I’ve been wanting learn about game design (primary interest is in tabletop gaming); can anyone recommend books or other resources for someone starting at the ground floor? I’ve tried pursuing some online forums but there don’t seem to be any good starting points there.
When I was driving once I saw this painted on a bridge:
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
Not sure if they hold up well or not, or if what they did has since been written better, but I reckon the basic concepts of "look at other games that are regarded fondly and examine what they do that you might also like to do" and "have a good understanding of the math behind various methods of rolling dice" are probably pretty solid.
I just dug out Root if you wanted some more details:
So there's "The Law of Root" which is like, a numbered rules document with sub clauses. And there's a learning to play guide.
The "law" is 12 pages of concise clear and well organized 'legal' rules, including a half page quick reference for some key actions.
The learning to play guide is 23 pages full of images and verbose explanations of things with a bunch of examples.
It's kind of a neat idea but I think the "law" book is cleaner, more concise, AND faster/easier to read compared to the quick start guide (plus it's the actual official rules). Which kind of means unless you really want pictures, or full written paragraphs the law book just works better. But maybe I'm biassed since I kind of prefer clear legal documents in most cases... doubly so if that version is also the smaller quicker to read version.
The Law of Root is explicitly just a Wargame style manual vs the more popular descriptive style manuals of other board games.
They're pretty helpful when your game is complex but procedural because you can just look up rules as needed and in a quick, plainly laid out manner.
I don't know if it'd really work for RPG's, both because the dryness hardly inspires genre excitement and because RPG's tend to be more intwined system wise compared to wargames.
I’ve been wanting learn about game design (primary interest is in tabletop gaming); can anyone recommend books or other resources for someone starting at the ground floor? I’ve tried pursuing some online forums but there don’t seem to be any good starting points there.
There are some good texts, but most are more appropriate once you've already gotten your feet wet with some practical work. Put an idea on paper. Get it in front of yourself and play against a pretend opponent, and if it survives that, get it in front of a couple friends. Don't be afraid to make drastic changes. Don't overdesign; you don't need 200 cards with stats and clip art to see whether your central game concept will work. Try starting with something simple.
For reading: Kobold Guide to Game Design, 2nd Edition - good practical tips in essay form A Theory of Fun for Game Design - skews toward video games, but nice general concepts of what makes things fun Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design - a reference guide of the different techniques games have used to accomplish things The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses - I've not read this one, but it is a well-regarded book on the subject Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals - a heavily theoretical approach, good for building vocabulary about design
I’ve been wanting learn about game design (primary interest is in tabletop gaming); can anyone recommend books or other resources for someone starting at the ground floor? I’ve tried pursuing some online forums but there don’t seem to be any good starting points there.
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
I have both of these, and they're really informative of game design as a field of study. They're a bit dry at times, but I found them enjoyable to get through.
Nice to see this thread blow up! I’m at sea with work so not much has happened with DAMAGE, but I’m happy y’all are doing it!
The last few posts have given me the idea to maybe include an in-character voice in boxes alongside the rules. I already think examples of play are needed, even if it’s a separate little pamphlet.
EDIT: holy shit this is huge on desktop, spoilering
Back to the conventions! Just had a really great game with a super exciting finish. Two of the three scenarios came down to the wire.
We're trying out a new rule. Previously, Stat Tracks all move every round 1 closer to the base value - except for any that moved during that round. That was complicated, unfun bookkeeping.
Now, you just do +1 to any 1 of them at the end of each of your turns. This is SO much more fun! Do you recover a debuffed Track or push another towards greater buffs? If you miss on your turn, consolation prize - you still gain a Stat. Scenarios "heat up" as they progress, but bosses can do this too - and they get 3 turns per round, so there's pressure to finish.
This was the jolt I needed. Playtesting high levels was a little grueling, and running cons can be exhausting. But this was just the straight up fun I know this game is most typically defined by.
One of our players was, like, 12 or so and still got engrossed and grasped the basics. So that's awesome as well
There's still nothing better than enjoying your creation with excited new players.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
On that note, I've gotten the D&D group I play with to come check out my game this Saturday, and I've spent all weekend doing finishing up a big update to it with my brother (my editor).
I'm going to run a one-shot revolving around defending a small town from attack. Since there will be so many players, I'm going to do one shorter into battle, then a long planning preparation section, then a really elaborate battle to finish off. To ease choice paralysis, they'll pseudo-draft by picking from a bunch of sealed envelopes containing all their cards and stats and such.
@Fleur de Alys that game looks pretty impressive when it's all out on the table and whatnot. That's awesome that demoing it went well. I definitely understand that feeling when you make a small rules adjustment and it's 100% more fun all of a sudden, moving the "move" action onto a different card in BeastWing made combat waaaay more fun. Also that jacket is rad.
@Xagar Sounds like a blast! How does the envelope draft work, is an envelope an entire character package or like, bits and peices of each build? I might have to steal something like that for next time I run BeastWing and people need to make characters. Two tests ago everyone built custom stuff, and I did want to test character creation a bit, but chargen also ate up half of our session time.
Finally got some testing in with Beast Wing the other weekend and it went pretty well. The players explored an abandoned underground tech-ruin to find some ancient ships and escape the planet they were on. Did a ton of exploration and some foraging encounters plus 4 combats in about 4 hours. Half the reason I started working on this game is I wanted something pretty *lean* as far as speed of resolving rules, so I was pretty pleased with the overall result.
I definitely should have pushed some of the stats on the native planetary fauna and on some of the security robots they fought in the ruins. Everyone kind of made class cannons so I was a bit weary of overdoing it, particularly as I don't have a ton of playtest experience for where foe numbers should be, but there's minimal incentive to spend a turn moving out of the way, without big haymakers flying around, doubly so if your attack going off will KO the enemy and also avoid the attack because they are dead. Next session I run I'll throw a pushed apex predator (which is basically a really big monster, with individual stats and attacks for each body part...think a monster hunter monster...) at them and see how things go.
@RawrBear
1. Character Select (premade character with a few backstory, personality, place in the town itself, specialties e.g. D&D skills) - 8 envelopes, each with half a discipline (4 cards)
2. Short battle, ending with the threat of a much larger one in just over a day
3. Players get the other half of their discipline (4 cards)
4. Players have a set number of time periods (4?) to prepare - I pass around a list of reasonable actions to take at this point (send for help, scout, set up barricades, arm townies, get a golem, make some potions), and everyone chooses one. These are generally easier depending on how many of the people do the same action.
5. Halfway through something bad happens, sabotaging one of their preparations or killing an NPC - there's a traitor!
6. There are a few more time periods for people to prepare and discover the traitor
7. People get to choose another discipline (8 cards) right before the battle, then they make a build of 8 cards with their two disciplines
8. Battle!
9. Cool epilogue OR everybody dies!
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
edited March 2020
Ok designers, help me figure something out. Let's talk d6's for a hot second. For all I know this is a solved problem, or I'm overthinking it. For the life of me I can't find anywhere online that talks about this.
A typical d6 has the numbers 1 through 6, one on each face, with opposite sides adding to 7 (1 opposite 6, etc.). Ignoring handedness, this means you'll have something that looks like this:
Let's say I want to build a six-sided die with nonstandard faces. I want A,A,A,B,B,B or something that effectively splits the die evenly into two different types of faces.
Which would you consider to be more "fair"?
Replace the 1,2,3 with A and 6,5,4 with B. This places each of A and B on effectively a "hemisphere" of the die.
Replace the 1,2,6 with A and 4,5,3 with B. This places A and B as a sort of pair of linked C shapes geometrically.
I think the second case is less fair, because you could more easily roll the die along one axis and effectively turn it into a rolling "dial" ignoring two sides and giving you a sequence of AAAB or BBBA to result from. But I still have this nagging concern that the first case is also somehow unfair or unbalanced, and I'm just not seeing it.
*I am aware six-sided d2's and Even-Odd dice exist, but I can't find examples of breakouts of the die faces anywhere.
Interesting question. Let's analyze it with far more rigor than necessary! There's a 2016 paper, "Numerically Balanced Dice" that discusses constraints for a numerically-labeled die to follow for maximum fairness. Its focus is on the d20 case, but it also mentions extensions to other dice, including the unusual d30 and d120. But it doesn't talk about the case where dice are labeled with digits other than from 1 to n, as you're asking. (Aside: Outside of the d4 and d6, most dice on the market are not optimally numerically balanced. And if you want optimally balanced d20s or d30s and don't mind paying a bit of cash, you might be able to get some here?)
Fortunately, the case of labeling a 6-sided die with {1,1,1,2,2,2} is small enough that we can easily make a manual comparison. As you've noted, there are only two cases: Case "A" has same-valued sides arranged around a single vertex (corner) of the cube, while Case "B" has same-valued sides arranged in lines (that, when folded, form interlocking U-shapes). How do these compare under the various criteria laid out in the above paper?
