, Charms, Workings and Miracles. Or perhaps somethings like Cantrip, Lesser Spell, Normal Spell, Powerful Spell.

>My modifiers are very huge... ;)
Fair enough.

>>44400616
>but the names still don't really make sense. The order should go from weakest spells to biggest spell; for example you could do Cantrips, Charms, Workings and Miracles. Or perhaps somethings like Cantrip, Lesser Spell, Normal Spell, Powerful Spell.
I don't see how arbitrary names for spell levels could be confusing, but I'll try to fix that.

>>44400420
I'd take a look at the Civilization game for how they handle random map generation. You have randomly placed tiles facedown that you flip when you move onto them, and each tile have an arrow to orient them when flipped to help avoid inaccessible tiles. It can be expanded on for the exploration idea.

I tend to be wary of specialized dice, but since they are the gamepieces, I'd say definitely go the DRM dice route.

>>44401062
I'm debating between random map generation or having a single solid map.

DRM dice?

I'm a huge fan of dice games like Quarriors, and I think it would be a nice combination.

>>44400256
I'm not really sure. I guess something akin to excitement but that's not quite it.

>>44401344
If you want exploration to be a big focus of the game, random maps would be better.

DRM dice is a term I use to describe games that use specialized dice that you can't use anywhere else, generally for no other use than simplifying gameplay mechanics. Things like DUST, where the rules are simply you need a 5+ or 3+ on a D6, but we still have special dice to use. I'm not a fan of things that require a lot of extra investment. Board games don't have that problem, since the idea is you'll get everything you need in the box when you purchase the game, but miniature games or RPG games where you have to have special dice or an overly large selection of different dice can be problem. My general rule is if you need a specialized something to play, keep it to a minimum of one or 2. Warhammer scatter dice, or needing a maximum of 2 D4's are good examples of doing it right. Star Trek Attack Wing that generally uses more of the special dice than what comes in the core gameset is an example of doing it wrong.

But the thing is that the dice would serve an additional purpose as game pieces in what you are purposing, so its not really specialized extras, as its more interactive game tokens.

>>44401344
>>44401503
Keep in mind, I'm not against extras for games, in general. Just the ones that force you to buy more than you want to get things that you need or components that you want. X-wing is in my opinion the worst offender with the extra upgrade cards only available in certain boxes.

is there a list with all the mechanics for resolution out there?

>>44388710
Maybe having a "What is a homebrew?" section in the OP would help.

For a logo, the homebrew channel thing is pretty neat and is more or less the most recognizable of homebrew pics, you could slap that onto a few brewing/creating related images, maybe like an actual "channel" thing. I can contribute with a few pictures if you don't mind weeb stuff.

>>44402995
I think a full list would be impossible to round up, since there's so many variations. There might be one that covers the basic categories of resolution mechanics, but I don't know one.

Random mechanic thought that's not been fully fleshed out. For things like morale, most wargames tend to use an abstract number that you test against. What I was thinking was instead of an abstract number to test against, what if I used a system that used the models overall health to determine their morale and nerves in battle?

The prototype idea is you have your morale stat, which gives you a number of dice to roll, instead of something to test against. When you need to test, you roll the dice and compare it to the remaining about of wounds the model has. If any dice roll equal or under, you pass, otherwise you fail the test.

Example, let's use 9 wounds as standard and the D12 as the dice. Standard morale could be 2, so whenever you need to roll, you'd roll 2D12 and if any dice came out as '9' or less on an undamaged model, you pass. But as the battle goes on, and the model gets worn down, the test would get harder.

You'd have to find a right balance of when to test, but I think the big ones would be if fighting a big scary thing or when a buddy gets killed. When fresh in the battle, you still have nerves and can summon up the courage to fight. But after a while, you've taken a few shots, scraped up badly, and then some bigass monster decides it wants you for lunch, or your best friend that's had you back in battle after battle gets his face blown off, you'd be more likely to go into flight mode and try to get out of there with what bits of yourself that's left.

>>44389513
I think it could be pretty good as long as the interaction between cards amount to something more than 'I have more cards, I win'. You'd also probably have to try and avoid having "solvable" Challenges, in other words, Challenges that are really easy to find an optimal play for.

>>44405006
Well, I've made a few changes since I posted that. I realized that there would be a lot of "I have more cards, I am winner" going on, so now there are two different card types that get added to Challenges - modifiers and henchmen. That alone makes a big difference.

>>44402995
>>44404600
See
>>44359324
>http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21479
There were other links but nobody ever updates the OP pasta

I've been dropping hints in my monster descriptions for crafting. Anything oily and viscous can be extracted into a compound that causes blades to slip off the user's flesh when applied. Serrations and blunt weapons ignore this boon.

>>44401503
Yeah, I get that.

I don't mind specialty dice or what have you, as long as they're accessible to everyone. That's my problem with X-Wing, despite how much I love the game: I only play one faction so I'll never have use of a K-Wing or TIE Interceptor outside the upgrades.

Expansions for this would be a new race, some new cards, dice and map tiles.

>>44397358
>>44393736
Anyone else have thoughts on this? What I could change to make it more coherent? I'm open to any suggestions at this point.

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Hey just throwing a thought out there based on what I just found out about my working process

If you ever get stuck on writing crunch for your own universe and don't know how to procceed, leave it for later and start writing fluff

After a while, some things will sort themselves out and you'll be able to adjust the rules to more specific and unique things that help you expand on certain rules and mechanics because you're trying to pull rules out of the world and not push a world into a set of rules

From only writing a small tidbit from my setting, I was able to explain and sort out the entire basis of magic in my universe, which was a major rule problem a few days ago, and also fixed at least one equipment issue i had and an entire class

>>44407238
Do you draw these yourself? This are really good.

>>44407698
I'm going to say no unless hes been making this system since 2012.

>>44406247
I really wish they would release upgrade decks. They won't, but I wish they would.

And yeah, its a sound plan. Now what's needed is rules drafts, though.

>>44407883
It's fanart for some indie game. Here is the artist.
http://emlan.deviantart.com/

>>44408944
Yeah, working more onnfluff right now and then I'll need to in list friends for number crunching.

