/gdg/ Game Design General

I made a conversion for Stars Without Number to Halo ODST. The handout implies you already know the rules for Stars Without Number. Looking for any suggestions and feedback.

Really not sure how I want the sound suppressor to work. Additionally I'm trying to think of a way to price items under the assumption players are actual soldiers and it doesn't make a ton of sense. Maybe do some sort of 1-10 point scale? Simple gear would cost around 1 for simple gear, UNSC guns 3-4, covie guns 5-6, and people could pool points to get something like a 10 cost warthog.

Looks decent, what are the auto fire rules? And why does a spartan laser only have a 1 in 6 chance of penetratung?

In Stars Without Number there is only shooting once and Burst Fire, which adds +2 to hit and damage. 1 in 6 was just a number I pulled out of the air, I'm not opposed to making it 50/50 or something.

I'd do auto fire as a bonus to hit against targets in the open, and a number of extra tartlets you can shoot at at -4 to hit each. So auto fire +3 lets you attack at +3 or attack four total targets at -4 to hit each one.

Just an idea though. You could also do multiple attacks a penalty but that might slow down play.

Oh goodie, I was waiting for this to come up again.
Mechs, take umpteen. This time, individual part generation, rather than the whole mech at once.

Still working on Dragon Forest.

I'm writing up an adventure and trying to get a playtest together. Then I want to do a complete rewrite.

I've been scratching out ideas for things I want to add to the rewrite:

>Favor and Disfavor
The game will use 'favor' instead of 5E's advantage mechanic.
Critical hits don't count unless your roll is 'favored'; you have a CH rating that determines your crit-range.
Critical fumbles don't count unless your roll is 'disfavored'; you have a CF rating that determines your fumble-range.
Certain skills and dark gifts trigger from critical hits and fumbles.

>Skill Challenges
The introductory adventure I've written includes skill challenge rules, which I will be adding to the GM's section of the rule book in my next rewrite.
The gist of it is that the party has to roll X number of successes within Y number of rounds to succeed, and events trigger after Z number of failures.

>Magic Items
Rules will be added for augment gems for weapon and armor enchantment, and magic seals that function like scrolls except for constant skills instead of spells.

>Advice and Examples of Play
Right now I just have a lot of bare-bones mechanical stuff. I need to flesh out the game by communicating how the game is actually supposed to be played.

For the most part though, the rewrite will be just that. I'm getting to the point where I can focus on refining things.
A lot of the classes are going to need overhauls though. I can tell that already. Still unsure about what to do with the Oracle class.
Some classes might get cut. New classes may get added. It depends on how the playtest goes.

I have other projects in the works as well.

Here's an idea I had that plays around with the d20 mechanic and bonus stacking:

>Core Mechanic
Roll 1d20 vs. target number. You may add up to three non-exhausted bonuses to your roll as long as none of the bonuses added in this way share types.
If you add only one bonus to your roll, the bonus is not exhausted.
If you add two bonuses to your roll, they are both exhausted until the end of your next short rest scene.
If you add three bonuses to your roll, they are all exhausted until the end of your next long rest scene.

>Character Creation
Instead of a character sheet, you have a hand of seven cards representing bonuses.
Each bonus has one of three basic types: Ability, Skill, or Item. At least two of your bonuses must be Ability-type, two must be Skill-type, and two must be Item-type. The seventh may be any type of your choice. Items of the same type are mutually exclusive for purposes of adding them to rolls.
Each bonus has a numeric value; this integer is added to your die roll when you use the bonus. A bonus's base value is equal to the number of types it has. You may add up to two extra types to each bonus; these can be basic types (Ability, Skill, or Item) or one of many different special types (Luck, Lore, Morale, Magic, Tech, etc.)
You also add +1 to one bonus of your choice at character creation.
Finally, the player writes a name/descriptor on each bonus to explain what it is and to narrow down when and how it may be use.

What are some non-traditional mechanics /gdg/ uses? Things like using penalties when bonuses would make more initial sense, or inverting number processes for flavor reasons. Something like if THAC0 was used in a new rpg (and it made sense to do the math that way)?