Opposing Sides: Conventionally, dice have opposing sides equal the same value. This holds for case "A", with each 1 face opposite a 2 face. For case "B", however, the opposing sides sum up to {2, 3, 4} due to the faces' wraparound. Advantage to Case "A". Vertex Sums: What are the sums of the faces around each corner of each die? Case "A" has a distribution of {3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6} while Case "B" has a distribution of {4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5}. Slight advantage to Case "B". Equatorial Bands: What are the sums of the faces in each 'axis' of each die? Case "A" has sums of {6, 6, 6} while case "B" has sums of {5, 6, 7}. Slight advantage to Case "A". Face Sums: Due to the small size of the d6, the sums of faces adjacent to each face (but not the face itself) equals the sum around an axis band. As such, Case "A" has the same advantage as the previous criteria. Full Face Sums: If we take the face's value plus its neighbors, then the equation changes slightly. Because of how high bands in case "B" necessarily leave out low numbers and vice versa, both cases result in the same distribution of full face sums: {7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8}.
Taking all of these criteria together suggests that Case "A", with its opposing poles, is better than Case "B". But it is not a fully dominant victory, as a roll with a particular horizontal spin (like a top) may have that nagging unfairness like rolling Case "B" along a particular face-wise axis.
In addition, aesthetically (as opposed to numerically), Case "A" can look a bit odd, since it might be off-putting to look at the die along its corner and see three of the same number. You'll always see different numbers in a Case "B" die. (Take for example, the specialist Q-workshop d2, which is very much like a Case "B" d6, but with rounded edges.)
MrBlarney on
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Taking all of these criteria together suggests that Case "A", with its opposing poles, is slightly better than Case "B". But it is not a fully dominant victory, as a roll with a particular horizontal spin (like a top) may have that nagging unfairness like rolling Case "B" along a particular face-wise axis.
Ah, there it is! I knew that nagging feeling was legit, I just couldn't picture how to physically throw the die to unbalance its result. Like a top!
Extra +Awesome for the unnecessary rigor! That's the kind of effort I can get behind.
Okay, next question: let's say I'm designing a die for a game, and to minimize cost I only want to use one style of d6. I need to put symbology on it for both "attackers" and "defenders". As part of my design, rolls inherently favor the attacker, therefore the following are the faces of the die:
Blank, Shield, Shield, Bomb, Bomb, Double Bomb
Blank does nothing.
"Defenders" only care about Shields, and consider Bombs as Blanks.
"Attackers" only care about Bombs, and count Shields as Blanks.
What is the most balanced arrangement of sides? I think it's going to be the two Shields opposite each other, the two single Bombs opposite each other, then the Double Bomb opposite the Blank. The only problem I see is this runs into the "top spin" problem from before, but I don't think there's a good way to balance this out.
As seen from the initial "d6 as d2" problem, each of the two possible face configurations has a different way to bias the roll. It's an issue that you just have to minimize, or otherwise ignore (and assume that players will just throw the dice arbitrarily rather than with a deliberate bias). (Aside: I made a small computational error regarding Opposing Sides in my post, which has been revised. Outcome is more in favor of Case "A", but the original conclusions still hold.)
I'm going to punt on judging the arrangement you've proposed and leave verification as an exercise to you. You've got everything you need from my previous post, and there's actually not too much work that actually needs to be done. Assuming that defender rolls and attacker rolls are separate (but using the same dice), there's only a few cases to analyze. For the defender, there are two arrangements for the shield faces: adjacent, or opposite. For the attacker, there are three arrangements for the bombs: clustered (like the Case "A" "d6 as d2"), line with the double in middle, or line with the double at the end. See which combination of arrangements is best, making sure to exclude impossible cases.
Of course, 'best' may not be from a purely objective, numeric standpoint. Sometimes it makes sense to give up a little bit of numeric optimization in order to make something more visually appealing. The arrangement you've listed will be aesthetically pleasing, even if it ends up not being mathematically optimal. (Again, I haven't actually done that math so I don't actually know!)
As I’m sure you’re all dealing with, things have come to a hiatus in much of our lives. DAMAGE is on hold. I’m making tiny piecemeal progress with a roleplaying system—more a write up of what I use in place of official PbtA games* these days. Just today I’ve dug out an old story game called ‘Land Poetry’, which is for playing a farmer after the Great Bad Thing came to pass.
I’m also working on a D&D campaign setting for fun called New Zellatia, which has got ballerina robots and tree paladins in it.
Last thing, I’ve made a quick list of games I’d like to make, to the benefit of nobody:
1. Alloy Item Mutable: A game of tactical espionage action in a world of nanomachines, son!
2. The Tongue is the Sharpest Blade: Be a sensible scholar or secret dealer in an oppressive kung fu empire.
3. Love, Justice, Transformation: Be a magical school kid and fight aliens or whatever!
4. The Necessary Affairs: James Atomic Blonde Borne Legacy Impossible: The Golden Circle.
5. Starfighter Velocity: Join the fight against the Maelstrom, blow up billions of enemy ships and don’t think too hard about it, or else.
*If you know how you roll dice in Apocalypse Engine based games, it’s like that but you get to roll lots of dice.
THE GOLDEN MOVE
When nothing stands in your way, you do it to the best of your ability within the established fiction.
When you come into conflict and take action, say how you intend to do it, then roll your approach.
You always begin with one die for your approach.
Next, add one more to your roll for every:
- Aspect that could aid you, right now.
- Situational bonus earned.
- Drama dice you’re willing to spend.
- Hero assisting you.
If your best score is a 6, the result of your action is success. You gain an opportunity, reprieve, gift or insight for every 6 you roll. Your achievement is driving the fiction forward.
If your best score is 4 or 5, the result of your action is mixed. Cost, consequence or compromise is driving the fiction forward.
If your best score is 1 to 3, the result of your action is disaster. Your action is twisted against you, and the fiction is driven away from this approach permanently. Now, mark experience.
Regardless of the result, always end your action by asking one question to the host about the situation at hand. You will receive an honest and immediately useful answer on a success, otherwise you will just get the simple truth—it’s up to you to make it useful. If the question is beyond the scope of what you can perceive or reasonably guess, the host can choose not to answer at all, but never lie to you.
ASSIST
When you assist a nearby hero, say how you attempt it. They add a die to their approach and you share in the result of their action, for better or worse. You can even assist them after they have rolled their approach, lending a hand in the nick of time.
IGNITE
When you push yourself beyond your limitations and defy the odds, your call, you may ignite an applicable aspect to gain success without rolling dice. The aspect is ashed; it cannot be used in any way until you recover it as part of a move.
I'm still working on Beast Wing! I'm just also super busy with work and attic raccoons and all this other nonsense.
Been doing a bunch of random artwork instead of writing, when I probably should be writing. But at least painting space-punk furries is fun:
Also trying to settle on some story-gamey character motivation mechanics to encourage some non optimal play from time to time. Right now I'm basically looking at "Drive" tracks as little relationship/motivation/character arc trackers.
You can "take" from one gain in-game benefits varying from small motivational boosts to being completely bailed out of a situation (ie. you're space pirate boyfriend NPC just *happened* to be in the area and showed up to bail you out Han Solo style).
Alternatively you can "give" to one to level it up or progress it by making a sacrifice for your motivation or setting the group back/putting them in danger.
Thinking about having a kind of track, where you eventually resolve the character arc on either end by taking or giving. And then having a meta currency on top of that (probably spent to do big "takes" and maybe progress these Drives off screen when you're on leave) so there's something to compensate the rest of the group for when someone "gives" to their "Fear of Spiders" drive and bails on the party mid combat.
But yeah, still working on this stuff slowly! I need to figure out the best way to do simple card decks online so I can run some online playtests from quarantine.
I’ve generally found the best way to make cards with minimal effort is just taking the spreadsheet app of your choice and making the cells into little squares.
Here’s my hot take on how you personally should roll dice to help you and your pals do improv storytelling. I’m calling my system Roundhouse Fiction (for use with Land Poetry and other games that don’t exist), after the theatre made famous by Shakespeare and after getting kicked upside yo’ face.
I hate that it isn’t one sentence. I’ve tried to cut it back into a bonsai of a roleplaying game, but this’ll do. It’s not especially new, I just like it. I’m sure it’s already out there, more or less. I’ll talk through the basics but not bore you with it all.
—
ASPECTS
You begin with three aspects of your choice. There will be a general list, and one appropriate for the setting you’ve selected/made yourself.
When an aspect would aid you, roll an extra six-sided die. Nothing to it.
SITUATIONAL BONUS & DRAMA DICE
Players get moves like in Apocalypse World or Monster Hearts etc., which will grant a bonus die to [thing that archetype does] as an incentive. Game hosts will be asked to throw bonus dice out for good roleplay or advantageous positions in battle, but especially during a basic action called ‘share intimacy’—which is any talky scene where the player gets vulnerable, not just kissing or crying (an example is in a test game I ran where a mechanic let his biker pal help him fix stuff)—which will net them Drama Dice! Drama Dice is my big brain moment, I like to think, as these are kept in a player’s pool.