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Slow day, isn't it?

>>44411200
'Tis the season

Lurker here thinking to share on a slow day, I tried building an experience-based system once (it was on a now defunct wiki). The core concept was that you could be awarded xp for doing things which would directly provide a benefit toward future rolls on that type. Additionally, the XP all went into a tree structure of specialization.

Going further down the tree indicated specialization and mastery of the related branch due to experience with it. So using a two-handed sword constantly meant you'd be better with it.

As an example, the tree for Combat had two branches, Melee and Ranged. Once you had 5 XP in Combat you would start putting your points into one of those (depending on what you had done to earn it, of course). Melee would be next for our sword example, followed by branches into the relevant areas (instead of unarmed, axes, etc).

The result was that if you needed to switch it up (pull a dagger? Throw a rock?) You had to go back down the tree to the nearest relevant skill and use that skill's value for the check.

As a bonus to the PC, while there were no levels you would get to select a special power at each branch of the tree. A variety would be presented which the player could select from to either further specialize or otherwise make up for specializing elsewhere.

Everything else revolved around a competitive skills check, wherein lies the problem with the system. Taking my cumulative XP in Sniper Rifles (32) and firing at a Monk with a high Armorless Defense rating (32) could let him dodge it even as a surprise attack if he rolled better than I. More work was required to rebalance that, and the wiki is defunct, as I mentioned.
Questions? Similar systems known? I was inspired by an old MMORPG, don't recall the name at the moment but it failed...

>>44411200
Also, you might want to clairfy the rules for custom suit. It says you start at 5 air and gives no ratio of points to how much air you get.

>>44412075
This should very interesting actually. Perhaps modifiers and such for adverse or advantageous situations? Alternate, I think it's pretty cool that a very skilled monk can Matrix dodge a sniper round from behind.

What dice scale was it?

I agree that the "Matrix Monk" should be doable, but it needed more balancing from where I ended with it.

Originally I'd planned d20 but when there are only 10 to 15 points per stage, a d20 would be overkill unless it was an over/under thing like -10 to +10. I considered switching to d6 only but hadn't done actual playtesting at that time so there's no telling how it would have worked out.

>>44390461
Maybe you can take pointers from artists who draw similar cartoonish art and still manage to make it look serious? gigidigi's Cucumber Quest might be one, the art during the Rosemaster Arc was pretty serious. Incidentally, on a scale of cartoonish clown wars and madness inducing grimdarkness, how serious is your setting?

>>44393736
Looks good. The Fatigue calculation might be a bit much though, maybe there's a way to keep it simpler, <2 variables maybe. Also, how high does Protection go usually?

>>44398930
Force sensitivity maybe? Using it depletes your ability to use the Force, so it's a double edged sword.

Oh, to clarify, the roll was added directly to the XP value for the check.

So 32 + 1d6 for each above means the effective number range would be 33 - 38. On a side note, this eliminates any danger from an attack lower than 6 less of the defense used. So our Monk would be untouchable at 25 or less attacker skills.

>>44411200
Fuck, that art neat. Looks bretty good, aside from Unity being on point about the custom suit problem.

What do you folks think of this for a core resolution mechanic?
http://pastebin.com/h7z6hDzb
I find expressing difficulty as a modifier to the roll rather than a target number makes it easier to work with degrees of success. A 10 is always a success with complications, etc.
The bonus players add to a roll usually varies from -2 to +5 for a new character depending on specialization. A +12 is around the maximum possible a player can have.

>>44412270
It specifies that it is the points put in multiplied by 10, but it does that earlier in another part of the document. Fixing it now.

>>44412863
Yeah after sitting on it for a while, I came to the conclusion I'd just have them use force points also and say that these power attacks can only be done after augmenting your body ability with the force.

I think it is for the best, my only regret out of all of this is that I can't find a use for charisma in combat. But I may as well give it the power to literally make a bad conversation 180 with a good enough roll for players who actually put points into it for giving them a reward for putting their bonus stat points into charisma.

>>44412980
You'd probably want a little more variance to reduce the ' not possible without fudging numbers/monk can dodge sniper' situation. I'd say something along the lines of determining if the attacker is at advantage or disadvantage for every roll, which decides if that d6 is added to or subtracted from the skill total. You could do the same for the defender, either for every circumstance or just when one die of variance isn't appropriate (Sniper+sneak attack)

>>44413211
Feinting, flinching and warding actions? That stuff is all about the sell. I also kind of thought force lightning was a cha based ability until now

>>44413435
Nah, I just made a whole force stat, and since they are running a dark jedi/sith campaign all of their abilities are innately used from their alignment.

The most sith can do with the force that are shared with jedis are healing, pushes/pulls, and combat roids.

Honestly if a jedi campaign appears, I'm just going to re-skin all the abilities and instead of force lightning it is now a force blast that can actually harm their enemies.

While that is a very valid point that force abilities can be used off of charisma, the problem is, the flavor of the ability is what changes, more so than the power. You can be an evil charismatic asshole but if you are weak with the force your force lightning may not be a potent to someone who is very in touch with the force.

But I will ask, what exactly is a warding action?

>>44412863
That's a good point, maybe do straight effect? And Protection is a skill similar to Weapon skills, so 1-5 for starting characters, 7 is mundane cap.

It reflects your ability to block or use armor to it's fullest potential. It can be influenced by armor in the same way Weapon Skill can be influenced by Affinity.

>>44413394
Good point, while I mentioned the over/under I had never considered die rolls to be potential for negative only to represent disadvantages. It's almost like an inverted saving throw, which is deliciously compelling as a mechanic (been rolling high all night? Can you roll low too? muahaha).

The other problem is that of granularity. With lower values (both of dice and xp) you have to award less and less frequently, and a single digit represents a huge variation of results - but the math is easier on players.
Upping all the numbers gives you more space to play within to balance values (say, roll a d20 if you have advantages, but only a d6 or even d4 with disadvantages), but I'd hesitate to do that to players unless it were computer assisted.

>>44413211
A simple way is to use charisma for Morale.