I'm thinking of making an RPG based on discussions with 四user and Dragon Forest from threads back. Players could buy their character's power-level with a meta currency which would then be used by the GM as encounter making currency. They'd also have vices and what not which would also contribute to producing more encounter making currency.In addition, other players would give penalties when they assisted a roll instead of a bonus.

It feels like it contributes extremely well to a post-apoc or otherwise pessimistic setting. The mechanics would directly tell players to only rely on themselves, maintain your vices, and just power through all the bad stuff. However, on a meta scale, the mechanics would actually encourage getting around the vices without satiating them, and reward teamwork despite showing the penalty (i.e. if your skill is 10, adding another player who has a skill of 10 will give you both a -4 penalty, but your total would be 12, higher than what you could do alone).

There's a certain feeling I get when I think of mechanics like that, though its difficult to explain. It is, however, something I think I want to pursue despite having other projects in the works. Any thoughts?

A new THACO0-based could be really cool.
It would absolutely make sense for a new RPG.
The advantage of THAC0 is that you don't need to add any bonuses to your roll; everything is pre-calculated, so all you need to know is whether your die beats the target number. This is most useful in games where you roll a lot of dice at one time; you don't want to roll a fistful of dice and have to work out additions and subtractions on each one.

If I were making a game that used D&D style THAC0, I would use d20 dice pools.
Your character sheet would have rows to list each of your weapons. Each of these rows would have spaces to write in your target numbers for different armor types (I'd simplify this to Unarmored, Light, Medium, and Heavy.)
The only time you would have to update these numbers is when you level up.
You would then attack by rolling a number of d20's appropriate to your class, level, and other attributes, and count the number of dice that beat the target number appropriate to the targets armor type.

This could be extended to skills as well, where each skill lists only the target number you have to beat, and circumstances instead dictate how many dice you roll to beat that target number.
Hard: 1 die
Moderate: 2 dice
Easy: 3 dice

This is what I was thinking, but for automatic firearms. Semi-auto would roll your normal d20 or whatever to attack, but full auto would roll xdx (propbably d6).

Here's another idea I've been pondering for Dragon Forest.
I need to build a consistent cosmology for my game's default setting.
Given the conflict of extremes in the cosmic war of Chaos and Law and the cyclical nature of the world (inspired by Moorcock), I've been looking a lot at Buddhist cosmology as a source of inspiration.

The universe would be divided up into six realms:
Deva Realm: Realm of gods
Asura Realm: Realm of demi-gods (probably where the PC's come from)
Manusya Realm: Realm of humans
Tiryagyoni Realm: Realm of beasts (I do have a lot of talking animals in my game, for a kind of faerie-tale feel in parts)
Preta Realm: Realm of hungry-ghosts (undead, in other worlds. It's the Dark Souls realm!)
Naraka Realm: Hell (realm of demons, divided into a hot section and a cold section)

The Narakas are interesting:

Arbuda, the blistering cold Naraka swept by blizzards
Nirarbuda, the burst-blister cold Naraka of frozen blood and pus
Atata, the shivering cold Naraka
Hahava, the lamentation cold Naraka
Huhuva, the chattering teeth cold Naraka
Utpala, the blue lotus cold Naraka where skin turns blue
Padma, the lotus cold Naraka where frozen skin cracks open
Mahapadma, the great cold Naraka where frozen bodies break into pieces
Sanjiva, the reviving hot Naraka where beings emerge fully grown, are slain by their fellows, and are resurrected to be slain again
Kalasutra, the black thread hot Naraka of fiery saws and sharp axes
Samghata, the crushing hot Naraka
Raurava, the screaming hot Naraka
Maharaurava, the great screaming hot Naraka
Tapana, the heating hot Naraka of impalement on fiery spears
Pratapana, the great heating hot Naraka of impalement on fiery tridents
Avici, the uninterrupted hot Naraka

I should stat all of these Narakas up as monsters.

I'm imagining the realms as parallel worlds overlaid upon one another. When the GM spends you doom, there's a Silent Hill transformation of your surroundings, and you are transported into the next realm down.

d6 would make it feel a bit like earlier editions of Shadowrun where your dice pools have variable target numbers (unlike SR 4E and 5E where you just have to roll 5 or 6.) That would be a neat homage.