So, this is why I think it works. Drama Dice are special bonus dice you get to keep for doing a cool social thing or advancing the plot, but can be used to do any action. Therefore drama feeds action, which leads players to make drama to get them dice for the action, in a cycle that leads the game to play like a cheap edgy show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a character moment with Willow in her bedroom so she can go beat up Spike better. Goku talks smack with Piccolo for two episodes so he can add dice to his next attack, basically.
YOUR APPROACH
How you tackle a situation is as important as what you hope to achieve. When you come into conflict and take action, first say how you intend to approach it.
Improvised
When you’re suddenly dropped into conflict, but use your wits with fingers crossed, and grasp what you can immediately get your hands on, you’re making an improvised approach. An improvised approach is bold and unexpected, but can collapse instantly from a single misstep on your part.
Forceful
When you throw your weight around, barge through and take what you‘re after, you’re making a forceful approach. A forceful approach gets you what you want, right now, but leaves collateral in its wake, and is a hard course to steer from.
Quick
When you’re on the run, use your own momentum as leverage and slip through, you’re making a quick approach. A quick approach outpaces all other approaches, but is limited in scope and short on detail.
Graceful
When you pick your way carefully with a heightened awareness of the consequences, you’re making a graceful approach. A graceful approach takes significant time, but leaves you room to manoeuvre and a lighter tread on the situation.
Prepared
This approach is different from the others. You will not always be prepared for the situation at hand, so it won’t be an option. A prepared approach is gained by planning prior to a known task or event, or through proven past experience against a similar conflict. You can never foresee what will happen next, but you’re in decent control of the situation when you are prepared.
This... works. I’m pretty sure. You could make more, but any you make can be merged back into these five. I like these vague action templates as they can be used for physical action, how you converse with someone or even how you endure something. I feel explicitly having a prepared state will create nice character moments, like a quiet scholar wrecking a noble verbally when they try to dress them down on their own turf.
Next up: This is a rough thing for player vs player antics, but worth noting. A prepared character will always beat a forceful one, which I think is neat and will solve the issue of speed in a non-turn-based game. It will also force players to change up their style when going quick is the only thing to do against the sniper in the heavily defended fort who has her sights on you.
Initiative Order of PvP
1. Prepared + Quick (best roll wins)
2. Improvised + Forceful (best roll wins)
3. Graceful (always last)
Looking it over this will also be used during heists and other split party scenes. If the Thief in the vents has rolled graceful twice then the Face sprinting away from the alerted guards is already far away, leaving the Thief high and dry.
THE GOLDEN MOVE
At last the meat of the thing.
Before you do something, always ask the host a question about the situation at hand. You will receive a simple and honest answer; it’s up to you to make it useful. If the question is beyond the scope of what you can perceive or reasonably assume, the host will say so, but never lie to you.
When nothing stands in your way, you do it to the best of your ability within the established fiction.
When you come into conflict and take action to achieve a goal you set, say how you intend to do it, then roll your approach.
- Improvised.
- Forceful.
- Quick.
- Graceful.
- Prepared.
You always begin with one die for your approach.
Next, add one more to your roll for every:
- Aspect that could aid you, right now.
- Situational bonus earned.
- Drama dice you’re willing to spend.
- Hero assisting you.
When your best score is a 6, the result of your action is success. You gain an opportunity, reprieve, gift or insight for every 6 you roll. Your achievement is driving the fiction forward.
When your best score is 4 or 5, the result of your action is mixed. Cost, consequence or compromise is driving the fiction forward.
When your best score is 1 to 3, the result of your action is disaster. Your action is twisted against you, and the fiction is driven away from this approach. You cannot use this approach for the rest of the scene. Now, mark experience.
Hopefully not too much of a mind twister. It’s pretty much Apocalypse World really, but I like lots of dice!
Only two things make this mine. First is the disaster result. It’s not failure or miss for a start, and deeper detailing in the game host section will clear that up. It’s just that the world pushes back, and now you’ve to deal with it. Drama happens, it gets real, the bad guy advances, your shoes aren’t as cool as you thought and Sharon took Kathy to the dance.
Second is the fact that you’re hard blocked from using the same approach for anything in the scene on a disaster roll. So being forceful when you tried to overtake the village with your bandit clan didn’t work and now you’re fighting for your life. Okay. Now fight quick or improvised, or go hide (graceful) and hope for the best.
FORTUNE’S FAVOUR
Before or after you have rolled your approach you can choose to, or may be offered, a Fortune’s Favour.
The host will explain in detail a further consequence that will come to pass if you accept a greater risk to achieve your goal. If you agree, you reroll all the dice used in your approach and the best set of scores determines the result of your action.
I have no regrets about stealing Blades in the Dark’s ‘Devil’s Bargain’. It’s appropriate. I even did it in black leather and steampunk goggles to be sure. So this is all part of my plan to have players court danger, ask for trouble, make things interesting. If you’re rerolling 5 dice you’re bound to succeed, but that’s fine because you’ve willingly created more problems anyway!
ASSIST
When you assist a nearby hero, say how you’re able to do it. They add a die to their approach and you share in the result of their action, for better or worse. You can even assist them after they have rolled their approach, lending a hand in the nick of time.
I don’t know if anything I run is right, but I’ve seen a few teamwork effects and I feel that simply flicking a die over to your mate with the risk their trouble is about to become your trouble is fun and interesting, without the jank of Dungeon World’s bonds or whatever else. It also allows multiple participants at the risk you’re all messed up.
IGNITE
When you push yourself beyond your limitations and defy the odds, your call, you may ignite an applicable aspect to gain success without rolling dice. The aspect is ashed; it cannot be used in any way until you recover.
Why does this exist, haven’t I got enough ways for them to win? Yes, but it’s all about tempting players to face hardship. If Power Panther is willing to be exhausted throwing a train car, ashing their [Strong] aspect leaving them to approach things differently for an hour, that’s the ideal for me.
Thems the basics. Thoughts?
I’m building this alongside making the playbooks/classes for Land Poetry, which is pretty fun. Making the Hewn right now, who is the ‘git off my lawn’ archetype of farmer.
I’ve been a lot of design work this week but I’m not yet at a point where I’m willing to show off version 0.1 of Land Poetry, so instead, here’s a naff title:
What I will say is... it’s Moomins, okay? It’s Harvest Moon too, but mostly it’s Moomins. Will people actually want to play a game set in a valley where you play as a grumpy vagabond who smokes a pipe, or an angry kid who isn’t really that mean, or a soft person that bakes cookies?
The only conflict will be the weather, looking after sheep and fixing broken things.
There are rules for cooking, and the power boosts good food grants.
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
edited April 2020
So it's not just the "@Endless_Serpents makes games" thread, I figured I should post up something I'm noodling on that I was going to anyway.
So....my brain's stuck on Spaceships lately. I've decided I'm going to host a game for a big party, and I don't like any one given game system. Therefore I'm taking the totally rational route and hacking together pieces from a bunch of games:
Movement and Flight path system from X-Wing? Check.
Damage Model and Equipment from One Page Rule's War Fleets? Check.
Damage and defense rolls from Gaslands? With X-Wing's range modifiers? Check?
Inspiration and backend work from One Billion Suns? Check.
Theming from Friends at the Table's PARTIZAN season? Check.
I need to get something on paper (I'm juggling too many projects!), but I feel like I'm headed in the direction I want.
The Protospiel Denver group is attempting to run their event entirely online this weekend, using Tabletop Simulator and similar tech. It should be an interesting experiment. It's hard for me to muster the same enthusiasm I bring to a traditional face-to-face Protospiel.
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
The Protospiel Denver group is attempting to run their event entirely online this weekend, using Tabletop Simulator and similar tech. It should be an interesting experiment. It's hard for me to muster the same enthusiasm I bring to a traditional face-to-face Protospiel.
At least it's something. I only just learned about the Protospiel circuit a couple years ago, and having visited one I get what you're saying. It's still better than wholesale cancellations though, which is what happened to my local one (Milwaukee).
Protospiel Online went better than I expected. The moderator crew was excellent, getting people into games and assisting with technical issues. It's not nearly as smooth as in person but I was happily surprised. I got some tests in of the games in progress I have converted to digital form, and learned a lot about what's possible in TTS. It has inspired me to work on converting some other designs I had dismissed as too complicated.
Design wise I’m getting really stuck in to this D&D fantasy setting, which I’m realising wouldn’t take much to convert to the system I’m designing once it’s complete. Really, apart from race choice and some monsters it’s pure fluff.
