Game Design General /gdg/

Today's Query: Do you tailor your systems for yourself or do you try to ignore your own needs while designing?

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>Dice Rollers
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>Tools and Resources:
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>Design and Layout
erebaltor.se/rickard/typography/
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davesmapper.com
>>

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These threads die so easily these days...

Query: Depends a bit on what I'm making, really. If it is my main system, I tailor it. My main system is created for my tastes so that I can run games with it optimally. Thankfully, it lead to a really intricate system that should, in essence, be easily graspable.

If it's something else? I usually do them design in the front, trying to squeeze the most I can from the specific thing I'm trying to design. If it causes it to have some convoluted rules, even if I fail to streamline them, I will leave them there. If someone wants to play it but doesn't like the rule, they can golden rule the fuck out of it.

To liven up /gdg/ a little, I think we should try to do something collaborative again, for a change.

I have just completed my core system, so I would need something to do on my spare time, too.

We should start with a simple goal. The end can be anything as small as a project worthy of a 1d4chan page, or something big as a proper Drivethrurpg-release (Assuming it's an RPG, of course).

So let me try to start: We should start with something weird or wild: Everyone is John and Haiku Warrior come to mind. We have the power of a dozen designers and the fleeting ideas of absolute madmen.

I believe we can do it! I wouldn't want to throw my ideas into the mix yet, because I feel like I would dominate and seize the entire project, and then it would just become one of my many projects.

If this would happen to catch interest of anyone here, I would be happy help to bring something new to life. And at the same time, maybe set these embers that are /gdg/ to flames.

Just to mention it, though. I have to go to sleep now, I'm not expecting much, but I hope you brethren find something to cling to.

I will return

has anyone used >thegamecrafter.com

Is it decent?

Alright, here's a stray thought towards that goal:
What about a game that uses dominoes as a conflict resolution system?

The problem with trying to do something like that is how you take numbers out of the pool every time you do something. Either that, or you have something where there's no real reason to use dominoes over dice.

I did have an idea for domino mahjong, but the issue there is more about testing to see if it results in something interesting, rather than trying to make an actual system, which is easy by comparison.

I think that's a limited perspective on dominoes as a mechanic. Dice already do numbers fairly well. Dominoes could let you create some insane-ass shape mechanic, where the key isn't to get a certain number, but to form certain shapes using the dominoes.

Dominoes could be interesting. There are two sides on a piece, so you could offer up one half in order to do an action, but at the cost of the other side as a counter action. Exactly how that might work out is another story.

I'm thinking of something like "I have a 5-2 domino piece. I'll use the 5 to hit, but 2 is my defense this round".

Another idea sounds more like a boardgame, but dominoes might represent your player's stats, and at given intervals you flip the dominoes around to use the opposite side and use those numbers as stats.

That's what strikes me initially, the fact dominoes always come with paired numbers.I wouldn't use them as "predetermined" 2d6 rolls, but rather opposing 1d6.

early morning bumps are good for longevity and virility

I dont post here often enough for anyone to likely remember anything about it, but Ive got a question regarding my Mortal Core project.

The cental point of the system is that "magic" runs on storylogic, and everyone is trying to out meta and out genre savy their way to effectual superhumanism through narrative significance. To abstract this, ive been using six stats to represent a character's "archetype", which determines what kinds of benifits they get from magic and what kinds of events they can try to force through their personal narrative.

Right now the stats are as follows:

>Good
The quality of safty extended to communal human values and the lives of those who follow them. Not consistantly powerful, providing minor benefits to quality of life and aiding slightly is the consolidation of groups, but overwhelmingly effective against evil narratives.

>Evil
The quality of independent power, and as an extension, threat to others. The exact opposite of good, evil is very consistantly powerful, but beware of heroes.

>grit
The quality of masculinity, aggression, violence, and resolve. Tends to empower fighters in a variety of ways not always relative to violence.

>appeal
The quality of coolness, attractiveness, and magnetism. Empowers charisma chiefly, but also can change the rules of reality in small ways to benefit the "rule of cool"

>reason
The qulaity of realism, wisdom, and practicality. Effectively antimagic.

>enigma
Catchall for mysterious or fantastic qualities that may be common conventions in fiction but have no real grounding in reality. Conventional magic goes here, as does subterfuge and sometimes terror.