In a system where a strength of personality attribute is present, it should have some influence into how your Force strength. Let charisma be control of your Force while your other stat is strength. Charisma is your control over your emotions which strongly influence the force. High charisma shouldnt be "can never become angry", more like "can control the anger and not let it cloud his judgement / avoid the temptation of the dark side"

Making rules over emotions is tough territory, but I think it's almost necessary for a good Force system.
I have seen some RPGs use 'Passions' as a way to state what the character really cares about, therefore can derive feelings from.

Looking a the FFG Star Wars, their force powers are powered by a dice roll, rolling a number of dice equal to your force rating, very low generally, only 1 for starter force users. It only have 40% change of giving a light point, rest is dark points. If you dont use the dark points you are like to fail the power use. Using the dark side to fuel the force power, you give in to the dark side. Easy access to power when using dark side.

My point is, The Force is hard to make proper rules for. IMO there should be some feelings involved, fear is a prime candidate and charisma might be the stat to fight fear.

>>44413713
Something like 'amount of reduced effect halved, rounded up' would be ok I think. How is fatigue used?

>>44411200
The mystery box rolls seem to be geared towards firearms. I might have missed it but I guess they'll never be applied towards melee like the axe?

>>44414150
Fatigue is basically a synonym for Damage. Since I'm going with Stamina as "Hit Points", since a "hit" doesn't translate to them stabbing you, but instead you having to expend extra energy to dodge.

Net Effect divided by two rounded up seems a little... Unnecessary? Plus I'm trying to avoid division/fractions as much as possible.

>>44414238
Well, they could be applied towards melee weapons, but the size of the table might have to be scaled down to compensate for the lack of complexity most melee weapons boast. I'll see what I can do.

>>44414506
I'm not suggesting that you scale it down, but ammo effects wouldn't apply, for example. Maybe you just need two tables for each weapon type?

>>44413621
By warding action I just meant trying to ward them off. That iconic moment where a desperate hero swings a torch or a sword to ward off some enemy? That's pure CHA. Yeah, sometimes the enemy is just afraid of fire, but if it looks like the guy warding is likely to drop the torch and run at first lunge, he'd still get bullrushed a lot of the time. But he projects an heir of absolute position, that he's not going nowhere and it's the monster that better back off.

>>44393736
Okay, I'm one of the dudes that was saying it's too complicated, and the most I can do is chip at it without understanding some of your underlying design assumptions, but since I said I'd think on it, chip I will.

Consider choosing one of them to dis-incentivize by either having it come with a risk or have an up-front expenditure of resource, then make the other action the default assumption. It removes 'Which defense you wanna use?' 'Uh, er, yeah, I'll parry.' and places the onus on the defender to be an active participant if he wants to defend in the alternate way, because now it's his responsibility to clarify that he wants to use the alternative defense, as opposed to dedicating a few seconds to it as a stage every single attack, which I assume wouldn't be rare.

>>44414952
>one of them
Damnit, I mean the two defenses, sorry. Parry and Block.

>>44414008
I mean that is a cool ideal for light side users. Sadly my players want to be dark side, so that is where the issue comes in.

There is no charismatic will power and they just completely gave into the dark side. I mean the only thing I can think of is maybe a force user critical system and if they give in to the dark side enough their force based abilities give additional damage.

The only problem with this is, I want to minimize dice rolling and not make this system intricate and annoying when determining a force critical. The most logical way in my mind at this very moment is like using the D20 system to see if you hit. And then rolling a D100 and basically ripping off warhammer 40k and if you roll under your charisma value you get a crit.

So all damage modifiers when using the force ability are through the force/str stat depending on the ability, but devastating blows are through D100. Also wouldn't it be awkward that force criticals are through d100 but physical attack criticals are still through d20 and only have a 5% chance to proc meanwhile, the force critical can like proc at 30 or even 40%?

I don't know I want to involve it in this way, but I don't want to make force criticals easier to get than other criticals pushing players to only use force abilities and then as a last resort whacking them with their light sword to death.

Test

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The rivers are crap, right?

>>44414952
Maybe I could have blocking not require a Reaction Action, so as to incentivize blocking as a more passive defense? So you can block a lot of attacks, but you only get one parry per round. The parry and block systems have Traits (basically combat maneuvers) that key off them differently, so blocking traits let you do things like stop a foe from moving or inflict a status ailment, where as Parrying let's you do things like make Reposte Attacks or move away, and each play to different strengths and character archetypes. A speedy knife using isn't going to block foes, he's going to parry them and jab a knife in their calf, or deflect their weapon and dove around behind them to get it their real target.

>>44415095
They're my least favorite part for sure, I like the map so far though.

>>44415173
I bet that'd cut a second or two off every attack resolution, so it's more than a start.

>>44414688
I was going to make separate tables for melee either way, it is just that I didn't think that I could vary it up enough with the effects to justify 10 slots. However I did get a full 10 slots filled for both.

>>44415040
Never mind I figured it out. After like internally screaming at myself for a good half hour trying to figure out a good idea I got it.

I'll have them roll a D20 like normal for force based abilities, and then subtract their Charisma mod by 20 and anything meeting that number or exceeding it is a critical.

>>44415095
Rivers almost never split.

>>44418279
Horseshit, they split all the time. Find any map of a river, for this sake let's say the Nile, it splits, from macro to micro scale they split

>>44400420
Sounds fun, though when you said small races I thought of Mice and Mystics sized races rather than Dwarfs or Goblins. Granted, I don't know the average size of those two races though. You'll have to try and find a good hook for it, something that makes it unique among other area control games.

>>44420490
Nope no such thing. All rivers are just one run, they never have any forks, that is just some imaginary thing made in cartoons to fool people that such things exist in real life.

>>44415040
Have you seen the praise Legends of Wulin gets? It something like "... and social combat is included in normal combat so you can 'attack' the opposing philosophy - you can win combat by talking him down"
or something. I think it would fit well into a SW game, but I havent played it, only heard the above phrased multiple times.

>I mean that is a cool ideal for light side users. Sadly my players want to be dark side, so that is where the issue comes in.
Yeah, this could be a problem. Charisma should govern control over your fear, anger and hate. And over your Force. Not sure how to mechanize 'out-of-control' in a way dark side users care about.

