>Don't have a link to the old thread edition
A thread dedicated to discussion and feedback of games and homebrews made by /tg/ regarding anything from minor elements to entire systems, as well as inviting people to playtest your games online. While the thread's main focus is mechanics, you're always welcome to share tidbits about your setting.
Try to keep discussion as civilized as possible, avoid non-constructive criticism, and try not to drop your entire PDF unless you're asking for specifics, it's near completion or you're asked to.
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View SameGoogleiqdbSauceNAO 1454074076887.jpg, 49KiB, 517x399
http://www.nullstrike.com/
My homebrew wargame. Freshly updated after a test game with a friend today.
Old thread - >>45954792
Just to give anyone who cares an update, I'm still working on Skyresh. Everything is going slower than usual because I entered finals month and have to pay attention to more college stuff, but I should be coming back with "almost ready to test" things in a week or two.
Still trying to figure out how to make stats grow organically without making the system abusable, while not limiting it too much.
Also I stepped over to a d100 (actually a d%+d10) to make modifiers more interesting and overall scaling slower.
ded thred
>>45999723
Yeah, they haven't been lasting long lately.
>>45997925
That's good to hear you're still at it. Life does take priority, though.
So I'm taking a break from my current project to work on something else.
An homage to Palladium's Rifts!
Some ideas:
>Capacity Slots
Each character has hit locations with standard capacity slots and mega capacity slots.
Gear is equipped to appropriate capacity slots.
Standard damage crosses off standard capacity slots while mega damage crosses off mega capacity slots (or standard capacity slots if all the mega capacity slots are crossed off already). If you have gear equipped to a slot you cross off, that gear is disabled.
It's kind of a ripoff of Nechronica, yes, but I'm repurposing it for a game with Glitter Boys and Juicers.
Mega capacity slots are used for equipping powered armors and robot vehicles, while standard capacity slots are used for equipping plug suits and things.
>Attack Rolls
You roll 2d6 + bonuses vs. the target's defense to attack.
You use the lower of the two dice and consult a table to determine which hit location you strike, or you can attempt a called shot.
>BIO-E
A variation on the idea BIO-E points from TMNT is used to balance weaker classes like Rogue Scholars and Vagabonds.
>Skills
Skills are a 2d6 + bonus roll against a target number ranging from 7 to 12. Okay, it's another FEAR ripoff, but at least it's not the inconsistent and messy percentile tables from Rifts.
Now, I'm of the opinion that a game doesn't have to be original; it just has to be awesome.
But still... how does this sound to you guys?
So how do I start on the whole numbers part of making my homebrew?
I have my setting, skills, arch-types, monsters, the whole nine-yards- but setting up combat numbers, or stats is being a complete bitch.
How can I make it easier/easy to handle?
>>46002792
Establish a baseline first. A "this is what I want to happen when 2 things of the same equal footing clash". Its going to be a lot of guessing until you get it down, but it'll make things easier. Not that much easier, but still easier.
>>46002860
Example would be nice, but I assume you mean if X character fought Z monster what would happen?
>>46002888
Something like that, or even simpler. An example would be "What would the chances to hit, damage, save, damage done, whatever steps you want in your combat, be for a lvl 1 player swinging a sword against a monster that is supposed to be a one-on-one fight?" Let's say you are doing a system with high lethality but hard to hit; you want the average to hit percentage to be low, but wounding and killing or dealing significant damage are much easier, you need to know what percentages you want those to be in a give and take situation and how that relates to your resolution system: dice, cards, whatever. If you want the chance to hit be as low as something like 25% and you are using a D10 system, you need to know that '7' or '8' and higher is as close as you can get, so you need to choose which one to set as baseline.
A further example I have is what I've done in my own system, though its a wargame, so the concepts are a little different. I want the average person to have slightly lower than 50% to wound, and the average damage to do about 1/3 the total life. Using a D12, 50% is a '6' or higher, so I set the average to wound to need to need a '7' or higher, which gives a 41.666% chance of inflicting damage. I have the life total set at '6', for game purposes with other mechanics, so the average damage needs to be '2'.
A lot of it is also guessing for scale you want. The average stat being a specific number is either because of mechanics forcing it into a range, or what you feel like would give you enough wiggle room to play with.
>>46002888
>>46003094
Should mention that this is how I do it. Others may have ways that you'd find easier, but this is what works for me.
I had an idea last night, about a possible health system I'd use for my current system. My system is rather simple, using backgrounds of the characters instead of "hard" skills.
So the health system would go approximately like this:
-If you get hit, damage is rolled (Either this or 1+ how much over the hit roll the opponent rolled)
-If the damage goes over your damage threshold (comes from armor mainly, fantastic settings from tough hide, barriers etc.), you get one wound
-Your character also has toughness and if your wounds + total damage goes over the toughness, you're down (Or roll toughness or the like). Meaning that taking you down with the second hit is +1 easier than on the last one.
-The total damage (not wounds) just disappears between rounds
Meaning if you've been fighting for a while, and have gotten hit over your damage threshold 5 times, you have 5 wounds. Your toughness is, say, 16. So if anyone does 10+ damage to you you're either down or have to roll toughness.
I came up with this system because I thought systems don't take the natural resilience that humans have into account. We are at the same time really hard to kill and really easy to kill.
My system honestly uses d6s in an unorthodox manner, so I don't know how it works this. I'll just write that too.
Reverse Dice Pool = You roll d6 equal to the difficulty of the roll. You then collect (starting from the lowest), your ability score amount of dice. If the total value of the dice you collect is higher than the difficulty, you succeed.
