Greetings anons of /tg/. Have any of you taken a stab at designing your own game? Are you currently working on one? What would you like to see from new games in the industry?
I'm currently working on a dungeon exploration / hack-and-slash board game with a Stamina system for bonus actions (you still your movement and standard action on your turn, but having extra Stamina lets you move further, make extra attacks, attempt to dodge or parry, etc). I'm also throwing out Vancian magic and replacing it with a pool of dice for mana: the more dice you spend to cast that fireball, the more dice you get to roll for damage.
Bump?
I guess I'll dump some maps in the off chance someone actually replies.
Anyone got advice on making a minimalist system like >>46356377 describes?
I find the idea intriguing.
>>46360593
There are some game design general threads in the board every now and then.
Consider showing your concept in the thread when it pops up, hopefully the guys there will be able to give you some nice feedback since they're in the same boat.
>>46361175
I could have sworn I've seen threads like that before, but when I couldn't find one in the catalog, I started doubting myself. I'll have to keep that in mind.
Alas, I'm a man of my word, so I'm still gonna dump some of my maps.
I am making a very crunchy system. I just threw out 40% of my first draft and am redoing large amounts of it.
Here are a few things I am implementing that I don't see a lot of:
>Two speeds of play that the game switches in and out of, by minute and by day. Characters can take by minute actions (shooting something, investigating a building, purchases) and by day actions (exerting political power, research, garnering new allies).
How the game is designed it highly discourages combat monsters and murder hoboing, as one can not support themselves with that lifestyle. From the same abstract pool of time/effort a character must purchase skill ranks, traits, allies, incomes, and political clout. If one is only made up of skills they are merely going to be a very skillful homeless man.
The system also has all of the following overarching characteristics:
>dice pool
>classless
>wound system based character death
>intrigue based
>modular magic system
>>46360593
I'm currently working on a "retroclone" that will please absolutely no one, because it changes far too much stuff for gronards to like it, but it's too rooted in old school D&D for anybody else to appreciate it. There are too many aspects I'm working on to it to even give you a cursory overview of them, but I'll touch on my magic system, which has had some big changes and is only semi-Vancian at this point.
There is no memorization, and you can cast every spell you know once per adventure. However, you are also limited in the number of spells you can cast per chapter (which is generally the period from the end of one fight--or the start of the adventure--to the end of the next one... or an equivalent period of time, if you prefer to play it that way). Within a given chapter, you can only cast 1 spell from each spell level you know. This means that you can't blow your entire wad in one encounter.
The table in the pic here is the current Wizard progression I'm working with. They are the number of spells you know at each given level. Numbers enclosed in a box indicate nascent skill with spells of that level, meaning that they occupy the same spell slot as the level of spells below them for the purposes of only being able to cast 1 spell for each spell level within a given chapter. For instance, a 3rd level wizard could cast a 1st level spell, and either a 2nd or 3rd level spell within a given chapter.
Intelligence modifiers give you bonus spells, and are split between your top level of spells and all other levels, like this:
Intelligence Mod = bonus to top level of spells / bonus to all other levels
+1 = 0 / +1
+2 = +1 / +1
+3 = +1 / +2
+4 = +2 / +2
...and so forth
Note that 1st level spells in this are basically cantrips, if a bit more powerful than you normally think cantrips would be. Thus, the level of every spell has been increased by 1. Magic Missile is a 2nd level spell; Fireball is a 4th level spell; etc.
take this garbage to the board game thread, /tg/ is far too much quality for this level of asinine filth.
>>46360593
Im assuming there's a system for regaining dice, is it just sleep and refill the dice pool or something more nuanced? Is it a d20 system?
>>46361305
Mate shouldn't you be debating on one of those Best Primarch threads or something?
>>46361296
Oh, I should mention that I've tried to reduce the gap between 1st and 10th level characters (so 10th level characters end up with 3 or 4 times as many hit points as 1st level characters rather than 10 times as many), which means that 1st level characters tend to be more durable and capable. I'm also trying to reduce the power of encounter ending spells like Sleep. So 1st level Wizards aren't as broken as they may appear.