I guess Im suggesting implementing a way to piss off your opponents and have it be meaningful, perhaps as 'stress damage', which also carries the weight of the attack into something more than just another HP pool, i.e. giving penalties and maybe evIen bonuses.
It could work as marking from DnD 4E; attacking another person is penalized because you wanna kill the one who pissed you off.

FFG does another neat thing for dark side users. They have more "meat points" and less "stress points". Reversed for strong light side users.

For more ideas of how the dark side works you could take a look SW: Clone Wars, the Savage Oppress arc and some of Asajj episodes.

>>44422425
>Have you seen the praise Legends of Wulin gets? It something like "... and social combat is included in normal combat so you can 'attack' the opposing philosophy - you can win combat by talking him down"
>or something. I think it would fit well into a SW game, but I havent played it, only heard the above phrased multiple times.

I've played it a lot and that's MOSTLY true.

You need to take an upgrade to make it able to take out (Remove someone from a fight) but almost all the secret arts (Doctors, Courtiers, Priests) can ruin another guy's day by screwing with him in ways other than applying sword to face.

A courtier can talk someone down OR infuriate him so much that his swings go wild and you can easily stomp him that way.

A priest can invoke the protections of heaven to curse the opponent who dared to strike a holy man.

Doctors can give you CancHIV. Do not fuck with doctors.

>>44421624
Go the Home Invaders route and have it about little races, like the Lilliputians and Gremlins exploring the lands of giants, recovering artifacts Lego Movie style, like the Sword of Exact 0.

>>44412863
>Maybe you can take pointers from artists who draw similar cartoonish art and still manage to make it look serious? gigidigi's Cucumber Quest might be one, the art during the Rosemaster Arc was pretty serious. Incidentally, on a scale of cartoonish clown wars and madness inducing grimdarkness, how serious is your setting?

I guess I'd say somewhere in the middle - not dark fantasy serious but serious enough for foolishness to be considered actual foolishness and not pass as some humor element

And yeah I guess I could use some colors and shading to my favor as much as I can

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I've begun working on an RPG based on the Fallen London setting (a freemium text-based browser game). It's my first homebrew and I'm very inexperienced with tabletops in general so I don't expect it to be any good yet, but here's a very early draft (orignally written in Italian and translated in a rush so I apologize if the writing's messy or unclear):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fOtHW6j2Ow9wESJtdwzVb55WOx13zWIBYQD38nKxKcA/edit?usp=sharing

Anyone else develop mechanics you want to use, but have no idea where to implement them?

>>44425027
all the time actually
in fact there's so many that i might hold them for a second project for when i'm stuck with this one
probably something involving skeletons

>>44425445
I came up with a way to deal with the limitations my weapon stats have, but don't really have a use for it right now. Need to come up with a reason to make things more modular without killing it.

>>44415095
Reminds me of great britain.

>>44425027
Ooooh yeah. I have this whole idea for multiple characters per player and squad based shenanigans and inter party conflict and firearms and weapon tactics and supernatural foes (actually this one will probably stay in) and monster hunter style boss fights and bloodborne/Dishonored style eldritch spookiness and skeleton PCs and...

None of it works at all for All Around the Fireside.

>>44425445
>>44426208
Lot of skellingtons ideas...

>>44425027
Actually I got an idea I dont think fit my own system but something I see in many movies/shows. I dont got a proper name yet, but
>Surprise Skills/Talents
Not everything have to be determined in character creation, but investing in an 'yet-to-be-revealed-(and-determined)' Skill.
"I spent a year in the army and I saw a lot of injuries, I know how fix him up."
Design-wise it can be a great tool to ensure not picking useless abilities/skills.
It might fit into your game, >>44426208 Unity, as another way of further exploring the characters.

>>44425445
>i might hold them for a second project
That's a great idea

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>>44390461
at least the color sketches are making me see that i've made the right aesthetic choices when describing the races

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Map of the world, only the important(playable) regions are detailed in any measure.

>>44426809
Maybe something like "Bonded Skills?" You can call out one Skill you are not trained in, assuming you can justify it using an existing Bond you have with another player, and you get to be trained in it? Maybe every "level" you can put a point into a Bond and that determines how many points you have for that skill?

So let's say Player A puts 3 points into a Bond with Player B, later on Player B gets jacked up in a fight, and no one is trained in Medicine. Player A can spend those 3 points into Medicine while justifying with with something like "Remember when we were kids and you busted up your arm? I had to fix you up then too." And it can kind of evolve into a roleplay moment.

This is a good idea, right up there with the Passions Mechanic from Unknown Armies.

Jeeze that system has given me a lot of ideas. Wish I could remember who recommended that.

>>44427214
At first I thought there was a pop-up on your image. It's very... Square? I feel like I need a lot more information about your setting to justify a giant rectangle in the middle of an organically shaped island.

>>44427780
Wizards did it.

The lighter area used to be the north-pole, and smaller, and the grey area is an expansion of that.

It's all ice, but it's unnaturally warm which is why it stops so abruptly, there's no actual temperature difference.

>>44427982
So it's warm, but there is magic ice? Couldn't you have done it in a circle shape instead? I don't know it just looks... Goofy?

The idea of warm ice is so fucking cool though. I once had a setting that had heat snow, my players dug the idea of people trying to dress in such a way to stay cool and dry but also stay covered to avoid burns.

How do you guys come up with titles? Did you decide on them early on, or did you name them after you had the bases of the game set up?
I'm having some real trouble thinking up titles.

>>44422425
Hmmm.... you know I like this a lot. I'm not well versed in other systems, this is why I enjoy coming to /tg/ they can give me information on games I may have never found out. I thank you.


>>44422459
My question to you at this point anon since you played this game quite a bit is how they deal with health pools and how it is statted so.

I can totally get behind this whole people talking them down while they are getting beaten on like a pinata to join the dark side. I just don't know if I should stat things so there is a physical threshold and a mental threshold and whoever deals more damage first decides their fate or what or if they share a pool and whoever deals the killing blow decides if they are spared or killed.