Almost blatantly stealing the idea of pie pieces and whatnot from Neoclassical Geek Revival, I'm trying to make something like that work in the context of a sci-fi rpg. One of the big things in NGR is that the more pieces of the pie you devote to a class, the more neat extras you get; i.e. 1 piece = 1 ability, 2 pieces = 3 abilities, 3 pieces (typical max) = all 6 abilities of that class.

Where I'm having a bit of a conundrum is I want to link the general idea behind each of the six abilities per class to a role in the party. Like, each "class" has a Defender ability, a Leader ability, a Striker ability, and so on. However, I can only steal party roles from D&D4e so much before I run out of material.

As it stands now, I have ideas for the Defender, Leader and Striker roles:
>Defender - Obviously a lot of defensive capabilities, ranging from interjecting themselves into an attack to creating temporary barriers to simply disappearing from combat (or at least appearing to).

>Leader - Inspiring others to follow in their stead, giving positive buffs to the group in their own manner.

>Striker - Straight up DEE-PEE-ASS, fucking your face in with little regard to themselves or their enemies.

The current ideas I have don't really require a "healer" class per se, as actual meat-health is a static number and characters can equip various kinetic shieldings to give them an extra buffer of "HP" to have to be burnt through. Outside of those three, I'm coming up a bit dry on the inspiration, and wanted to see if there might be something someone else can see that I may be missing.

Well, you may try splitting roles up into smaller and more specific roles.
Controllers can break down into zone control (AOE soft lock) and lockdown (single target hard lock). Defenders break down in much the same way, with some defenders putting a soft lock on many enemies and others putting a hard lock on a single enemy. Defenders and controllers have a lot of parallels; it's just that one is focused on range and the other is focused on melee.

There are as many ways to split up the striker as there are ways of dealing damage:
Charging
Melee multi-attacking
Ranged multi-attacking
Ongoing damage
Frost-cheese/Radiant-mafia
Crit-fishing
Sneak attack

One of my biggest design rules is I want everything to fit nicely as either a 3 or 6 (unless absolutely necessary), not only as a design constraint to save time but also because I'm using only d6s for the project. Splitting up the various roles was something I had thought of, and may still go back to, but it's very easy to go into too many divisions and end up with a bunch of different roles that eats up huge amounts of time to create, develop and balance.

As it stands now, I rarely have a full day off of work, and even the half-days have a ton of stuff going on, so I don't have that time to sit down and put in the work something like that demands. To go from your post alone, there's 11 different aspects of roles that could be fleshed out, and I noticed you didn't even touch on Leaders. To make sure no one feels like they're being left out, left behind, or forced to be the healbot is a lot more effort than I'm honestly willing to devote to the project right at this moment.

I dunno if that's a good design thing though. Not the guy you replied to btw

don't forget you can divide 6 by 2 also.

There's the commonly known MMO holy trinity of Healer-Tank-Dps. One of my favorite games (GW2) eschews that for Support-Control-Damage. You could use that second trifecta to use as a base, and then divide each of those groups into two distinct styles. For example, healing is part of GW2's support section, but its not the only thing. Buffs, and Cleanses are also included. Control could be ranged or melee based, or it could be divided by other styles of control (aoe/single, etc). Damage could again be ranged/melee, or direct/DoT.

I personally would give every class at least some access to all 6 options in some way, but have them excel at one particular aspect. GW2 does this by changing what exactly each class offers. Thieves excel at burst damage, but have low defenses. They can;t heal allies for much if at all, but they can grant Stealth and share unique buffs (like controlling debuffs) with allies. The Guardian, in contrast, are built with defense in mind, and can buff and heal allies by placing aoe symbols on the ground that also damage enemies (which also fulfill an area denial role).
You can make your classes take advantage of different interpretations of their roles to enhance uniqueness.

And don't worry about getting things done fast. just take some time to think about each role individually while you have downtime throughout the day. A lot of times just having the thoughts sit in the back of your mind will help you come up with great ideas. just make sure to write them down.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Aa3XMcdHzkkiY4SF2RBS2pZSgDhMrmO57xNYnWlAJ7I/edit?usp=sharing

The above is the link to my work file of my system by the way, finally made it back to my laptop.