Speaking of, the actual write up of my homemade system is on hold, but I’m using my system (in simplified form) right now to run a multipart set of sessions for my crew. They’re nomad outriders leading their tribe across the ruined world! They eat monsters!
I feel like this is progress in itself, even if I’ve stopping writing it up for now. It works, and as hypothesised rolling lots of dice is funner, even if it’s basically Apocalypse World (success, partial, miss; fail forward).
Painfully, in five minutes I’ve come up with a MonsterHearts supplement called Bury the Pitchforks, which would be about 20 somethings getting tangled in the supernatural again after years suppressing it. Not time to make that right now though!
Rather than post unnecessarily I’ll just say I’m now working on my zillionth project, Unknown Company, an XCOM war game which honestly has little purpose but to take my mind off things. You can see it slowly progress below before I stop updating it f o r e v e r .
I’m at a good place with a couple of projects—time to prototype something I won’t finish!
Project: A Response Force Tactical Combat Thing
Let’s call it Unknown Company, or U-COM.
I’m thinking I’ll steal from XCOM and Metal Gear Solid, and a little of F.E.A.R, and hey, Hellboy too. Basically you’re operatives of a clandestine organisation. There is advanced nanotechnology and robotics, aliens exist, but also so does some mystical stuff—but in-setting they’re all written off with technobabble explanations.
It’ll be turn based, and use a simple action economy (you can move, make one primary action and one quick action per turn). With abilities and ‘spells’ to mix things up.
I’m ditching dice for a weird contested coin flip system because brain exercise.
The main kicker is I’m thinking positioning, elevation, off-turn reactions and supporting your allies is the main drive to combat, and absolutely imperative to dealing any significant damage.
So far I’m thinking you attack like this:
Take a Shot
You fire on a target in weapon range, expending 1 ammunition.
The outcome of this action is determined via a contested action. This is made by the opposing entities flipping coins. Heads is a success. Tails is a failure.
You make a hostile flip. A hostile flip consists of a number of coins, with a minimum of one coin.
- Add a number of coins equal to your weapon rating.
- Add a number of coins equal to your positioning.
- - One for flanking the target.
- - One for elevation over the target.
- - One if you’re hidden from the target.
- Lastly, add a coin if the target has already been fired upon this round.
The target makes a defensive flip. A defensive flip consists of a number of coins, with a minimum of one coin.
- Add a number of coins equal to your shield rating.
- Add a number of coins equal to your cover.
- - One for partial cover.
- - Two for full cover.
- - One more if a second form of cover is within an adjacent space.
- Lastly, add a coin if you have made the Evade action.
When you have a greater number of heads, you deal your maximum damage to the target.
When the results tie, you deal your minimum damage to the target.
When the target has a greater number of heads, you deal no damage to the target—they dodge or their cover is sufficient. You cannot make the Take a Shot action from your current position again.
On to weapons.
Weapons might like like...
Pistol
Weapon Rating: 1
Minimum Damage: 1
Maximum Damage: 3
Ammunition: 3 (at zero, do reload action or switch weapons)
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Not 100% if this is a board game or a roleplaying game, but I’m imagining it playing like a much faster D&D with greater enforcement of cover, movement and tactics.
I was digging around some of my old college game design stuff, and I came across a card game I created.
It's called Card War (temporary name) and it's meant for 2-players. The only things needed are 4 tokens (coins or whatever), the "game board", and a deck of cards. Here's the entire game:
And here's an example of a typical turn:
Typo alert: The final scores should have been 12-10. Silly 2011 Dover!
The original idea was a game meant to be played quickly with a standard deck of cards. The catch was that the "game board" shown above was printed on the back of my business card! It was a fun way to show off my game design skills and my contact info at the same time. I did end up printing the cards like this and it turned out pretty good. The text was tough to read, but it was all-around solid. There was an alternate way to play if you didn't have my card, by simply removing the aces and placing them in order (Dia, Hrt, Spd, Clb) between the players. Each player put one token on a suit and one token where the aces meet (on Dia/Hrt for x2 red, on Hrt/Spd for blk/red, and on Spd/Clb for x2 blk).
These days, I think it would be a perfect browser and/or mobile game to play against others online. The game has a simple concept of dropping pairs, but the skill comes in bluffing and memorizing what you have and what you have seen. Smart players will be able to accurately predict what their opponent has left as the card pool diminishes.
If only I had the time and ability to create the game.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Slap some art and a theme on that it really could be an app, browser or real game!
Cards make me gravitate to Wild West, but anything could work.
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I’ve got many projects on the go, but work has me so busy I’m only adding a sentence to each one on alternate days, often written at 4am between lugging ammo around or driving a seaboat. It’s not ideal.
The one I’m getting someone on is a roleplaying system I’m currently making calling Roundhouse Fiction. It’s so derivative of other systems in the vein of Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark I’ll not bother posting about it.
Instead I’ll just thank you all for posting so far!
I need to take another crack at a game design i've got sitting around.
Provisional name was Celestial. Card battle game, intended to be a self-contained thing.
It's two big things was that rather than each player having a deck, there are four decks in the middle of the field.
Earth, Sun, Moon, (collectively referred to as Spell cards) and Creature.
Players would draw a pair of creatures first, and then four spell cards in any combo of Sun/Moon/Earth they wished.
You could play Spell cards face down to have them act as energy to let you summon creatures. However, you could also at any point, flip them up to reveal the spell that was on them - activating the spells effects. The goal was to destroy enemy creatures, taking them as tributes - or be able to attack your opponent directly, in which case you sacrificed the attacking creature and placed it into your own tribute pile.
Bigger creatures were worth more tribute points, and victory was going to be a First-past-the-post situation.
Creatures needed energy of one particular type to summon, and all cards of that type had a theme - Earth was tough, sun burned, moon was sneaky.
Spell cards additionally came in three types - Equipment would attach to a creature. When the equipped creature died, your equipment went to your own tribute pile. Quick spells could be played from your hand, for that extra nasty surprise! angle, but at a cost: You put them into the opponents tribute pile once they'd resolved. If played from the field, they'd go to your tribute pile. Normal spell cards had the advantage that once you'd played them, they flipped back to being energy again.
I basically need to figure out a good way to handle scaling it to multiplayer (So you can have 2-6 player all out brawls), and exactly how the combat resolution is handled - do creatures have toughness? What?
One thing i'm considering is maybe figuring out a way that all creatures are lost at the end of hte round - you sacrifice any survivors or something. Dunno, i need to think on it - the tension of spells-as-resources is really cool, but the limited playtesting i've done indicates the game has horrible snowball issues - if you use up all your spells AND still loose your creature, it's a real blow out.
But there's enough meat in the bluffing aspect of the game to be super, super strong and interesting - and the everyone has a shared card pool makes for really interesting emergent play
Edit: Thinking about it, i wonder if it'd work better if i did something like
Start of Round: Each player draws 6 creature cards. Possibility here that a draft mechanic could be worked into the game, which could be really cool?
Summoning Phase: Draw 2 spells (your choice). Play up to two spells face down. You can then tap these spells to summon creatures. Once all players have summoned (or forfieted their summon), move to battle phase:
Battle Phase: Creatures all duke it out. Probably have a go round the table style approach - i.e first battle, player 1 starts off, declares who they're attacking, etc. Perhaps rather than being able to attack players without creatures, if you're the only player with creatures left at the end of the battle, then you just auto sacrifice them and keep them as tributes. Also probably needs a rule of "you cant NOT attack on your turn", to stop stalled states.
At which point, repeat until all players are out of creatures. A player who's out of creatures cards would be out of the round, and no longer a valid target (So you cant just rack up points by thwacking a player who cant do anything about it) . Winner is the person with the highest tribute score.
So, to give an example:
Player 1 draws 6 critters. So does player 2-4
Player 1 draws 2 moon spells, and places both face down on the field. They then summon 2 1 energy moon critters. Player 2 draws an earth and a moon spell, places both, and summons one earth, one moon critter. Player 3 draws two sun spells, and summons a single 2 energy sun critter. Player four draws a sun and moon spell, places the sun, and passes summoning. They're now out of the fight.
Player one attacks player 3. Some used up spells later, and neither player has lost anything. Combat passes to player 2, who attacks player 1. Using their spells, they sweep both of player one's critters. It's then player 3s turn - both players have used up their spells, but player 3's critter is much stronger, so it proceeds to mulch both of player's 2 critters.
The score at the end stands at player 1: 0, player 2: 2, and player 3: 2. player 4 is at 0, having passed the round.
This time around, player 2 starts off with drawing spells and summoing, it repeats through till player 1's done so, and then player 2 gets to start combat. Repeat until all players are out of creatures.
That probably gives enough flow to things to allow the spells-as-resource mechanic to really shine (Since you can inteitonally hold off using up equipment/quickplays to cultivate)
I think my proposed Draw 6 critters, round ends when players are all out of creatures is really clean, actually.