>>44428620
I actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out mine. Then an anon called my game "The Camping Game" and I decided to focus the name around the kind of feelings/theme I wanted to portray and the main standout mechanic I use.

Thus "All Around the Fireside", a game about companionship and exploration, one of the big mechanics I love is the Camp phase, which focuses on rewarding Roleplay with Unity points and blah blah blah.

If you want to talk about your setting and brainstorm some ideas we'll see what we can do though.

Kinda want to make a TCG type of game, mostly as something to play with friends. I was thinking of trying to make the basic concept of Yugioh not utter shit

>limited set of cards on the "field"
>"resourceless"/sacrifice mechanic to minimize bookkeeping
>limit to how many creatures can be played from hand
>keywords and better effect resolution (stack, priority, etc)
>allow for more deckbuilding variety than archetypes

Is there any literature about card game design that might help?

Today I really learned the value of not being too set on a setting when I realized my superhero card game might work better as a spy/special forces card game.

>>44428690
Well nevermind my question, I managed to find a PDF to read and figure out how it works.

How do you implement the progression of time?

>>44431857
What do you mean

>>44432420
As in, how do you integrate the the flow of time into your system? I don't know how else to phrase it.

So general question:
If someone, today, came out with the exact game you're working on, all the design goals and mechanics and themes and setting you wanted to put in your game in place, would you be angry or happy?

Personally I would be happy, I'm working on my game because it's something I feel is lacking in the industry, and I'd really like to play something like it.

>>44432740
Like, in combat? During exploration/travel? During long time skips? During setting creation? On and existential level in the setting?

You're going to have to clarify.

>>44432772
In respect to the players in the course of their adventures, how do you deal with the progression of time on a mechanical level?

>>44432830
For the player? Or the character?

I'm assuming you mean the character getting old/aging? I'm just going to let players handle appropriate stating of elderly characters, and then give some ideas for when they DM should start pushing that each member of the race is getting hella old, and should start testing attributes to see if they start failing.

Aside from that, it's not the main focus of my game, so I'm not putting many mechanics for it.

>>44432988
I mean stuff like day/night cycles, season changes, lunar cycles, ect.

>>44433080
Oh! I suppose a lot of that depends on the GM and the setting.

Personally I like to break things into hour-long activities (within reason), I give 16 hours to day time and 8 to night time. Night works a little differently during Camp Phases and Town Phases, as those have some mechanics specific to themselves like Unity actions and the like.

During overland travel, I roll 1d4-1 and Xd8 depending on what I rolled, twice. The first is how many encounters players will have in that 8 hours period, and the second is when in that time frame the encounter will occur. Then there's stuff for what kind of encounter and the like. Generally these are just guidelines though.

For seasons, it helps to at leave have rules for starvation, fatigue, overheating, freezing and sickness. Then have rolls based on what preventative measures players take (warm clothes in winter, breaks during long marches, eating well to resist starvation and sickness). Again, this can be abstracted of you wish, or have a series of rolls based on an appropriate measure of time (a poorly dresses person in snow must test freezing twice every hour, a parka'd person every day).

Moon cycles? Depends on if your system needs it really, could be a cool mechanic should you choose.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

General tips: in winter days are shorter and nights are longer, moon cycles never change, depending on the climate seasons may be 4 every 12 months down to a single mono-season. A lot of this depends on the setting and Gm though. But guidelines and generalities are always nice

>>44432830
>how do you deal with the progression of time
I drink a lot

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I think I may be getting attached to this race to the point that it's shadowing the small amount of fluff i have written for the other races

Or maybe it's the fact that it's the first race i'm making fluff for and the other races will have the same amount of love put into them as well at a later point

Have you guys ever had this issue? Getting overly attached to an element in your universe that ends up overshadowing the rest?

>>44435246
Depends, if the races are very connected (no single-race nations) I kind if work sideways, expanding on each unique racial trait and how it goes to another race's relations with them.

If they are seperate, I have a habit of picking one "pet" race so to speak.

>>44414248
Ahh ok, here I was thinking that it was a separate thing from HP. A straight 'effect reduces stamina' might be ok maybe? You already use Might/Finesse/etc. during the combat itself (do you? as either Scope or Limiter?), no need to use it again during resolution. Unless the effect amount is particularly swingy.

>>44437704
I was actually considering taking it out of the roll, and open up the space a bit more, just because right now an attack kind of caps out at 3-4~ish and that's before any form of defense. It seems way too low.

>>44391630
50/50 chance per dice feels... weird. I wonder how high the attributes go? Would be pretty fun rolling 20d6 or something.

Otherwise looks fine though, the pdf is neat, the three steps to a quest thing is really nice, and the concept of recording a character's 12 labors is pretty good too. Hopefully this gets some plays in the future anon, looks fun.

I wonder if there should be a googledoc/pastebin for completed works too, that way newcomers could browse completed projects and play what they like. Might be redundant I guess.

>>44398996
I know Bastards are supposed to be the fighter class, but the early description makes them seem a lot better than any of the others in general.

>Humans call themselves Ash people
>they are both fertile and destructive
Heh, good one.

Wonder if the Goblins should be given one more advantageous thing over the other races, they don't seem fun to play at all at the moment. Maybe like 'Goblins are born in twos, the player gets to play two Goblins'. Doesn't look like there's a way to roll a Hobgoblin either?

I keep wanting to tell you to avoid shortened terms like HD, AC, etc. but then I find something before it that explains the meaning, so I don't know.

A pretty nice read overall, wouldn't mind playing. No idea on the retroclone thing though.

>>44435246
Everyone does. Its even harder when you are trying to expand the ideas, so you can attract a wider crowd. You're always going to end up with those niche parts of the fluff that started out as a single idea or two, and you just don't feel the drive to flesh it out.

>>44379751
Here's something for you.

>Remove Charisma. Not much point to it. Might as well roleplay it out. If you still need it, might as well make it Persuasion to cut down on the clutter.

>The hard suits don't feel like suits. I am supposing that this is quasi-realistic, so give them more rules. Add rules for encumbrance, partial failures, etc.

>Why doesn't everyone have Suppress? Add it to a machine-gun as an action. Combat generally feels clunky. I'd encourage rolling initiative for sides, rather than individually, to encourage team action, and use their raw initiative to determine who goes first on their turn.