Would it be obnoxious for my system to use 40k's scatter dice? I kind of like it, but
>proprietary dice for an RPG

Its not inherently bad design. You would just need to make sure your other mechanics all fit together, and that's not particularly hard to do if you keep that in mind. Its when people want to combine things that don't fit well together that you get "bad" design (or people don't put in the work to make them fit).

I'm back at work on the game, so here's the condensed rules for Budding Heroes

Also a guide I just finished for new GMs:
buddingheroes.com/guide/thinking-like-a-gm/

How do your characters progress?

I know the common thing is to have levels, and to have other facets grow based on level, but what other ways can progression happen?

I've got one project where money=xp, but there aren't really any levels. More money just means you can buy more things, and those things will also need repair. I also have another project where players basically have to buy off their character's power.

What did y'all decide to use for progression, and why?

Since the base game is made to be simple, the player characters actually don't directly level up. Instead, the world moves around them (which is actually really easy since the balancing system is so robust).

The roles are different than the characters themselves, and the same is true about the enemies. Players can move horizontally into different roles at any time if they decide to use different equipment or decide to use different skills/tactics, and the enemies can be represented by progressively weaker stats as the players get stronger or have better equipment.

Each enemy CM has a specific Endurance and Threat rating which respectively mean how long it will survive on average and how much damage it will deal on average. If you want to show that the group is getting stronger, the same grunt enemy (like a goblin foodsoldier) can be represented by stats that have a lower Endurance. Maybe at the start of the game the enemy took 3.5 hits on average to kill, but now it's down to 2.

The same can be said about the players getting better armor and being better at dodging. Every type of enemy Character Mold has versions at every Difficulty level, which means there's a wide variety of Threat ratings to choose from while the enemies still get to have the same style of attack. Moving to a lower Threat will obviously make the enemy attacks against the player weaker, so the players will feel much sturdier.

Endurance and Threat per turn are independent of each other, so it's easy to represent a lopsided offense/defense growth if you want, and it's super easy to make those changes temporary. If the characters are all in power armor for a single battle, just move to way weaker enemies, then just shift back to the normal enemy balance when they're out of the power armor.

If you need to make one member of the party way stronger than the rest of the group, then you could do something like give them a strong enemy Character Mold for that one character. (Comment too long for more)

Glad you're still working on this! Someone in the Wild Talents thread was asking about rules for doing mechs in the ORE, and I mentioned your project.

I feel like you're overcomplicating things by asking players and GMs to average out the final scores. Generally speaking division is disliked by most players because it's hard to do in your head on the fly, and is usually avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Are any of you going to be participating in GameChef next month? I am going to be working on something individually, but a"tg got shit done" submission would be pretty cool.

This is a cool idea. Would the PCs actually be travelling to different levels of Naraka, or would it be more like the world around them is transitioning from one level to another as things get more and more dire?

One cool thing about Buddhist/Hindu cosmology that you hit upon is that being in the Deva and Asura realms can reincarnate into lower realms. In particular, Deva beings sort of just laze around and don't do anything and pretty much burn off all the good karma they accumulated, until they run out and have to reincarnate in a lower realm to reascend. It's a cool idea that could be adapted in an interesting way in an RPG.

That's what I was worried about, yeah, but I'm thinking about changing things up. The only real issue I have is worrying about the amount of dice getting too high, and thus letting mechs or characters get too strong.

What's a good dice resolution system that plays well with percentages?

I can't seem to think of one that won't be horribly complicated. Currently using a d6 system like Shadowrun's, but >3 instead of >4.

Also: Who's up for making a skype/discord/whatever group that we can discuss game design more in depth?

Eclipse Phase works fairly well. 2d10 (0-99) system where you try to roll under whatever score you have in a skill, altered by modifiers.

Define percentages? d20 when rounding to 5% works well enough, and 2 d10s can handle resolutions up to 1%.

If you mean 100% while sticking with only using d6s, then you can treat a 6 as a reroll to make it a 1d5. (1d5-1)*20 will get you into a sensible range, then add 4d6-4 to fill in the remaining hole of 20. It may not be 100% statistically accurate, but it's probably close enough

Actually, anydice says that the 4d6-4 is pretty wavy so take that idea with a grain of salt

For example, you roll 5d6>3 for an attack, but your attack is 25% more effective against those who choose to block so you roll 25% (1.25 more dice) rounded down so you roll 6d6>3 dice to resolve the attack

d6>2 is 33% more effective than d6>3, so what about mixing your goals until you have the effectiveness you want like 4d6>2+1d6>3? (that's just an example, didn't calculate how close to 25 that is)

Unknown Armies is an awesome use of d100%. There are rules that allow you to flip your results (turn an 81 into an 18), and rules for rolling doubles that are fun as well. It's a nicely varied system them adds a lot of color to what can otherwise be a kind of bland mechanic.