It does suggest however, that players should just draw spells, check what they are, and put them straight onto the field, face down. So rather than have quick play spells, i think i'd just split things between equipment and returns to being face down. I think the limited # of creatures structure means that blowouts should be less of an issue too.
The other alternative is to replace Quickplays with more powerful spells that dont get to return to face down - but equipment already does that, soo... ??
I think it's probably better to have the majority of spells flip back down, and have a few powerful equipment in there. This gives some interesitng play in that revealing a spell costs you hidden information, and also adds to the ramp up feeling of a fight. On the flipside, you dont want to have TOO many spells going off, otherwise it's a lot of mental information to track. Thoguh, itm ight be a self solving thing - if spells can only be activated ocne per round, then you really only need to worry about the oppent you'r choosing to attack's spells..
Obviously, a lot of this is stuff i'd have to turn around and playtest the fuck out of... so i'll add that to the pile of creative things i need to do, aheh.
Hmm.
I should mock up a bunch of this, then force ya'll to come test it with me on roll 20 or some shit.
I really like the sound of it! I never have enough time, but I’m actually off work for a week in two weeks, so if you cook something up we could try it out on Discord. Don’t rush it though, I’ve got so many game ideas that aren’t ready to be played!
For ages I’ve wanted to make a collectible card game called Villy. It’s about villages trying to win a best village competition (something old folks in England take very seriously), but plays like a mockery of Yu Gi Oh.
I just want it to have that fool! you’ve activated my trap card! vibe, but it’s a rose bush or an old lady instead of a dragon.
—
Later today, potentially a few hours, I’m gonna post a mini version of the roleplaying system I’m making. Any criticism is welcome!
So there’s much more to it, but if I was gonna run a quick game for friends, or particular my nieces, this is my system.
It’s basically Apocalypse World without stats, and tons of dice to roll. Without playbooks / classes it’s nothing, but I think you’ll get the gist.
I would say it’s main and only draw is my approach system. They’re not stats, rather you say how you’ll approach the situation, and if you roll low you’ve got to try a different one. Basically, it bakes in not being a ‘I hit it again’ kind of player. It also exists to create an overlapping timeline in what’s otherwise a non-turn based game.
Say you’ve got a Death Race game. If Bob’s approach is quick, and Ben’s is forceful, when the host (DM/MC/the one dude) narrates the scene they can have Bob get there first, but Ben does the most damage.
There’s not a campaign I’ve run with this that hasn’t involved a group base building (entirely Blades in the Dark), so I’ll do a write up of that soon too.
It’s practically done, but I need to get on compiling various documents and getting the rest down in text. It’s so natural for me now it’s 70% in my head, which is no good to anyone not sat at my table.
@The Zombie Penguin
I figure you’d like a look as I’ll no doubt ask you to play a game of something once I’ve completed the 0.1 version.
Edit: oh and it’s called ‘Emergence’ now. The Emergence roleplaying system; does that sound okay?
So I've been tooling around with a dueling card game for a bit. I think I've posted in here in the past about it, but I have come up with an action resolution mechanic that I think is pretty neat. Some of it is inspired by reading a lot of narrative RPGs and @Endless_Serpents posts. I kept thinking about the stakes of actions and how to make a dueling combat game without minions more descriptive. I wanted actions to have weight and require sacrifice to get what you want without being simultaneous reveal or rely on interrupts and preventing opponents from getting their turns. I wanted some level of interaction baked in.
What I have decided on is an initiative system. On your turn, you choose an action from those available: each character has some base actions but can also play more advanced ones that they draw. Each of those actions has an initiative score. Your action always happens. That score determines if you were fast enough to pull it off without Risk. Risks are either baked into each action or character based. The rub comes from adding modifiers to either your or opponent actions. You can play cards that add effects or bonus actions, but they slow you down. Opponents can play cards that either trip you up and modify your action or play more defensive which lets you face less risk. Both your and opponent cards can add more Risks to your action. I think you'll have a limited amount of cards to play per round, which brings a planning element to it.
I haven't decided if I want a random modifier thrown in there or not, but I was inspired by those dice mechanics I've seen for games powered by the Apocalypse that both fail forward and have "yes, and..." or "yes, but..." as failure states. I've played a super limited hand of it, and it was interesting to me. My girlfriend was a trooper and tolerated my trying to explain it very well.
So would you say a good bit of the strategy is guessing whether your opponent is going for a quick / high initiative attack and deciding what’s best for you to do, too?
That's what I'm going for, but getting the game to play that way might take some extra tweaking. I'll post the demo rules after I play a couple more rounds!
Posts
I'd want the Hero to just look like Link, but take off the hat to reveal it's been the Princess' younger sister the whole time.
Gotta save something for DLC or a sequel.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
Not sure if they hold up well or not, or if what they did has since been written better, but I reckon the basic concepts of "look at other games that are regarded fondly and examine what they do that you might also like to do" and "have a good understanding of the math behind various methods of rolling dice" are probably pretty solid.
The Law of Root is explicitly just a Wargame style manual vs the more popular descriptive style manuals of other board games.
They're pretty helpful when your game is complex but procedural because you can just look up rules as needed and in a quick, plainly laid out manner.
I don't know if it'd really work for RPG's, both because the dryness hardly inspires genre excitement and because RPG's tend to be more intwined system wise compared to wargames.
For reading:
Kobold Guide to Game Design, 2nd Edition - good practical tips in essay form
A Theory of Fun for Game Design - skews toward video games, but nice general concepts of what makes things fun
Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design - a reference guide of the different techniques games have used to accomplish things
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses - I've not read this one, but it is a well-regarded book on the subject
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals - a heavily theoretical approach, good for building vocabulary about design
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
I have both of these, and they're really informative of game design as a field of study. They're a bit dry at times, but I found them enjoyable to get through.
(called out!)
Ya rly don't do this, it's eaten up so much extra time. Though, it was really fun, and I don't exactly regret it, but...
Yeah, stay really focused to start with. If you can
The last few posts have given me the idea to maybe include an in-character voice in boxes alongside the rules. I already think examples of play are needed, even if it’s a separate little pamphlet.
Like having the "here's how it looks as an overview and in general play" book backed up by the weird detail oriented nerd book works in 99% of cases.
We're trying out a new rule. Previously, Stat Tracks all move every round 1 closer to the base value - except for any that moved during that round. That was complicated, unfun bookkeeping.
Now, you just do +1 to any 1 of them at the end of each of your turns. This is SO much more fun! Do you recover a debuffed Track or push another towards greater buffs? If you miss on your turn, consolation prize - you still gain a Stat. Scenarios "heat up" as they progress, but bosses can do this too - and they get 3 turns per round, so there's pressure to finish.
This was the jolt I needed. Playtesting high levels was a little grueling, and running cons can be exhausting. But this was just the straight up fun I know this game is most typically defined by.
One of our players was, like, 12 or so and still got engrossed and grasped the basics. So that's awesome as well
There's still nothing better than enjoying your creation with excited new players.
I'm going to run a one-shot revolving around defending a small town from attack. Since there will be so many players, I'm going to do one shorter into battle, then a long planning preparation section, then a really elaborate battle to finish off. To ease choice paralysis, they'll pseudo-draft by picking from a bunch of sealed envelopes containing all their cards and stats and such.
Should be fun!
@Xagar Sounds like a blast! How does the envelope draft work, is an envelope an entire character package or like, bits and peices of each build? I might have to steal something like that for next time I run BeastWing and people need to make characters. Two tests ago everyone built custom stuff, and I did want to test character creation a bit, but chargen also ate up half of our session time.
Finally got some testing in with Beast Wing the other weekend and it went pretty well. The players explored an abandoned underground tech-ruin to find some ancient ships and escape the planet they were on. Did a ton of exploration and some foraging encounters plus 4 combats in about 4 hours. Half the reason I started working on this game is I wanted something pretty *lean* as far as speed of resolving rules, so I was pretty pleased with the overall result.
I definitely should have pushed some of the stats on the native planetary fauna and on some of the security robots they fought in the ruins. Everyone kind of made class cannons so I was a bit weary of overdoing it, particularly as I don't have a ton of playtest experience for where foe numbers should be, but there's minimal incentive to spend a turn moving out of the way, without big haymakers flying around, doubly so if your attack going off will KO the enemy and also avoid the attack because they are dead. Next session I run I'll throw a pushed apex predator (which is basically a really big monster, with individual stats and attacks for each body part...think a monster hunter monster...) at them and see how things go.
1. Character Select (premade character with a few backstory, personality, place in the town itself, specialties e.g. D&D skills) - 8 envelopes, each with half a discipline (4 cards)
2. Short battle, ending with the threat of a much larger one in just over a day
3. Players get the other half of their discipline (4 cards)
4. Players have a set number of time periods (4?) to prepare - I pass around a list of reasonable actions to take at this point (send for help, scout, set up barricades, arm townies, get a golem, make some potions), and everyone chooses one. These are generally easier depending on how many of the people do the same action.
