originated of Veeky Forums of all places. Wanted to make it transparent enough that people could pick up and run it much more easily than was currently possible. You'd generally have to reverse engineer the Myth-Weavers archives or get extensive mentoring from a previous GM. It was super unclear which arbitration were actual rules applications and which were just freeforming.
Logan Rogers
Can I get some input on this character sheet? It's for designing and operating spacecraft in a One Roll Engine homebrew space adventure game. I'm mainly wondering if it's too busy or if its layout is too haphazard.
Levi Morgan
Is there a sans-serif font you can use for the smaller text, that goes with the larger bold?
Tyler Rogers
The layout itself seems very dense. It could stand to be a little more spaced out, I think. The squares everywhere are especially annoying and remind me a bit too much of aircraft maintenance paperwork, which is information dense and a headache overall. Some other shape might take off some of the eyestrain and make the layout seem less dense. Maybe make the lines a shade less black, as well, or eliminate them entirely where they aren't entirely needed. You might experiment with changing the sections with lists from lines above and below to a shaded background on each row, with whitespace between the rows. That would keep each row to itself like the lines are already doing, but it would make the sheet seem less dense as well. However, it could take some playing with to make it fit with the rest of the sheet, as there are sections where you can't just replace the lines with shaded rows.
And as mentioned, a different font for your body text will go a long way. I agree with some kind of sans-serif.
Brody Turner
Appreciate the advice guys!
I've been using Cambria as my body text in general throughout the work I've been doing because I find that it reads well on the page; is the assertion that it's a bit too jarring when juxtaposed directly with the header text?
Regarding this:
>The squares everywhere are especially annoying and remind me a bit too much of aircraft maintenance paperwork, which is information dense and a headache overall. This is in reference to the damage boxes, yes? I can easily substitute rounded corners which would take some of the hardness off the design. I also entertained the notion of using Hexes, since hexagons are the shape of the future, but dismissed it as being too busy.
I'll mess around with the shaded lines. In the Systems section I can very easily eliminate the dotted underlines entirely, which would help alleviate the alignment problems I was having with Word in the damage boxes.
So to summarize:
>Different, sans-serif font that goes with the Agency FB header font >Fewer square shapes, smoother corners >Less lines
One thing I can also do is move the Navigational Log to the second page of the Design Sheet, since that is mainly a reference tool for players to chart how long it takes to get places; that would free up some space that I could use to give it some more breathing room, especially in the Damage Report section.
What do you think about the Tactical Display? It's a simple tool that helps a Player quickly track where enemy craft are in relationship to themselves without needing a detailed battlemap, since space combat is somewhat abstracted.
Carter Turner
Finally managed to get some of my ideas written down. It's fairly derivative of DnD at the moment, basically just a list of houserules.
I hope by the end of the day, I'll have written down a few more things that I've been thinking about but not yet codified.
Agenda: >Damage and Wounds >Magic >Inventory
In the mean time, I'm open to comments and questions. I realize it's pretty barebones right now, but I figure if I start getting thoughts from people now, I'll have less to revamp later.
Hunter Long
Bottom up
Nathaniel Collins
Does this seem too heavy handed?
Asher Perez
>is the assertion that it's a bit too jarring when juxtaposed directly with the header text? It's that and the fact that it's mixed in with a lot of other densely formatted information (the squares and lines). Font is a simple enough change, however, that you can wait until after you've played around with the other formatting to see what you should change it to or if it's even necessary afterwards.
>damage boxes Yeah, those ones. Hexes are definitely futuristic, but I think with the current info density, they'd take up too much space and seem busy. You've already figured that out though. For the damage boxes, rounded squares will probably be easier on the eyes, I agree. If it's not too much work to change them, though, I suggest also trying diamonds and circles.
>Navigational Log That would definitely help. Best to keep your combat related information separate from information that will only be used outside of combat.