So, difficulty 6 action with ability score 3 means you roll 6d6 (2 6 4 2 3 5) and pick up the three lowest (2 2 3) and 2+2+3 = 7(>6) = you succeed.
>>46002792
Figure out what you want the numbers to do first, then work your way towards probabilities, then work your way towards dice.
The most core combat number is mean turns to death. And that's directly related to mean real-world time spent on a combat, which I think is possibly the most important number in the game. It's equal to mean turns to death times number of players times average turn time. Average turn time in D&D is something like a minute (if that sounds high, time it). Number of players is not under your control, but the target you choose will influence the design. With those, you find that a five player party with one minute turns doing a four round combat is already 20 minutes. So pay attention to your targets here when picking your game's mean turns to death.
Mean turns to death is a little murky. We could convert that into damage per second and HP, but I prefer to keep the units in turns, so turns to kill an average opponent and turns to be killed by an average opponent. If you have a good handle on what these numbers are, you have control over game balance. There's an equation in chapter 14 of Rogues to Riches (attached) that shows how to convert those stats to a CR system. The numbers A and D that you'll find there are actually cross-system, but the way they're calculated is not.
Now that you know all these things, you're more equipped to get numbers you want. Rogues to Riches is designed for combat to take 4 turns - three hits at 4d6 damage each, one miss, characters with 40 HP. Much of the rest of the system is setting it up so there's more than one way to end up with equivalent combat numbers.
Your game will end up different. You might pick more or less than four turn combats. Or even using 4 turn combats, end up there with a completely different system.
>>45999723
The problem is that no one is commenting on each other's content. We gotta get some reciprocity going in here.
>>46002792
I would find it easiest to first think the preferred dice system (I don't think you have that ready yet?), then fiddle around with sensible max values for skills so either the amount of dice or the amount of math doesn't get overwhelming. Once the max is set, try some basic rolls, see how they feel to roll.
Does the math seem unintuitive? Think it again.
Do you fiddle too much with the dice themselves? Think the maximums again.
Then, let the combat EMERGE from the skills. Combat is not supposed to be entirely cut off from the game, it is supposed to be part of it. So rolling a combat roll should not be too different from a basic skill roll, maybe with more modifiers, that's it.
Then think about the combat movement and maneuverability; do you want to abstract the movements on the battlefield (Like in Exalted) or do you want a grid? How does rules for disarming and all other battlefield maneuvers go? Is it a combat roll with flair, or is it more freeform?
That formula has served me well. Letting the combat emerge from the skills is much easier than figuring out combat before the rest.
>>46003370
Sounds like a good system, kind of like what Fantasy Flight Games uses for their Star Wars system.
I've been on vacation all last week; have you made any other progress on your Persona game?
>>46005492
Most content gets commented on, but we usually get 1 or 2 comments per topic. Nobody scrolls back to the top of a thread and comments on old stuff.
If someone posts a PDF that's less than 20 pages I can take a look and review it.
I've been working slowly on my own stuff (currently streamlining rules for spaceship creation), but since I'm practically the only One Roll Engine player I don't have much to post.
>>46002284
do it
if nothing else, it will recharge you for your current project, whatever that is
In my endless cycle of projects I never finish I've moved back to my d20 project. Basically combining things I like from various editions of D&D and it's offshoots like Fantasy Craft and Iron Heroes.
The current idea I'm toying with is how to handle classes or, in this case, a relative lack of. I was thinking that instead of having rigged classes that give you certain abilities at certain levels I would just use very broad paths/ability trees - Melee Combat, Arcane Magic, Primal Magic, Subterfuge, Influence' etc - from which players could choose abilities as they like provided they meet the base requirements. Something between Fallout's perks and the class trees of EotE/AoR/FaD.
>>46015413
>endless cycle of projects i never finish
this is a fun approach, but you may find it valuable to actually bring one to completion - not perfect, but finished. There is a certain solid sense of accomplishment with a finished work that you cannot find with a long list of unfinished (yet cool) idears.
>>46015559
There's a handful that slowly move along.
>>46007006
Nothing big really, my game starts... In a little over one week oh no. Shit. I gotta figure the conversion formula for the skills, and the starting points for personas (They're point-buy).
I also have to make up some locations for the game, the school I've designed, I can fudge the mall, players design their homes themselves...
I also have to make a rudimentary 3-6 shot campaign... Hmm.. I could actually just do the whole arc idea I had from the beginning, I can share that sometime, but I have no idea whether my players go to /tg/ so can't reveal specifics.
Ironic how much weird looks I got when I said I seriously was making a Persona game...
All in all, I've been super busy with the pages of my IRL life changing (Civilian service ended, I am moving houses) to actually focus on it. Ironically the last week I used so hardcore on planning another game (Thankfully I am not the only GM in that one) that I almost forgot the Persona system. Well, my sheet is ready, so I have no big qualms about the system specifics, I am rather good at simply improvising stuff.
maybe this is really easy and i'm overthinking about it but is this order right?
> atk > def > speed > efective range ( how far can you hit) > number of acctions someone can make > atk
i was thinking on removing the number of actions and treat it like a wild card but i wanted to balance that too, also because anyone can make actions in anyones turn but costing more actions.
does it make sense? also what do you guys think on a system where almost anything is rolled on a 1d6+ stat ( usualy atk or def ) where 6 = 0?
1d6(6=0)+stat
>>46015671
that sense of completion is awesome, brother anon - once you feel it, the 'moving along' might move along faster and easier.
