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Have dice, will [game design].

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Posts

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    My economic system is not surviving test very well. Blaaah, economic systems are such a pain. Maybe I need to separate out the finances. Very difficult to have both personal-level and domain-level finances at the same time. If you own a domain, you probably don't care about how much lunch costs. Unless maybe if you're far from home...

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
    Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
    Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Right so! I gave your gal’s game a look and it’s grand! I hope she keeps wanting to make games.



    Having seen Celeste up close as it’s being made I honestly think it’s got legs, and not just because The Zombie Penguin is a pal of mine. Keep it in mind for a future purchase!



    I wish I had the coding skills of Delzhand, because you always make your concepts look professional! I haven’t been involved in it due to life, but I hope it’s going well! I’ll take a look when it’s through.



    For me, I reckon I’ll make the art for a miniature card game ‘Villy’ that I came up with ages ago now I’m getting slightly better at drawing. No time limit on doing that, it’s just as I can. Villy is a game about trying to win a best village competition.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    @gavindel
    How’s it coming along?

    I’d personally simplify it right down, but I’m intrigued with what you’ve gone for!

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    My answer actually came from solving a different problem. I was searching for some way to handle spells. In particular, I wanted a "mana source" that would naturally rise and fall without relying on Ki. (It is difficult to balance Ki as both a short-term combat resource and a long term ritual source). After a few iterations, I decided to change Harmony from a point system to a dice size system.

    Both players and the domain have a Harmony die. Smallest is d0 (you done fucked up) and largest is d12 (in tune with the world). To do a ritual, you roll <Tier dice pool> + <Harmony dice>. Somewhere between 1d2 (d0 is automatic failure) and 4d12. Casting the ritual drains your Harmony, and you drop to the next smallest die. Thus, you have an inherently limited mana pool with a max of eight points (die sizes) and an intuitive way to store up power (get a bigger die!)

    Once I had that, I just applied it to money. I added a Standing stat, also d0 to d12, and gave it similar rules for building and spending as Harmony. Your available cash is a standard challenge roll, using <Wealth stat> + <Standing die>. Better social standing explicitly gets you better deals.

    From there Standing broadened out to be a form of social and legal defense. Once we move these actions into challenge rolls, then we can benefit from my existing rules for how to have partial failure, disastrous failure, successes, and extra successes.

    Basically, the answer was to figure out that I could make die size a part of the meta-currency behind my central mechanic and then just apply to additional domains.

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    So I had a minor development into the kind of game I'm trying to make. It's always been an objective driven, card-based squad action game. I've gone back and forth on having a map, and I tried a zone system a while back that worked pretty well. It was due for some refinement, and it made me realize what genre I'm trying to emulate from video games: hero shooters. So I started taking a look at map design from the ones I think are the most popular: TF2 and Overwatch. It led to me creating node-based maps for objectives and a couple routes that connect those nodes. I have a couple terribly drawn maps, but it made me realize easier ways to do AOE and LOS. A much bigger part of the game is controlling the routes between nodes now, almost as big as controlling the nodes themselves. Temporary barriers, smoke, shields, turrets and stuff all apply to either routes or nodes. Routes also state whether the nodes that are connected provide LOS, cover, concealment, or are blocked to ranged attacks. I'm debating on how to do control numbers for contested nodes or whether you have to clear the enemy from them via pushes, pulls, etc. Probably some combination of the two.

    The second development is a simplification of the damage system. Attacks deal threat to targets instead of damage. Threat gets wiped at the end of a round. Threat on a target can be exchanged for damage, which does not get wiped at the end of a round. When a target's threat plus damage becomes greater than their defense, they take a wound. The game is divided into two phases, the setup phase and the combat phase. The setup phase has players trade activations, playing effects like smoke bombs, moving characters and attacks that can only apply threat. The combat phase has characters act in speed order, with ties broken by who has least threat, then simultaneous. So the name of the game now is to throw as much threat/tactical prep into the setup phase at the enemy team as you can before you capitalize on it by turning it into damage and wounds in the shootout style combat phase.

    These two minor changes have led to a lot of system-wide stuff that's been easier to throw things at and see if they stick, like variable side objectives, victory points, wounds making a character respawn, all that kind of thing. I hadn't even had healing before, but it's worked its way in now as a very minor thing for a couple characters.

    If you guys have any ideas for this sort of thing, I'd love to hear them!

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    A general question for the group: what's your tolerance for variation in items?

