A thread dedicated to discussion and feedback of games and homebrews made by Veeky Forums regarding anything from minor elements to entire systems, as well as inviting people to playtest your games online. While the thread's main focus is mechanics, you're always welcome to share tidbits about your setting.
Try to keep discussion as civilized as possible, avoid non-constructive criticism, and try not to drop your entire PDF unless you're asking for specifics, it's near completion or you're asked to.
Here's something I found yesterday from an ancient tg thread.
Okay, some general advice: -Examples never, ever hurt. Explain how someone grapples, or knocks someone down, or does their skill points, or whatever. This makes learning a new system MUCH easier. I would advise making a generic character step-by-step in little side boxes or something in the chargen section. -DON'T put in trap options. DO make some rules/guidelines for custom options. -DON'T use vague language. That's fine in cinematic descriptions, but it makes shit hard to decipher. DO use precise words and descriptions on stuff like spell effects. -Don't go all whacky with dice. Either use dice people already have (standard D&D set) or ones that are easy to get (like d6's). It's really frustrating when a game wants you to go out and buy like 20 d8's or something weird that you'll never use again. -PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST. With a GOOD group, and with a group TRYING to be shitty. See how the system runs.
Dylan Torres
And a bit more...
1: Figure out what kind of game you want to make. This might sound stupidly simple, but the decision is key. Are you making a general sort of game, where the mechanics are supposed to be flexible so as to handle many different potential settings? Or is there one specific world that you are trying to put into game form? In the former case, you need to keep the setting and the mechanics at arms length, since nothing about the setting can be taken for granted. In the latter case, you have setting specific games (like Dark Heresy) where many aspects of the setting are hardcoded into the game mechanics in one way or another. This choice basically comes down to "try to do many things reasonably well, or try to do one specific thing as tailored as you can make it". Either choice is fine as long as you know which path you have chosen and stick with it. A half and half system is just going to cause problems later.
Dominic Reed
Skirmish is defined by how a game plays rather than the fictional size of the forces involved. Battletech could be called a skirmish game, even though lists that bring infantry often include a full company of them.
Beyond about fifteen distinct elements(individual men, machines, whatever) in about four distinct groups, you're leaving the realm of a skirmish game because it begins to play differently.
Link to file above (too large to upload, plus it's not 100% finished). It's based largely on Jason Mical's Fallout Tabletop game with some elements from J.E. Sawyer's system and the overall feel and tone of Retropocalypse as far how the rules are explained. My team and I have managed to bang out pretty much everything we need from a player's side and it runs pretty smoothly. Combat with 5 players and 8-10 enemies takes a half hour to an hour depending on how tactical everyone gets.
Right now the main issues are vehicle combat (bottom of my priorities) and figuring out a good system for generating NPCs and building combat encounters. Right now it's more or less pick NPCs out of the Bestiary and throw them at the PCs. So far I've managed to keep the fights dangerous without being lethal (minus one character), but that's probably only because I made all the NPCs myself.
We need solid, easy to understand rules for that, and I'm drawing a blank. Any help in this regard would be appreciated.
Connor Martin
Does anyone know of any unique mechanics for tactical and cover based gunplay? Or any mechanics of such things that you've found and liked? I'm trying to draft up a homebrew system for an urban apocalypse esq setting.
Mason Cox
>ThatFalloutGuy Came here looking for exactly this.
I'm going to see how this works out with a group of 5 players of varying skill. Anything I should note or keep in mind?
Jordan Hill
Linking to a post in the last thread: I'd say its actually very clearly written, I can't think of anything that should be changed.
Hudson Gutierrez
Not entirely sure, as everyone that's been working on the project has years of gaming experience. My second playtesting group (character creation only) has one guy who's only experience is d20 and another guy who's been playing for all of six months, but all I really had to explain is that your main limiter is your own character and you want to roll under the Skill or Stat value. Once that was explained, everything was good.