>Some background on the pilots? To give them some flavor.

If you'd like, I'd rewrite combat for you. Waiting for response.

>>44389513
I like it. Use Kickstarter or some shit. Need some refinement of ideas?

Talk about races you use and how they fit into your setting.

Humans are naturally able to form super tight bonds with animals, like, they can domesticate just about anything in a couple generations, they're also great sailors and basically dominate the entire northern coastline. A typical human city has roughly 2 cats and 1 dog for every person, and roughly half as many horses. They're also pretty notorious for taking on almost every new race they meet (or make) as a slave race, up until their next war, where they trade them their freedom for their service in combat. This was done most recently to elves and half-Sentients before them.

Dusklings are humans who WAY BACK WHEN got into crazy magical body mods during the days of the Old Alaeish Dominion, which were the first people to discover magic. So they have very... springy DNA, and usually have things like horns, tails, fangs, unnatural skin colors, and occasionally things like claws, odd eyes, vestigial wings (sometimes in odd places) and things like that. In all other ways they look human, or at least humanoid, because they used to be humans.

One really common off-shoot are called Bastlings, which are otter/cat people who are excellent natural swimmers and basically have a not-India/Asia theme. They are carnivorous and so must eat meats primarily. They also have a hard time focusing on one task for too long.

They are bros with Dwarves who are wanderlust-filled river traders who one day just pull up to the bank and set up permanent shop. They age somewhere between humans and elves, which make them super compatible with half-elves, who age at the same rate.

This obviously causes problems for half-elves, as they age too slowly to keep up with their human childhood friends, and too quickly to keep up with their elven childhood friends. They also can't connect easily to "The Dream" which is how most elves are educated. They are super sturdy and don't get sick often though.

Cont. 1/3

>>44443214
Elves basically age at 1/10th human rate after age 10-ish. Up until that point they can connect to this thing call "the dream" which is this living memory projected by sleeping elder elves. All elven children are basically sent away to live at an old folks home which serves as both a boarding school/daycare.

Half-sentients are an all mute slave race who were created centuries ago during a big "golem" phase humanity went through. They basically created golems capable of giving birth in hopes that the offspring would retain the intellect of people with the controllability of golems, since golems are REALLY dumb and can only perform very simple commands. After the power resources keep golems running (a leftover power source from an Alaeish ruin) ran out, half-sents were only thing left running, but since they were so human-like, they were eventually granted partial citizenship to prevent riots and uprisings. They can store mana, and are easily accessed power sources, but they're hands are too clumsy to effectively mark the necessary sigils and they can not speak the command words. They typically have ceramic-like red/brown skin.

Orcs are largish, human-giant crossbreeds, back before the great giant hunts drove them to extinction. They have tusks and are very in touch with nature. They can commune with it in a similar way humans commune with animals. They have very low mana capacity though, which can be a danger on the battlefield, as that means they resist mana very poorly. They are expert gardeners though. As they age they slowly turn into the nature they surround themselves with, so an old Orc who travels a lot will have bits of coral and grass and stone and gems and shit growing out of them/becoming their flesh.

Cont 2/3

>>44443228
Drakekin are big, scary, and can run down a horse at full gallop, which makes sense as they are a completely artificial race made by the Old Alaeish Peoples in basically a big science experiment. They are very much at home on the plains, and basically invented the idea of heavy foot infantry, as most wild animals have a natural predisposition against them, as though they can smell how fake they are. They get on well with humans though, living near to the Human's coastal settlements and forming a natural barrier while humans keep them safe from sea and stocked to the horns with fish, a delicacy.

Wisps. Basically they are spirits who bind themselves to clothes and and objects and basically look like a heavily robed and garbed person with just a set of glowing eyes peeking out. They are like gypsies who live out in the forests and travel through towns in great big caravans selling strange wares and buying absurd amounts of cloth and fabrics. They are also the only ones who can do any type of weapon or item enchantment, called Soul-Bonding. They have been know to steal away young half-orcs in the night, though whether they leave willingly or not is up for debate.

Basically
>Humans love the coast and animals
>Elves have both eidetic memory and ancestral teachings
>Drakekin love plains and running shit down
>orcs are scary big gardeners who suck at magic and turn into nature as they get old
>Dwarves are wanderlust filled river traders
>Half-Orcs are Albinos in touch with the spirit world
>Half-Elves are natural outcasts
>Dusklings are freaks into body mods
>Bastlings are swimming cat/otter People who are from not-India.
>Wisps are gypsy spirits living in clothing who may or may not be old Half-Orcs

And that should be all of them.

>>44443242
>Drakekin
>kek

>>44443314
Yeah, I still need to figure out a better name for them.

>>44442710
Aegeos actually started as a thought exercise about standard fantasy race tropes.

I did a few subversions: orcs are peaceful, dwarves are nautical-based, elves are not the super old race; and some playing with tropes: dwarf greed and honor makes them into the perfect lawful businessmen, due to how magical they are, elves have a hard time using magic, as their natural magic messes with it, undead are powered by life magic instead of death magic. And then it just expanded from there.

Does this make sense at all? Can you tell the difference between abilities and effects based on this explanation?

>Some cards will have text that causes something to happen either when the card is played or at some point after the card is played; these are called effects.
>The specific event that causes an effect to occurs is referred to as a trigger, and may vary from the card actually being played to the card leaving play, and anything in between. Unless an effect is somehow nullified, a trigger always causes its corresponding effect to occur, even if a player does not take advantage of that effect.
>If an effect is worded in a way that allows the card's controller to choose whether or not to use the effect, and the controller chooses not to use the effect, that effect is still counted as having triggered.
>For example, a Challenge has an effect that allows the Defender to draw a card when it is revealed. The Defender reveals that Challenge and chooses to not draw a card from that effect. For the sake of ease of gameplay, that effect is still considered to have triggered and resolved.
>Some cards have abilities, which are similar to, but ultimately different from, effects. An ability is something that a card's controller may decide to use during the appropriate turn step, and usually only once per turn. Using an ability also Fatigues the card that the ability is printed on.
>For example, a character card has an ability that allows the Attacker to remove a single Henchman from the current Challenge. The Attacker chooses to use this ability during turn step 3 and Fatigues the character card with this ability, then chooses which Henchman the ability is affecting.