>>46015328
>>46013791
Well, here's the combat section so far at least.
Plus some standard equipment. It's only four pages right now and far~ from finished.
>>46013791
Null Strike's core rules are ~8 in print format,
>>46015671
Try doing a system in five paragraphs or less some time. It's a fun exercise, and sometimes /tg/ goes apeshit for them. Some I did 8 years ago are still on 1d4chan.
Helps a little to get out of the rut of thinking everything has to be D&D sized and/or perfect.
>>46020464
If this thread is still around tomorrow, I'll take a look at it.
>>46020464
going to check it
>>46020464
are augments lacking the number of slots they have?
>>46023916
Yeah, quite probably.
I'm thinking augments could probably be ranked in tiers representing not only their rarity but how many capacity slots they fill up.
I also don't have damage expressions for weapons yet. That's another thing I'm going to work on.
I also just expanded the list of augments to include bionics, cybernetics, and vehicle stuff, but I think I'll hold off on posting that.
Been a while thread. Here's an update on the game I've been making.
>>46029572
And the armor grades for each race as well.
How do you guys come up with dice systems for games? Is there an encyclopedia of rpg dice mechanics somewhere or something?
>>46030009
With good enough math sense it's easy to see how to make it work.
>>46020464
>Use lower dice to determine hit location
I like what you're doing with Hit Location. As a fan of systems that resolve multiple factors of combat simultaneously, it speaks to me.
>Critical Hit
So because of the aforementioned rules, the target will always choose which Location a Critical Hit lands on?
>Initiative
To me, a system where Initiative can change each round based on math throws up some red flags. It seems like it would be a major pain to track.
>Actions
I've never played Rifts, but is this taken directly from Rifts? Because I really dislike systems where you can hardwire more actions into one character over another. Pretty much no matter what it makes that character better than other characters in the party. That's just my opinion though; your mileage may vary.
>Tied Initiative
This seems really silly and clumsy
>Augments and Weapons
Seems straightforward enough. Although if there's one thing I know about Rifts is that its known for having millions of guns. Are you planning on replicating that as well?
>>46030509
>So because of the aforementioned rules, the target will always choose which Location a Critical Hit lands on?
Yeah, I should rethink initiative.
I might try switching it to rolling doubles instead.
>To me, a system where Initiative can change each round based on math throws up some red flags. It seems like it would be a major pain to track.
I'm also considering static initiative where your initiative count is just based on your speed.
>I've never played Rifts, but is this taken directly from Rifts? Because I really dislike systems where you can hardwire more actions into one character over another. Pretty much no matter what it makes that character better than other characters in the party. That's just my opinion though; your mileage may vary.
It's not based directly on Rifts, but the general idea is yes, some characters have more actions than others.
Unlike Rifts, I'm working on balancing it with other factors including a fatigue mechanic.
>This seems really silly and clumsy
I've actually had a lot of success as an OD&D DM having players write their actions down on index cards. It keeps everything more organized, and you can easily use the cards to track initiative.
>Seems straightforward enough. Although if there's one thing I know about Rifts is that its known for having millions of guns. Are you planning on replicating that as well?
Oh, definitely. Plus weapon upgrades.
>One more idea!
I may smooth things out with an 'advantage' mechanic that lets you roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 and drop the lowest die. The dropped die may, however, still be considered in determining hit location.
>>46030652
>Yeah, I should rethink initiative*.
*I should rethink critical hits. Silly typos.
I'm a retard at anydice, how do I get it to roll 2dx and show me the probabilities of individual numbers, not the combined results?
>>46020246
This is a completely closed loop, but I feel like extra actions are just better than anything, because you can turn those into extra mobility, extra range through extra mobility, turn them into chance to hit or damage through extra attack. Unless you're partitioning movement in a way that it doesn't become effected by action count. Probably still superior to all the others, just isn't objectively better than speed, only subjectively.
So instead of a closed loop, it's more like a bunch of serfs carrying a palanquin and number of actions on top.
>>46030663
Actually you'll need to, because the only way to roll a 6 for Hit Location is to get a Critical Hit, now that I think about it. Since Location is based on the lower of your two die, and 6 is the highest you can roll, you can see the problem.
>>46030751
>serfs carrying a palanquin
in fact the movement is partitioned something like 2 squares per action and the average number of actions someone has is 4, also you have to keep some if you want to move outside your turn or respond to enemy attacks, also cover like walls and half covers help speed to take advantage on efective range but not so much that extra actions hinder that by actually beign able to move to
>>46030705
I don't understand your question, that's what it does by default.
Output 2d8
>>46030009
Scroll up, there's a bunch of long posts on exactly this stuff earlier in the thread.
Okay, looking for a little input on something for my streamlined Spacecraft creation rules.
Attached PDF is the start of the Problems section. As explained, Problems are flaws that a spacecraft has which earns players who deal with them up to 1 XP per session. I've put in the first three, and I'm looking for other suggestions.
The feel I'm aiming for is sort of medium-hardness space opera, roughly around Star Trek and Farscape, upwards to Battlestar Galactica (but not approaching real hard stuff like Arthur C. Clarke).
Any suggestions on some Problems I can include?
>>46030652
Advantage mechanics are all the rage right now, so go for it.
If you wanted to go outside the box, you can do what Nemesis does and have you roll a dice pool with a single off-color die in it, and use the off-color die to determine hit location.
>>46029572
What's this for? It looks pretty neat.
>>46030009
Pretty much everything I do uses the One Roll Engine, which makes things easy for me personally.
