Admit it, Veeky Forums

You have tried making your own tabletop game or RPG system.

How far did you get and what's the pitch?

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Small dice-pool system based on action arcade games. Got the core rules working for the most part, sorting out the details was something of a headache. Part of the problem is I made a game engine to be used in different styles and it's hard to settle particular ones. Some of the number balancing was also difficult, ironically due to the smaller numbers involved.

I never actually tried but I had an idea for a quick pickup sci-fi game, but then I saw Lasers and Feelings and realized that was my humble idea made way better.

Only ever gone for worldbuilding and homebrewing myself.

I'm a lazy person.

Attacks come from cards, which you unlock moving along essentially the sphere grid from FFX. Probably just wait for Thornwatch which will be 100x better let's be honest.

I have tried fleshing out a very realistic adventure simulation system, trying to take as many factors into consideration as possible (to the point of doing extensive wilderness survival and emergency first aid research) while still keeping the numbers as simple and meaningful as possible. If it worked, you would be more stressed out by trying to climb a wet rope than you would fighting a group of orcs in DnD.

NEO Scavenger is a fantastic videogame example of the direction I'd like to go, but even further.

The ultimate design goal is to have players make smart decisions while still going after their goals.

Project 1: "A wargame, Brutal trench warfare with mecha in an art deco world"

Status: Rules complete, need more art, publishing backing, etc.

Project 2: "An adaptation of the X Wing movement rules with Mad Max/Death Race style car battles, played with hot wheels cars"

Status: Rules partly done, expect extensive rewriting.

You move along a sphere? How would that physically work?

The Sphere Grid from FFX wasn't actually sphere shaped, the game just used spheres of crystal as a pseudo-XP.

Dude are you the guy with the trench warfare mech game? I saw that months ago, it sounded awesome. It inspired me to keep working on my own system. You got a website?

I am. Don't have a website. Got a discord channel I frequent tho. I think this invite is still good. discord.gg/0pEgcQvEfLwsGm1e

My basic plan never got to the real crunch, just worldbuilding.

The basic sell was that everyone who's PC-caliber is magical to at least some extent, at least to the point of casting support spells and being empowered and shit. So obviously I stopped work when I discovered Earthdawn.

Heh. I wrote a teaser and saved it with some other design documents. Goes something like this.

As humanity grew, so did big business, and eventually, megacorporations came to dominate 99% of human wealth and productivity. Such megacorps could easily buy and sell entire governments, provided they were not checked by another megacorp in the process, and as a whole, governments came to place the needs of the corps first. Such businesses ruled their demesnes with an iron fist. Eventually, corps began to see greater profit in international tension and contrived to start a series of brushfire wars. Some dead troops, some dead rebel militants who didn't buy into the system, whatever, who cares. Profit!

They didn't expect this series of wars to ever go nuclear. But, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

Now, humanity has begun to reclaim the nuclear wastes. Some hid in shelters, some just weren't near the blasts, but for whatever reason, humanity survived, although not without change and adaptation. Mutation has set in, and humanity has divided into several stable strains of mutations, most now different enough to claim status as new species.

Even reality as its known has changed. When the bombs hit, something happened. No one knows what or how, and few are left who have the scientific background to figure out the mystery – and now, magic has crept into the world. Humans and near-humans can cast forth mysteries and weave magic that was previously the domain of fantasy works. Every silver lining is attached to a mushroom cloud, however; where previously the small folk were just fairy tales, now they are real – all too real, as is their sadism and cruelty.

You got me. It's a half fantasy/half scifi gamesystem that takes place in the same galaxy. For the fantasy part it all takes place on one remote planet with its own set of races, magics, ect all unique to the rest of the galaxy. Scifi half of it takes place in the rest of the galaxy with its own unique tech, races, ect. I just liked both types of games a lot and wanted a system that'd accommodate both. Finished it, only 289 pages. No want or need to publish it, I just enjoy playing it with my pals.

Tried to make a game world combining elements of Shadow Run, Delta Green, WoD, using a system that drew the best parts of Fate and a lil' bit o' D&D 5e.