One of the things I like about this is how you're able to convey tone through your short skill descriptions. For instance:

>Hacking
>The last great art of the world, the last frontier of discovery this side of the stars

That says a lot not just about the skill but the setting and how people who can use the skill see themselves. It communicates the idea that hacking and use of computers is all that really matters to most people in this world, and mastery of that is the key to an enlightened life. I dig it.

Can you explain some more about your Cybernetics system? It's not immediately clear how they work and why you'd want them.

You dont want cybernetics unless youre missing that limb is the point. Also it gives activated abilities based on the model. Not to mention the enhancement stacks with your skill

Ah, I see. That's kind of an interesting take-- most cyberpunk games go with the assumption that a robotic limb is a straight-upgrade to a normal one.

A mint condition limb is a straight upgrade. But punks will rarely have mint condition. They break down and you lose precision in control.

The system is also super lethal. People are going to get limbs blown off every session.

Did anyone else have feedback on the game's rules or the GM guide? Trying to see if anything seems wrong before I concentrate on other areas, and I'd love to hear from someone that runs through a skirmish or two

One thing that stands out to me is your Health Regeneration mechanics. I love the idea that each character can regenerate health in different ways in a fight, but that seems like an awful lot of bookkeeping, since you could conceivably be healing every single turn,

It's actually been super quick in practice. One of the optional accessories is actually a set of little plastic cards that can be used in lieu of character sheets, and the cards have a coating that work with dry erase markers with appropriate spots to write.

On the free side of things, I've created some scratch paper specifically for the game and it has a large area for your current health. There's a box in the corner of the health area where you write your max health, then you just write your current health in the large area; whenever it goes up or down, you can just cross out the old value and write the new one. Crossing out saves a lot of time compared to erasing, and there's space for dozens of changes.

A different thing I toyed with was a cardboard sheet with plastic pegs on sliders that look like a DJ mixer board to keep track of everything's health, but that was super expensive to manufacture

Hey guys!
I'm currently making an RPG that is going to take place in a setting that is based on Insane Asylums of years passed.
Just wanted to hear what you thought of my Class ideas!

The Enraged - violent, crusading, ruthless
They tried to keep you calm and silenced but you know that can never happen. Your rage boils up and you smash through their chains of oppression into their skulls. Ruthless in your fight against perceived evils and those who stand in your way of destroying them.
The Visionary - those who know conspiracies and get inspiration
They tried to tell you that you were wrong even when everything you've said is true. Able to know what goes on in the shadows and where hidden things are. Able to discern truth from fact and know which answer is the best.
The Schism - the medium between reality and fiction
They tried to take away what made you special. Trying to dampen you grasp on what really goes on in the world. Able to know what is actually happening to you and a deep sense of where to go. You have no idea what chose you to have this power but you think you can wield it for good.

Another post coming with the rest

The Freak – wields powers of the unknown
Afraid and full of fear they locked you up because they couldn't understand your power. Able to do things no one else can and make great wonders of the unknown happen. You can move objects with your mind and force things into existence that weren't there.
The Psychic – those who see the future
The world was unready for your power and they weren't able to understand what was happening to them. You tried to show them the truth but they locked you away. Able to know what happens next in the events of the world. Knowing the grand plot before it's even started.
The Psychopath – one who is uncaring and unrelenting
Nothing is what you feel and the only thing that brings satisfaction the in the shadows is death and because of this they put you away. Your hunger for death grows the longer you wait for the kill and cannot be sated by only one.
The Paranoid – untrusting, sneaky, and secretive
You know they are after you, why wouldn't they be? They want what you know, but you can't let them have it. It's important that you trust no one, not even your friends. The shadows are the only comforting place for you because they can't see you there; they can't watch you there.

If you have any questions about my game or any comments I'll try to respond.