>>44443560
Why use the standard fantasy races in the first place then?

>>44444232
Presumably because otherwise people would just say "So they are [generic fantasy race] but X?"

Same reason most people do, because these races are in the popular psyche and any attempt to innovate is met with "why bother" and any attempt to make something new is met with "why not just call them X?"

It's a hard thing, trying to make fantasy races stand out.

Also, it's more fun for the creator.

>>44444361
Eeeeeh. That's not really convincing me, personally.

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>>44444232
Because they are still recognizable enough as the standard races; elves are still arrogant, immortal bastards, dwarves are still short, stubborn jerks, orcs are still primitives that are looked down upon and abused by other races.

Like I said, it just started as a thought exercise, but eventually I started fleshing it out and adding more to it. Here's some of the background notes that I've been working with, if anyone is interested.

>>44444501
Hm. I hope it evolves more.

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>>44442365
Great feedback - it'd be great if you could rewrite the combat to make it less clunky. 'Suppress' would certainly fit as a weapon ability and increase their functionality further than just damage.

I had some extended rules for equipment and weight based on a suits number of hardpoint. The average suit would have 4 points (two arms and two shoulder mounts but potentially more) and weaponry would require X amount of hardpoints to field and also have a minimum BULK value so only the largest suits could use the heaviest weapons and even then if they have sufficient hardpoints.

>>44445185
Yeah, its been a while since I worked on the fluff part of things.

>>44445185
>>44445304
Should also mention that I've been focusing on other projects lately.

I'm building a simple partial AI system for boss level monsters using Kingdom Death: Monster's AI system, for use with almost anything. I say partial, because the monster still needs a controller, whether it be another player or the GM.

One thing they originally had though was in order to attack, they must first roll for hits, draw cards from a hit location deck according to amount of hits, then roll to see if the attack does damage, resolving the cards. The roll to hit thing is kind of slow though, plus it might not work the same in different systems, so I'm trying to find a way to replace it.

One solution I have is after any hit resolution mechanic the game they're playing may have (if there aren't any, they can go directly to dealing damage), the players may declare how many attacks they want to do, then draw cards according to that. That let's them have some control of how much damage they may deal, and then there's tension due to the Counterattack card that they may draw, which negates the attack on top of the monster performing a special attack.

It could work, but maybe someone has another idea?

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If anyone has any desire to read through and/or critique a ridiculously huge homebrew system (a full rules-heavy system from scratch to be honest), go to www.thelastbook.us and go to the downloads page. No login required, around 250 pages. Been working on this system around 6 years.

>>44444423
How about this then:

Tolkien didn't invent dwarves and elves and wizards (he did kind of invent orcs, though). Those ideas are as old as human mythology, and carry a lot of cultural cache. I don't think there's anything wrong with appropriating them for a fantasy work, though it's going to end up being kind of dull if that's the extent of your imagination. That significant presence in the mind of the reader or player helps acclimate them to the fantasy setting. Imagine if everything in Lord of the Rings was the same, except replace the dwarves with sentient land-dwelling octopi and all the elves with eleven-foot tall preying mantises. More original, perhaps; more interesting to some, but it would absolutely alienate the rest of the reader-base because its presenting a completely inscrutable world.

The common fantasy races are a useful aid in leading newcomers into the more fantastic elements of the setting. If there's nothing to guide them along the way, most people won't even try.

Which isn't to say that fantasy can't work with more unique demographics. All you need to do is read some China Mieville to get an idea of that. But it's far less popular because it takes a greater cognitive leap to appreciate it.

>>44447691
TL;DR: Marketing and the lack of confidence that comes with being new to the scene.

That's a bit more honest, thank you for owning up to it.
What REALLY irks me though is how virtually nobody seems to pay attention to other mythological races and/or always ads in all of them.

Actually, it's especially the latter. You don't NEED Humans, Elves, Dwarves, AND halflings. Focus that shit and maybe swap out a few.

But anyways, enough of me stinking up the place, my apologies.

>>44447317
Someone's still working on this? I glanced through it a couple times, and it has a lot of strong ideas, though I haven't gone through in detail.

I love the Esoteric Alchemy system though, and it's kind of inspired my own alchemy system, though I focus more on the color of the material than it's actual make-up, and there is less depth and options.

>>44448154
Yep, we are still chugging along. We're close to putting out version .4 which has artwork, some changes, and some new stuff.

We were being too tryhard about "marketing" it in the past, because we were really interested in publishing, kickstarter, etc. In the present, we realize that rules-heavy systems are not very "in" and that this system overall would be very niche if published.

So, it's worked on at a much slower pace, because we've resigned that the game is for our group and a few select others.

Glad you like the Alchemy! I'd love to see your system, it sounds neat. We're working on expanding Alchemy in TLB, but its a bit behind expanding mundane combat in priority.

>>44438555
Thanks for the feedback. I forgot to mention on this thread that it hasn't been playtested at all because it is a 24-hour challenge game.

As for the 50/50 dice, it is my understanding that it's pretty typical fail/success dicepool threshold, though I seem to recall seeing at least one system where success threshold was 5-6 instead. I don't really see the point in that as all it does is requires larger dice pools to have the same chance of success at specific difficulty.

One thing that didn't make it in was a system of patron/antagonist deities. I decided I lacked the time to create a proper list. It would have worked the same as the other dice pool size modifiers; for example if player's patron deity was Artemis they could use the that to add to ranged attack dice pools, but if she was their antagonist deity the GM could use it to make their ranged attacks more difficult (costs destiny points / challenge points like the rest).

don't you
dun dun dun dunduun
forget about me

>>44448403
I'll try to get it up next time I'm at my computer, unfortunately most of my posts are from my phone just out of necessity.

I'll definitely go back through your system in detail next time I have a couple hours, and not just to snag ideas.

