Game Design General - /gdg/

...Are you asking what crimes *we* would do for money, or people in general?

Which people?

Because otherwise the answer is "any of them"

People in general. Specifically people willing to do crimes for money. I've got heists and assassinations so far, but I'm drawing a blank beyond that.

Do anyone know how where to find game designers in your city? I'm at Montreal

I want to hire one but I don't know where to find them. There got to be a better way than using craigslist.

Fraud
Theft
Prostitution
Contraband
Depending on the setting, hacking

Why do you need this again? We can give better help if we know your purpose.

I'm creating a system based around crime and mobs during the 1970's. I'd include the full rules but I don't have Word or a PDF converter yet.

Okay, so then you should ask what crimes people committed for money in the 1970's.

You could use this site for ideas:
ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/OneYearofData.cfm?NoVariables=Y&CFID=132007181&CFTOKEN=d79e9b26e0e3ff81-23722E70-CBC3-47E2-CBE128A68A0007F1

Okay, thanks for the help! This helps trememdously.

Don't forget racketeering, extortion and "insurance" sales, forgery, and guarding any of the above.

GM perks, yes or no?

I really like PbtA's GM moves concept, less as a rigid set of restrictions and more as guidance for keeping the story going at a good pace. I also like Ryuutama's concept of the ryuujin, a mysterious GM character who shows up occasionally to help move the plot along that belongs to one of four classes.

In my game, characters choose and combine multiple classes, so why shouldn't the GM? I have a few ideas about what kind of abilities a GM could unlock. Using PbtA's GM moves as a basis, GMs could select traits that increase challenge for the players (and give them extra rewards) or make things easier for the players.

For example, maybe there's a choice between:
>Bigger, Badder Badness: When you warn of future badness, it's always worse than the characters anticipate, but they always gain extra XP.
>Pass It Back and Forth: When you Barf Forth Apocalyptica, each player can do the same; choose one of their ideas, but don't reveal which.
>Tick Tock Clock: When you make a progress clock, every other step should directly impact the players; if they can overcome these extra challenges, reward them with double XP once the clock is resolved.

Stealing. Theft. Burglary. Robbery. Pickpocketing. Taking without consent.

Also murder, grand theft auto, treason, or anything else at all.

fixing e-sports matches

What is a way of approaching the RPG on an essential component to essential component basis? For writing the rules. I've got so far:

>How to check if a character can do something?
>How, specifically, does time pass (when this matters)?
>How do you describe a character? (And, subsequently, "How does a character grow?")

I get the feeling that these are the first questions I should answer, before answering questions about the setting, like, "What is magic?" or "What is a longsword?"

There are no levels. Just opportunities for progress, and risks of becoming debilitated.

What do player characters do, and why?

Please never trust anyone who would call themselves a game designer. Never give them money. Look up games that you respect from a design angle, then research the people who made those.

Even if you asked me to work for you, you would have to give me 60% royalties and bring a lot to take yourself if you wanted me to seriously try and not just take your money

I don't really get any of this.

Have you read both the games I'm referencing?

Nope. I was hoping you'd explain

Brainstorm a typical campaign scenario, then add an item, check, stat and rule for everything in it. Brainstorm a different one and add to the rules & lists. Rinse & repeat. You can also use the info in the OP and relevant rulebooks for guidance and inspiration.

Bumping with a question: is there any good programs to simulate NPC movement, like sweeping an area for players or roaming an area they're guarding?

I'm working on my dream RPG system and I'm happy with it, but I know it will not become popular because it's not a gimmick/buzzword thing. I feel like starting a shit game with maximum gimmicks so it can draw people in. Hopefully they'll check out the good system after.

Good idea?

Nah man, just drop a pdf here. If people wanna play it, volunteer to GM or something since it's yours. People wanna play fun games, not gimmicky ones.

Speaking of which, do we have a game testing general or is the Game Finder good enough?

Have you ever commercialized an original system? Do you personally know someone who has?

Do some research on scams? Ring dropping, change raising, pyramid schemes, and the like.

"What's my game about," for one. What makes the world different than ours, what roles are the characters playing, what kinds of challenges will they face?

I'm currently doing a little homebrew system. The idea is to keep everything as simple as possible. Having this in mind, does this make sense for magic attacks?

The idea is that even all magic attacks do some damage, obviously some are more effective than others.

Sorry for shit pic, I'm currently on the phone.