    To give context: I have a list of ~80 reagents which are used for the crafting system. They are organized by elemental affinity, type and Tier. These are consumed for crafting recipes. Imagine a crafting recipe might say "2 helpings of Tier 3 Air-water leaf, 1 helping of Tier 3 Earth-Fire metal" as the material components.

    This already feels like a lot. I'm not sure how many people will really care. I like it cause I like the flavor of "We need to find some Moontear to imbue my sword", and I have an optional rule to automatically convert gathered resources into generic crystal salts (aka, a simple point currency for crafting).

    So far, so good. I'm okay with a little complexity when I feel it increases the flavor and immersion. My worry, beyond that, is how much granularity each of the 80 items should have. For example, should I give every single item separate factors for inventory space and how to harvest? Or should I smooth it out so that each of the five resource groups all share the same general flow? Or just drop it and let it all be "one Inventory Space (tm) per item"?

    It feels like a conflict between making the 80 items feel unique and the pain-in-the-ass factor of "Okay, this is Adamantium. Is it 3 Inventory per Adamantium or 4? And was this one of the ones with a difficulty bonus? Let me check page 323..."

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    Is crafting a focus of the game or supplementary?

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    The core game play loop outside of narrative concerns is exploring for resources gathering > gathering reagents > building up your town > building up your gear > exploring for better resources...

    My ideal fantasy is that the RPG be Harvest Moon meets Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    My personal tolerance for crafting is that I think unless an item is exceptionally good, it should be assumed that a bit of cash spent in an appropriate location like a city should get you [box of materials for a iron sword]x1. If an item is good, it should require that and a rarer item gated behind an appropriate challenge.

    Exceptionally good items could require multiple rare items, but managing individual brass buttons or yards of veg tanned leather isn't my cup of tea unless it's the core gameplay loop.

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Sounds like you'd be better off using the crystal salt conversion since the point of that is to handwave individual resources and just say "sixty fun bucks gets you a sword, last trip got you 25, 35 to go"

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    I think granularity in materials could be done with halfway measures on both. Having gathering/harvesting skills that can tackle different kinds of materials, but they all convert into X elemental currency. So if you come across adamantite, you could gather it to get X precious metals or X fire gems with different skills for both. I think having a cool encyclopedia for that is fun, but unless it serves a fundamental purpose to the game it can require too much bookkeeping.

    That being said, a bingo card for rare materials to craft a sword is cool if you can make it a part of the journey rather than tedious. Like if there were a grid for upgrading your weapons and each player wanted the same materials, it could be cool.

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Standardizing the game language is always tedious but very important. Reviewing my second draft, I used all the following terms for a player's numeric result from rolling:

    Dice pool / Dice / Pool
    Bonus / Static bonus / Bonus dice / Bonus Die
    Dice size / Dice rank / Die size / Die rank / Die power
    Result / challenge result/ challenge outcome / outcome
    Roll dice / make a challenge roll / challenge for...

    And on and on. Not a huge deal for drafts, but clean-up required. Nobody wants to end up with mishmashes like "an attack is different from a weapon attack is different from an unarmed strike". (Not that something like that would ever make it into publication...)

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    I'm working on another game. It's a "daily challenge" style strategy game that's a mashup of wordle, chess, and rock paper scissors.

    https://delzhand.github.io/tactle/

    It's mostly done, the things that are incomplete are all meta-level like stat tracking and social sharing.

    I do worry that it might be too easy, but I also might be too close to it to be objective.

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Delzhand wrote: »
    I'm working on another game. It's a "daily challenge" style strategy game that's a mashup of wordle, chess, and rock paper scissors.

    https://delzhand.github.io/tactle/

    It's mostly done, the things that are incomplete are all meta-level like stat tracking and social sharing.

    I do worry that it might be too easy, but I also might be too close to it to be objective.

    I might be an idiot, but I was surprised when the other side didn't move after the first round. Also took me a game to realize that I should be using the weak hits to spend health and move white into position.

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    No, pretty much everyone I've shown has said the same thing about the white pieces not moving. Maybe I shouldn't present it as a symmetrical game if it really isn't. The only impact the white pieces have is their starting positions and number of hearts.

    As for swapping, it's meant to be a last-ditch effort. It lowers your score by 1, but if you're not going to make it in 6 turns it can be useful. I think the problem here is that victory can be measured two ways - how few turns you can take, or score... And score isn't in the How To.

    I'll think on this. I appreciate the feedback!