I have 6 starting classes that have very vague outlines and serve more as starting jobs that give some starting gear and a general direction rather than unique mechanics

It's supposed to be a very basic starting point that gives you a simple way to start working your way up into whatever direction you want but now that I have to actually touch them I have no idea how to proceed

Any ideas? I can't think of anything other than very vague starting packs like "1 weapon + 1 Utility trait" or shit like that
Maybe different starting stats? Jesus I don't know
I haven't started new campaigns of anything in so long that I can't remember how characters start out

>>44453676
See, I started out Classless, and now I'm debating switching to Classes, just to increase the feeling of team cohesiveness. Less overlap that way and all. I'm not sure, but I think it may be worth the extra effort.

I think a good approach is to give each class a bundle of traits to pick from, say 2 of 5? Some skills to pick through and then some equipment a choices. As weird as this is too say, D&D, particularly 4E and 5E would be some good places to look.

>>44453676
>>44454131
Something you could try is that instead of assigning single domain of abilities to a single class, is come up with a series of defining qualities for the classes. A strict warrior might be a "Melee+Tanky", whereas a paladin has "melee+buffing". They have overlap and are similar, but have access to other skills that uniquely identify them. It creates a more granular breakdown of abilities and more blur between "classes".

Other things to consider are basic tech-trees (or ability trees, a la Diablo 2) that might branch into each other. For brainstorming new content, consider this: each ability serves a specific purpose (or maybe one primary purpose with any number of secondary effects). What are other ways the same purpose can be answered or solved? e.g. Decrease the enemy's damage reduction through a debuff, or increase an ally's damage through a buff? The numeric result might be the same, but it offers different flavor AND different synergistic possibilities, such as something that increases all of a character's buffs or debuffs.

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Guy making that starwars home brew here. I've been making up classes here and there for my system and this is one of my classes I drew up.

I'm looking for input here, is this class set up too linear? I personally don't mind linear classes, but I'm wondering if others would be a fan. The problem I notice with skill pools where classes can pick from a list is that there are 5 good ones and then 7 shitty ones that no one wants because they just aren't as good.

>>44458593
Also excuse the god awful grammar, and word structure. This is all rough draft stuff.

>>44447856
But what if they want humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings?

>>44459802
>But what if they want humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings?
>dwarves and halflings
I'd tell them to kick out either of the latter two to improve distinctiveness.

>>44432745
If it's exactly the same, the same mechanics, the same theme, the same anything, an obvious 'I saw this on the internet so I'll publish it as my own', I'd probably be more than slightly miffed, both at that person for stealing and myself for being too slow at doing shit. In the end I'd probably get over it though and end up buying it, especially if it's good.

If it's very similar but quite obviously not the same thing though, I probably wouldn't mind as much.

>>44435246
Not fluff, but I have trouble balancing the amount of unique mechanics I give to a faction myself. Plenty of ideas to do this and that, add them in, then after a while I realized the other faction was a lot simpler to play, almost barebones.

>>44460357
I know that problem. I always start with a group that is the average, and end up making them extremely vanilla. So when it comes to fleshing out everything else, the new stuff gets all the crazy rules, while the original control group is stuck with nothing.

>>44424419
So complex actions are basically
>decide on an approach
>do simple actions/checks that increase that approach
>Once feel enough, act on that approach
Correct?

I wonder how you can give an incentive for using a particular approach over another. I like how 'open' this system is though, you could use it for multiple things including disarming a bomb, killing a demon, or wooing a lady. I recommend keeping it simple and focus on this system without bogging it down with too much else, though I suppose it does depends on how complex you want the end product to be.

>>44460081
I actually dropped Dwarves and gave the name to Halflings, I liked where they were going more, so I made that choice to lose the beardy, drunk mules and kept the wanderlust filled river folk. Mostly because Halflings as a name is SHIT.

Hi guys.
I'm making a campaign that will involve long missions and extended patrols, and I wanted something to represent he characters' increasing weariness.
I would like some criticism from you fellas on the project:

So, we have Fatigue points/levels. You can use them as fate points to perform heroic actions and/or reroll dice.
As your fatigue level go lower, you get cumulative maluses due to exhaustion (mostly skills malus for now, with the possibility of critfail at the lower levels).
Once you're below zero, you can't stay awake anymore and faint.

To calculate fatigue losses, you roll 1d100 and add modifiers. If your result is above 100, you lose 1 fatigue level. If it's above 130, you lose 2. You can't lose more than two at a time for now.
(starting characters have 5 levels to go before fainting, and can gain more with experience)
You roll once per time unit (for now, it represents roughtly one hour of walk).

List of modifiers:
+10 for each consecutive roll (i.e. First hour of patrolling +0, 2nd hour +10, 3rd +20, then trying to swim through that river at +30, and so on...)
+1 per 500g of carried gear.
+X depending on the particular effort (forced march, awful weather,...)
-X depending on character fitness

Making a short break rids you of the consecutive modifiers, a nap gives you fatigue levels back.

Questions:
>Am I clear enough in my explanations?
>Do you see any issues with that idea or the execution?
>Are there existing systems that provide similar or better mechanisms?
>What kind of maluses for fatigue levels do you think would be cool?

Also, I'm pretty sure my players will try to stay awake with caffeine and combats drugs. So, does anyone knows good tradeoffs for the use of those substances, aside from addiction? I want it to be a valid choice, not a magic potion that solves everything.

System will probably be open d6 unless some problem arises.

What are your mechanics for negotiation/diplomacy? Straight Cha rolls?

>>44464210
Mine work very similar to combat, in that there as some arguments that work better than others (logic works better against a foe motivated by logic, intimidation works better against a foe motivated by fear) but worse against others (you can't intimidate a person driven by emotion easily, and you can't be logical with a person driven by fear), you have to wear your opponent down, you can get traits that let you do special things, you get a bonus if you and an ally "flank" a target, there are risks involved. They also both share a place as End Caps to quests, in that a particular task usually ends with either combat, or a debate, and they are designed to give the impression of equal importance.

So in theory, you could build a diplomancer who dodges combat by talking down foes, and it would be a good build, but you aren't just going to flash a smile and wave your hand and have the problem go away, you'll have to argue tooth and nail.