What do you guys think of these categories? Do I need more to cover all the common cenventions of fiction? Do you think some are too generalized and need to be split up?

Posting from phone, apology for errors

I think your six attributes cover the archetypes nicely. It's very easy to see the clear distinctions and implications of each, and I can quickly recall a multitude of appropriate characters from media who would fit into those...
It feels perfect for appropriating traditional anime character archetypes, I'm just trying to think of how well it handles other characters. At a brief moment's consideration, the one thing I would think it might lack is a sort of "goofball/funnyman" archetype for those capable of defusing tension, sometimes stepping beyond the limits/rules of the universe, at the cost of rarely being taken seriously. How does that sound, our do you already have any considerations for that in mind?

Dominoes was not something I was expecting.

Hmm. To throw my idea in the mix about it, there are several options.

-Simple "choose the best domino you can" -mechanic where you have to put the domino to the best position, and the position can have variables in on itself, such as getting crits if you put in pieces that touch X other pieces.

-Another would be shapes, as mentioned. Out of the top of my head, I could see the context of ---> the final variable sum is the total of all the numbers in a straight line parallel to its point.

Would dominos played then become part of the central "board?" if so, there should be a clear element of building toward something that inevitably resets, perhaps as a great successor a catastrophic failure, not unlike the jenga tower mechanic of Dread.

Funny you mention it. There used to be a 7th stat called "absurdity" that behaved basically exactlt as you described. I removed it after significant playtesting due to what may be a personal vendetta. Basically, it turns 1/7 PCs into kender.

I know what you are thinking, "isnt that just a fault in the maturity of the RPer?" But no, every player that has played a high absurdity character, including some who are normally great RPers, has immediately turned into a mood raping, fight picking, childish, smug twat. I mean, the stat hands then an incentive and justification to behave that way, plus a get out of jail free card for when repricussion that they will intead respond to with the equivalent of a smug loli reaction image. You dont understand the horror.

Maybe ill include it as an option the GM can enable at their discretion...

You could have a limited amount of dominoes per Scene, where to attempt to build towards certain locations on a table.

Players take turns announcing their actions and placing dominoes, matching numbers with each other like regular dominoes. Multiple locations are placed on the board that you want to try and "connect" via lines of dominoes. These locations mark objectives during an encounter.

For example, you might be haggling with a shop keeper. A nearby target might give you a 10% discount while a further target might give 20%. An even further target opposite from the previous two might net you an amazing 50% off. If you happen to somehow connect all three, then you've earned that 80% discount.

Depending on how large you want your scenes or encounters to be, your objectives will be as general or specific as needed. An encounter like Prepping a Heist might have objectives like Bribe Guards, Sneak Inside, Create False Identities, Create a Distraction, and Create a Fake Replacement. You wouldn't have to do all of those, so you could customize your approach. You could also tie in benefits for hitting certain objectives before others, like connecting Buy a Map of the Area before you hit Discover Sources of Water might grant you an extra domino to help you reach the Water objective easier.

You could even run stats off of dominoes like mentioned where your stat determines your domino pool(s). You might have to choose between consistent sizes (either large or small) or have highly variable sizes.

There's actually quite a bit of potential here.

You might need to tweak the design to reinforce the novel concept, "don't be a dick". People can be dicks with the rest of those archetypes too, so I don't know what you did to make comedy inherently That Guy.

You mean that the difficulty would work on two different axes, the location of the dominoes and the numbers on those dominoes?

If so, you're an absolute madman. But in the good way.

Buildin towards a close would be good, maybe about going out of bounds or having to place a domino in a somewhere it "cannot" be in.

Some sort of forced failure -mechanic would up the tension quite a bit.

How about if the 'building area' is different shape for every scene? Or the bounds be defined by some first blocks that the GM places?

You're probably right. Like I said it got removed more due to vendetta than design, not to mention it is kinda outside of my personal taste. Still, easier said than done. The user i replied to had the same idea as me, sacrifice ability to be serious for resistance to seriousness, and my experience this, while fine from a flavor perspective, is terrible from a mechanical perspective. Mechanically, its primary function is to encourage trolling. The only positive use of it I can think of is to be the "supportive fool" archetype, which could be achieved with good+appeal and low intelligence instead.