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    edited April 2022
    Currently working on a Urban fantasy crime game think Arcane and Necromunda having a baby.

    The things I need to fill into that doc are:

    A) Character creation having an ABC priority pick between: Standing (more resources to use), Experience (more skills/competence out of the gate) and Weird (being deep touched, a non human or just more experienced in terms of having more techniques).

    IE Players could be A for Standing, B for Weird and C for experience to have a non human noble whose slumming it/exiled to the under city.

    Or A for experience, B for standing and C for weird to stat out an old man brawler that everyone respects as the mid level enforcer.

    B ) The combat, social and chase systems: Basically when you wanna do an Advanced Interaction rather than 'roll to knock a dude out' everyone gets Form, a mini HP bar based on a stat relevant to the conflict (combat is highest of Physique/Will, Social is Will/Charm and Chase is Wits/Physique). Then based on the form of conflict there's various rules for how you divide up initiative and hits and difficulty. There's also the concept of off balance tokens that make the next roll for someone harder (getting hit in combat makes it harder to reply, blackmail knocks you off balance and so on)

    Importantly once your form is gone you can leave with only the consequences of the action. So if you're in a fight with a cop and your form's gone you get arrested or searched. If you're in a social situation and back down from the meeting it just means you retire from the debate and so on.

    But if you wanna commit you can do so, with further damage going to Strain on your resources that both caps them and is a huge pain to recover from. But hey, risk scandel, debt and death to achieve your goals if you want!

    C) All the techniques/special rule breaks that let people feel like they're making a build. Techniques are basically there so folks who want more crunch in a narrative system. Stuff like being a gossip who subtely manipulates NPC's passions before even meeting them, being a sadist who takes advantage of people's off balance tokens in conflicts or an alchemist who can spend downtime to scrounge materials as an extra resource bar for Cool Potions.

    Albino Bunny on
  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    Neat. Sounds like you could draw some inspiration from Griftlands if you haven't done so already.

    Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
    Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Griftlands is something I still need to play more of but also it's on Epic and I never get around to booting it up :P

    Though yeah the resources of wealth, reputation and energy basically encourage you to bounce a little in between different actions to stay safe the same way you wanna mix social and conflict in griftlands even if you're specialized in one.

  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    https://delzhand.github.io/tactle/

    Now with an AI opponent and revised scoring. The score is now just how many hearts you have left at the end vs how many you started with. Sometimes it doesn't display at the end and you have to make one more move before it shows up, but that'll get fixed soon.

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Also in terms of dumb techniques:

    Gossiper: Whether it's via news paper, gossip network or Strongly Worded Letters you have a surprising hold on the social current. When you meet an NPC for the first time you may spend 2 energy to describe what facts you espouse the target has internalized. The GM will adjust the Passions for the target to incoporate those facts.

    Cull the Meek (AKA, the cop talent): In brawls you can spend energy at a 1:1 ratio to turn off balance tokens on an enemy into bonus damage.

    The Voice of the Deep (Weird talent, requires being deep touched): When you act in social confrontations you may spend 1 energy to use your Passions as a trait (you may still spend energy to boost your roll with passions as normal). If you do so you fix the difficulty at Tense. People may resent you for this later.

    Daredevil: In a chase situation you may choose to spend 1 energy to take the harm of the chase round regardless of win or loss. In return your side receives one extra success for their tally.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Wow, thread title was two years old. Gonna have a read of your stuff gang!

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Yeah, no big updates from me. I'd like to think I've nailed down my full set of core mechanics, mostly revolving around manipulating bonuses and dice pools, and I'm about halfway done converting my v1 classes into v2.

    My game system is currently 110,630 words long....and I still don't have full text for monsters or techniques...

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    I think I have enough content to go back to playtest a few rounds with my game group. The last time I ran playtest, I ran head-long into the TLDR problem with my world document. This time, let's see if I can fit everything they need into five pages.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKum3NtLDg

    It's good exercise for a system to condense it to minimal form. I have an open question about how one best presents the rules to an RPG system. As a programmer, my personal documentation for Seln Alora looks a lot like a design spec. "if this, then this. If that, then not that." However, such decision trees in text form can make a reader's head swim.

    I don't know. I can think of a lot of rule books where they outline the rules wrong and not so many where I think it was right...