Put players mainly as part of the more clandestine groups of the intelligence community that had to deal with power struggles between whole segments of the supernatural world (vampires vs. werewolf blood feuds, sabotage a deal between the nation's President and the Greys, etc), extinction-level events (prevent summoning of sleeping outer-realm entities, neutralize an invisible, flying telepathic alien the size of a storm cloud that causes spontaneous human combustion on whoever it passes over), and other such shit, in such a way that even the most dedicated onspiracy crackpots were barely aware of their exploits or existence.

And of course, the players had superpowers, but application was more like in the film 'Push' or 'X-files', rather than 'X-men' or any Marvel/DC stuff. Atmosphere can be anywhere from the black-on-black grittiness of Delta Green to the outright hilarity of Archer, depending on the GM and the players.

Still a WIP.

Actually doing one with a friend, it's all early and shit, but would basically look like the archetype system of pathfinder, with only the archtype. And no archtype will ever share the same rules, the same mechanics to avoid an easy way to break the system. Each archetype are organized in classic group (warrior/thief/wizard/cleric) who rely on an abily (respectively strenght/dexterity/intelligence/faith). You'll forced to have your main abilty high, but there won't be some of the others who will be more useless than the others if you pick them.
Plus abilites which are separated from your way to attack, like constitution. So everyone can afford to put point in HP, because everyone need to live more.

It's going to be called Kynareth

Started working on something in my spare time. Players take the role of different adventurers, each with stats split between might, smarts and wit. Each round your party is confronted with a monster, which also has its own strengths and weaknesses relative to each stat (strong enemies like ogres are easily outsmarted, while hags can be outmatched no sweat.)

Defeating an enemy gives fame (victory points) based on how much you contributed. Players also have the option to grandstand, which allows them to gain fame as though they'd contributed the most yet contribute nothing to the actual fight. Obvious problem being if nobody is actually fighting the monsters, it wins and not only do the ones fighting it lose some fame, but the ones trying to take the credit also take full credit for the loss.

As it stands it's just a nice press your luck game among friends. I'm trying to incorporate some kind of "favor" system which would let you gain additional one-time options for your turn as you level up, but I'm trying to keep it elegant.

I'm dying to know what is in those pages. Can you drop a link to the files or just break down what ratio of the book is rules vs monster codex, etc

nope

Assign each weapon and armor a damage/protect value against Piercing, Slashing, and Bludgeoning damage. Modify initiative to be affected by the reach of a weapon and weight, both of the weapon and of total weight carried. Add a "close combat" distance that's not quite grappling but is still inside the enemy's guard, which can only be exploited by having a short enough weapon.
Break armor and damage into locational damage and rework the armor system and remove all the fantasy/fictional armor. Gambeson, mail, multiple plates (brigandine for my setting), solid plate. Protection values mentioned before are armor soak. Only dodging/missing prevents all damage; shields stop everything but bludgeoning damage, but only if the bludgeoning passes the ability of a shield to block it. A dagger does nothing but a lance still does plenty. Shields and armor also have condition and both degrade in protect values and inflict modifiers when damaged.

So autistic runescape.

>it's all just written down and worked out mathematically in notebooks
>it will never ever be used in in a campaign

I always make a new system when running a game. I think the system should reflect the setting in a mechanical way, generic systems are fine but nothing beats the flavor win of a system designed around the setting, imo.

1: a system revolving around personal and mecha scale combat with minor.. well, think a combination of eclipse phase and evangelion set across history with the primary characters folks thrown backward in time. Primary antagonists were others from your group - everyone split to try and force their own vision on Earth over the eons. The gm set up the campaign using a bastardised d100 system and the players were involved in a series of battles determining the war results over thousands of years, with each one and its status affecting the final state of society. We actually ran a session but liked the setting more than my rules, which were.. bad.

2: a unified quest gm system that would be easy and flexible for many uses, with only one roll thread side while the qgm used their own dice to sort things. Yeah. Got as far as you'd expect.

Fantasy 1600s Colonial America
Simple and disposable characters
Complex rules to help direct slave and property ownership
Focus on social and economic problems compared to constant combat.

Its crunch is nearing the end of first draft, settings a little generic in places as a result and will be spruced up after it's been playtested a bit.

I hope you see it through, this sounds pretty great.

Rules-light, open-ended system using playing cards instead of dice, one deck per player. Four attributes, each mapped to a suit. Checks were done by drawing a number of cards equal to the stat/skill in question, looking for cards matching the required attribute, and tallying them up to meet the target number (ex. Clubs = STR checks, thus Bend Bars Lift Gates requires Clubs). Relevant traits/skills/items would add/subtract cards from the draw. A Joker makes a check a Critical, whether it be a success or failure.