5. Halfway through something bad happens, sabotaging one of their preparations or killing an NPC - there's a traitor!
6. There are a few more time periods for people to prepare and discover the traitor
7. People get to choose another discipline (8 cards) right before the battle, then they make a build of 8 cards with their two disciplines
8. Battle!
9. Cool epilogue OR everybody dies!
A typical d6 has the numbers 1 through 6, one on each face, with opposite sides adding to 7 (1 opposite 6, etc.). Ignoring handedness, this means you'll have something that looks like this:
Let's say I want to build a six-sided die with nonstandard faces. I want A,A,A,B,B,B or something that effectively splits the die evenly into two different types of faces.
Which would you consider to be more "fair"?
Replace the 1,2,3 with A and 6,5,4 with B. This places each of A and B on effectively a "hemisphere" of the die.
Replace the 1,2,6 with A and 4,5,3 with B. This places A and B as a sort of pair of linked C shapes geometrically.
I think the second case is less fair, because you could more easily roll the die along one axis and effectively turn it into a rolling "dial" ignoring two sides and giving you a sequence of AAAB or BBBA to result from. But I still have this nagging concern that the first case is also somehow unfair or unbalanced, and I'm just not seeing it.
*I am aware six-sided d2's and Even-Odd dice exist, but I can't find examples of breakouts of the die faces anywhere.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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Fortunately, the case of labeling a 6-sided die with {1,1,1,2,2,2} is small enough that we can easily make a manual comparison. As you've noted, there are only two cases: Case "A" has same-valued sides arranged around a single vertex (corner) of the cube, while Case "B" has same-valued sides arranged in lines (that, when folded, form interlocking U-shapes). How do these compare under the various criteria laid out in the above paper?
Opposing Sides: Conventionally, dice have opposing sides equal the same value. This holds for case "A", with each 1 face opposite a 2 face. For case "B", however, the opposing sides sum up to {2, 3, 4} due to the faces' wraparound. Advantage to Case "A".
Vertex Sums: What are the sums of the faces around each corner of each die? Case "A" has a distribution of {3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6} while Case "B" has a distribution of {4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5}. Slight advantage to Case "B".
Equatorial Bands: What are the sums of the faces in each 'axis' of each die? Case "A" has sums of {6, 6, 6} while case "B" has sums of {5, 6, 7}. Slight advantage to Case "A".
Face Sums: Due to the small size of the d6, the sums of faces adjacent to each face (but not the face itself) equals the sum around an axis band. As such, Case "A" has the same advantage as the previous criteria.
Full Face Sums: If we take the face's value plus its neighbors, then the equation changes slightly. Because of how high bands in case "B" necessarily leave out low numbers and vice versa, both cases result in the same distribution of full face sums: {7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8}.
Taking all of these criteria together suggests that Case "A", with its opposing poles, is better than Case "B". But it is not a fully dominant victory, as a roll with a particular horizontal spin (like a top) may have that nagging unfairness like rolling Case "B" along a particular face-wise axis.
In addition, aesthetically (as opposed to numerically), Case "A" can look a bit odd, since it might be off-putting to look at the die along its corner and see three of the same number. You'll always see different numbers in a Case "B" die. (Take for example, the specialist Q-workshop d2, which is very much like a Case "B" d6, but with rounded edges.)
Ah, there it is! I knew that nagging feeling was legit, I just couldn't picture how to physically throw the die to unbalance its result. Like a top!
Extra +Awesome for the unnecessary rigor! That's the kind of effort I can get behind.
Okay, next question: let's say I'm designing a die for a game, and to minimize cost I only want to use one style of d6. I need to put symbology on it for both "attackers" and "defenders". As part of my design, rolls inherently favor the attacker, therefore the following are the faces of the die:
Blank, Shield, Shield, Bomb, Bomb, Double Bomb
Blank does nothing.
"Defenders" only care about Shields, and consider Bombs as Blanks.
"Attackers" only care about Bombs, and count Shields as Blanks.
What is the most balanced arrangement of sides? I think it's going to be the two Shields opposite each other, the two single Bombs opposite each other, then the Double Bomb opposite the Blank. The only problem I see is this runs into the "top spin" problem from before, but I don't think there's a good way to balance this out.
I'm going to punt on judging the arrangement you've proposed and leave verification as an exercise to you. You've got everything you need from my previous post, and there's actually not too much work that actually needs to be done. Assuming that defender rolls and attacker rolls are separate (but using the same dice), there's only a few cases to analyze. For the defender, there are two arrangements for the shield faces: adjacent, or opposite. For the attacker, there are three arrangements for the bombs: clustered (like the Case "A" "d6 as d2"), line with the double in middle, or line with the double at the end. See which combination of arrangements is best, making sure to exclude impossible cases.
Of course, 'best' may not be from a purely objective, numeric standpoint. Sometimes it makes sense to give up a little bit of numeric optimization in order to make something more visually appealing. The arrangement you've listed will be aesthetically pleasing, even if it ends up not being mathematically optimal. (Again, I haven't actually done that math so I don't actually know!)
As I’m sure you’re all dealing with, things have come to a hiatus in much of our lives. DAMAGE is on hold. I’m making tiny piecemeal progress with a roleplaying system—more a write up of what I use in place of official PbtA games* these days. Just today I’ve dug out an old story game called ‘Land Poetry’, which is for playing a farmer after the Great Bad Thing came to pass.
I’m also working on a D&D campaign setting for fun called New Zellatia, which has got ballerina robots and tree paladins in it.
Last thing, I’ve made a quick list of games I’d like to make, to the benefit of nobody:
1. Alloy Item Mutable: A game of tactical espionage action in a world of nanomachines, son!
2. The Tongue is the Sharpest Blade: Be a sensible scholar or secret dealer in an oppressive kung fu empire.
3. Love, Justice, Transformation: Be a magical school kid and fight aliens or whatever!
4. The Necessary Affairs: James Atomic Blonde Borne Legacy Impossible: The Golden Circle.
5. Starfighter Velocity: Join the fight against the Maelstrom, blow up billions of enemy ships and don’t think too hard about it, or else.
*If you know how you roll dice in Apocalypse Engine based games, it’s like that but you get to roll lots of dice.
THE GOLDEN MOVE
When nothing stands in your way, you do it to the best of your ability within the established fiction.
When you come into conflict and take action, say how you intend to do it, then roll your approach.
You always begin with one die for your approach.
Next, add one more to your roll for every:
- Aspect that could aid you, right now.
- Situational bonus earned.
- Drama dice you’re willing to spend.
- Hero assisting you.
If your best score is a 6, the result of your action is success. You gain an opportunity, reprieve, gift or insight for every 6 you roll. Your achievement is driving the fiction forward.
If your best score is 4 or 5, the result of your action is mixed. Cost, consequence or compromise is driving the fiction forward.
If your best score is 1 to 3, the result of your action is disaster. Your action is twisted against you, and the fiction is driven away from this approach permanently. Now, mark experience.
Regardless of the result, always end your action by asking one question to the host about the situation at hand. You will receive an honest and immediately useful answer on a success, otherwise you will just get the simple truth—it’s up to you to make it useful. If the question is beyond the scope of what you can perceive or reasonably guess, the host can choose not to answer at all, but never lie to you.
ASSIST
When you assist a nearby hero, say how you attempt it. They add a die to their approach and you share in the result of their action, for better or worse. You can even assist them after they have rolled their approach, lending a hand in the nick of time.
IGNITE
When you push yourself beyond your limitations and defy the odds, your call, you may ignite an applicable aspect to gain success without rolling dice. The aspect is ashed; it cannot be used in any way until you recover it as part of a move.
Thank you for reading my contentless post.
Been doing a bunch of random artwork instead of writing, when I probably should be writing. But at least painting space-punk furries is fun:
Also trying to settle on some story-gamey character motivation mechanics to encourage some non optimal play from time to time. Right now I'm basically looking at "Drive" tracks as little relationship/motivation/character arc trackers.
You can "take" from one gain in-game benefits varying from small motivational boosts to being completely bailed out of a situation (ie. you're space pirate boyfriend NPC just *happened* to be in the area and showed up to bail you out Han Solo style).
Alternatively you can "give" to one to level it up or progress it by making a sacrifice for your motivation or setting the group back/putting them in danger.
Thinking about having a kind of track, where you eventually resolve the character arc on either end by taking or giving. And then having a meta currency on top of that (probably spent to do big "takes" and maybe progress these Drives off screen when you're on leave) so there's something to compensate the rest of the group for when someone "gives" to their "Fear of Spiders" drive and bails on the party mid combat.
But yeah, still working on this stuff slowly! I need to figure out the best way to do simple card decks online so I can run some online playtests from quarantine.