>Tactical Display I like it as a concept, but I'm not sure how you're using it on the sheet. Are players meant to put tokens on it and move them around? If so, I think it should be a separate sheet, if not just a battlemap in the center of the table. With all the boxes your players will be filling out and erasing, there's a good chance their tactical display will get all muddled up. If they are just supposed to write on it, of course you don't end up with that problem.
It depends also on how many ships you'll have on each side of the conflict. If each player has their own ship and they aren't staying in a tight cluster together, the tactical display could become tricky to handle. You might consider a central battlemap set up to represent the relative distance between each combatant in that case. I don't have any real suggestions here, though.
Luke Hernandez
If I want to have a classless system, but still force people into using one combat style (say a specific type of magic or martial combat), but *still* avoid a situation where people will just make a beeline for the strongest abilities as soon as they get the XP, what are my options?
Sebastian Nelson
Is firing a plasma gun thingy a common occurrence? What else could someone be doing in combat aside from firing a plasma gun?
Jonathan Edwards
Any suggestion for a good alternate font? Just stick with good old fashioned Helvetica?
>Tactical Display >I like it as a concept, but I'm not sure how you're using it on the sheet. The Player writes on it directly.
Basically, space combat is abstracted so that your position relative to other stuff only really matters when someone says it does, like if one craft specifically declares a maneuver to get behind another or escape from targeting range. Otherwise the only thing that matters is how near or far away it is. How close Players with their own ships are to each other also doesn't particularly matter unless one of they says it does. It's basically meant to emulate the extremely fluid, dynamic dogfights from Battlestar Galactica, where positioning really matters but can change on a dime, while also being able to work with more naval battle style of combat like in Star Trek, where position doesn't matter all that much.
I'm going to be testing it out pretty soon to see how it works, so hopefully it'll go as smoothly as I envision.
Brayden Nelson
Plasma guns are strong, but expensive to make.
Leo Wright
based on the wording, it seems like it has nearly a 2% chance of just exploding the first time it's fired seems like a shitty weapon, you couldn't even train with it you hand out plasma guns to your 1,000 recruits and 20 of them die immediately, the rest die over a couple days, before they even get into battle and this is assuming that no one even dares to fire it for two rounds in a row, which is suicidal
Logan Bell
I'm trying to do a complete conversion of 40k to GURPS so I'm trying to emulate the danger of using plasma weapons. Which have a 1 in 6 chance of exploding every single shot.
This actually greatly reduces those odds as every overheat is not necessarily an explosion.
Owen King
Part of the appeal of a classless system is that you can be as general or as special as you want. Keep point costs high enough that generalization has disadvantages but low enough that specialization in one thing isn't impossible and you'll be fine.
Read up on GURPS if you haven't already and try to break down the trends in its character creation system.
>Any suggestion for a good alternate font? Not that user, but I'm a big fan of Fira Sans, personally. fontsquirrel.com/fonts/fira-sans
Hudson Miller
>Converting to GURPS based on the tabletop rules and not on the fluff That's just silly.
Benjamin Cruz
There needs to be a reason why every single space marine isn't just using plasma guns or they would.
Gabriel Hall
Yes, they are rare, expensive and difficult to maintain which in the fluff occasionally results in a malfunction. The idea that every one in six shots makes them explode is a stupid mechanic to emulate and I seriously hope you aren't doing this for ALL the tabletop rules.
Carson Wright
Does your game use orthodox terminology (ie Game Master/GM) or something less common (ie Guide, Storyteller, Master of Ceremonies, etc)? What are the pros and cons of each?
Luis Perez
The fluff is they occasionally overheat and vent super-hot gas into the firer's face. The one in six thing is just 40k using a 1-6 grade scale, so that's the minimum. The odds are usually lower because armor saves are allowed. So yes, the fluff is its a powerful and rare weapon that occasionally barbecues its user.
James Myers
There are far more factors involved in the fluff than simply a lethal overheat. The tabletop just uses that as a simplification.
Connor Watson
No, the fluff is literally the weapon shoots a small solar flare and taxes the cooling systen. Prolonged use can cause critical over-heating, in which emergency vents are used to release the built up heat, which are generally located near the firer's face or chest.