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    gavindel wrote: »
    I think I have enough content to go back to playtest a few rounds with my game group. The last time I ran playtest, I ran head-long into the TLDR problem with my world document. This time, let's see if I can fit everything they need into five pages.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKum3NtLDg

    It's good exercise for a system to condense it to minimal form. I have an open question about how one best presents the rules to an RPG system. As a programmer, my personal documentation for Seln Alora looks a lot like a design spec. "if this, then this. If that, then not that." However, such decision trees in text form can make a reader's head swim.

    I don't know. I can think of a lot of rule books where they outline the rules wrong and not so many where I think it was right...

    I have to agree, going as minimal as possible, building it back up and doing it again is a great approach to design.



    I don’t have any great updates either, my roleplaying system ‘Wreckage’ works and I’ve run and played in it but it’s still not written up in such a way I could publish it.

    For fun I making a solo/forum game about being the boss of a dungeon. It’s basically A Quiet Year.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    So for my A Quiet Year hack before you start the game the players draw two cards each from the deck (before it’s separated into seasons). Each card represents a type of monster. Very few of them have actual game mechanics, it’s just for fun. You might end up with goblins, wraiths, vampires, slimes, harpies and trolls. They each have a general note next to them, which should help fuel how you collectively roleplay the settlement.

    I’m going to make new questions (but overall it’s just default A Quiet Year) that reflect this diversity of population. Groups might come into play as usual, but this hack basically adds ethnicity and culture to the mix. Who hates who? Who works well together? Who can’t conform to a new rule? Who is marginalised? Who is privileged?

    The premise is the monsters have just lost, and have run away to some backwater location.

    Stopping for today, but I reckon I’ll have it done in a week, to some degree.

    flm9l9lv5yr5.png

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    At this point I feel like I have a cross-system engine that works relatively well. Dice pool + dice rank. XdY + S. For Seln Alora, X is your Tier: Student (2), Warrior (3), Master (4). The dice rank is based on your choices in character creation: d4 would be a young child; d6 is the bog standard average; d8 and d10 are for specialties within your choices; and d12 is the highest die rank that you can only reach with boosts.

    The situational levers are then: Bonus die (add to dice pool), penalty die (subtract from dice pool), boost die (increase die size), break die (decrease die size).

    S is the static modifiers and is largely equipment.

    The biggest drawback I see for this system comes from the inherent drawbacks of a Gaussian distribution. As one reaches 5dY, 6dY and so forth, the normal curve gets steeper and steeper. Since a static bonus merely shifts a normal curve directly to the right, static bonuses eventually become too powerful. IE, if your opponent has a +2 on you and you're both on the same (steep) normal curve, he has a very strong advantage. The designer doesn't have enough room to actually implement meaningful numerical bonuses on either side of a fight.

    I didn't actually solve this. I just stopped at 4 dice in the pool for Seln Alora.

    My grand and overly ambitious plan is to use this basic system for the rest of the RPGs I have lined up to design over the next ten years. For example, I want to make a mech game. There you could say that 1d6 is an unmodified human; 2d6 is a human with genetic engineering, psionics, or tech. 3d6 is a personal sized mech; 4d6 is a big-gun mech; 5d6 is a ship; and 6d6 is a capital ship. There would be some wrinkles to work out there, but it does seem reasonable that a person should have basically zero chance of surviving a hit from a big-gun mech or ship.

    Really, the idea is just that the dice pool represents the magnitude of your power source (whether it be cultivation, technology, or friendship) and the dice size represents your skill with the power source. Generic enough that it should be able to flex into any genre.

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Got a fully complete hack of A Quiet Year I’m gonna run for friends soon! In the process I learned the original author did something quite similar, but ultimately I think mine is different enough that I’m glad I made it.



    My pet project Wreckage is in a stable state and so different to the original idea. It way more a tactical board game that happens to have a host than the old school roleplaying game I originally had planned. Turns out the answer to “How do you make old school turn based roleplaying games snappier?” is to rip out even the pretence of simulation. D&D really is at the half-way point between things, allowing it no advantages.

    I’m usually a story game guy, so it’s been a fun project to look at the opposite side.

    If I ever get a full week off work / I decide to burn the candle at both ends I could create a new rules document for folks.



    Today I’ve decided to pick up an idea for a Jet Set Radio / street inspired card game. Not that I got anywhere with it originally.

    I’m calling it Butterfly City Vibes.

    The main mechanic I’m playing with is “spin”—every card has a top and bottom, and you can play them either way. When they’re hit by an opposing card (because I’m not imaginative enough not to do the Magic the Hearthstone: Rune Terra style of card game) they spin around. Some examples:
    Chiller
    1/5

    Icecap. When Chiller is dropped, the aggressor is frozen on your opponent’s next turn.