I absolutely design for myself.
I see it as the best way to craft something that is genuine and the fact that there isn't a game that covers my needs fully is as good an indicator for a niche as any.
Beside I just want a system that is my ideal.

I am megalomaniac enough to presume that SOME of my preferences are shared by wide segments of the gaming public. I hope I am intelligent enough to spot which are not.

However, the proof is in the pudding (publication).

I generally see these threads involving tons of answers to a couple of questions and the rest being ignored, which inevitably kills the thread when discussion on those questions peters out. Maybe it's just the format I dunno.

Still looking for amass combat system to be inspired by that isn't smash number into other number.

You could keep the absurdity stat but make it an NPC only one. Then you'd make a threat faction based on it. Like a magical virus that turns people into loons in order to propagate itself.
GMs could still allow players yo use it then butit wouldnt be part of the normal game.

So I'm designing an evangelion hack for fate. It's not really meant to be super in-depth, but there's one thing I really can't decide:

How to deal with synch scores. Having a higher synchronization with your evangelion is both a big plus and a big minus, while having a low synchronization is the same- mostly in that the lower the synch, the less control you have, but also the less damage the pilot takes.

Anyway, here are my main ideas.

I could make it a skill- the more synch you have, you get a boost to your skills in the eva, but also take more health stress damage from attacks. At the minimum synch, +1, you'd get a -1 to eva skills but also a -1 to damage taken. At the maximum, a +3, you'd get a +1 to eva skills but a +1 to damage taken.

Alternatively, I could make 'high synch' and 'low synch' special aspects that a pilot could apply to themselves with a maneuver- the aspect would last until they used another maneuver to change it again, but both the angels and the evas could spend fate points on it to get bonuses.

Finally, I could basically completely ignore synch entirely, and just assume that every pilot has a normal synch score unless they have an ego-related Consequence or a 'naturally talented' aspect or something.

Well yeah, it usually depends on how the question is asked. If you ask a broad question, people might not bother to give broad answers, and little, specific questions might require foreknowledge about the surrounding system to figure out the best outcome.

I have personally gotten a lot of input during the last year or so, about as long as I've been developing my current game. I've tried (and in many often have succeeded) to make it so that for every question I ask, I answer 2-3 questions by others, just to keep the embers lit on my part.

This collaborative development is the next step. Think if we actually go somewhere with it and, low and behold, have some threads maybe have entire threads filled with design ideas for it.

About the dominos, now as I mentioned it again... I could try to make some sort of examples with Indesign, maybe I could find dominoes for Tabletop Simulator for anyone who has that. Having "physical" copies in front of you might help heftily.

And if anyone has a headset or mic set up, we can try to make a new voice channel to discord for it.

Rip off humanity from WoD but invert it, every time you Heroic BSoD you gain synch every time you successfully act like a stable individual you lose it. Roll against it for BSoD in stressful situations.

Yeah I just feel there tends to be a lot of questions that get buried in convos or as part of convo posts. Maybe there should be a specific format people use to ask questions so people can pick them out quickly.

>Rip off humanity

I don't think that's the way I want to handle it. Mostly because as-is, Pilots BSoD when they get Taken Out via ego damage or get their negative aspects compelled. While this IS evangelion, I don't want to make it so that players BSoD too much, especially beyond their control.

Not to mention that fate points would essentially be gained every time a pilot is being a fucked up person and spent in order to resist compels in order to pretend to be a stable individual.

The suggestion isn't a bad one, but I think it mixes too much with other mechanics

I'm attempting to create a tactical skirmish tabletop game with some rpg elements. I am also interested in an additionalAztec/Mesoamerican faction because I like the aesthetic.

Does anyone have any suggestions for flavorful twists on the generic classes (ie warrior, mage, etc) or their usual abilities for a combat oriented game? Or links to resources to draw inspiration from?


Currently ideas include shapeshifting into animals based on your selected armor (animal pelts), edgy heart eating, blood drinking and general sacrificial rituals, and idol worship.

That does sound like a viable plan. Even in the question posts themselves, the question might become obscured by the additional details. Thus, the 'question' part of the post should always be somewhat short, so people can read that and see whether the question is one they can give input in.

Something like

>>>How could I streamline this task resolution system?

>>>My system's damage output is too high, what to do?