The guns themselves rarely actually explode, but an increasing chance of harming the firer fits the fluff.
Cooper Hughes
I'm just going to suggest you read more of the fluff. That is all.
Josiah Lopez
Unless they've changed it in the last couple of editions, that's what the fluff has been. And new 40k fluff sucks, sans the Necron revamp.
Andrew Ross
Bump.
Jayden Torres
No, it was just for plasma weapons.
Michael Williams
no one familiar with the 'Wars?
Anthony Butler
'soft class' system have no clear 'strongest' abilities
Cameron Gonzalez
Is this a good place for homebrew stuff in general, or specifically system creation?
Ian Bell
Homebrew is accepted.
Isaac Phillips
You could go with grouping different abilities of a style together in a simple more expensive, granularly leveled package. It's just a *little* like having a class though so maybe that'd bug you. If you do it right it won't look or feel like that, but thats probably not easy.
John Ortiz
I can't open it because I'm on mobile. How did you change the wounds system?
Anthony Gonzalez
Neato
Benjamin Collins
Damn phone. What I was going to say was that this is an FFG Star wars species I made and no one seemed interested enough to give feedback on in in that thread. It's what I see as the salvageable aspects of the Yuuzhan Vong separated and made into a new thing.
Christopher Miller
Pros and cons? If you need somebody to tell you that you shouldn't be designing games.
I personally came up with my own team because I don't like the connotations of "Master", since my system is supposed to be accessible
William Morgan
I'd allow it at the table
Jacob Thomas
>Top down or bottom up? I don't feel that this applies. The first decisions you make are: 1. What attributes? 2. How do (skill) tests work? 3. How is combat generally supposed to work, how is it different or similar to existing combat systems?
>Board game crossover: are design elements or board game principles helpful for your tabletop developement? Personally, I have to say: no, not for game design. As a GM, I may or may not introduce mini-games into a scenario but I rather look at other RPGs and my own RPG experiences to improve system design.
Kayden Brown
those elements sound comparable to a bottom up approach in many respects, though
Nathaniel Mitchell
Well, the request for a serif font was probably to make certain portions of text more distinct from the headers. Apart from that, the crammed appearance comes not enough spacing between various elements. It would help if the eye had an easier time to make out at first glance the various blocks that make up the sheet. To do that, use spacing, you can afford a slightly smaller font. I mean.. print the sheet out, experiment with a smaller font for the section contents. See if you can get additional space to make things appear less crammed.
John Kelly
Well, I always assumed a single shot in the TT actually represents a number of shots in fluff. That said, it's kinda okay to have extreme events occur more frequently than on average to a PC or relevant NPC - for narrative. purposes.
Grayson Martin
I disagree. For gaming purposes, having a very good but dangerous weapon makes very much sense. That's why it was set up that way in the TT: it makes for an interesting gaming conundrum.
Owen Wright
>'soft class' system like 40K RP?
Joshua Evans
What would you call top-down?
Bentley Baker
starting with the intent or setting and moving to the system. Eg I want a dramatic combat system, so I'll use single dice for swinginess rather than a dice pool
Christopher Peterson
I guess what I wanted to say in short was: building blocks should be grouped more tightly and more distinctly from each other.
Ayden Bell
This seems less top-down vs bottom-up rather than: setting- vs mechanics-driven. You can do either with the 3 points I mentioned.
James Jackson
maybe. Those concepts are kind of abstract. I think starting with dice rolls lends itself to specifics rather a big picture, but you're right in that it's not necessarily so.
Kayden King
yeah. WoD is a similar example, with the minor exception that some gamelines have a minor subset of 'class' specific powers amongst the general pool of powers
Jack Jones
Alright here's a revised Spacecraft Design Sheet that I think is significantly improved.
Obvious problems:
-To create the Damage Report, I just upscaled the System Damage boxes, which resulted in some quality loss. I'm going to have to revisit those.
-I realized, which is something that I didn't know about Word, that the option exists for objects to be unsnapped from the Grid which makes positioning so much easier and more free.