Yeah, I mean that's pretty much standard. Although you may want to consider what a Rock, Wind, and Water attack actually are. Ultimately they're all about hitting something with a lot of mass, unlike the distinct effects fire and lightning have on a target.

It's more a guideline for DMs as what to expect when some player says "I'll throw a fireball against that water elemental"; but i get your point.

bamppu

double bampuu

6

the quest for the last knowledge trait continues

Oh, you opted for that kind of approach...

How about Anatomy or Medicine?

This is actually closer the very first approach I had, it's mostly an attempt to bring back the things that worked in the first version without entirely reverting to the first version.

I considered Medicine, but I'm not entirely sure if it would work (healing spells would use arcanism, medkits would use tech, potions are just items) so I'm not sure what kind of specializations it would bring at the table that wouldn't be better off as an abstract/general specialization in itself

Anatomy could be better, in that case (I reckon).

You can:
-Use it for medicine (surgery at worst)
-Use it for torture
-Use it for combat (kind of, if you want to stab them to an artery or something)
-Use it for psychology etc.

I guess.

Another possibility could be to separate scrounging / investigation from Survival to it's own trait? They are different in practice, methinks.

What's the fewest number of "elements" you can have in a rock-paper-scissor relationship without the players feeling limited? Like, if there's only the standard 3, there's no choice involved - rock should always be chosen when playing scissors. I was thinking 7 or 9 would present decent options without having so many some would never get used.

That is a big question, a little ill-defined, maybe.

If you have RPS relationship, does that mean that R beats S at least 90% of the time, or just 75% of the time?

Because that is an important distinction, and depending on the game, subverting those percentages would be part of the game.

Thus, it all comes down to balancing. You can make do with only three elements, if the breadth of each element is larger than "wins / gains advantage over x".

What is the reason for the RPS in the system? What do you want to evoke with it? Is it to limit choices or to make the choices give-and-take? Do the elements have more depth than "beats x" and "loses to y"?

If there are 7-9 elements, do all elements have 3-4 weaknesses and strengths, or are they singular?

These are very important questions. Try to formulate your question again, see the core of the question and see if you might actually figure it out yourself, be it through personal preference or some internal logic.

Hmmmmm, I have to think more about your first point. I was thinking just in absolutes, not relative values. I would like for a poor decision to not spell doom alone, but at the same time I don't want the advantage so small I need to invoke the law of large numbers to make the advantage apparent.

I know I'm definitely thinking all elements would have 3-4 weaknesses/strengths, rather than singular, since any "draws" would likely result in stats and dice rolls resolving things instead of tactics (which isn't an inherently bad thing, but it is something I'm trying to avoid with this game).

This was a really great response, thanks. Hopefully I can flesh out what I'm trying to get at better on the way home.

What's the difference between Arcanism and Channeling?

arcanism is various forms of academic and natural magic that use the spirit of the character in order to draw magical energy to cast spells through the use of catalysts

channeling is borrowing that power from another being, force, or source of energy for a different kind of magic

l'm doing a bestiary right now. What should l put on it?

We can pitch you only so much if we don't know what you're working on. Is it modern fantasy? Generic fantasy? Sci-fi?

What are monsters? Are they just dangerous inhabitants of the wild, constructs, physical representations of concepts?

Even though depends on the setting is overused, on something as integral as fauna / megafauna of the world, some things need explaining.

I say put Strix in, whatever the setting though.

They are birds with long golden beaks that they use to suck the blood of infants, their favorite victims. They also have wings, usually red, and four black legs, all with clawed feet. Their eyes are yellow and round, without pupils.

To double the creepy, make them uncanny humanoids. Freakiest vampires you can get.

Owlbear

Yea its a generic fantasy thing.

Then make a plethora of Chimaeras, made of different fucked-up parts.

Like a snake-owl, human-eel or something equally weird.

The Shark-bear, which is known to have a symbiotic relationship, where Spider-hornets build nests on their back fin.

First PDF of the rules, feedback appreciated.

I was trying to not sound too meme-ish with the hornets, but bees actually make more sense. The Spider-bees attach their hives to the backs of a Shark-bear, which gives them protection and mobility to collect pollen. The Shark-bear occasionally rubs against a tree or rock to force out some honey from the webby like hive structure and licks it up, its thick fur and scales protecting it from the angered Spider-bees.

Seriously, they drown under the hundred mtg/40k/dnd threads. Best to do both.