>>46034216
It's for a diceless system that will end up being a skirmish. Been adjusting the mechanics for it to work smoothly too. So far so good.
>>46035990
What's the lowdown on each character type?
>>46037015
Well there's five races and five classes, so there's 25 combinations available for characters. Each race is the origin of each class, and they're all suited to cover five roles in the party for combat. Tank, priority dpr, crowd control, healer/support, and disruptor.
>Struct - Guardian - a highly dynamic tank that reactively intercepts attacks and damage intended to allies.
>Qoatl - Mauler - a mobile offense that specializes in using force to clear space and reposition enemies in the fight.
>Salire - Lancer - a fighter who negates advantages held by enemies, be it numbers, aggression, or defenses.
>Squalu - Scout - ferocious combatants who survive in the wilds indipendantly, and bring a lot of elemental support to teams.
>Leng - Slayer- perceptive combatants who analyze an opponent before taking them down. Specializes in fighting a single opponent.
>>45995470
WEAPON LISTS?!?!!?!
What systems do weapons right? What's the best, most comprehensive list you've seen? What was the most concise list?
A friend and I are working on a kind of 3.5 clone. Currently, I'm researching weapons and types.
In particular, I'm struggling with bows. It would seem that the most important categories are Recurve, Reflex and Longbows. But nothing stops a longbow from being a recurve? Also, it would seem that material is much more important that shape.
>>46030663
Right you are.
Rolling doubles is one way to go about it.
Another way to go about it would be with a variable critical hit range.
Some characters might increase their critical hit range through a Luck stat.
Alternatively, I might tie critical hit range to attack range to give players an incentive to use melee attacks (nonexistant in Rifts) without gimping ranged weapons. Basically, your odds of a critical hit increase in melee range, and decrease as you get farther out.
>>46038198
Bah. Responded to the wrong post.
Meant to respond to this one:
>>46030770
>>46038198
Hmmm... I might take character stats completely out of the target number equation just to give unaugmented characters a fighting chance.
The target number for an attack is always 7 + Cover + Concealment.
Critical hit threshold is based on range:
Distant; 12
Long Range; 11
Medium Range; 10
Close Range; 9
Melee Reach; 8
Melee Touch; 7
You score a hit if your roll equal to the target number or greater with your adjusted 2d6 attack roll.
You score a critical hit if you roll equal to the critical hit threshold with your unadjusted 2d6 attack roll.
Critical can be used to change a standard weapons damage into mega damage, or change a mega weapon's damage into standard damage x10.
Have you tested your game, /gdg/? What did you learn from it?
I've tested it twice with different builds, one a few months ago that showed me everything with character creation was wrong and the whole stat system was vague and broken
I just came back from a second test and learnt that character creation is still somewhat mediocre (but mostly because I forgot my written stuff and I winged most of everything in an interview kind of thing that took way longer than expected) but the whole rolling and combat system is much more dynamic, and I even got the idea for a few changes on this test that didn't last longer than an hour, the health/armor system in particular is working wonders, while the weapon damage needs to be retuned (i accidentally made the caestus deal the same damage as a revolver)
I really like this experience because it grabs everything wrong and right with your system and throws it right at your face, something that plain doesn't happen on paper
How many projects at once is too many, /gdg/?
I've got a main project in an RPG that's slowly reaching a playable point, and three different board/card games being used as side projects to keep myself sane. Yet I still want to add more.
How do I stop myself?
>>46040136
You don't, it never ends
Ive been trying to work out a damage system, and I think I might have figured it out.
Strength + Weapon Modifier - Opponents Defense= XD6
XD6 = Damage Dealt
Stats are low, so what would be considered a high stat would be in the 20's.
>>46039409
Around a dozen games each for Null Striek. The core mechanics are pretty solid, though there is always some tweaking and balancing to do. Redshirts is at a similar number of games, though it needs some more work and it's been sidelined since we haven't played it in a while.
>>46040136
If you're not making any decent progress on anything, then you probably have too many projects.
>>46040975
That's actually pretty creative though it feels like it would be wildly swingy (though that happens with damage roll systems anyway). Would you model weapons with different damage outputs with different dice?
>>46040975
What happens if the opponent's defense is greater than your strength + weapon modifier?
Adding up large numbers of dice can take some people a while. Would you consider using d3's instead of d6's for quicker mental processing?
>>46034216
>If you wanted to go outside the box, you can do what Nemesis does and have you roll a dice pool with a single off-color die in it, and use the off-color die to determine hit location.
I wanted to come back to this post.
What I could do is have players roll one white die and one black die; the total of the two dice determines whether the attack hits. The white die determines hit location, and the black die determines damage.
If I do it like this, I could flip around the hit location table so that a roll of 6 on the white die lets you strike any hit location of your choosing so that critical hits make more sense.
There might also be a possibility of some mechanic that lets you flip your black and white die around so that black determines hit location and white determines damage.
>>46039409
Not nearly enough as I'd like. I'm lacking people to help test.
Each time has shown plenty of things to change that radically changed the ruleset.
What do you guys do when you're more interested in the design process than the implementation? I have several ongoing projects and a couple are almost complete, but I never feel like going through with preparing it for production, either because it requires learning a new skill set (converting into a digital app) or lacking the capability altogether (publishing a game). What are your plans for the butt end of the design process once everything is done?
I'm working on a game with deckbuilding mechanics. Since the goal of the game is not point accumulation past a certain point it might actually be counterproductive to keep buying cards. You have your perfectly trimmed engine and you don't need anything else. This is a problem since I want the player to keep buying cards throughout the game.