    Add +1/+0 to Chiller.

    With this guy, you need to take it out in one turn, or else it comes back stronger. In the best case, you’ll remove it from play while it’s on the bottom half, or else it’ll freeze one of your cards.
    Cube-Man
    2/2

    Wall. Adjacent allies gain +0/+2 while Cube-Man is spun up.



    With this one, it provides a temporary amount of health to cards while the top half is in play. It’s nothing special otherwise, so putting just a bit of damage on it is a smart move, effectively taking a space away from your opponent.
    Indigo
    1/2

    Snipe. Indigo can attack from the back line.

    Backdown. Indigo returns to your hand and loses this ability.

    Easy enough to remove, but you’ve got to throw at least 2 damage at it, possibly pulling damage that would be better elsewhere. On the flip side, there could be some quirky strategy where you play Indigo with the bottom half, immediately putting it back in your hand, but triggering some other card’s ability like “When a card is removed from play…”.


    Now cards with two lots of text on them would force me to keep abilities concise, possibly reducing them just to symbols for the most basic, but frankly I think that’s a good thing.

    I’ll always take this
    8qgldjcfnwnd.png


    over this
    0x8ugg0g61wz.jpeg

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    If hits spin the cards around, how do you remove them? Or do they continue to build all game?

    Also, yes, card games are usually a complete mess of information overload...

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    gavindel wrote: »
    If hits spin the cards around, how do you remove them? Or do they continue to build all game?

    Also, yes, card games are usually a complete mess of information overload...

    The cards would have something like 2 to 8 health.
    Player one: Plays an 8 health card.
    Player two: Attacks it with a card they played earlier, bringing it down to 4 health. It spins.
    Player one: Attacks with this card in the new way that’s opened up by the spin.
    Player two: Attacks it again, reducing it to 0 health, removing it from the board.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    You know folks, starting to make things is so much fun and finalising things is god awful.

    Yesterday I ran Wreckage for some pals and it went really well! It’s barely a roleplaying game these days, more a tactically board game I deliberately lose, but feedback has been positive!

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Just pretend there is an evil witch hovering behind you hissing, "finish what you ssssstarted!"

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    Gonna run that modified Quiet Year here relatively soon if anyone wants a slow time Play by Post game.



    Today I’m making a boardgame that no one has thought of doing ever before, which is that one sport from the show Korra. You know, the elemental bending dodgeball thing.

    Just while I’m on the train. I’ll post it later, as I’m trying to keep it tiny in scope. This post is manly so I have to finish it by the time this train stops.

  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    Gonna run that modified Quiet Year here relatively soon if anyone wants a slow time Play by Post game.



    Today I’m making a boardgame that no one has thought of doing ever before, which is that one sport from the show Korra. You know, the elemental bending dodgeball thing.

    Just while I’m on the train. I’ll post it later, as I’m trying to keep it tiny in scope. This post is manly so I have to finish it by the time this train stops.

    I dallied around with ideas about something similar after I watched the show. Fantasy sports are fun to think about.

    Mine wound up too complicated, but it's been tooling around in the back of my head. Blitzball has also been an influence....probably why it was too complicated.

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    "Model Avatar as a TTRPG" is 100% a rite of passage for game designers.

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited June 2022
    One train journey later I came up with this. Tried to keep it as minimal as possible, as if you could play it on said train journey. Naturally I’d give the whole thing lore if I wanted to expand it, but it’s just a thought exercise.


    ELET

    ELET is a game for two players. You’ll need:
    - A coin.
    - A 6 by 6 squared board (or a standard Checkers board you can mark off).
    - 8 game pieces that can be easily defined as 2 fire, 2 air, 2 water and 2 earth sportsmen of opposing teams.
    - At least 8 game pieces identified as walls.
    - A notepad and pen / device to keep a check on sportsmen’s statistics per round.



    The Basics
    A game of ELET is played as best of three matches.
    A match is won by pushing all your opponent’s sportsmen off the back row of the board nearest your opponent.

    Before the game begins, players place 4 unique sportsmen along their respective back row in the order of their choosing.

    A coin is flipped to determine who goes first. The following match should have their opponent go first.

    On your turn, you have 4 actions. Any of your sportsmen may take a number of actions up to their AC, in whatever order you choose. You must use all 4 actions. Then your opponent takes their turn, and so on.