I'd be interested in playtesting this with my group if it has neat mechanics for dreams, and if you're willing to share details about it.

So I thought of a life system for a TGC.

King - You have a King, who is very similar to a normal creature. You lose the game if your King is destroyed. The King has 5 strength, and we're going for around MtG number scaling. It's okay, but its strength is boosted by...
Crowns - Crown is a card type and you start with five basic ones. They(the basic ones at least) have 1 strength(but things that aren't creatures cannot attack or block) and can be reanimated or bounced because they are actual cards and not tokens. Each Crown you control increases your King's strength by 1. Crowns and Kings can always be attacked. Your King can attack and block like a normal creature, however doing so will cause you to sacrifice all of your Crowns. That is, unless, you have...
Nobility - Nobility is a quality that some permanents have(marked by a number of ornate seals somewhere on the card) that let you retain some or all of your Crowns when the King initiates combat. Each seal among your permanents lets you retain 1 Crown, and many of the cards with Nobility are themselves Crowns.

The point about Crowns always being attackable is because I'm going with Duel Masters combat where normally only tapped creatures can be attacked, and Crowns can also be creatures.

20ish. Slower progression then.

Pirate the Adobe PDF thingy, it's the very best on the market.

The regular bois, the Goblin, the Orc, the Bugbear, the Ogre, the Zombie/Skeleton/Vampire/Lich.

Put in your regular fantasy foes and some of your own spins there. This way fellow GMs will know the relative power level of such creatures.

Sorry to be rude, but ugly font; not easy to read quickly.
I personally dislike the secondary derived attributes that use division. Might bog down parts of the game.
I'm confused with the %-based perks. Maybe they should be "-3 on firearm use" for Firearm trained people? 20% better lockpicking doesn't tell me anything. D&D alignments are a bit of a hassle.
The crippling and dying rules are great. Fatigue and stress don't seem to add much meaningful deals to the players.
You have too many weapons of which most wouldn't be readily available to criminal elements. Distance shouldn't play much here, it's a criminal-skirmish (under 100meters) not a sniper-squad simulator; you could drop the dist column.

All in all, it's okay, needs work. The base mechanics are solid, and the other bits could use some trimming.

"It seems that perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."

i personally make them in illustrator, bretty gud

A few of the percentages were tacked on without thought just as placeholders, but they only act as a modifier, rounding to the nearest whole number. It seemed easier to do than fractions. I have toned down the ammount of weapons and cars, and I'm going to add the rest of the charts before I release it again. Thanks m8

Would you play a DnD clone with Animal Crossing like characters fighting giant bugs?

How would I balance a poison damage that deals a percentage of max health and doubles over time (1%,2%,4%,8%,16%)

Every unit of time, roll a die system, and for every roll increade the chance of successfully overcoming it.

so say every other turn you roll 1d10, and to break the poison effect you have to get a 1, then a 2 or a 1 then 1-3 and so on?

I have items that purge in here as well, some are held on the person and purge automatically at 50% or below max health, some take a turn to use

do you think a percentage cap is a good idea, say capping it at 16%

Yeah, something like that. I don't know about the purge mechanic though, at least on items where it could overdo the effect & waste healing. But I do like the percentage cap idea if it was bumped to 20%.

Hey Veeky Forums how do you all feel about a TCG based on the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series? I know that this is usually based around tabletop games but I'm not sure where else to ask, and I plan to mock up some cards once I've figured out the basic mechanics.

Here's something I can up with. Let me know what you all think, y/n/fgt.

pastebin.com/yBU3rB8M

how is that even a question
of fucking course

I've been working on an ammunition mechanic which I think might be hitting the sweet spot in terms of how crunchy I want the system to be. It's not quite as relevant with a bow-only setting but when you have weapons that need to reload it becomes more useful.

1: Game has forgiving but present encumbrance limits
2: If you choose to carry backup ammo you have unlimited ammo, but it increases encumbrance.

Characters just keep track of their magazine capacity and have a binary "yes/no" answer to whether or not they can reload. Players may choose to go without reloads if encumbrance demands it.

Likewise grenades and other disposable tools have a minor, moderate, or severe encumbrance penalty for single use, double use, or infinite use.

The idea is to keep bookkeeping to a minimal while still enforcing scarcity when it's advantageous.

Sounds good to me
I'm gonna steal it now

sorry I had more negative things to mention than positive ones, it was 3AM.