I hate that it isn’t one sentence. I’ve tried to cut it back into a bonsai of a roleplaying game, but this’ll do. It’s not especially new, I just like it. I’m sure it’s already out there, more or less. I’ll talk through the basics but not bore you with it all.
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ASPECTS
You begin with three aspects of your choice. There will be a general list, and one appropriate for the setting you’ve selected/made yourself.
SITUATIONAL BONUS & DRAMA DICE
Players get moves like in Apocalypse World or Monster Hearts etc., which will grant a bonus die to [thing that archetype does] as an incentive. Game hosts will be asked to throw bonus dice out for good roleplay or advantageous positions in battle, but especially during a basic action called ‘share intimacy’—which is any talky scene where the player gets vulnerable, not just kissing or crying (an example is in a test game I ran where a mechanic let his biker pal help him fix stuff)—which will net them Drama Dice! Drama Dice is my big brain moment, I like to think, as these are kept in a player’s pool.
So, this is why I think it works. Drama Dice are special bonus dice you get to keep for doing a cool social thing or advancing the plot, but can be used to do any action. Therefore drama feeds action, which leads players to make drama to get them dice for the action, in a cycle that leads the game to play like a cheap edgy show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a character moment with Willow in her bedroom so she can go beat up Spike better. Goku talks smack with Piccolo for two episodes so he can add dice to his next attack, basically.
YOUR APPROACH
This... works. I’m pretty sure. You could make more, but any you make can be merged back into these five. I like these vague action templates as they can be used for physical action, how you converse with someone or even how you endure something. I feel explicitly having a prepared state will create nice character moments, like a quiet scholar wrecking a noble verbally when they try to dress them down on their own turf.
Next up: This is a rough thing for player vs player antics, but worth noting. A prepared character will always beat a forceful one, which I think is neat and will solve the issue of speed in a non-turn-based game. It will also force players to change up their style when going quick is the only thing to do against the sniper in the heavily defended fort who has her sights on you.
Looking it over this will also be used during heists and other split party scenes. If the Thief in the vents has rolled graceful twice then the Face sprinting away from the alerted guards is already far away, leaving the Thief high and dry.
THE GOLDEN MOVE
At last the meat of the thing.
Hopefully not too much of a mind twister. It’s pretty much Apocalypse World really, but I like lots of dice!
Only two things make this mine. First is the disaster result. It’s not failure or miss for a start, and deeper detailing in the game host section will clear that up. It’s just that the world pushes back, and now you’ve to deal with it. Drama happens, it gets real, the bad guy advances, your shoes aren’t as cool as you thought and Sharon took Kathy to the dance.
Second is the fact that you’re hard blocked from using the same approach for anything in the scene on a disaster roll. So being forceful when you tried to overtake the village with your bandit clan didn’t work and now you’re fighting for your life. Okay. Now fight quick or improvised, or go hide (graceful) and hope for the best.
FORTUNE’S FAVOUR
I have no regrets about stealing Blades in the Dark’s ‘Devil’s Bargain’. It’s appropriate. I even did it in black leather and steampunk goggles to be sure. So this is all part of my plan to have players court danger, ask for trouble, make things interesting. If you’re rerolling 5 dice you’re bound to succeed, but that’s fine because you’ve willingly created more problems anyway!
ASSIST
I don’t know if anything I run is right, but I’ve seen a few teamwork effects and I feel that simply flicking a die over to your mate with the risk their trouble is about to become your trouble is fun and interesting, without the jank of Dungeon World’s bonds or whatever else. It also allows multiple participants at the risk you’re all messed up.
IGNITE
Why does this exist, haven’t I got enough ways for them to win? Yes, but it’s all about tempting players to face hardship. If Power Panther is willing to be exhausted throwing a train car, ashing their [Strong] aspect leaving them to approach things differently for an hour, that’s the ideal for me.
Thems the basics. Thoughts?
I’m building this alongside making the playbooks/classes for Land Poetry, which is pretty fun. Making the Hewn right now, who is the ‘git off my lawn’ archetype of farmer.
What I will say is... it’s Moomins, okay? It’s Harvest Moon too, but mostly it’s Moomins. Will people actually want to play a game set in a valley where you play as a grumpy vagabond who smokes a pipe, or an angry kid who isn’t really that mean, or a soft person that bakes cookies?
The only conflict will be the weather, looking after sheep and fixing broken things.
There are rules for cooking, and the power boosts good food grants.
I like it.
Land Poetry is also this song:
So....my brain's stuck on Spaceships lately. I've decided I'm going to host a game for a big party, and I don't like any one given game system. Therefore I'm taking the totally rational route and hacking together pieces from a bunch of games:
Movement and Flight path system from X-Wing? Check.
Damage Model and Equipment from One Page Rule's War Fleets? Check.
Damage and defense rolls from Gaslands? With X-Wing's range modifiers? Check?
Inspiration and backend work from One Billion Suns? Check.
Theming from Friends at the Table's PARTIZAN season? Check.
I need to get something on paper (I'm juggling too many projects!), but I feel like I'm headed in the direction I want.
At least it's something. I only just learned about the Protospiel circuit a couple years ago, and having visited one I get what you're saying. It's still better than wholesale cancellations though, which is what happened to my local one (Milwaukee).
My play logs for the three days:
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/103567/protospiel-online-2020-friday
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/103586/protospiel-online-2020-saturday
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/103619/protospiel-online-2020-sunday
Speaking of, the actual write up of my homemade system is on hold, but I’m using my system (in simplified form) right now to run a multipart set of sessions for my crew. They’re nomad outriders leading their tribe across the ruined world! They eat monsters!
I feel like this is progress in itself, even if I’ve stopping writing it up for now. It works, and as hypothesised rolling lots of dice is funner, even if it’s basically Apocalypse World (success, partial, miss; fail forward).
Painfully, in five minutes I’ve come up with a MonsterHearts supplement called Bury the Pitchforks, which would be about 20 somethings getting tangled in the supernatural again after years suppressing it. Not time to make that right now though!
Last thing, no comment:
Define & Object
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RQyQPjkFHmtEnfVClV-ckl1Oe2yOC7G9qK46V8WwZ8s/edit
Old post under cut:
Project: A Response Force Tactical Combat Thing
Let’s call it Unknown Company, or U-COM.
I’m thinking I’ll steal from XCOM and Metal Gear Solid, and a little of F.E.A.R, and hey, Hellboy too. Basically you’re operatives of a clandestine organisation. There is advanced nanotechnology and robotics, aliens exist, but also so does some mystical stuff—but in-setting they’re all written off with technobabble explanations.
It’ll be turn based, and use a simple action economy (you can move, make one primary action and one quick action per turn). With abilities and ‘spells’ to mix things up.
I’m ditching dice for a weird contested coin flip system because brain exercise.
The main kicker is I’m thinking positioning, elevation, off-turn reactions and supporting your allies is the main drive to combat, and absolutely imperative to dealing any significant damage.
So far I’m thinking you attack like this:
Take a Shot
You fire on a target in weapon range, expending 1 ammunition.
The outcome of this action is determined via a contested action. This is made by the opposing entities flipping coins. Heads is a success. Tails is a failure.
You make a hostile flip. A hostile flip consists of a number of coins, with a minimum of one coin.
- Add a number of coins equal to your weapon rating.
- Add a number of coins equal to your positioning.
- - One for flanking the target.
- - One for elevation over the target.
- - One if you’re hidden from the target.
- Lastly, add a coin if the target has already been fired upon this round.
The target makes a defensive flip. A defensive flip consists of a number of coins, with a minimum of one coin.
- Add a number of coins equal to your shield rating.
- Add a number of coins equal to your cover.
- - One for partial cover.
- - Two for full cover.
- - One more if a second form of cover is within an adjacent space.
- Lastly, add a coin if you have made the Evade action.
When you have a greater number of heads, you deal your maximum damage to the target.
When the results tie, you deal your minimum damage to the target.
When the target has a greater number of heads, you deal no damage to the target—they dodge or their cover is sufficient. You cannot make the Take a Shot action from your current position again.
On to weapons.
Weapons might like like...
Pistol
Weapon Rating: 1
Minimum Damage: 1
Maximum Damage: 3
Ammunition: 3 (at zero, do reload action or switch weapons)
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Not 100% if this is a board game or a roleplaying game, but I’m imagining it playing like a much faster D&D with greater enforcement of cover, movement and tactics.
It's called Card War (temporary name) and it's meant for 2-players. The only things needed are 4 tokens (coins or whatever), the "game board", and a deck of cards. Here's the entire game:
And here's an example of a typical turn:
Typo alert: The final scores should have been 12-10. Silly 2011 Dover!