If this thread sticks around through tomorrow, I should have something good to post.

Sounds pretty interesting, sort of an American McGee's Alice sort of thing crossed with Vanishing Point's mental illnesses-as-races type of idea.

What sort of adventures do you imagine the players engaging in?

Is there a way to capture tactical battle like in x-com but using the "theater of the mind"?

I wanted to make an X-COM Tabletop game, but at this point I'm wondering if I should use dark heresy rules, and just refluff it.

At first I was thinking that it was just going to be a module based hack-and-slash adventure game about combat and tactics, but I've decided against that.

The setting I thought up is all of an inside of an Asylum with rooms that can be as big entire cities, but with a clear four walls on all sides and doors at the edges to go to various locations. So, they could take a module based hack-and-slash or it could be made into a sort-of traditional RPG adventure game, like DnD, with quests and what not, but themed around a more mysterious setting with dark horrors outside of the "civilized" zones.

I'm still really not sure about what I want to do and how complex I want to make the rules. Any suggestions are appreciated.

That's a great premise actually. The idea of an insane asylum the size of a continent with vast, city sized wards for various forms of treatment and quarantine is extremely evocative, even if it was just used for traditional hack-and-slash type stuff.

Maaaaybe, but it would be difficult. Check out how 13th Age handles distances and engagement-- basically range is abstracted, so you don't really need to know exactly how many feet you are from something, just roughly how near or far.

Question is, why would you want to? XCom is basically built around precise tactical movement.

building off that idea, you'd need to create ranges that were both relevant and static in either your world or a translation of Xcom's ranges. Things like melee range, AR range (or specific weapon range), grenade toss/splash range, and whatever else. I don't really know much of anything about Xcom, but any form of range (movement, weapon, sight, etc.) would need to be recorded in some way like that. Then I'd imagine players would just ask "Is X alien in my LoS" and the DM would respond with relatively binary states (yes/no etc).

It sounds like you're trying to mush two things together that won't really fit. You might need to sacrifice one aspect or another in order to make things fit better.

I want to use a mechanic similar to the Dark Souls board game, where AP and HP draw from the same limited pool but can be replenished. However, I worry that all the penciling/erasing will wear out a paper character sheet. Is this a legitimate concern or am I worrying too much?

Why not use dice as the pool, or just a sheet of scratch paper?

That's a good question. I was just going to print the damage track on the character sheet and have players check/uncheck boxes as they move across it. But just using an extra die or token as a marker works too.

quick bump

one more bump for the night, though it seems like this thread wont last till the morning.

not with that attitude

Just finished these rules to make a table top smash bros game. I'm still working on it. Tell me what you think and what I should change, add, or fix.

Definitely use tokens for it. Make the boxes the size of a common coin - I feel like using dice for it would remove that visual aspect of your death 'closing in' on you the way it is if you're actually filling the boxes. Or if you're down to do so, make some tokens yourself for playing, but making it the size of a smaller coin means everyone has tokens easily accessible. Or have the damage tracks on a laminated card instead of the main sheet, so you can use dry-erase on it, assuming the overall size of the damage track is static.

if the thread dies, just create a new one. /gdg/ died when all the quest threads ran rampant. It needs a few weeks sustenance to get going again.

It seems like every time I come here to ask for guidance, laying out the problem helps me work through it on my own. Thanks, /gdg/! Now I've got no qualms with using a d12 for my core mechanic!

Been a while since I've posted in one of these. Been stuck with part of Hellsgate.

I've been working on some new faction ideas, the problem is I have 2 that I'd like to add, but they more or less fulfill the same roles, so I'm having a hard time deciding which to add.

The first is the remnants of east Asia, after the apocalypse shreds most of China and Japan. The idea is that what remains of the Japanese Defense Force and the Chinese military have to protect what's left, isolated from the rest of the world. Relying on limited resources and manpower, they adapt to forming small teams of piloted power armor suits, trained for long deployment. The focus on the army would be a few, elite units that specialize in combined arms and not needing support.

The second force is an angelic force to match the demonic incursion. They arrive a few years after the apocalypse to engage the demons, and are a strong driving force for the religious tones that the Knights Templar take when they form. However, they are not humanity's saviors, as they do not care about the humans, and see them as a resource to spend to achieve victory at most. Their playstyle would be similar, small elite force with a combined arms approach, with more emphasis on close combat. A big thing that would separate them would be mobility, as right now, some ideas is for them to aerial deploy forces onto the field.