% is a really wonky thing in pen and paper unless it's d% roll under. Maybe have it work in 10% increments? Much easier to quickly do /10 then /20. Depends on your HP system and lethality of combat and tone of game.

Balance is subjective user; if there's poison, there's antidotes and cure spells. If you're geared you live, if you're not you die. That's a lesson.
Depends on how gritty you wanna go; IRL most poisons will take you out for a day or a week (black widow's bites are survivable), and don't go away on their own quickly. Shit's tough but survivable, and you're not going to be heroic with a heavy headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and heavy pain in the bitten location.

In video games (and some RPGs), poison's usually a bad choice because a instantly-dead target's a lot more worth to you than a living poisoned one (an orc with 1% HP fights as well as an orc with 125% HP). See how much you like poison and how effective it should be.

Mine's at 1d6 damage per round until cured + maybe some minor status effects in a system where most folk walk around with 3HP, players have 5-15HP and bosses have 10-50HP.

This is nice as long as players are on track. There isn't actually infinite gear, just more than enough for the mission. They should "restock" on that gear between missions.

Apply penalties (loss of infinity) when they attempt to share gear among themselves or waste it.

What are your encumbrance levels and what stat defines it? I toyed around with a d20-dark souls homebrew a long time ago and hit a dark-soulsy feel for currently equipped encumbrance.

I'm doing about the same thing, but I'm going for more of a D&D style

you wouldn't happen to know King, would you?

I currently have three different kinds of curative items, one is held by the PC, and automatically purges at 50% health, another can be used for an instant purge, but takes up an entire turn, and a third purges after three turns, and can be used at any time, and does not cost anything other than the item itself.

A PMD thing? Maybe we could work on it together?

yeah, all the hard work has already been don thanks to Nintendo, I just need to translate the existing mechanics to dice and coin flip, 1d30 takes care of IVs rather nicely. I'm just starting this, and if you wanna help, I can post the google doc

I certainly would. I should note that EVs and IVs do not exist in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon as pokémon have fixed stats for each level. If you want to generate them anyway I would use 6d6 - 5 to generate a more cushioned distribution.

Page 10 rescue!

My game has three types of dice:

>Success die determines whether you succeed/fail
>Opportunity die determines whether you get a positive or negative repercussion (called opportunity/consequence, respectively)
>Bonus dice can be subbed in for either of these two

Each individual die is rolled against a TN from 1-6 to determine whether it passes or fails, but this leads to some odd situations:

>I got a fail on the success die
>I got a success on the opportunity die

So what should I call these things? Should I rename the dice, or should I change "success" and "failure" to something else?

That makes sense; you fail at what you were doing initially, but instead of being punished, an alternate opportunity presents itself.

Also thinking of getting rid of weapon damage in my game - on a successful attack, you simply do damage equal to your level (the max level is five).

The weapons and armor are part of the characters' spirits, and they invest XP to add "keywords" like "burning", "jagged", etc. that have special effects.

But does the terminology make sense? Is it clear enough?

I might change them to be tests of action vs test of consequence/aftermath/opportunity, so that you can still use success and failure to refer to the results without confusion.

cool

docs.google.com/document/d/1zvKpfrgOupKmjvBw5NStw1An06uxAl4gszwAeIaJ9N4/edit?usp=sharing

Do you ever have days where you feel really productive? Just overhauled all ~20 pages of my game today! It's still missing a lot of stuff, but it gets better with very revision.

Nice! Was making headway earlier, but then life butted in.

First time doing tabletop rules here. Any tips? Any common mistakes?

I usually work in bursts. Having constant inspiration rolling in helps, like watching movies just so you could rip off ideas and such.

Keep it simple stupid. Have a solid base mechanic and idea.
D&D is basically roll 1d20, add number(s) against Target Number or opposed roll. That's is, the other thousands of splatbooks are just flavor.
Don't rip off something too much.
Don't do zany dice mechanics (6d4+lunar cycle), anydice.com anything you come up with. Don't have mods (dice+mod) be higher than three-quarters of the die (a d20 should have no more than a +15 bonus or shit gets fucked up, likewise a 3d6 shouldn't have more than a +10 to a roll).

Write for yourself first; most players won't read it and if you share it here we're most likely gonna piece together what you meant. Keep the wordcount low.

Save everything you write no matter how dumb it may look. Say, a deck mechanic won't work in a modern gun game/setting, but it might work in a fantasy one. Save older versions of your system, maybe skim them later. Keep it somewhere online backed up too.