Triple arrows right would be the question

I've thought about having classes perform different based on factions. You could get away with keeping the generic classes for familiarity, but have each faction bring something different and unique to that base class. I'm thinking something like 5e's Class Archetypes where a Fighter is always a Fighter, but a Battlemaster will play differently than a Champion which plays differently than an Eldritch Knight.

After that, you just find the unique aspects of each faction. Some of what you listed is pretty good with the pelt transforms and heart sacrifice stuff. A japanese faction would obviously revolve around Bushido and a Viking faction would be more raid n pillage. Looking into mythology might also help drum up ideas.

Query: I tend to ignore my personal needs when designing systems. It's a product (ish- I haven't made money or anything,) so it seems kind of silly to base it around the needs of the creator.

Moving on to the reason I'm participating in this thread.
I've been scratching out notes in a notebook of mine that is centered upon the concept of obscenely strong mages. While Vancian magic is in effect, level one Regents (my magic user class) start with eight slots in spells that are obscenely strong when compared to their DnD counterpart. For example, DnD' fireball spell deals 1d6 fire damage per caster level, and can melt certain metals such as gold, lead, and bronze. An analogous spell I've drummed up deals 2d12 flame damage in a cone two hundred feet long and forty feet wide at it's tip.
Now, while the other classes are also stronger than the ones offered by Wizards of the Coast, none of them are quite as spectacular at decimating large numbers of enemies as the Regent is, or has quite as much utility. That's okay- again, the idea of a hereditary class of extraordinarily powerful people is central to the setting. Once they run out of magic, however, their few unarmed combat skills are largely ineffective, as they risk hurting them more than the enemy, because punching someone's breastplate rarely works well, and arbitrary no weapons is in play. I've been thinking of ways to introduce a semblance of balance into the class, so I'm wondering if there's any elegant manner to make enemies more difficult and/or combat more deadly as more Regents, or more powerful Regents, come into play.

>TL;DR: Need help finding an easy to implement way to make difficulty adjust based upon the presence of a certian class

>Magic of Regents comes from their bloodline.
>Literally blood magic
Make it actual blood magic then. To do their magic, they must spill Regent blood, be it theirs or some other Regent.

Give health loss / wounds every time they do spells with their own blood. Balances the game quite a bit, really.

Also metal as fuck.

>mechanic turns normal people into kender

What's your cutoff point for derived stats, /gdg/?

Going on the 10-is-0 scale, I like 5e D&D's approach of capping things at 20 (+5). That means that you can get anywhere from -5 (0 or 1) to +5 (20) while encouraging people in a system with derived attribute growth to explore secondary aspects of their characters for breadth purposes rather than encouraging min-maxing.

That whole spectrum comes from the classic rolling of 3d6 for stats anyways so it's a good metric for talking about systems in general.

That said, rolled stats or point buy? Most people seem to prefer point buy due to badfeels from poor rolls but point-buy can come with inherent min-maxing problems, especially in systems with many attributes like Eoris, Space Opera, Harnmaster, Fuzion, Storyteller, etc.

Holy shit user I'm a retard. Thanks a bunch.

Domino quest bitches!

It can be played solo, cooperatively, and competively.

There's the pitch, now for the engineering.

My system is point-buy, so I'll talk from that perspective.

My answer to minmaxing is Stat Upkeep. It might sound like a horrible system (Haven't playtested yet so don't know how horrible it is), but the jist is that if your stat is high (On a 1-5 scale, 4 or 5), you have to pay a part of your exp gain to keep it at that level.

It makes the point that being good at something requires more than just practice to the learning point, it also requires regular exercise to keep it at that. You won't be the most intelligent person for long if you just sit on your knowledge that you have. This is what the stat upkeep represents.

The more you deviate from the "limit", the more exp points you have to pay.

Of course, the limit is a malleable. A regular human of relatively young age (Under 30) has 3 as a limit on all the stats. If they have one stat as 4, they pay 1/10th of the experience away every time they get experience. If they have one stat at 5, they pay 2/10ths. (The standard amounts of exp are in multiples of 10, so the calculations are not hard)

This means that if you create a character that is grossly minmaxed, in the beginning of the game you'll find it hard to gain any experience, because most of your character's effort to get better is mitigated by the character's desperate efforts to stay in shape.