A possible solution is to force players to take the equivalent of a copper card every few turns. Thus they have to keep buying stuff to keep the deck's proportions. How does that sound?
>>46049645
You could take Trains' method of forcing you to add Trash into your deck for doing anything and have copper/silver/gold/money be an income you receive every turn as a side effect for doing something. This could end up being unintentionally hilarious though.
>>46049645
You could have some powerful cards that are removed from your deck when you use them
What do you guys think about using playing cards as a source of randomness? Any games that do this?
>>46051381
what
>>46051381
I believe Last Resort uses playing cards as its random mechanic.
There was a really cool homebrew posted a while back as well that had kind of a blackjack mechanic to it which I thought was awesome.
>>46032764
So... It's not partitioned at all? Depending on how I interpret that post, movement is either just not separate from actions or is passively better by virtue of having more actions.
>>46051613
Got a link to Last Resort? Google isn't turning up anything.
>>46039409
I've playtested mine weekly for two years, with some people saying it beats the shit out of dnd and fate and some people saying both armor and skill resolution just feel instinctively wrong, like eating sonething while blindfolded.
Its been tested in multiple iterations, and started as a tactical skirmish plug-in for fate. It's a true-blooded dungeon crawl/adventure rpg now.
And I'm basically terrified to show it to anyone who actually understands homebrews, because I know the first complaint will be about something so central to the game that it can't (and, imo, shouldn't) be fixed. :(
>>46051634
if someone has 4 actions available and his speed is 2 squares per action it can spend it all on movement and travel 8 squares but left him self as a sitting duck for anyone to shoot him dead (muh high lethality almost anyone is 2 hit dead), instead it can spend on his turn 1 action to move 2 squares to reach cover, 1 action to attack an enemy on efective range and keep 2 actions for if someone gets near it can spend those for move outside his turn or attack a "unsuspecting" unit that moves on his erange while moving. I'm trying to make a tactic skirmish chess like fusio of something like overwatch/dirty bomb, cs:go and ttrpg elements with a pregen rooster of units (in a future maybe a unit creation rules I already has te formula for balancing stats between units).
Do you think there is a good reason as to why most deck-building games feature a mechanic which limits the amount of cards you can play from your hand each turn? Drawing two action cards in Dominion when neither card gives actions is kind of a bummer.
>>46054516
Because the game break the way they have it set up. You need some kind of limiting factor to avoid abuse, whether its resource management, card play limit, or card hand and draw limit. Generally, limiting your card plays, instead of playing your hand and then your done, adds more strategy and thought.
Dominion is already on the more abusing side, if you play with the right cards, its pretty easy to set up a combo that keeps feeding into itself.
>>46051381
Malifaux and Into the Breach both use playing decks for their resolution mechanics.
>>46039409
Playtested a lightweight orbital-combat game concept I've been brainstorming. Learned quite a lot just from doing a mockup and playing out a few turns.
One problem is that while the movement mechanics are interesting, the player needs more choices than: acceleration burn, deceleration burn, stationkeeping burn, or no burn.
Thought about it for a while and decided to try getting more granular. Hopefully giving the player two or three burns consecutively will feel better.
>>46051899
My mistake, the name is Last Stand, not Last Resort. Unfortunately the only thing I can find on them now is their Kickstarter, which ended years go (successfully, I might add). I was surprised not to find the product in the DriveThru.
>https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/funhaver/last-stand
>>46051381
Savage Worlds uses playing cards for initiative, but I'm fuzzy on the specifics.
That said, I'm not a fan of it in concept, at least when it comes to RPGs. It just adds another thing to purchase and keep track of and frequent shuffling could be a pain.
Looking for some input on my revised rules for Spacecraft construction using One Roll Engine. Do they make sense? Are they easy to follow/understand? Do they make you want to play?
>>46055791
Interesting. Are you tracking distances between objects in absolute terms?
I've got my own early draft of an orbital dogfighting system that I haven't got to playtest yet, so I'd love to hear about how yours went.
>>46056709
>Are you tracking distances between objects in absolute terms?
Nah. Very abstracted. Basically just playing on the plane of the ecliptic. The goal isn't to get totally realistic orbital mechanics - the goal is to get something that actually feels like a spaceship game, but retains the pacing and playability of something like X-wing.
One interesting problem I'm going to have to overcome is the simple fact that ships deployed to a high orbit are of course at a massive advantage to those deployed in lower orbits.
>>46057134
Cool, that's pretty much what I put together too.
>https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0lxa1jahxzfrvc/DOGFIGHTING.docx?dl=0
As I see it, the most important thing about combat in space is relative position and relative movement, so instead of defining everything in absolute terms, it just focuses on the relationship between two objects at a time. As a result, it's a game about speed and positioning, where the faster craft has the edge but only if the pilot is skilled enough to handle it at that speed.
What do you do if you've set out to make a certain kind of game but the game is trying to tell you it wants to be something else?
>>46057263
Interesting.
I'm avoiding dice as much as possible, but things get pretty deterministic as you might imagine. I'm considering some sort of card engine. Haven't really dived into that bit yet.I do know that I want combat resolution to be skill based, not luck based. I find it more visceral when you hit because you outflew your adversary, rather than because the dice say so.
One thing you could do for your system which might help in this respect is to make the set-matching mechanics into something more like a dice-based trick-taking game. At the very least, you might consider using both runs and sets - e.g. a run of 8-9-10 is playable just like a set of 555 is playable. Higher and lower runs/sets should be useful in different ways. My first thought is to try something mechanically similar to Lamarckian Poker. Another option would be to take a page from Texas Hold 'Em/7 Card Stud and have three dice pools for opposed rolls - your pool, your adversary's pool, and a common pool.
