Game Design General /gdg/

Dominoes rule edition. Today's query: Have you ever participated in collaborative efforts on Veeky Forums? If so, which ones?

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Bamping with domino quest!

A classic dungeon crawl where you battle unknown horrors and level your characters in a fantasy setting.

Bring it on, yesterday I was a little bit too tired learning how to work on Illustrator to join this discussion... can you post a summary of what you have so far?

Also, I would appreciate some comments on my character sheet

forgot to post the file

I can take a look at the sheet. I have worked quite a lot these past weeks on sheets.

There was nothing set in stone, my idea was to incorporate normal domino play style and layering on the questing battling leveling and traveling.

It would need a character sheet, and tables to work properly, as my vision is just the 6x6 set and the rules tables and sheets.

In my mind its like WHQ in a way where you quest, slay monsters, complete missions, go back to town to level up and buy certain perks fr the next dungeon and so on.

For combat I was thinking about monsters being a domino with a head and tail as described from a table. The monster would have buffs and penalties based on the combination, some would be bosses. You'd delete the monsters by matching a certain number of dominoes, maybe with certain matching requirements to "kill"

Like I sad no one really agreed on anything, there were some suggestions that the dominoes be stats, there were other ideas as well.

I'd like to think that I had coined the phrase "domino quest" though.

It looks really neat!

Now the suggestions:
>Those stars look a little off because they're too "clean."
>Maybe move ability sub-type(?) texts (Outdoors, Personal etc.) A little upwards. They're a little close to the first ability as of now.

Also some typos / grammar mistakes:
"Tattoos"
"Psychological Profile"
"Strength"
"Philosophy"

Everything else looks really good. But that's as far as it looks. I can't say for certain how spacey it is when printed, though I could see it being a little cramped, much like my own one-page sheet.

As far as your sheet goes, I'd say it's organized well, if a bit busy (not hating). I guess your players would understand the effects of each of the stats when it comes to game play, or the GM has these effects close at hand so the players do not have to reference a rule book etc.

My opinion on CSs are that those that show the effects of the stats are the most effective. Cross referencing slows down game play, it's easier to look at your sheet sheet, see a number, and then know explicitly how that check etc. works. True it's more casual, but the gameplay is whats important, not being a research scientist.
that being said, your game looks interesting just by checking out the sheet.

I have problems figuring it out how to pull this off, I think it's very easy for it to go either way becoming kind of boring/annoying or really awesome/fun...Besides that, I think we should think of using 2 sets of 6x6 dominoes, having a whole set for the GM/monster would be nice....

Good points, typos fixed and I agree that they look a little too close (I didn't knew how to increase the line spacing back when I started working on this), about the stars, I still haven't settled down with style yet but I will vectorize them and rough them up...on my writing lines there is ~0,5 cm (~1/5 inch) spacing

I get you, this is supposed to be just the basic one (with all an experienced player would need), I'm considering to build some cheat sheets to go along with this.

Couldn't find a more appropriate topic and didn't want to shove another one into the archive, so I'll post this here.

I designed a game and setting for some real life friends to play with. Basically, I took Pathfinder and made a LOT of changes.

A few of Pathfinder's classes, all with some changes, and some completely new classes.

Got rid of the typical Vancian magic system (hate it so much) and introduced a custom "spell creation" system similar to 13th Age while adding a resource (stamina) that fuels the spells.

Gutted the feats list, tried to only keep ones that were good, for either RP, combat, or utility, or any combination, and added new ones to hopefully fill gaps and make certain builds more viable (throwing weapon builds for example).

Other smaller changes, including making it so anyone can use power attack/deadly aim (and removing those feats to hopefully remove some feat tax), getting rid of BAB while keeping level progressing additional attacks (and accounting for lower attack rolls due to no BAB), and redoing the alignment system so that instead of the 3x3 grid, it's more of a "this deity opposes that deity, if you're good you're good, if you're evil you're evil".


What I need help with is coming up with more ideas for feats, things to make sub-optimal builds more viable, ideas for fun feats that add fun stuff for the players to use both in and out of combat, buffing specific classes, etc.

If anyone's interested in looking over and reviewing my stuff, I could post my files, just keep in mind that I'm fully aware that it's likely an unbalanced mess, but the players are having fun and don't have any complaints about balance, so that's not a very big deal.

>>What I need help with is coming up with more ideas for feats, things to make sub-optimal builds more viable....

I'm starting from the scratch and I'm having that same sort of problems, but I figured that instead of worrying far too much as the Dev I can make and balance stuff on the roll instead of thinking too hard to give "too many options" that no one is ever going to use...ig you got all the D&D "classics" working everything should be fine (if you finished those go for the mage/martial crossbreeds, the overly specialized classes (pure debuff mage or pure defense warrior) and hybrid misfits (fochlucan lyrist-esque)

Domino bump

Get rid of 5ft steps (or at least make them not immune to AoOs) to make anti-caster play remotely viable. One of the worst parts of 3.X.