Progression was handled through a ghetto Karma system. Each stat gained experience separately, capping at its respective number. To level up a stat you'd do something cool relevant to the attribute/story, increasing it by one and the experience within it to zero.

I made it to handle a fast, fluid X-Files style game, and while it worked on paper, there were certain QOL problems (constant reshuffling, unclear RAW etc.) that prevented us from returning to it. Wouldn't mind giving it another go, though.

It was a super simple system that I made when me and my friends all really enjoyed the game Bastion.
So I made Bastion d6.
Don't think we ever got around to playing it though.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, user!

Got an idea for a mad max type of game. 4x4 or 4x6 board, use 1/50 or similar vehicles and any 25mm or 28mm miniatures you like.
The only products you'd "need" to buy would be upgrade kits to madmaxify your dudes and rides.
Simplified Infinity rules, movement templates for vehicles.
Car chase scenarios with 3-5 road segments replacing regular terrain.

I tried to make a brutal legend inspired heavy metal adventure game based off rogue trader, heavily edited of course. Instead of ships you have tour buses, and the magic is of course metal \m/

It's like Mordheim but set in the kind of atmosphere of 'This War of Mine' of a war torn Modern Country, with the occasional bit of Future Tech and Psychics. Tanks and improvised armoured vehicles I want to be a thing, I want someone to be able to scrap together a T-72 and slam it through a building.
Status: ????
I do a bit of work on it every so often, having trouble explaining how armour will work. Haven't started on tanks and other armoured vehicles.

I've got a system that I haven't tested yet where your main stats are derived from a personality test that I made up.

d20 Castle Crashers, failed miserably but was simplified and a lot faster than regular d20.

Simple as Magic Beans, tiny d6pool, D&D/OSR clone, extremely fast gameplay, extremely open/moddable, very lethal (but forgivable), hella simple because I game with non-system savvy folk or newbies. About 2.5 or more years of making this little shit, about 12 rewrites from the beginning, basically only the base mechanics remained the same. Playtested dozens of games, different groups, everything worked well.

Last project was using a SAMB base to make a DOOM tabletop game, hella fast hella lethal and was pretty fun for the one playtest I did.

It simply is never good enough to publish, and you always get some new ideas or inspiration. The biggest hurdle is having a simple as fuck core rulebook that's about 10 pages long, but the GM manual and other shit that I instinctively know would take 40 pages or more, and supplements/gamemods... I always get overwhelmed.

I have like a 2 page PDF for the combat system of a game inspired by Soul Calibur/Souls games.

I promised I'd work some more on it but I'm lazy.

Gimme more info, how fast was it, how did you handle multiple protagonists, weapon upgrades and challenges? I love Bastion.

In all honesty I was pretty young and the system was so simple it only really had fluff in common with Bastion.
Players picked what caste they came from (mancer, brusher etc) or could be Ura and that decided what their fighting style was like.
I don't have the document anymore though, sorry.

Greater support for messengers, spies, crafting, research, mass combat, running a church and domain management in a streamlined rules medium package.
Pretty much, the things you start to very quickly find out are missing from most rulebooks if you run a sandbox game.

It's heroic fantasy in the sense that it's not grmm low fantasy but it's lower fantasy than d&d. It seems to have a good strategic element when it comes to resource management and planning while not being overly brutal. I have some benny sorta mechanics to promote the party creating cohesive goals and following them which the players seem to like.

I have all the basic parts of the game in a pdf and mostly formatted. Pretty much anything say basic d&d handles is formatted with pictures and all of that. I need to playtest most of the rules outside things like combat, wilderness travel, skills, etc. but I'm about 80% of the way through rules design.

I actually made a kickstarter for this one, just to see what would happen.
I learned I don't know shit about advertising but still had several hundred donated by friends, which felt nice.
It was a rules-lite D&D clone where any build was viable, because of how stats worked. You had your health stat, your physical stat that gave you more power points, your mental stat that gave you more magic points, and your luck stat that gave you more luck points. Power points let you add a die to your damage roll, or reuse a power (1/encounter abilities), while magic points let you use a spell. So you could be a strong ass wizard that powered up a couple spells and could counterspell more often, or a wizard who could cast more spells. Luck just let you reroll something. Stats didn't change the base damage you did. Oh, and everything operated on a d6 (well, mostly 2d6) system.