    Sportsmen’s Statistics

    Action Count (AC). A sportsman’s can make a number of actions equal to their AC per turn. Actions do not need to be taken consecutively. The same action can be repeated within the same round.
    Range (RAN). By default every sportsman’s range is 1 square away.
    Push Rating (PR). A sportsman’s PR determines how many squares they can push a target. A sportsman can push opponents, allies, walls and themselves.
    Stance Rating (SR). A sportsman’s SR reduces the number of squares they would be pushed. Whenever a sportsman is pushed, reduce their SR by 1 after the push.
    Elemental Talent (ELET). Each sportsman has a unique action. As with standard actions, each costs 1 action.

    Air. 4 AC. 1 PR. 1 SR. Pass through an adjacent occupied square and to other side.
    Water. 2 AC. 2 PR. 2 SR. Switch any two adjacent allies, opponents or walls with each other.
    Fire. 2 AC. 2 PR. 2 SR. Destroy all walls orthogonal to them.
    Earth. 1 AC. 3 PR. 3 SR. Create 1 wall on any square.



    Walls

    Walls occupy a space, blocking those either side of them from being pushed. However, the wall itself can be the target of a push. When a pushed wall completes the push adjacent to a sportsman, they are moved directly away 1 square.

    Wall. 0 AC. 1 PR. 0 SR.



    Standard Actions
    Move. Move a sportsman 1 square in any direction.
    Push. Push a sportsman in range a number of squares equal to your sportsman’s PR minus the target’s SR. Pushing can be done in any direction.
    Focus. Increase the range of the sportsman’s push by 1 square.



    Extra Rules

    When two sportsmen or a sportsman and a wall are adjacent to each other and one is pushed into the direction of the other occupied space, neither moves though both their SR are reduced by 1.

    Just a note, you can’t push sportsman off the other sides, just the back rows.

    Great Wall Variant: Walls are kept through matches.
    Shifting Sand Variant: Only 3 walls may exist. The earliest is removed when more than 3 would be present.

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    Endless_Serpents on
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    I’d need to play-test it, but it seems like a fast little game theoretically.
    I’m picturing very sudden wins. Like having your air piece move twice, hop over a wall, which puts them in front of a water piece on its back line, and pushing it off all in one turn. On the opposite end of the scale, the earth piece might sit unused for several turns, then put a wall up right where you need it, or tanking several push attempts before doing its single action to boot someone back 3 squares.

  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    I found one of my old business cards from art school. I'd forgotten I made a game to put on the back:

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    Full rules here:
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    Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
    Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
    Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
    Steam ID
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  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    So, game outline/framework for Traveller Meets Deserts of Kharak and Bio-arcane merchant fuedalism:

    Rolls are 2d20. Each dice adds your attribute mod + skill mod vs a difficulty number. If you beat it that's one success. If you beat it by 10 that's two successes, if you fail it by 10 that's -1 success. Rolls can vary in complexity and require more successes (IE, shooting someone in the open with your storm crystal powered pepperbox beam pistol needs one success, shooting someone in cover is complexity 2 and needs 2) but otherwise more success=more style and fictional effect. The negative successes are crit fails.

    There's also saves which are just flat roll 1d20 under your stat. So if your opponent gets more successes than they need in a melee attack they might declare they want to trip you. You get to roll a physique save against that. If you roll under you're too bulky for them, if you roll over your ass is in the sand.

    Skills start at between -3 to -1 based on how niche/natural they are (Medicine and engineering are harder to innately do than athletics!). Snap to 0 the first time you level them and then specialize and typically hit +1-3 for all but extreme experts.

    The main question I'm mulling over is the stat scale and where PC's oughta lie on it.

    1-3:-2
    4-6:-1
    7-9:0
    10-12:+1
    13-15:+2
    16-18:+3
    19+:+4

    My general thoughts are like, 2d6 rolls for stats with players getting to assign them where they want. Adding in their upbringing + career should leave them with their 'main' stat at least at +1 or maybe +2 and most stats hover around the 0 range.

    But what sort of range would you want for a character?

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    My main take away is if you roll for stats, is that because they’re disposable characters?

    On a sliding scale of one-shot to campaign, I want to pick my stats for a campaign. If I’m picking everything else for my character why am I rolling for the foundations?

    Flip side, if they’re easy come easy go maybe roll for everything. Less hard feelings if your pal has great stats but nothing else works out / if you got crap stats but the best perks and moves.

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