If you don't pay your upkeep when it is time, your stat drops by one.

A harsh system, yes, but because my game works on a limited range (Ascending dice type a'la Savage Worlds), that is the best way to go about things, IMO. The longer the game goes the less you have anything to do with experience, and thus you can sacrifice more and more, until you hit the point where you have reached the apex, the point you no longer gain experience.

Note that Vancian magic is a crapshoot to balance. Maybe disallow spilling of other people's blood to cut down on abuse. And by god do not allow any (easy) access to spells that could create or regenerate a caster's blood level. It *should* be debilitating to the point of every single use being a difficult decision.

Though on that note, you should probably take a note from Jack Vance himself and make your casters at least moderately capable outside of using magic, so that they can at least serve a supportive role when not slitting their wrists.

Does this sound too complicated guys?

So every character has six basic abilities (Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) and six combat abilities (Fortitude, Reflex, Will, Physical Attack, and Magic Attack). Abilities are rated from 0~6.

The combat abilities are derived from the basic abilities thusly:
Fortitude = (STR+CON)/2
Reflex = (INT+DEX)/2
Will = (WIS+CHA)/2
Physical Attack = (STR+DEX+WIS)/2
Magic Attack = (CON+INT+CHA)/2

HP is then derived from Fortitude, Sanity from Will, and Initiative from Reflex.
Furthermore, you also consult a table using your combat abilities to determine your damage ratings for different damage types:
Adroit damage (based on Fortitude)
Gauche damage (based on Reflex)
Arcane damage (based on Will)
Fire damage (based on Will)
Ice damage (based on Fortitude)
Lightning damage (based on Reflex)

Does this sound like a bit too much number crunching?

>six combat abilities (Fortitude, Reflex, Will, Physical Attack, and Magic Attack)
I count five

The derived attribute system seems pretty cool; I like that Physical Attack uses Wis and that Magic Attack uses Con. I dunno about the damage ratings though, I'd need more explanation.

Also, do your basic abilities still do things, or are they only there for derived abilities?

Domino quest? Hell yeah!

I was thinking about the options and suggestions given before.

What do you guys think of a system where the GM (if there is one) lays down 2-5 domino blocks, 1-4 on the edges of the board and one in the middle. The players then have to build connections to said blocks to achieve some bonus goals in the scene.

How will we do action resolution? Totals of the domino blocks? Shapes that those blocks create?

And what about difficulty? A number to pass over, or a pinpoint number, meaning you have to get close to it. Or maybe something else?

Are there other pieces to the game other than the domino blocks?

Don't attack types have the problem that they can go over 6?

The amount of crunch seems passable, as long as the crunch is in the sheet and not just in the book (Playing Exalted can sometimes be annoying when all the crunch and derivatives you need are mentioned once in a 600+ page book)

The crunch might become a problem during character advancement, though. Every time you raise a stat, all the derivatives must be recalculated, so it can be a little frustrating.

But hey, if you're okay with that, then sure.

>I count five
Blech. I meant five. Sorry.

Basic abilities are used for things outside of combat.
Strength is used for encumbrance and athletics
Constitution is used for survival and endurance
Dexterity is used for tinkering and stealth
Intelligence is used for memory and lore
Wisdom is used for discovery and perception
Charisma is used for morale and diplomacy

Attack types are supposed to be able to go over 6 since I want offense to slightly outpace defense. I just had a brain fart.

I've been using code-academy a bit. I'm hoping to eventually develop an app to go along with my game so that players can easily generate characters and calculate all of their stats.

Resolution should be shapes or die rolls based on tile values. I like the idea of a 2/5 block being 2d6 and 5d6, as a sort of yin-yang mechanic tied to attack and defense or two other related actions.

On top of using domino values to roll, they can then be used to represent the "flow" of a scene by leading into shapes or attaching to those bonus dominoes.

With damage ratings you basically add your ability plus level and consult a table to determine what dice you roll for damage rolls of that type.
For example:

>Adroit Damage
Heavy weapons deal adroit damage
1~3: d6
4~6: d8
7~9: d10
10~12: d12

Hmm hmm. Interesting interesting.

So basically it would be a very experimental d6 dice pool.