The original idea was a game meant to be played quickly with a standard deck of cards. The catch was that the "game board" shown above was printed on the back of my business card! It was a fun way to show off my game design skills and my contact info at the same time. I did end up printing the cards like this and it turned out pretty good. The text was tough to read, but it was all-around solid. There was an alternate way to play if you didn't have my card, by simply removing the aces and placing them in order (Dia, Hrt, Spd, Clb) between the players. Each player put one token on a suit and one token where the aces meet (on Dia/Hrt for x2 red, on Hrt/Spd for blk/red, and on Spd/Clb for x2 blk).
These days, I think it would be a perfect browser and/or mobile game to play against others online. The game has a simple concept of dropping pairs, but the skill comes in bluffing and memorizing what you have and what you have seen. Smart players will be able to accurately predict what their opponent has left as the card pool diminishes.
If only I had the time and ability to create the game.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
That’s a cool little concept!
Slap some art and a theme on that it really could be an app, browser or real game!
Cards make me gravitate to Wild West, but anything could work.
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I’ve got many projects on the go, but work has me so busy I’m only adding a sentence to each one on alternate days, often written at 4am between lugging ammo around or driving a seaboat. It’s not ideal.
The one I’m getting someone on is a roleplaying system I’m currently making calling Roundhouse Fiction. It’s so derivative of other systems in the vein of Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark I’ll not bother posting about it.
Instead I’ll just thank you all for posting so far!
Provisional name was Celestial. Card battle game, intended to be a self-contained thing.
It's two big things was that rather than each player having a deck, there are four decks in the middle of the field.
Earth, Sun, Moon, (collectively referred to as Spell cards) and Creature.
Players would draw a pair of creatures first, and then four spell cards in any combo of Sun/Moon/Earth they wished.
You could play Spell cards face down to have them act as energy to let you summon creatures. However, you could also at any point, flip them up to reveal the spell that was on them - activating the spells effects. The goal was to destroy enemy creatures, taking them as tributes - or be able to attack your opponent directly, in which case you sacrificed the attacking creature and placed it into your own tribute pile.
Bigger creatures were worth more tribute points, and victory was going to be a First-past-the-post situation.
Creatures needed energy of one particular type to summon, and all cards of that type had a theme - Earth was tough, sun burned, moon was sneaky.
Spell cards additionally came in three types - Equipment would attach to a creature. When the equipped creature died, your equipment went to your own tribute pile. Quick spells could be played from your hand, for that extra nasty surprise! angle, but at a cost: You put them into the opponents tribute pile once they'd resolved. If played from the field, they'd go to your tribute pile. Normal spell cards had the advantage that once you'd played them, they flipped back to being energy again.
I basically need to figure out a good way to handle scaling it to multiplayer (So you can have 2-6 player all out brawls), and exactly how the combat resolution is handled - do creatures have toughness? What?
One thing i'm considering is maybe figuring out a way that all creatures are lost at the end of hte round - you sacrifice any survivors or something. Dunno, i need to think on it - the tension of spells-as-resources is really cool, but the limited playtesting i've done indicates the game has horrible snowball issues - if you use up all your spells AND still loose your creature, it's a real blow out.
But there's enough meat in the bluffing aspect of the game to be super, super strong and interesting - and the everyone has a shared card pool makes for really interesting emergent play
Edit: Thinking about it, i wonder if it'd work better if i did something like
Start of Round: Each player draws 6 creature cards. Possibility here that a draft mechanic could be worked into the game, which could be really cool?
Summoning Phase: Draw 2 spells (your choice). Play up to two spells face down. You can then tap these spells to summon creatures. Once all players have summoned (or forfieted their summon), move to battle phase:
Battle Phase: Creatures all duke it out. Probably have a go round the table style approach - i.e first battle, player 1 starts off, declares who they're attacking, etc. Perhaps rather than being able to attack players without creatures, if you're the only player with creatures left at the end of the battle, then you just auto sacrifice them and keep them as tributes. Also probably needs a rule of "you cant NOT attack on your turn", to stop stalled states.
At which point, repeat until all players are out of creatures. A player who's out of creatures cards would be out of the round, and no longer a valid target (So you cant just rack up points by thwacking a player who cant do anything about it) . Winner is the person with the highest tribute score.
So, to give an example:
Player 1 draws 6 critters. So does player 2-4
Player 1 draws 2 moon spells, and places both face down on the field. They then summon 2 1 energy moon critters. Player 2 draws an earth and a moon spell, places both, and summons one earth, one moon critter. Player 3 draws two sun spells, and summons a single 2 energy sun critter. Player four draws a sun and moon spell, places the sun, and passes summoning. They're now out of the fight.
Player one attacks player 3. Some used up spells later, and neither player has lost anything. Combat passes to player 2, who attacks player 1. Using their spells, they sweep both of player one's critters. It's then player 3s turn - both players have used up their spells, but player 3's critter is much stronger, so it proceeds to mulch both of player's 2 critters.
The score at the end stands at player 1: 0, player 2: 2, and player 3: 2. player 4 is at 0, having passed the round.
This time around, player 2 starts off with drawing spells and summoing, it repeats through till player 1's done so, and then player 2 gets to start combat. Repeat until all players are out of creatures.
That probably gives enough flow to things to allow the spells-as-resource mechanic to really shine (Since you can inteitonally hold off using up equipment/quickplays to cultivate)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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I think my proposed Draw 6 critters, round ends when players are all out of creatures is really clean, actually.
It does suggest however, that players should just draw spells, check what they are, and put them straight onto the field, face down. So rather than have quick play spells, i think i'd just split things between equipment and returns to being face down. I think the limited # of creatures structure means that blowouts should be less of an issue too.
The other alternative is to replace Quickplays with more powerful spells that dont get to return to face down - but equipment already does that, soo... ??
I think it's probably better to have the majority of spells flip back down, and have a few powerful equipment in there. This gives some interesitng play in that revealing a spell costs you hidden information, and also adds to the ramp up feeling of a fight. On the flipside, you dont want to have TOO many spells going off, otherwise it's a lot of mental information to track. Thoguh, itm ight be a self solving thing - if spells can only be activated ocne per round, then you really only need to worry about the oppent you'r choosing to attack's spells..
Obviously, a lot of this is stuff i'd have to turn around and playtest the fuck out of... so i'll add that to the pile of creative things i need to do, aheh.
Hmm.
I should mock up a bunch of this, then force ya'll to come test it with me on roll 20 or some shit.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
For ages I’ve wanted to make a collectible card game called Villy. It’s about villages trying to win a best village competition (something old folks in England take very seriously), but plays like a mockery of Yu Gi Oh.
I just want it to have that fool! you’ve activated my trap card! vibe, but it’s a rose bush or an old lady instead of a dragon.
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Later today, potentially a few hours, I’m gonna post a mini version of the roleplaying system I’m making. Any criticism is welcome!
It’s basically Apocalypse World without stats, and tons of dice to roll. Without playbooks / classes it’s nothing, but I think you’ll get the gist.
I would say it’s main and only draw is my approach system. They’re not stats, rather you say how you’ll approach the situation, and if you roll low you’ve got to try a different one. Basically, it bakes in not being a ‘I hit it again’ kind of player. It also exists to create an overlapping timeline in what’s otherwise a non-turn based game.
Say you’ve got a Death Race game. If Bob’s approach is quick, and Ben’s is forceful, when the host (DM/MC/the one dude) narrates the scene they can have Bob get there first, but Ben does the most damage.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_aS_DxBU8hVUahlMTyj9p3h9bcYE4Rr1eSNGiYkWPEw/edit
There’s not a campaign I’ve run with this that hasn’t involved a group base building (entirely Blades in the Dark), so I’ll do a write up of that soon too.
It’s practically done, but I need to get on compiling various documents and getting the rest down in text. It’s so natural for me now it’s 70% in my head, which is no good to anyone not sat at my table.
@The Zombie Penguin
I figure you’d like a look as I’ll no doubt ask you to play a game of something once I’ve completed the 0.1 version.
Edit: oh and it’s called ‘Emergence’ now. The Emergence roleplaying system; does that sound okay?
What I have decided on is an initiative system. On your turn, you choose an action from those available: each character has some base actions but can also play more advanced ones that they draw. Each of those actions has an initiative score. Your action always happens. That score determines if you were fast enough to pull it off without Risk. Risks are either baked into each action or character based. The rub comes from adding modifiers to either your or opponent actions. You can play cards that add effects or bonus actions, but they slow you down. Opponents can play cards that either trip you up and modify your action or play more defensive which lets you face less risk. Both your and opponent cards can add more Risks to your action. I think you'll have a limited amount of cards to play per round, which brings a planning element to it.
I haven't decided if I want a random modifier thrown in there or not, but I was inspired by those dice mechanics I've seen for games powered by the Apocalypse that both fail forward and have "yes, and..." or "yes, but..." as failure states. I've played a super limited hand of it, and it was interesting to me. My girlfriend was a trooper and tolerated my trying to explain it very well.
So would you say a good bit of the strategy is guessing whether your opponent is going for a quick / high initiative attack and deciding what’s best for you to do, too?