Kayden Harris
Idea, if you're taking them:
I feel like the Gambling skill should have some sort of INT modifier to it if part of the description mentions calculating odds and rigging games in the character's favor.
Matthew Cruz
Warmahordes is a weird one, since while the amount of models is larger scale, the rules are skirmish.
Launches on Tuesday, hoping this goes through. Posted about it a month or so ago in one of these threads. Feel free to ask me anything about it.
Jack Brooks
I need some help /gdg/
I need to decide on what magic system concept to use in my roughly OSR inspired game- if you don't know what that means; basically it's dungeon crawling and high danger action.
Basically I'm set on giving magic users 1 magic die (or more?) per level. So at level 1, the magic user gets 1 die to use, at 2, he gets 2, and so forth. These only come back PER ADVENTURE, not per day or rest. Debating between two systems; >Roll magic die vs a spell DC (remove rolls of 6 from magic die pool after spell is over) >Roll magic die as effect, (remove rolls of 6)
Basically the first method allows for more spells to be cast, more difficult to succeed on cast spells- for example if you need a spell to work you can throw multiple die out, but your chance to lose a die goes up since you're using more. However the first method requires a long and probably very annoying spell list to be written up of different levels and effects.
The second system grants ease; you just roll the die and deal damage or whatever based on the roll. The magic user may roll a single die that counts as how long his 'magic light' spell continues to function, or maybe the roll is just equal to damage or healing. But obviously this may be too powerful if they get removed on a roll of 6- perhaps they simply get removed when used, but that means the magic user only gets 1 effect at level 1- which may be the point anyway.
Post-Apocalyptic OSR hack/homebrew I've been dabbling in. Basically a mash of LotFP, Mutant Future and bits of other things I enjoy. Looking for any feedback or input.
Dominic Garcia
Just steal DCCs magic system: Cast as much as you want (d20 + INT + Level), but failed rolls can lead to lost spells or spell corruptions.
Angel Nelson
>I'd say its actually very clearly written, I can't think of anything that should be changed. Thanks fäm can't see the forest for the trees, I guess.
Colton Barnes
I don't like that system. Too many tables, the variable dice and more importantly the corruption/misfire table is something I really don't like.
Robert Green
Can somebody critique this thing ive been working on for some time? I posted it in the 5eg but didnt get much feedback beyond the class being edgy as fuck. So besides the words 'dark' and 'shadow' being used waaaay too much, how else is the class? Looking for serious feedback, please and thank you.
Jack Foster
you missed a space in the second paragraph. "Wisdom(Perception)"
The introduction is also very confusing when you read it (Shadow Magic and Paths). It's a lot of information you are trying to say.
Zachary Bell
...
Juan Thomas
What is confusing about it? I'm reading it and it seems pretty straight forward. It could use a better example, i guess.
Connor Evans
I'm trying to figure out a good alternative system to rolling dice on a small skirmish game I'm working on. The game already has a small hand of cards that modify your unit's actions, so I'm shying away from an approach like Malifaux's.
Right now I've just had it so units auto hit, and while I like like the removal of bad dice rolls fucking up a turn it also means games are pretty swingy and often turn into rocket tag where my players would stack buffs onto one dude and just have him liquidate things.
Should I just quit being a bitch and add an accuracy system, or should I keep looking for alternatives. I've been toying around with each player having a pool of accuracy tokens they can use to boost their attack accuracy/dodge defense and have the players keep bidding off until one side wins, which causes all spent tokens to be lost.
Grayson Gutierrez
How do the cards work?
Kayden Wood
whoops, wrong one
Connor Wright
You replace on of your minion's actions with one of the actions on the card and use its affect instead, then discard the card.
Cards range from buffs, healing, damage, movement tricks, etc and replace either the minion's attack action, move action, or both.
Here's an example of one of our earlier playtest cards.
Nathan Morales
Yeah, I feel that something needs to be there, even if its not dice rolls.
Brayden Nguyen
What do you think? :)
Elijah Williams
Feels like a picture from an old video game magazine.