-Overall I think spacing is vastly improved
-Moving the Navigational Log to the second page actually allowed me to size it better and fit some more useful information in there without crowding it too badly, which is very nice.
Nolan Lee
Do you think a Hearthstone-style CCG could work as a near-perfect information game if the branching factor was big enough? e.g. Each player has a hand of 9 cards arranged in 3 rows. Each player can see the other player's hand. Playing a card in a given row discards the rest of the cards in that row. A new row is drawn for each discarded row at the end of the turn. If a player didn't play anything in a given turn they can still discard a row of their choice. Mana is carried over from turn to turn.
Chess has a branching factor of 32. Is there any reason this type of game just wouldn't work with a similar or higher branching factor?
Chase Diaz
now, elements don't align properly in my modified image here but this serves just as a demonstration how to avoid the cluttered look by proper spacing. things that belong to each other are quite close to each other. things that are different maintain distance. this goes to a lesser degree also for subgroups of elements.
Angel Cox
Note how the structure is immediately obvious: 3 lines of elements. Top is made up of 2 columns, middle 3 columns, bottom line is 2 elements again.
Matthew Rivera
Yeah I'm seeing that. The main thing you did was resize the Tactical Display so that its top boarder lines up with the Features heading line; is there anything more subtle that I'm overlooking? It's a minor change but it has a very nice effect.
Chase Phillips
Looks way better.
Brandon Powell
Another update. I made some changes based on the above, plus modified the Navigational Log to include a little bit more information that would be needed (since Spacecraft may frequently have different Thrust and Drive capabilities). I feel like it's at a real good place now. Thanks for the advice all!
Asher Ortiz
>is there anything more subtle that I'm overlooking? Use a grid but customize the grid so that the elements naturally align with each other.
Dominic Cook
Looks much better.
Nathan Diaz
So, question about this:
The amount of Damage that a Spacecraft can take is dependent upon the Craft's Construction Aspect, which goes from 1 (Junk) to 5 (Matchless). The better your Construction, the more damage you can take. A Construction 5 Craft, for instance, gets access to every single one of the Damage Boxes, whereas a Construction 1 Craft has way less (including only 3 Critical boxes, which is a major liability).
My question is, should I structure the hit boxes accordingly so that a player doesn't need any external reference?
For instance the Critical Boxes would look something like this:
[ ][ ][ ] [ ] [ ] And underneath I'd note the Construction levels needed for each box.
The advantage, again, is that you wouldn't need any kind of external reference at all where damage is concerned, but it would potentially clutter up the sheet AND make things look less even, though how much so I'm not sure.
(Of course the rules for how many Damage Boxes each Construction rank grants are included in the rules for Building Spacecraft, so once you read those you can just shade in the damage boxes that are outside your Construction level).
Where should I lean? Utility or simplicity?
Caleb Miller
>I believe simplicity is for the best (I'm kind of struggling with the same question, so far I didn't can't make appealing "soft" references inside my sheet). >About your tactical display, you could use instead a "small" 2D combat grid with a small "ruler" to represent the 3rd axis, whereas each space is a region and many ships can occupy a single region, and each space away from a ship (in any axis) increases the "range category" by one.
On another topic, for my melee weapons, I'm thinking about using a very small list of "fixed-weapons" and have a section about point-building specific weapons? What do you guys think about it, and how many/which weapons should I include in the basic list? (FYI I'm working with Attack bonus, damage value/weight class (req. STR), "Level" and properties(e.g. cutting, bashing, piercing))
Logan Jackson
bump
Julian Hill
I think it's best to start top-down in the sense that you sit down to think about what kind of game you want. But that it's best go between top down and bottom up. A lot of times it's good to go bottom up and make sure each element of the game is well done. Returning to top down at that point is mainly getting things to gel into a coherent game and whatnot.
Julian Sanders
So what do you guys think of adding things to appeal to playtesters? I had someone test out my crafting rules and they immediately wanted to make neat custom items. I always end up expanding the scope of the rules after a round of playtesting but I think that's a good thing, helps point me in the right directions.