The regular game has 10 character levels, but there is optional (slow as fuck) bonus advancement thereafter, which is what the +1, +2, +3 levels indicate.
>>46361290
That sounds rad, and you should feel rad.
>>46361296
>>46361388
Oh look, a Vancian(?) magic system that I don't completely hate. Good job, anon.
This a good place to talk about homebrews?
Trying to make a fusion of Fate and the Cypher systems, as both are essentially narrative resource-management games it seems pretty straightforward. The goal is to take some good ideas from Cypher and implement them a bit less sillily, and to tone down the base powerlevel of Fate while filling out its somewhat threadbare mechanics.
From Fate we have Aspects as per usual, though you can no longer invoke your own Aspects for +2 to rolls, only for re-rolls. This is to put the emphasis instead on environment Aspects and Skills (which I'll get to in a minute). Additionally instead of having 'level-ups' at completed milestones, have them once each PC has had each of their Aspects compelled once (that's what the hexes are for, checkboxes).
Consequences and Stunts are vanilla Fate, though I added a Description field for Stunts because in my group people just write down the name and forget what the rules for it were and it changed everytime they used the stunt.
Skills have Edge and Effort as per the Cypher system, but we're using Stress tracks as attribute pools. So if you have Edge 1 Effort 2 in Fight you could add a +1 to a fight roll for free or a +2 if you pay 1 Stress (probs physical). So you can specialise but to perform amazing actions it'll cost you.
Also importantly you can spend Fate Points in lieu of Stress.
Recovery rolls are as per Cypher but with Fate dice so it's likely you won't actually get anything back, so Stress is a bigger deal than Fate where you just shake it off immediately after a scene.
And finally if you're on to your last Stress box in either field you get -1 to all rolls (this stacks).
>>46361500
Thanks. My two biggest issues with the standard Vancian system are having to muck around with spell preparation lists and the length of adventures having too large an effect on caster power (if you know you only have a single fight to deal with, after which you can rest, you can bring down the hammer, but if you have a long adventure and miscalculate when it comes to spell rationing, you're just an unarmored guy without much fighting skill trying to hit people with a stick).
I'm generally aiming for simplicity with the game, so I'm a little disappointed with how detailed the system has become (split bonuses from intelligence, nascent levels, etc.), but it shouldn't be hard to work once you know what you're doing, and I have streamlined other aspects of the system.
Anybody know any good "narrative dice" systems beyond FFG SW? Currently trying to adapt that to a d6 system (player rolls a pile of d6, one color for difficulty and one color for their skill, higher number wins) but can't think of a good mechanic.
I want to make a Risk variant designed for play-by-post.
So far I've written up a list of features I'd like to get out of it (population mechanics, cities, fortifications, faction-unique units with a special ability, hero units with a special ability, some form of RnD progression) and now I'm chugging through various rulebooks for various editions and spinoffs.
It's surprisingly difficult.
>>46361768
Add another coloured die for advantage\threat or whatever other vector you want. If it's above their skill roll bad stuff to the degree its above, otherwise good stuff to the degree its below.
Not really sure what your goal is though, but personally I don't understand what the new SW dice systems do that degrees-of-success doesn't (provided you have a sufficiently creative GM)
>>46360593
>I'm currently working on a dungeon exploration / hack-and-slash board game with a Stamina system for bonus actions
Sounds interesting. Seems like it'd be interesting if you paired it with same sort of Reflexes / Speed stat, and you got whichever one was lower at any given time. The trick is that Stamina would generally start out higher, but would be reduced through strenuous activity as the day progressed. Thus, a high Reflexes, low Stamina guy would be fast and dangerous as fuck when he's well rested, but would be comparatively useless at the end of a long day. Meanwhile, the sturdy dwarf wouldn't get much in the way of bonus actions due to his low Reflexes, but his Stamina would be high enough that it really wouldn't matter how long and hard the day had been.
Of course, all of that might be better in theory than practice, given the potential complexities involved. I like the idea though.
>>46361778Anon pls
>>46361907
>I don't understand what the new SW dice systems do that degrees-of-success doesn't
Basically, it decouples success/failure from positive/negative "side-effects." A successful roll might have a negative side effect or a failed roll can have a positive side-effect.