After a year I realized a class-based system for that was a bad idea. You now build a character by drawing a power and spell card, then choosing a race that gives one benefit to your character, then rolling a D6 for each stat. You get to draw a new power or spell card that you "learn" on level up. I just haven't had a reason to test it, since it's more of a casual-friendly system and I haven't played with anyone new to the hobby for years.

Made an entire system for it, except for the main worldbuilding bits, economy systems, enemy statblocks, etc. I got all the core mechanics down though.

The idea is that there are three core classes for the player to choose from, and they all have their own distinct mechanics.

The warrior creates new actions for use in combat, and also 'styles' that change the way his combat works entirely. For example, he could make a style that comes with two negative qualities and one positive (No weapon, no armor, bonus damage) to become a monk. Or maybe a maneuver that boosts their acrobatics for the purpose of jumping, at the cost of only being able to use it X times per encounter.

The mage class gathers different flavors of mana from various nodes (holes to mana-filled planes) or alchemical reagents that they can find around, and casts freeform spells with them. If you find Celesthe mana, the flavor of 'life' for example, they get bonuses to healing things but negatives to harming things whenever they use that mana. Mages end up with multiple mana pools as they level.

Finally, the Wanderer/Rogue/Thief learns abilities from monsters, enemies, or even other players. If you spy on a mage long enough, you can learn a spell or two. If you spy on a warrior, you can borrow their maneuvers. But these fill 'lore' slots that limits how many abilities you can know at a time.

My online group wanted to play a game set in the Elder Scrolls verse, so I went about putting together a d100 home brew system. I was actually pretty damn close to getting to done, but having my computer crash on me and having to reset everything lost me the system.

I tried to make essentially Thief: The Board Game/War Game but I didn't have anyone to playtest with so it fizzled out.

Kind of a homebrew system for WWII play. We used to play DnD 4e, so skill system is kinda based off of that.
>inb4 fags
yeah, yeah
But strutting around as dapper SS soldiers actually worked great, as the combat system was simple, but fair and effective.

I'm not a sturmfag, we just felt like being a bit edgy.

Gunplay:
>Bolt action rifles, or similar slow things, like melee, grenade, stuff could make one attack roll per turn
>Semi automatic could make two
>Full auto could make four

>Accuracy penalty for faster firing weapons and buttstocks and stuff

Game based on the URealms engine, with restructured universe, races, and classes for something I already had on mind.

In theory it's pretty much playable now, and every now and then I go back to it. I have a few notes for it right next to me in fact. But I was very insistent on creating all the art assets myself, and I've still got so much to do. Probably should have started smaller but it feels too late to back out of it now.

Very ruleslite system because I naturally tend to roll-play when systems get too number heavy.

I made an RPG about maintaining a settlement in the wake of a black-death-like zombie plague in a fantasy world.

I am still trying to get the village mechanics to work.

There is a lot of downtime rules, crafting rules, et cetera, and the village rules and character rules are intimiately intertwined. For example you can spend Manpower to build a library which aids your village's Morale but also lets the wizard research an extra spell when he is in downtime. Or the botanist being able to engineer crops to be more drought resistant, and droughts are fairly common.

Each month the GM rolls on an events table depending on the season to see what misfortune befalls the village. This can act as an adventure hook or just a mechanical effect on the village.

Overall I ratehr like it but I am having difficulty implementing Food and farms in a non-RTS-autism way.

>It's going to be called Kynareth
Wait like the Aedra? Is it a TES game?

Kinda a mix of Call of Cathulu, SCP foundation, and various other cosmic horror shit. I called it Project Y'lipson. It was rules light, focused on how each player/character's perception Of reality does not always overlap with their party members.

I started it when i designed a silly character sheet and just asked my schoolyard chums to fill it out. I read the sheets, assigned stats(instead of the players doing it. Weird, i know but it worked in my group. ), and then realised i should do somthing with them.

The few games i ran went pretty well, but i had to do a lot of improve and taking the players aside to personally alter their perceptions. So it was slow af and disjointed, combat was a stuttering wreck and it was hard finding a balance of metagaming with the dynamic of altered realities.