>>46057757
Is your game designed to be competitive or cooperative? Because in a competitive game, an absence of chance means that it's practically impossible for a less skilled player to ever defeat a more skilled player. This seems obvious but it also tends to make the game less accessible, as it engenders a sense of closed-offedness.
As for my dice roll mechanics, it's not of my own inventions. The One Roll Engine is something used in a small number of excellent games, and the product I've been working on is essentially a supplement for one of them, turning a fantasy game into a space-based sci-fi one.
>>46057898
>in a competitive game, an absence of chance means that it's practically impossible for a less skilled player to ever defeat a more skilled player. This seems obvious but it also tends to make the game less accessible, as it engenders a sense of closed-offedness.
There are good chance mechanics and bad chance mechanics. Good chance mechanics randomize the exact resources at the player's disposal at any given point in time. Bad chance mechanics determine whether anything actually happens as a result of the player's use of their resources.
Attack rolls are a huge pet-peeve of mine. They reduce otherwise interesting games to risk-management. Basically you are forcing the player to look for ways to avoid playing the game. E.G. D20 system the player is looking for strategies & tactics which make what they roll on their D20s matter as little as possible.
How would you remove dice roll encounter resoulution from your game?
>>46059302
All you need to do is understand that the dice rolls in a game represent a variable. Removing the variable means you need a system or number set that is flexible enough to withhold minor changes, such as circumstantial modifiers or roleplay benefits.
After that, it's pretty easy. Just look at the skirmish threads in /tg/ for more info.
Pic unrelated. Just wanted to share a thing.
Posted this in last thread, looking for more opinions, thanks to the people who responded last time:
Is it possible to make a game system both "gritty" and "heroic"?
I'm thinking the "average person" has 5 hp, modified by Con/End/Str/whatever, so between 4 and 8 hp. If you were doing GURPS-tier grittyness the characters would also have this much. I have guns dealing d8 or d10 damage, swords dealing d6 to d8 damage, so this means most people die in 1 to 2 hits.
In a "heroic" game characters start with 10 + Con hp, so between 9 and 13 hp. NPCs still have the same base of 5, so characters are tougher.
The only thing I'm stuck on is how they gain HP in a realistic setting, and how to cap it off. I want it to be so that character's can't have too much HP, but just buying HP one point at a time feels too weird; I want them to have to buy it in increments, like with D&D hit dice. But balancing it would be weird, because more hp might be too powerful compared to other options.
What do you think? I'm looking for a damage system that minimizes bookkeeping. With this I can usually track damage with a d6 since most NPCs and mooks will have around 5 hp, and a lot of times they will go down in one shot.
I'm considering adapting the Savage Worlds damage system instead, since that is minimum bookkeeping at it's finest, but a system like that is hard to balance without using exploding dice.
What do you think? It's meant for a multi-genre system.
The more I work on this RPG the more skeptical I become of positioning actually being conductive to RPGs. Every battle consists of the side with the stronger ranged capabilities turtling in defensive terrain. At this point I might as well just do the JRPG thing and remove movement. Or at least abstract it to areas/lines.
>>46060203
Or you could have there be a balance between turret play, by making a method to punish that tactic available. Geomancy styled magic or demolitions with artillery/arc would be a start.
>>46060203
>JRPG thing and remove movement.
Holy fucking shit.
It's so simple, how have I never thought of that before?
Like wow. Instead of tactical grid based combat. Just, simple JRPG combat.
God damn.
What the hell.
How did I get so stuck into wargame-isms when I haven't ever played any?
Thank you anon for this moment of enlightenment.
>>46060769
If it makes you feel any better I only went back to working on that RPG because I've realized the project I've been working on for... forever is fundamentally broken mathematically.
>>46060100
I'm thinking have it be multiples of Con/End/Str/whatever.
Let's say 10 is the default in Con in your system - with a 1x multiplier, this would give your character 10HP by default. If the Warrior wants more HP but is fine with the default Con, he can buy a 1.5x multiplier, which gives him 15 HP and later, if that turns out to be too little, he can buy a 2x multiplier for 20 HP or a 2.5x multiplier for 30 HP.
Likewise, if the wizard is feeling confident/brave, he can buy a .5x multiplier for 5 HP and get the points back to put into his Intelligence/Magic/whatever stats.
If the GM wants a more heroic game, he can start everyone off with, say, a free 2x multiplier or he can say that everyone's supposed to be fragile and start everyone at a .5x multiplier.
Does that sound like a good starting point to you?
>>46060203
Another rather simple solution is unrealistically short ranges. Assuming you've done something to prevent kiting, ranged attacks are really equivalent to the extra HP someone saves during the turns it takes someone to approach.
For example, if a person can move 5 squares per round, a bow has a range of 10 squares, a typical attack does 1d6 damage, and we ignore accuracy, then that's two extra rounds of avoided damage = 2d6 = 7 extra HP.
Apply that same math to a range with 100 squares and you get 70 extra HP, which is certainly unbalanced in this hypothetical system where people do 1d6 damage per turn. And now you can easily see how ranged attacks get overpowered.
>>46060100
For some reason when I hear 'gritty and heroic' the first thing I think of are firemen.
Have you considered using a wound system instead? Seeing you fuss over the growth of numbers seems neither gritty nor heroic to me. Cap it at 3 wounds max with the normal being 1 wound, then have something to bar off most attacks from causing a wound, probably some sort of defense. Maybe have multiple layers of defense even, or have them regenerate.