Agree with . If you have a small enough pool, pennies work. If you want it similar to the DS board game, I don't feel dice give the right feel of how the battle goes. Its semantics, but game feel is an over-looked and important part of design.

The D12 is highly under-rated.

It really is an underloved die. I've been trying to figure out the best way to use a d12 for my core mechanic for a long time and, while it's swingy, I think 1d12+modifiers over Target Number works pretty well for me. It's fairly quick, it's familiar to people who've played D&D, and the way I have it set up, all you'll ever need is one or two of them, so being uncommon won't hurt since most people have at least one seven die set for D&D purposes.

Literally the only concern I have is that modifiers might not scale as much as some people would like (my idea is to cap skill and attribute ratings at +3 for a max total modifier of +6 ala D&D 5e's bounded accuracy), but making attribute/skill increases more difficult to come by might help make people see them as more momentous occasions than they might be in other systems.

Now all I need to do is get off my ass, learn Latex, and start formatting some sort of rough quick start guide. Maybe by next week, I'll have the first inklings of this true form to show off here.

That's part of why I like it. The weight for modifiers and degrees of each result being lower means more play room. Part of my problem with the D6 is that results are so limited, each '1' is so important. The D12 cuts back on that a lot.

The other part is that its easier to roll multiples of them compared to other larger dice. I'm looking at you, D10.

Well, the thread survived until the morning. Did anyone run through any quick skirmishes in Budding Heroes on roll20 or anything like that? I'd love to hear any experiences or other opinions on the rules.

I'm working on the step-by-step combat guide for now, though it's geared toward beginners rather than anyone on here - the condensed rules should already cover everything you need to know if you're familiar with other games.

Well this certainly isn't anything I expected to see, probably ever.

Notes:

>Recovery Special: An ability that may be used in the recovery or movement phase.

You never described a Recovery phase at the start of this document.

>Flinging
Your grammar with this is real weird, but I'm ignoring that in favor of the mechanics you describe. I actually think it's fairly clever how you translate damage into distance flung, but you may want to spell this out better. I'm assuming that a flung character travels in a straight line, not in an arc? The arc would be more accurate to the game but extremely hard to figure out at the table.

> Attack rolls work by adding rolling for the characters attack – enemy speed.
I don't think I understand this sentence. Are yo saying to take your Attack - your target's Speed and then try to roll under that on a 2d6?

>In resolve rolls if the character is in the air, you roll 2d6 over damage – resolve.
Do you mean damage - recover? Also is it now a roll-over mechanic instead of a roll-under? I don't think that's a very good idea. Most games choose one or the other, and don't switch back and forth.

My feeling here is that the game is going to go a lot slower than you want it to, because of all the arithmetic involved. It's also kind of janky because initiative is entirely random and not based on the speed or reactiveness of the characters, so players may feel like they don't have a lot of control over the flow of battle.

bump

Oh hey a response.
>You never described a Recovery phase at the start of this document.
Its towards the end. I'll move the phases of the game more towards the start so the reader won't get confused.
>Flinging
For now its a straight line. Later on I was thinking of making an arc mechanic.(also my grammar a bit off there sorry about that.)
>I don't think I understand this sentence. Are yo saying to take your Attack - your target's Speed and then try to roll under that on a 2d6?
Exactly.
>Do you mean damage - recover? Also is it now a roll-over mechanic instead of a roll-under? I don't think that's a very good idea. Most games choose one or the other, and don't switch back and forth.
The reason I made it like that is because depending on how well the characters recover is, is how well he'll get back in control. So if the damage is 6 and the recover 3 he only has to get a 3 or higher. I might change attack roll to be under but for now I really do think that I should keep recover rolls.

>Your thoughts
Thanks again com-padre. The goal is to make this the same length as king of tokyo. Quick 45 minute game that's slow at first as your adjusting to the rules but fast pace once everyone knows them. I'll try and trim some of the arithmetic nature of the rules to get the speed up and I'll also try to make it to were initiative is either earned by doing more damage to the oppenent or some other means. Thanks for the feed back.