For example, if you fail to hack a console but gain a positive side effect, you might not have opened the door you needed to open but the alarms are disabled. Conversely, you might have successfully opened the door but set off the alarms. It's a lot of fun in practice and really drives the narrative.
>>46361977It's going to be intended to be played as a roleplaying game too.
>>46362114I never knew I needed this until right now
>>46362072
Yeah, I get that, but I just see the same thing in systems where the dice mechanics are such that the majority of rolls fall into the "partial success" range so that stuff happens anyway. Even better if you give the player the choice of success-at-a-cost or failure.
I find tweaking dice probabilities this way more elegant than just throwing a bunch of extra dice into the mix.
>>46360593
There's a regular "Game Design General" that floats through here occasionally. You might want to watch for one.
I've made several games:
- Two overly complex major systems way before I was ready
- A bunch of quirky games with short rules, which are still on 1d4chan somewhere
- Rogues To Riches. Sometimes I open the thing up again and see something so clever that I feel intimidated by the author, before remembering it was me. It's unfinished, though.
I'm currently considering two projects:
- A rewrite of Rogues To Riches. I need one more design breakthrough before I'm comfortable with the direction I want to take it in.
- A game that feels like Dungeons And Dragons while being a better introductory RPG.
>>46361939
In its current form, everyone has a number of Stamina points that they can spend on bonus actions and movement equal to their Dex modifier. The Thief and Ranger benefit from the extra mobility and chance to dodge everything, the Fighter benefits from a little Stamina by being able to parry, and the tank doesn't need to worry about Stamina because his heavy gear comes complete with damage mitigation.
In play testing, it's turned into less of a "I hit you, you hit me" scenario and more of a dance between foes. It's actually proven pretty fun.
>>46361307
Because of the focus on fast-paced combat, I wanted to make sure that magic users are able to cast spells often without having to worry about "spells per day." So their dice regenerate between battles.
>>46361623
No one's going to be able to critique this since nobody's played Fate or Numenera, right?
My advice to y'all is to go out and play games which are totally different to the ones you usually play. Having a wide array of creative influences is just as healthy for system design as it is for world building. Not to be rude, but everyone's pretty much just discussing their not!DnD clones.
>>46362331
>a dance between foes
That sounds cool, mobility is often something really lacking in RPG combat. Want to share a link to the rules?
>>46360593
A few years ago I tried designing a tabletop wargame meant to be played with foldable paper cutouts as minis. The lore and background was mostly done but I could not for the life of me get any kind of working, playable game rules together no matter how hard I tried. It was a complete disaster.
>>46362514
I'd gladly share a link to the rules if they were typed up. Sorry anon. Maybe when I get off my lazy ass, I'll finally type them up and make a PDF to share.
>>46361623
In a similar vein, my favorite general purpose system is Risus + Aspects. If you haven't read Risus, you might get some ideas from it. It's only four pages long, too.
>>46361388
A lot of your goals sound similar to mine for the "Introductory version of D&D" that I mentioned in >>46362319 . So I don't think everyone will hate it - these's at least two people who think it's interesting.
You probably won't get much traction with the hard core retrocloners, but you might get more from the rules light kind of crowd. You might enjoy stealing a page from Rogues to Riches and using Risus as a skill system.
>>46362114
Well, that sounds interesting.
That's definitely something RPGs need - to steal mechanics from board games. There's no way that the historical accident of D&D being based on miniatures combat actually panned out to miniatures games being the best rules basis for RPGs.
I want to make a war/skirmish game that basically will be a tabletop arena shooter like Unreal Tournament.
Sadly I don't hame much experience with wargames to do it.
>>46362892
Ever play Frag?
It's actually pretty fun.
Snek bump.
So apart from playing games, what materials do you draw on when designing games?
I went through a bunch of old Forge posts\essays and apart from the insufferable elitist there was some interesting stuff, GNS theory, the Big Model, it certainly helps to have some jargon to be able to analyse a RPG system and it's purpose and how its mechanics try to achieve that purpose.