But i have a few of my players nightmares and the games have Become a part of the group's lore so I'm satisfied over all

I'm still working on it, actually.

General idea is that XP is replaced by something called milestone points. You gain milestone points by learning things that correlate to your class. Initially you will need two milestone perks to LVL, which will increase your stats and unlock new abilities/spells depending on your chosen background(class). The requirment increases by 2 points for every time you LVL. To gain milestone points, you need to learn. For example, if you choose to be an alchemist then you will likely gain milestone points for either experimenting with different ingredients (be it the result positive or negative) or by killing an enemy with an unexperimented solution. Even if you fail to kill them, you can still observe the effects and learn that so and so ingredients create this effect, thus netting you a milestone point.

Combat can be described to be as similar as DH, in which the enemy can roll to dodge your blow. However, new additions are added. For example, you can choose to attempt to disarm your opponent, of which they have to take a characteristic test to see if they can keep their weapon in their hands. If you choose a combat oriented class, you can choose to gain milestone points if you simply get an enemy to surrender. If you fail to kill an enemy and observe why, and then proceed to kill them with a better method, then you basically learned a better way of killing this kind of enemy and thus gain a milestone point.

So far I got character creation done, and the world is almost finished. Whats left is to iron out the rest of the rules for equipment, travelling, marshalling armies, and so on. Ill proably be done with this in the next few months, but who knows really.

I like this! What do you use to show player progress? A shared map? I want to do an irl stratedgy game with a tablet and stuff

OP I'm still writing
immortalpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Tallet_Legion
immortalpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Ashed_City-States
immortalpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Goran_Nation

System?
Nah, too many out there for me to try to create my own from scratch. I know how those systems produce different results, and I've got enough options to pick from to produce the results I'd want.
I've done modifications on those systems, but that is modifications. From a few houserules to transplanting the core dice mechanics.

Settings... a bunch.

>Purposefully simplistic RPG system geared around short, silly sessions played with friends over IRC or Discord or whatever

Finished, already in its "Third" edition of revisions. Not intended for widespread play, but my friend's enjoy it and appreciate the time I take to try and fine-tune it. Good for a night where we're all around and there's nothing to do or talk about.

>Dungeon crawler with an emphasis on survival and sanity, horrors buried deep within the earth and hope within darkness

Still in the sketching things out phase; probably won't have anything even playtestable for awhile.

>"Bureaucracy" simulator where the player(s) play the part of a military officer placed in charge of an occupied village where everyone hates you

Rough semblance of rules and resources in place, working on an event system to further the ability to playtest a rough draft.

I'm designing my own syncretic take on D&D wherein I subvert the game's reward mechanisms and fail states in order to shift the game's focus from that of violent conquest to that of finding peace and easing one's burdens in a fantasy post-apocalyptic realm.

Last version is linked. Currently working on a complete rewrite with a massive overhaul.

There is a settlement character sheet shared among the group, it has a map with buildings and stats and what not. Pic related is pretty out of date but the same general idea.

I am close to finishing the quickstart pdf, including the introductory scenario. As for the pitch, I won't go into details here. So in short: yeah, I did get it done - in about 1 year.

Well that sounds fucking fascinating desu.

Been working on a darkest dungeon type system, where players would create characters and basically play the role of tiers to the family

Possibly taking stuff from Coc and end to make characters and stress management

This sounds really cool. Do you have anything written up yet? A working document?

Well, the start of it was that I preferred the d20, leveling system in regards to combat, but preferred the Xd6, number of successes, gain XP points as you progress, system for skills.

Actually almost done with it, mostly editing minutia at this point. Afterwards doing some playtesting.

I used to make board games all the time as a kid with my brother. Cant really remember any specifics except most of them were some form of modern warfare chess

I tried working out accurate farming rules to slot into D&D in order to increase verisimilitude. I wanted realistic mechanics that could calculate how much food a settlement required , starvation on a mass level if they couldn't get it or farms were burned down etc.

This was so players and npcs could implement realistic things like scorched earth policy on a marching army or how long a city would take to starve put and there'd be a clear mechanical effect. Sadly I never got it to work as I'm no economist and my brain started falling apart and I decided I didn't want to be running a farming sim.

Shame though I'd love to see something like it ingrained into a system.