IMO, this is basically a board game at this point, although, most interestingly, I think there might be several games, or at least seeds of games, using dominoes going.

My horse in this race is a storyteller-themed RPG where dominoes are pulled for conflict resolution, where one side triggers a positive trait, and one triggers a negative trait. These traits together comprise the entirety of a character.

I originally envisioned it similar to a dice roll, where every trait has a number associated with it, and you need a domino whose side surpasses that number to activate that trait. If you wanted to, though, you could also just have 6 positive traits, labeled 1-6, and 6 negative traits, labeled 1-6. When you pull a domino showing X|Y, you activate positive trait X or negative trait Y, or vice versa. That's pretty light and storygamey, but it's an option.

Late night bump.

bump

I think we should discuss the domino quest now.

So, some prime questions:

How are the dominoes and chosen? Do we have a random bag everyone just takes from every time they roll, or have everyone have a "pool" that they can choose the domino for the task.

Latter is more success-prone, but probably smoother to execute, and the latter is more random.

I think having multiple positive traits and negative traits, with them becoming better or worse depending on their stat number.

Such as, a positive 6 would be "Glorious Paladin", a positive 3 would be "Knight", then again negative 3 would be "Eternal Pessimist" and a negative 6 would be "Religious Fanatic"

Having multiple traits (not six for both as you envisioned, but like 4-6 total) could open interesting things.

If we're going with this, making this rather storygamey again, but... What if something triggered the GM to get "Tokens" that give the higher number for the negative trait, not causing a fail, but causing an appropriate effect for getting such a high point total for the negative trait.

Such as, the previous character using a 6 / 4 domino (pretty risky in on itself), but instead of being a Paladin with a pessimistic outlook on the situation, the character suddenly becomes "Religious Fanatic" + "Knight", so basically... DEUS VULT!

Then the numbers could be balanced in a way that all characters would have 1 six-point trait in both positive and negative and 1-2 traits under each of them.

How does that sound like?

>Have you ever participated in collaborative efforts on Veeky Forums? If so, which ones?
No. I haven't seen any Veeky Forums collab-creation threads and those that happen I imagine get groupmindy as fuck ASAP. Which is sensible as any publically-accessible design is sure to go down the shitter unless you impose some quality control. Nevertheless I'm unwilling to devote the time and energy needed to convince any random personages on the internet that I'm quality.

A box to put a number in instead of a track to fill in is more efficient.

> no M/F circle one gender
Seriously, a box to fill in appearance details is more general and thus more likely to be used. I've rarely seen anyone fill in "Height" when its on a character sheet
I personally only ever put "short", "medium", or "tall"

>no label on the stars
It'd probably make sense after reading the rules, but plenty of potential players will look at the character sheet and use that to decide whether or not to read the rules (let alone playing the game).

>categorising Abilities under categories
Is it ever possible to use, say Melee, to Compose a military strategy or tactic? Seems a bit restrictive to me, even if the rules dictate otherwise (again, players may never look at the rules). It's a good rule of thumb, but unless you intennd that either 1) your categories are strict, one skill may NEVER be used outside of it's category or 2) it's up to the GM's interpretation, in which case you should make it explicit early and often that Abilities can be used outside of their 'Category'? Is it is not possible, cool, just be explicit one way or another. Personally just looking at the character sheet raises QUESTIONS.

Lists of Feats are awful and what you should create instead is guidelines on how a player can go about creating feats. Stunts in Fate is a good example. Trust that the GM (which realistically is just going to be you) can balance things and put their foot down if need be.

That's a homebrew which (You) should comment on I don't care if posting full pdfs is a faux-pas. It's based off Fate, Diaspora (a Fate 3e hard scifi game, and takes a bit from Monte Cook's Cypher system).

Predetermined-results games are rarer in game design and I'd encourage doing that on the gimmick factor alone (which is not insubstantial for indie RPG). Putting enough in the main rules about planing out your scene and playing to both your weaknesses (low dominoes) and your strengths will go a long way, assuming a RP group already familiar with Narrative mechanics.

>stuff about using both sides of the domino
Seems like it'd be more balanced if you pick one of the sides of the domino (randomly drawn) to be the "positive" side (working for you, +to your roll or used to invoke one of your strengths) and the other is used to be negative.

So for traits 6/4, with the player picking 6 as positive, becomes "Pessimist Knight" with Pessimist being bad in this situation and Knight being good. Of course you could reverse it is being a Pessimist is more useful in the scenario at hand, it's then up to the GM/table to determine how being a Knight is bad. It would be necessary to ensure all Traits are double-edged, but enough creativity within the player group renders that a non-problem.

And of course you'd need a limit on which side of the domino you get to choose. Betting metacurrency seems an obvious limiter.

Maximum storygame.