Another thing I found was this academic journal: http://ijrp.subcultures.nl/ but it's more about LARPs, culture and RP for therapy and learning than design. Still, a good understanding of players and why they play is vital for good design, imo.
I have a whole stack of pdfs from the share threads but most of them seem more exercises in pigeonholing existing design elements than anything. At least the Forge tried to innovate.
>Making a simplistic RPG based on Action Points and Shadowrun's combat
>It's more focused on the fun of doing things rather than the nit and grit of being rules heavy
>Laying the blocks so I don't have to deal with numbers and just make concepts
>I'm eventually going to have to balance all this shit if I want it to be playable
Anyone else wanna share the things they hate most about designing your game?
>>46364625
>making a simple, yet succinct combat system for an online roleplay
>have the stats and a general idea of how they'll interact
>want to implement this system in the website so the roleplayer just has to write what happens based on the decision made
>cannot into numbers so no clue how it'll actually work until I get it designed a year down the pipeline
>don't even have a website designer
Suffering is all I know.
>>46364625
Similar to yours
>want a game where you decide what you pay for/invest in, so to speak
>mechanic they can also control and pay to decide how to alter/affect safety of said investments
>third "threat" item they can't control that throws negatives at them
>trying to balance values of investment gain vs. threat of loss and the defense system so that there is no "loss" choice of actions and no easy win path and everything remains chaotic enough that your choice can only be well informed, not well executed
>>46364858
Do you mean you don't know how to program or you just don't know how to balance stuff?
>>46365705
The first option, primarily. I could sit down and balance it all out myself, but because I don't know how much will transfer over into the program, what information is needed for the program, and what is not needed, I'm unsure of where to start and don't want to waste time.
>>46364625
> Friend started working at Wizards Of The Coast
> Gets passive aggressive every time I try to playtest something I made
> Seems to think he needs to defend WotC's copyright or something
> Doesn't understand that "making an RPG" doesn't mean "stealing Dungeons And Dragons"
> Rest of my boardgame group would think it was weird if I didn't invite him
Yeah I love the whole game design process, it's just my current group that puts a damper on it.
>>46364625
>>46364858
You've gotta get the math right. It's the entire reason we use RPGs instead of sourcebooks.
Here's my advice: Stop thinking about things like a player, and abstract way the hell out. If you're asking a question about HP, damage, accuracy, or whatever, you've already went too far down the rabbit hole.
The combat stats you care about as a designer are:
- How long does a turn take? (Wall clock time.)
- How many turns does a combat take per player?
- What's the largest number of players I'm willing to support?
- Does that make the combats too long?
The next most detailed stats you'll probably look at are:
- How many turns does it take to kill a monster? (Hint: it's the same as "how many turns does a combat take")
- How many turns does it take to kill a player?
The closer those numbers are together, the more tense combats are. The more often random elements bring the "turns to kill a player" above the "turns to kill a monster," the more lethal your game is.
That's not enough to write a whole system off of, but the rest of the process is:
1 - Add more constraints. (How long combats take, how fast power level grows, what a 2v1 fight should be like, how many different ways you need to be able to get to the same results for content reasons...)
2 - Think for a while about how many systems you can come up with that satisfy your constraints.
2a - More than one? Back to step 1.
2b - Can't think of any? Back to step 2. Or remove a constraint maybe.
2c - Exactly one? Congrats, that's your system!
i'm working on a system based on smooth combat and a bunch of cool abilities that you can tactically use, with different resource systems for casting them.
setting is a really edgy land where good is seen as unnatural. i love over the top edgy shit, it's cool as fuck idk
a couple preset character ideas i've had
southlands champion: born under the condition of every ill omen possible. hulking warrior with a mace and chain in plate armor adorned with pentagrams, inscriptions of 13, and tortured faces. extremely rng based character, has lots of crit successes and fails. rolling a 13 always has some kind of horrible result. obtains carnage points from obliterating enemies in cool ways, can be used to cast chaos magic.
necromaster: very creepy looking but regally dressed. wields magic over death and corpses. harvests necroreagents from the dead. can use them to cast spells like bone bolt or corpse sword. also can cast staples like corpse explosion and raise dead. can passively come partially back to life if there's enough necroreagents around.