Playtest, playtest, playtest, both solo and with powergamers trying to bend your system.

Personal pet peeves are %-based mechanics in non-% systems and division because most numbers godda be rounded down. And zany dice pools like using 5d8s or 6d12s 'cause some people (eastern euro fucks) don't have many of those laying around.

Second revision: better font, along with a few tables and some minor changes.

Dumping a potential idea, free for the taking: dice pools pre-rolled with limits based on your stats.

Roll your dice pool at the start of the session. Commit dice to actions whenever you want with the number of dice you can commit limited by your stat/skill, then set those dice aside in a discard pile. When your pool is empty you reroll it.
You can reroll manually by suffering a penalty - maybe -1 die when forcing a mulligan? Or allow rerolling your pool when taking an action but it reduces your limit for that action by 1.
Another way to mulligan would be from special abilities and circumstances like committing a special 'sweet spot' value depending on the action that the DM shouldn't disclose. That would encourage players to actually learn and remember where the sweet spots lie for different tasks because it lets them refresh their resource pool without having to commit bad values to tasks. For attacking something, you might know the exact TN ahead of time but the sweet spot depends on the target, so it's target knowledge that allows you to refresh your pool and you learn by experimenting and committing different values. I'd also even encourage people designing enemies to have the 'sweet spot' be a failure point on tougher enemies.

Personally, I'd use d6 for this because they're easiest to get in bulk and are most stable for keeping laying around. d10s are the only other good die for this acquisition-wise but they tip too easily, other dice would require buying a bulk pack to get enough of them to play which is undesirable (especially for a pool-based game - each player might be using 12 dice or so, so for four players you're using 48 dice plus whatever the DM needs - which I'd rule that minion-type enemies just roll their limit as they go along, while rivals use a pool just like the players, so the DM will need a shitload of dice too).
Set your overall pool based on your total stats, probably. Skills could contribute rolled-as-you-go bonus dice, too.

2000 chars

Haha I meant dream as in ideal

There is sort of a dream mode of play though...

Carrying capacity is determined by strength. Strength ranges between 1-12 with 3 being average, 7 being the normal human maximum, and 12 being the augmented maximum (sci-fi setting). Characters get 5 carrying capacity per strength. Weapons and armor use capacity between 1-6 depending on size, reusable equipment uses 1 capacity per item, and disposable items like ammo use 1 capacity per refill level.

If you stay under carrying capacity there are no penalties, dodge and speed decreased by 1 if your surpass your limit, and an additional 1 for every increment of 5 points that (1-4=-1, 5-9=-2, 10-14=-3, etc).

RefillLevels
Level 1:You have the ammunition in your gun or a single disposable item.
Level 2: You have a single reload or two disposable items.
Level 3: You have as many reloads or disposable items as you need, effectively infinite.
Level 4+: You have as many refills as you need, plus buffer for daily losses.

If you share or waste ammunition or disposable items your refill level for that item goes down by one. At the end of the day if you used that item you must pay upkeep at an appropriate store or the level degrades by one.

don't you die on me

Would anyone here use analogue random map generators? Or are online resources good/fast enough to sort of obviate the need for them?

What would you look for in a dungeon, hex map, or city map generator?

I've got most of a hex map generator, an idea for a city map generator, and basically nothing for dungeons. FWIW.

A generated map. I don't have a system for roads, rivers, or keys just yet.

For generic fantasy, it might be best to make sure and put a robust and simple monster creation system front and center. Broadly generic games benefit a lot from being able to port whatever the hell you want in.

Then you could do samples by category. Instead of presenting your definitive vampire, present a few ways vampires might be handled under your system, for example. Same for dragons, demons, whatever other broad categories suit your game.

Maybe follow this with a deep all-fluff bestiary with insane quantities of creatures with brief but colorful hooks or rumors. "The typhic beasts were born from the blood of a rampaging mad god. They carry their parent's all consuming hatred but none of his intellect or charm. For the most part they are sealed beneath the earth behind wards and guardians, but the unwary or psychotic sometimes raise them." That sort of thing.

Hi Veeky Forums and /gdg/

I'm working on a large scale map-based asymmetrical fantasy wargame, and I need some help with the visuals.

What are good color choices to nicely identify about 12 different factions on 1 inch square chits? The map itself will be in muted greens, blues and yellows.

But I'm generally completely clueless in design, so how the fuck do I design nice counters?