The grittiness would be from how easy it seems for a character to die, the heroic would come from when despite that they manage to shrug off attacks using their defense and fight their way through multiple opponents.
Of note is a phone app called Sword and Glory, which has something similar. Maybe try it out, see if you can find any ideas.
>>46062864
Sounds decent. I'm still thinking of ways to make a wounds system work. Might just go with HP. who knows.
a bump
>>46064417
I think the big problem is not very damaging ranged attacks - this is easy to solve - but that if one side has superior firepower the other has to approach it under its terms or eventually lose because they take 2 damage a round while their archer only dishes 1. Firepower, then, translates directly to defender's advantage via bottlenecks etc.
In a politically themed card game, I can't come up with good name for a card that penalizes players who choose to skip their turn (Skipping turn is a viable tactic here otherwise)
Any suggestion?
>>46071101
Filibusterbuster :^)
Dunno if this is the best place to post it... but eh, whatever. It's a game I've been working on for a while, might as well shoot to you guys and see what you think.
https://sites.google.com/site/arcanikrpg/
It isn't done, but it IS playable. Spells are the biggest missing part of it right now, but forgoing those, you CAN enjoy the game as it is. I'm actually running a LOT of playtests, if any of you would be interested in that. :)
>>46071101
Lame-Duck Prevention Legislation
>>46071101
Is there a term for when someone chooses to veto/using their right to keep silent and it bites them in the butt?
>>46060100
>Is it possible to make a game system both "gritty" and "heroic"?
I have similar design goals, but after some thinking, I came up with an answer along the lines of
>Heroic, but Deadly
And by deadly, I mean fragile characters in the sense they dont just shake off anything but are readily affected by the enemy to the point of being taken out of the fight, though not dying.
My current solution is HIT POINTS, good old fashioned hit points, just as we are used to them, but instead of being taken out at 0 HP, pcs can elect to be taken out with any attack, because hp are a precious resource that dont just pop back to full every encounter.
Another key component is instead of damage, attacks inflict conditions (with an effect value that can be reduced with hp).
In the words of Design Patterns we got Hit Point mixed with wound traits AND an endgame pattern.
Inspiration for this idea; justice league. heroes are taken out, but are quickly brought back with some help from others with an action along the lines of "Are you okay?"
I'll post my some of my work tomorrow, gotta go play some 5e DnD soon.
I'm starting working on homebrew game where player characters have direct access to semi-sentient primal forces that give them favors in return for certain conduct. This is basically my idea of alignment.
There are 3 axises - Honesty-Dishonesty, Mercy-Cruelty and Charity-Greed. Anyone can procure up to 3 favours from going to any end of each axis.
This I believe to be working well to describe code of conduct for an adventurer, without putting stranglehold on their goals.
What do you think?
>>45995470
i have recently made up a new combat system to go with my homebrew.
I had noticed that the rules i used on fantasy settings don't translate all that well into the fallout game i'm currently running. The role play aspects work just fine
As inspiration, i heavily oriented myself on the XCOM games. So cover is very important, tile based movement, hit percentages and the like.
>actions
like in XCOM, every character has two actions at their disposal. They can use it to move, attack, use items, overwatch or use an ability.
attacking and overwatch can be used after movement but will end the turn regardless.
except for some abilities, like the ability to attack two times with a penalty to aim.
>abilities
i came up with a chart that works quite the same as the perk chart of fallout 4. Characters have main attributes and can choose from a tree of that attribute up to their value. These abilities are a mix of fallout perks and XCOM skills.
these are in addition to the skills that a character already has, which more broadly represent their skillset (guns, medicine, bartering etc.)
>attack roll
When a player wants to attack an enemy, they have to roll 1d100 for their accuracy against the enemies defense. accuracy mainly depends on the respective weapon skill (max +20%) their perception (max +10%), and the aim bonus of the type of weapon they are using (different boni or mali depending on range). Each player also has a base value for aim. currently i use 60% as a base value. not sure if i can come up with a non static value for this.
Defense has a base value aswell, which is the agility of the character (max 10%), but more important than that is cover: like in XCOM, high cover provides a 40% bonus, low cover a 20% bonus.
After these values are determined, the attackers hit chance is aim vs. defense. If the w100 roll is lower than that, the attack was successful and (if applicable) the attacker can roll for a critical hit (ranges from 0% to 25%)
>>46073036
weapons have a damage spread and the damage is determined by rolling a d6.
if the damage of a weapon is 2-4, a roll of 1-2 equals 2 damage, 3-4 is 3 damage and 5-6 is 4 damage. Basically just look at the third or in other cases half of the d6 range.
>flanking
if a character makes a move so that no cover is between them and a enemy anymore, that enemy has been "flanked". Their defense bonus by cover doesn't apply anymore, and the attacker gains a bonus to crit chance.
so basically like XCOM.
players will have to be very wary of not being flanked aswell as try to flank as much as possible.
I have tried this system out by myself with a relatively small number of characters (2 normal enemies one special one vs two PCs) on a 20x25 grid map of a ruined city and it seemed to work quite well.
It basically feels like playing XCOM on tabletop (surprise surprise, it pretty much is a rip-off afterall).
The huge number of rolls doesn't really bog it down all that much, or at least i think so, and it seems to generate some genuine heart pounding moments when a character is near death. I'll have to see how it works when the players and alcohol are involved, but i'm pretty confident so far.
Thoughts?