Wait, I had an idea. So, what if, in combat (We don't know about turn structure or whether it will even be a thing), all players put an initiative block on the board (There should be some way to discern whose blocks are whose) and then, to attack another character on the board, they have to put either their own initiative block or another block next to the opponent's block. Even how it is placed can be a factor, meaning that the halves that touch are compared, and then the halves that don't touch are compared. This would basically create a risk-reward system where if you attack an opponent's weak spot (the lower end of the block), you will have to withstand the attack from the stronger side of the block.

Or something like that? Would that be too much of a hassle though? To make it easier, the receiving end could always have a static number (for example, 5/2 block having [5x6] 30 and [2x6] 12 respectively).

Thanks for the buy in!

Here's a thought from muh shower...

Domino quest is a 1-4 player game
basic Domino quest requires a standard 6:6 domino set - advanced domino quest uses the 9:o
Domino quest is played in turns
Players navigate a dungeon of unknown horror as they repeatedly quest for treasures and experience

Lol

The game starts with a draw picking up dominoes face up until a double is drawn, this is the start of the dungeon, rewards a re based on this initial tile
Players pick up 3 face down dominoes and play out the domino game as usual by matching numbers and building
If you cannot match then a domino is drawn from the pile. This is a monster.
The monster is comprised of 2 parts, a head and tail. These are determined by a chart and the monster will have some buffs/modifiers based on the head and tail. In a GM/competitive game this 'noe is drawn by the other person. In a coop solo game the 'noe is spun around face down to determine a head and tail before flipping.

So now to combat resolution....


The quest ends when the hero is killed or there are no more 'noes to play. Gold is tallied by the numbers on the outsides added, minus the numbers left in the hands of the players. You may lose money fighting in the dominoe dungeon of peril, but you may make money.

Gold is spent on stuff, maybe modifiers, like redraw a monster, more hp etc.

Larger quest have bosses, or different winning conditions, or save the process where you must match a certain piece with another one.

Guys?

If I was going to do that, I'd have a degrees of success mechanic where you get bonuses depending on how well you beat the other number.

If I was going to do the "growth" idea like in , then I'd almost think premade maps with "pathways" for the dominoes would work well, and you'd just designate certain locations as the objectives. Like if you had a 3.5 mat where rooms and hallways were pre-drawn like pic related, you all might start at 2A and place dominoes on those squares. Each time you connected any of the 2s or 3s, you'd accomplish some objective. You could have pools of dominoes based on certain stats, so if you were a brawn over brains type, you could try to do 6 things (6 dominoes to place) using Strength, but you could only do 1 thing with Intelligence (1 domino). Once everyone has placed all their dominoes, you tally up what objectives you completed and they determine how well you finished that encounter. What cool is you can use the exact same mechanic for everything, whether its combat, social interaction, stealth, or whatever.

forgot pic related

Did my first playtest for a fantasy board game yesterday. The group liked it and had pretty unanimous feedback on what to modify.

The game incorporates more of the common aspects of pnp rpgs like choice vs just pure combat like most go for. Very simple system. I'm really glad it worked, as I built it to be able to be swapped to alternate themes.

Also got some playtests in for a simpler party card game. Oddly, got the complete opposite feedback of what the last group gave, so that's a pickle.

Holy shit I accidentally a game. Original domino guy back, hi.

I was thinking on this last night, and I think that if you're going to care about where the dominoes are on the physical play space, you're going to need some sort of board or map on which to place them.

If you wanted to, you could get real storygamey with such a system as well. Designate spots on the board for story roles ("Brute", "Villain", "Friend"), and have everyone place their block on the space they want their character to represent through the session. These character dominoes can be connected via regular dominoes, which can be placed down by performing an action (attacking, healing, whatever). If you ever manage to connect a line to another character domino, you can create a life-changing interaction between the characters (love, killing them, whatever). Archetypes that would regularly interact ("Brute" and "Villain", for example) are close, where less common pairs ("Lover" and "Brute" for example) are far apart.

Or, alternatively, fuck that. The fact that the dominoes have two numbers on them is also really interesting. What if characters are composed of a series of traits, positive and negative, which have numerical values to them, like Strong 4 or Greedy 2. Whenever you need to make an action, you select one of your positive traits to try and solve it, selecting a Domino from your pool with a side greater than your Trait rating to succeed. The problem is that you must use the other side against one of your bad traits, and if the number on that side of the domino is higher than that number, that bad trait also activates.