I actually thought right after that post that instead of metacurrency, the blank domino sides could indicate automatic negative trait. Meaning that if you get a domino that's 3/blank, it will activate knight, but it will activate either Pessimist or Fanatic.

Maximum storygame indeed. But I like it. I'm one of the few people who actually like games like Infinity Dungeon that's just total storygame, and absolutely silly.

Infinity Dungeon is basically a storygame that works like Fiasco. Players are put into a trap-filled room, and they have to escape. Whether it works comes down to 2 things, chance, and votes. Positive votes give +1 to the chance, and negative votes always have a condition (It requires more bears, for example) can give +2/+3 (can't remember) if the condition is fulfilled.

Domino game still has no unified direction whatsoever

We do know that we will most probably go with maximum storygame, with character traits reigning over rather than any stats.

Additionally, we have a strong image that while one of the sides of the domino block will decide whether a certain action succeeds, both of them have an effect about HOW it succeeds or fails.

That's all we have as of now. But it's still a fresh idea, one that's using a medium not much ever (if ever) has been used in a tabletop storygame. Of course it's gonna take more effort than slapping some stats to make a character and decide what dice to roll. The whole medium is something else we can use.


So, now for more of that.

Oh wait, I realized you implied the opposite of what you meant.

The metacurrency thing can work well in that sense, definitely. We could actually divide the traits, instead of good and bad, to neutral and negative. Negative traits should be kept because "Heroin addict" doesn't really have any good sides, almost ever, where as "Soldier" can have traumas and unwarranted reflexes, but also have experience.

Any "positive" trait, such as altruism, decisiveness or carefulness can be treated as a negative trait in specific situations.

How would you make 'puzzle' feats, /gdg/?

That is, feats with unusual mechanics for requirements that call for more than linear A>B>C selection?
I'm designing a game with feat-like skill selection where you can take skills even if you do not meet the requirements, but you have to meet the requirements to benefit from the skill.
But I want to have a couple of weird chains in there with kind of a river-crossing element to them (like a fox, goose, beans sort of thing) where players may have to use the game's retraining mechanics.
How would you recommend I go about it?
Thanks!

Bumping until I get home.

As for a bump from the 9th page, I present to you.

The weird feeling when your system is nigh ready. It basically just needs playtesting and minor tweaks. But now I would need to start making the setting(s).

I know that setting building is more /wbg/, but this is actually about the statistics and such, so it's more aligned to here. So I'm now just struck with this... Lazyness. My college (basically, we don't have colleges per se) is starting on 24th, and I'm just feeling weird. At the same time, I'm cathartic about having my system so well put and polished, but... I find it hard to put the same effort I put to making the system into worldbuilding. And that should be no surprise, I still work, polishing my system, and making the settings on the side, enough to call it work. Even today I've probably used like 8-10 hours just doing my system and settings. And that's just somewhere in the average zone.

I don't really have a writer's block, but is this burnout? And if it's burnout, it just feels funny to have burnout RIGHT BEFORE my school starts...

Any advice on this kind of situation? I find it really hard to take breaks, this game has turned into a real obsession this past year.

Originally, I wanted to run this a quest. However, recent events have lead me to doubt I could manage to create anything fun or interesting.
So I dumped everything into an unfinished RPG ruleset I had and came up with this.

I'm a bit too depressed to address feedback immediately, but I'll write everything down and at least say that I was able to get this in a postable (although unfinished) state.

This is the game mentioned in the previous thread that uses Corruption points as a form of experience points.

I'm not really sure if its burnout and not just disinterest in making the setting. Which can happen and isn't bad, some people just are more interested in some things over others. If push comes to shove, you might think about letting others write or flesh out the setting, and focus on the mechanics.

I would make a bunch of different feats with a bunch of different prerequisites. Fulfilling the prereq is a one time deal though, so eventually you can mix and match with retraining and achieve your desired result.

For example, in 3.5 you first take Dodge, them Mobility, then Spring Attack. Then you retrain Dodge and Mobility for Power Attack and Cleave. Then retrain Power Attack for Greater Cleave and Cleave goes back to Pretty Attack.

After doing all of that, you're now able to run your full movement speed and make all of your base attacks, plus one extra attack for each enemy you kill. It's a build designed to kill a lot of mooks which scales with higher movement speed and damage.

That's the easiest way I'd implement that idea.

True, some of my friends pretty much insist that I am not a hobbyist TRPGer, I am a hobbyist system cruncher.

But most of these settings are pretty much the things that interest me the most. I think I will just need to start writing and it will probably go okay.

You see, right now most of the planning that goes on is in my head. And if I'm trying to make 5 separate settings (Because I have equal interest to all of them...), no wonder it is hard. Especially when I try to think about the individual mechanics and metamechanics that playing each setting has BEFORE making the setting itself.

I should make a priority list so I won't slack off on other settings to make the others...