I'm making a small non-commercial LCG. Just something fun to play with your friends in a program like Vassal. I had an idea for what I think is a fun mechanic but I'm not sure if it actually has potential. I'll speak in Magic terms to avoid explaining things specific to my game.
What do you think about being able to fuse two creatures by playing one on top of another who is not suffering from summoning sickness? The result would be a creature with the P/T and all of the abilities of the two creatures. If the creature is defeated in combat only the top-most layer dies. The drawback is that fusion causes another round of summoning sickness.
This allows you to combine two creatures whose abilities have a strong synergy, or a cheap creature with a good ability with a more expensive vanilla one with good stats, or cover a powerful creature with a trash creature to give it another life.
>>46074119
This seems like a pandora's box of potential abuse.
I say go for it.
>>46056254
>No Location can have more than 10 Hit Boxes, except the Cockpit/Bridge, which can’t have more than 4 Hit Boxes.
This could probably be worded better.
>in battle, a Craft’s Construction Rank serves as the Difficulty of the Engineering roll
If this is the case, then I'm assuming that the ship would also have someway of avoiding or mitigating Killing damage as well? Looking at the long term, Junk ships would be much more advantageous if you can recover damage quickly compared to better built ships, even if they can withstand less.
>Do they make sense?
If you mean 'does this stuff seem logical to have in a ship construction thing', then yes it does. That you managed to think as many as you did for the finer parts of building a ship deserves a compliment.
>Are they easy to follow/understand?
It's nice that you can skip ahead and look at only the stuff you need quickly, though since most sentences are in a format similar to a textbook, my attention wanders pretty often.
>Do they make you want to play?
Definitely. At the very least I feel like building a ship in Galaxy Trucker and stat said ship using this system, just to find out how well a ship made out of sewer pipes fares in this.
>>46074119
Use translucent cards.
>>46074344
Thanks for the feedback!
>If this is the case, then I'm assuming that the ship would also have someway of avoiding or mitigating Killing damage as well?
Of course, there are several ways. First, the way that damage works in this game is that there are two kinds: Shock and Killing. In person-to-person combat, Shock is generally non-lethal damage vs Killing, which is lethal. Signficantly, if a Hit Location is filled up with Shock, any additional Shock to that Location becomes Killing, so that stuff adds up.
Where spacecraft are concerned, it works a little bit differently. These rules don't discuss it as much, as it's more relative to the explicit rules for combat, but Size plays a major factor. By default, a Craft's weapons do what is called Scale Damage. Scale Damage inflicts Killing damage against a Craft of equal size, Shock against a Craft that's one-size greater, a only a single point of Shock against a Craft that's two-sizes greater. It works in reverse too: if you attack a Craft that's smaller than you, you deal both Shock to its connected Locations, and if it's two sizes smaller (i.e. Big vs Small) you deal Killing to connected Locations. In exchange, smaller Craft get significant boosts to their Maneuver rolls against attacks of greater size, making them easy to dodge.
Using the Advanced Weapon feature, you can Upscale the damage of a Weapon (giving more damage for less speed) as well downscale (less damage, more speed). This allows Small Craft to deal critical blows to Big Craft, and it allows Big Craft to field effective anti-air defenses.
As far as answering your question direct, generally there are three ways to avoid damage: Shields (which add an extra layer of hit boxes atop your Craft), Armor (which is damage reduction in general) and Defense (either Maneuver to dodge attacks or Countermeasures to block them).
vContinued
>>46074964
>>46074344
Mostly, I mostly added that rule for there to be SOME advantage to having a Craft with lower Construction. The idea being that it's easier mend a sailboat than to repair a diesel engine.
A while ago I made a module to use in one of my DnD campaigns. Some anon requested it so I compiled it and made it neat and here it is. Works in pretty much any setting/system with magic.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177798/Defuse-This-Bomb
If anyone is GMing something and needs a noncombat challenge to throw at your players I recommend it, it was pretty fun.
>>46074964
Hmm, it still doesn't seem like there's an obvious benefit to having a Craft with high Construction though. Say in the case of two same Size Crafts, where both of them only have 2 locations, and one is only of Junk Construction while the other has Unmatched. Assuming both Locations have max Hit Boxes (10 and 4 for Core and Bridge respectively), the end result is the lower Construction Craft is just as durable as a higher Construction Craft, with the addition of being easy to repair.
An easy solution would be adding more hit locations, but maybe the player doesn't want any more and is satisfied with only the Core and the Bridge. Shouldn't there be some sort of benefit to having a better constructed ship in this case?
>>46075917
It's funny that you mention that, because I actually had that written out as a note for players that High Construction Craft benefit from having more Hit Locations.
There's still another advantage for having high Construction, which is that pretty much when you make any kind of repair on your Craft, you roll Engineering + Construction Rank.
So let's say you have 3d in Engineering. If you have a Junk craft, you're rolling a total of 4d, which per the One Roll Engine has about a 50% of success. If you have a Good Craft, then you're rolling 7d, which has 93% of success (but your matched set needs to have a face value of at least 3).
The way that the One Roll Engine works is that once you hit around 6d you have 85% odds of get a matched set, which counts as a success under most circumstances. Construction complicates that slightly because it simultaneously gives you a Difficulty you need to beat if you're dealing with heavy, Killing damage.
The real advantage of high numbers in the ORE isn't greater chances of success, but rather your ability to succeed under adversity, such as dealing with Difficulties or penalties from having to act quickly or while multitasking.
>>46043798
The two dice thing is pretty cool. An older project of mine did something similar; two dice, same color, and you pick one die to determine which things you can add to the attack and one die for damage.