For example, I'm a big angry fighter, and I wanna bash a chest open. I am a super simple character, so I only have 2 traits: Smash Shit 3 and Clumsy 2. My only domino is a 4/3, so I have to use the 4 on Smash Shit and the 3 on Clumsy. I now get to narrate how my character successfully smashes the chest, but something bad happens due to my clumsiness.

How exactly this would play out depends. Maybe the list of possible positive and negative traits is in the book, which describes exactly how these positive traits can be used and how negative traits can misfire. Maybe you just sort of get to freeform narrate it. Maybe it's a bit of both.

This sort of system would be really good for a setting that focuses heavily on the duality of characters. For example, settings with characters that undergo less than favorable transformations (ex. Jekyll and Hyde, or werewolves) could use such a system, as could simply a setting where everyone is very two-faced (obvious pseudo-joke answer is politics) or simply has two very different aspects of their personality (secret superspies, or maybe dualistic characters like Sheogorath). Could also be an interesting supers game, where you have to balance the traits of your heroic identity and your dweeby, imperfect mundane self.

>party card game
Those are always going to have very different opinions about them. It really comes down to the party playing.

Question is, what happens when someone inevitably gets 0/6, 1/6 or 6/6 at some point?

I'm figuring that out. I've tested it with 6 groups so far.

On second thought, maybe I should have put this here instead. Ah well, still I am curious about your answers, broskis:

Where do you get your testing groups from? FLGS? Internet? University?

bump

So far it's just people I know, but soon I'll be pulling from a facebook group and squatting at a local game store's open board game day

As long as they're not too common, I don't see why a 0/6 or 1/6 can't just be a crit success.

6/6 is really interesting, because I imagine it as this sort of triumphant moment of self destruction. Like if you use that domino on Combat Master and Drunk, you get shitfaced and drunkenly beat all of the brigands in the bar, but you black out and get alcohol poisoning afterwards.

Sadly, I've had very little support, but I haven't had a steady gaming group in years.

Does the phrase "Bastard child of mordheim, realm of chaos, and riddle of steel" do anything for you.

If I knew what Riddle of Steel was, then I'd say "yes".

That's a good point. But that depends on the fact that do players get a domino piece pool or do they just pick one at random from a bag. Or well... It would mean, that picking up a six, and say you have a "hand" of 3, your choices diminish to two because you want to save up the crit to when it matters most.

In a dice pool system, how many dice is too many dice?

can you explain in more detail how your stats affect magic?

probably 8 or 9

Don't go over ten, a simple rule.

I'm looking at you, Exalted.

2

The amount you can physically fit in one hand. So, you don't want your system to take you above like nine in general use. Crits or other such special events can require double-fisted rolling.

Different poster with a followup question

What if the only dice used are d12s?

Is it a good idea to just go straight to kickstarter vs actually shopping around for publishers for a board game?

I guess that begs the question, how do you get dominoes to use? Do you pick the traits you're activating and draw one domino? Do players get a pool? Does one get pulled for everyone relevant to the situation, and everyone goes one by one taking one until the last character is stuck with the last one?

In that last case, you could balance by adding some sort of chain effect, meaning if someone's already played a domino that has a matching side to the domino you picked, you can "chain" them, cancelling the two matching sides and counting the two unmatched sides as a "new" domino.

Why?

I wonder why would you play narrative system about assholes and degenerates

I would never go over 5 with d12s. We learn decimals in schools, but if we learned dozenals in school, the maximum of 10 would again be the best. But because using dozenal dice in a decimal system is hard, I say 5.

(Unless the dice are actually dozenal meaning one to dozen, then it's 10 again)

Let me explain that a bit.

10d6 (One maximum I see) = 60
10d10 (Another maximum I see) = 100
5d12 (The third one) = 60.

This is because we as humans are conditioned to use numbers 100 and 60 intuitively. Going to 120 would make the system messy. And actually, if there was to be a dozenal system, I derped, the maximum dice then would be a dozen d12s. With d6s I would give the same amount due to there being too many fucking dice in hand.

Wait, is that last line an accidental pun? I think it was.

My correction was unneeded. In dozenal, writing 10 means dozen, not dek.