>>46365901
As long as you actually pitch it as "over the top edgy" I think this is awesome. Expectations are a powerful thing.
I always wanted to play a monk who could punch people so hard their skeleton flies out, and then the skeleton walks around and helps kill the monk's enemies.
Hint hint.
>>46365889
>The combat stats you care about as a designer are
I think even that is too specific. As a designer you should be asking yourself
>how do I want combat to feel in my game?
Once you know what your goal is THEN you start working out mechanics. Every time you put a mechanic into a game, ask yourself how it contributes towards your design goals, and if it could do it better.
>Stop thinking about things like a player
While you're definitely right when you're at the 'adding mechanics' stage of design, when you go back to edit and take things out you should look at it from a player's perspective.
>>46365901
Is a good counter example, already you've got problems
>smooth, tactical combat
is completely at odds with
>different resource systems
and
>extremely rng based
Having lots of resources to track isn't smooth. Having RNG isn't tactical.
>>46366162
ur right. fuk... looks like it won't be horrifically smooth but fuck it it will be cool.
i was planning on making a program to run it that would eventually have a gui that would look like a game (actually it would be a game at that point) so smooth isn't even that huge of an issue. i just want to fully design it as a tabletop and playtest it first.
rng on that character would be mostly in really over the top effects happening from crit successes and fails
>>46366214
If your RPG mechanics can be reasonably implemented by a program its probably better off as a videogame, my dude.
RPGs shine because humans can tell stories and be imaginative in ways that computers can't. Videogames shine because they can crunch the numbers in complex mechanics that humans can't or don't want to.
I like your sketch.
As someone and has created a handful of different games over the years, I find the most important thing to ask yourself is "what is the game design to do? Why am I making this?"
It's one thing if you're just trying to patch an existing game or hack it to do something it doesn't already do, but If you're going through the trouble to make a complete game from scratch, you really need to get specific about what it is you want to achieve. "Make a better D&D" or even just "make a generic engine" can be done, but they tell you nothing about the kind of design decisions you should be making, and the world is already filled with a ridiculous quantity of systems that fulfill both criteria.
The more specific you are about the purpose of your game, the more likely you'll end up with something someone will have a desire to play.
>>46364625
Oddly enough, my biggest grievance so far hasn't involved designing mechanics and rules rather than writing descriptions and fluff for them. Preferably in a quirky manner as to not bore the fuck out of the reader.
Working alone on the same shit almost every day for over a year really burns your creative muscles and my plume isn't what she used to be.
i ma trying to make a hunter x hunter rpg, cant find a system to mod or somewhere to start
So how do I make stat rolling not incredibly broken?
I was thinking of 1d12 + 2d6, removing the smallest result of the three die.
If the player happens to roll two die with the same result, they can remove the two die and re roll one of their choice.
ie d12 = 2, Ad6 = 2, Bd6 = 3
you can remove Ad6 and roll the d12 again, but have to keep Bd6.
>>46369918
What numbers are you looking for?
>>46369918
If you're trying to make things balanced between players in order to achieve "fair" results, then direct rolling isn't the way to go. You want to either draw cards or use some sort of array (possibly a randomly determined, randomly distributed one).
>>46370226
2 large values, with and the rest being how you'd expect. Classes are specialized so I thought it'd be the right way to do it.
ie 16, 16, 13, 10, 10 ,8
>>46370283
I was considering point buy, and that rolling stat array is very helpful thank you, thanks for sharing it.
>>46370783
No problem. Here's a clean version without the card draw shit at the top.
>>46360593
I've tried once or twice, back when I was really young and believe all the "Just give D&D different dice and everything is fine!" ideas that absolutely everyone has.
Right now, I think it's more important for me to get some practice as GM in multiple RPGs, and to work out a good method and system for running and participating in games. Far too many games seem to focus on just how to play the system, as opposed to how to GM or how to run a game in general.
Once I have that in place, I can work on designing a game system that can do what I want it to do - or just use an existing one, if a new one doesn't need designed.