I added some custom items rules to item crafting, it's on the second page here. What do you folks think of it?
Grayson Clark
>Been running playtests for my game for a month and a half >Find out today someone debuted a game that is almost identical to it at Gencon >Mine is better than his but the similarities are so great right down to the weird theme and identical dice symbols that if I release it people will think it's a ripoff Fuck.
Josiah Ross
For what it's worth your point buying system idea for weapons sounds cool
Sebastian Butler
Sounds really nice. The amount of math required seems to be outweighed by the value it adds to the system
Nicholas Anderson
I think the only problem with this is sometimes you can get stuck on pieces that that don't fit, but you've put the time into, so its hard to cut. I'm having this problem right now, where I have some ideas that I like and don't want to give up on, but don't fit in with the overall project.
Bentley Flores
Here's a mass combat add-on if anyone wants to check it out. I'm trying to figure out a mass combat system that overall uses the same rules as a regular combat. I'm aware that this is essentially a white whale of rule design.
Logan Ward
Yeah, true. It's part of why I think playtesting is so important. Players won't give much of a shit about unimportant parts of the rules while when they ask "Why don't you have this?" then it's a good idea to expand a part of the rules.
Andrew Phillips
I'll be including three "Density of Rules" settings in my game. "Realistic" is same as Standard but with any added house rules. Standard includes everything without trying to be bloated, and "Lean" rules, with many simplified systems.
That way i can design my perfect hardcore systems for hardcore players, and easily trim the fat for accessibility sake.
Andrew Martinez
...
Carson Russell
The space combat system I have put together is designed to be very streamlined and fast-paced, and trying to incorporate representations of 3D space would hamper that. My rules are more about speed, momentum and facing, which the existing Tactical Display is designed to handle pretty well. I should be in a position to actually test it in a few days.
Luis Robinson
What do you think are essential features to have fleshed out to play test your game? Also any tips to efficiently play test?
Daniel Lopez
Rules are pretty essential imo desu senpai.
Hunter Miller
Skill system and combat system, plus magic, etc. if there is any. if there is an integral subsystem like cpunk decking, you may or may not want to include it from the get-go.
you also need pregen PCs and some NPCs, plus their gear.
identify critical issue of your ruleset ahead of testing. have a short list of crucial aspects that need to be tested. stuff you're unsure about and which will require massive changes if unworkable. any additional insights coming from testplay are a bonus.
Leo Torres
Since I got some excellent feedback on the Spacecraft Design sheet I posted above, I made some adjustments to the character sheet that my homebrew uses as well. Attached. How's it look? Any thoughts/suggestions?
Robert Young
>>You can reduce the size of your xenotype block (it's mostly white space right now). On this note, I believe you should try to reduce this block and align it with the last column. >>You should align bottom of Mind skills table with the bottom of the flight skills table. >>Correct your font size on tables (unless if that is intentional), if space is a problem try to re-word it or reduce your font in all similar/related fields. >>Why there are blank boxes for possessions and willpower? How players should be filling those boxes?
Michael Cox
I've played under a model where party characters could only be above average at a given number of abilities. The abilities were very specific techniques, and the encounters had foes and situations that were randomly immune to some techniques. Usually it worked out to having maybe 4 of your 7 techniques usable, discoverable by trial and error.
Carson Price
>> *still* avoid a situation where people will just make a beeline for the strongest abilities as soon as they get the XP >>>This is a problem in most point-buy/classless systems that don't enforce restrictions on players allowing for overly specialized builds, getting even worse with character progression.
This is usually good advice , but instead of using a "soft class" system, I'm going with classless "soft levels", where a player can only expend so many points in his field of expertise because of the level cap.
Julian Mitchell
If you are aiming for about 16-24 elements on the field, how much damage do you think should the average element take to remove it? If we use something like a 50% chance to damage.
Keep in mind, these elements are split up between players and non-players.