Assholes and degenerates make for good comedy

My core mechanics is roll Xd12 (X determined by stats and soforth) against a difficulty normally 1-3

10, 11, and 12 are successes. 11 gives you one reroll, 12 gives you two rerolls.

If you have some kind of training in the action, that is represented by a expertise score. When you make a roll for which you have an applicable expertise score (1-5) you may choose to have results equal to or less than your expertise score count as successes in addition to 10+, however you sacrifice all rerolls.

I love this dice system, and it has playtested very well with keeping pools ~3-5 normally. But I was curious what others thought.

Sorry for not elaborating that is is success based and not addition based.

>Talk about a game idea with a friend
>He expresses interest in working on it, which was fine with me.
>He doesn't work on it.
>I make the whole thing myself.
>I construct a prototype entirely by myself.
>He playtests it one time.
>Thinks he is an equal partner in the game
>His accountant girlfriend is convinced he is an equal partner in the game.

God damnit

>expecting anyone to work on autistic number calculations and fine tweaking in real life

>expecting to get a cut of any profits, should they exist, from a project you didn't work on

That's no way to talk to an equal partner.

I had a friend who I hired on as an artist for a writing project that I was working on and I found out within about a month that he had been presenting himself to other companies at meetings that I was not informed of nor invited to as the co-creator of the entire property.

I fired him immediately.

Just mail a part of it to yourself, so you have some legal backing if anything becomes of it.

Allright... An unique system allright.

But with the possible rerollings, keeping the rolls relatively small is best. With the reroll system as is, more than 6 dice can get iffy at times if you have multiple rerolls in a row.

Even though it has unique success mechanics, I will raise it only to about 6.

I would do that, voluntarily.

But I probably have an unhealthy obsession with systems in general.

Oh, that was me BTW. Was posting elsewhere in user in the meanwhile.

you realize where you're posting this to, rrrrrrrrrrrright?

I made a game for a homebrew setting that functions as a plaster layer over Dark Heresy and uses corruption as experience points.

What are your first impressions knowing only those details? The objective of the game is not to fall to chaos, but also to not die or let everyone around you die horribly.

It sounds like a game where the characters just become more and more wicked as the game goes on, meaning it probably has something going on in the horror-section. The experience seems to manifest probably as mutations or superpowers, using of which is probably something of a last resort, because you will be consumed by it if you do it too often.

sounds like vampire the masquerade

does that work? wouldnt it be better to put it privately on dropbox or something?

That's pretty much it. I was more asking if the premise sounded retarded, but since no one has said anything yet, I guess I can relax a little.

Don't let the image fool you. Its not actually vampires. Its mecha.

My impressions (I went user again ) are always the mechanical premise of the system, rather than thinking whether it sounds stupid.

It sounds like a solid premise for a horrosesque game. I always love high-risk--high-reward things in games.

struggle for humanity, struggle against corruption, same thing.

I'm working on a game that involes limiting the ways in which players can communicate. Does anybody have any good ideas for ways this can be done?

Currently I have things like

No talking directly to anyone
Letter restrictions
Third person only
syllabic limitations
Nonverbal communication only

Anyone have any ideas for more in that style

>trying to come up with a damage/health system that keeps strong creatures from being damage sponges while also allowing for a wide range of creature toughness and weapon power

Using the postage system gives legal backing for US patent law. So if you end up getting to the point of selling the game, and he tries to pull something, you have physical proof to secure your claim, even if its just something like a print out of the rules.

Have a wound system. Depends on what kind of a system it is, but usually that would be that the amount of wounds becomes a tougher and tougher vitality (or whatever is your "health stat") roll to beat.

And presto! You have a system where it is almost possible to fall in first hit, but also a one where more bonuses means more chances to stay up.

Though I do admit that large variance of weapon power might be a little tricky to take on with this. That was one thing I almost sacrificed for this, but I made it up with situational damage (meaning hitting weak points and such, which probably will be the most important aspect of combat now).

I am extremely biased toward this kind of system because my main system that I've created to maximize my GMing potential uses it

Depending whether the health stat raises a static bonus to this roll or whether the dice type changes really hammers this system's strengths.

This kind of system requires a relatively low damage output though, to keep it from being ridiculously lethal... But NPC damage can be different from PC damage, though, if we are being exact.