John Ramirez
Assuming each player has ~10 units, just think about how many units you "want" to be down at the end of a full-out combat round...if you think that at most one player should lose half of his forces, them units should be able to hand 2 hits on average (check both best case where all attacks hits and check average case where exactly half the attacks hit)
Nathaniel Rogers
>>You can reduce the size of your xenotype block (it's mostly white space right now). On this note, I believe you should try to reduce this block and align it with the last column. This is misleading on my part. The Xenotype line is to be filled in with the character's species. The box below it contains their wound silhouette, where their hit locations are noted. This character sheet is for a humanoid character, but I will have a blank one as well for creating non-humanoid characters, hence its size. >>You should align bottom of Mind skills table with the bottom of the flight skills table. Clearly. I'll work on that. >>Correct your font size on tables (unless if that is intentional), if space is a problem try to re-word it or reduce your font in all similar/related fields. Are you referring to the font size for skills like Weapon and Perform? Those are intentionally shrunk to give Players room to fill in specifics, like Weapon: Pistol or Perform: Ballet. >>Why there are blank boxes for possessions and willpower? How players should be filling those boxes? Possessions are listed in the box, and specifically refer to plot items and valuables that are of significant meaning to the characters.
Willpower is a source of fudge and power points for characters, and so there's a large workspace to track the ever-changing number. In my experience its easier to use than a single line or a smaller box.
Luke Miller
The idea is that players have 6-8 units on average, while objectives can spawn neutral monsters. The problem I'm having is I need to work out the full math of the system I'm using. The system on average I'm looking at is each player rolls 3D12. The attacking player scores a hit on X+, 2 hits on a natural '12'; defending player negates a hit on a X+, 2 on a natural '12'. Once hits are decided, you divide it by the units resilience, rounding down, and that's the damage they take, i.e. a model with resilience '2' takes 3 hits, it'd take 1 damage.
I was thinking of making the defense slightly lower on average than the attack, but make the resilience something like 2 and the damage a model takes 3-5, depending on how durable I end up making things. There will be ways to increase and decrease dice pools. For example, a larger model attacking in close combat would gain the size difference in dice, to represent the higher potential damage they can cause.
Gabriel Adams
Bumping.
Juan Clark
Do you guys think item and equipment cards could work to assist in physical inventory management and equipment use or would they always be gimmicky?
Jace Sanders
I don't think they're gimmicky, but I feel like they limit my ability as a GM to introduce new items into the game, at least in an aesthetically pleasing manner
Nathan Allen
They're fine as long as they're a template so you can make new items. Considering doing this for manoeuvres in my game to give players a clear and tactile list of their combat options.
Parker Williams
Been toying around with the idea of an rpg combat system in which all actions are declared at the beginning of the turn, then resolved in phases like wargame (movement, casting, shooting, fighting) through the rest of the turn, with the actions declared having modifiers that apply throughout the turn, like pulling a risky extravagant attack lowers defence.
What systems already do this that I can steal from/find out it's been done exactly like I plan already but a hundred times better?
Hudson Watson
Closest I've seen is a MOBA called Atlas Reactor that uses that concept; all players plan out their moves and actiins first, and then they are resolved. The key thing to make it work is everyone has to decide on what to do before they declare their action, to cut down gaming the system too much. Obviously, a video game can do stuff that tabletop can't, but watching some videos of how the game works can give you ideas.
Hunter Martinez
bumpski
Sebastian Cruz
I think if you kept them minimalistic it would be fine, writing the items in pencil doesn't look great either
Eli Morgan
I think the risk of being too gimmicky isn't in the idea, but the execution. Too much focus on the management of the cards, as opposed to what they represent, and it'd feel like you're just managing cards, not your character.
Asher Gonzalez
extension by new items is a problem. equipment cards work only smoothly in a game like deathwatch where the PCs have highly standardized gear.
Luke Torres
d10 space dogfighter I'm making, Blazing Stars. Has an extra ships .pdf for stuf I'm considering too.
Christian Lee
what happens when two assertive jockeys have a propulsion tie?
