Game Design General /gdg/

How do you mean?

Your document should be more self-contained. Please don't link me to websites for calculators and stuff to select; I may want to play your game offline.

>How do you mean?
Say you have 3d6. Each roll over 3 does something for an action, and the total of the rolls is also used for some part of the action.

Ugh, my design and setting ADD has been killing me.

I've seen a few takes, but usually its you roll for the total and doubles or trebles do extra. Like the Mordheim search chart, you roll the D6s for the total loot, but rolling duplicates in the roll means you look up what extra you find.

I'm planning on that, this was just for my current group. I also haven't found a normal and simple written explanation how the hell point buy works yet. I would be very gratefull if somebody helped.

I would just dump the 3~18 scale altogether and switch to straight modifiers.
Then each rank added to an ability costs a number of chargen points equal to the score you are raising the ability to.
0 to 1 costs 1 point
1 to 2 costs 2 points
2 to 3 costs 3 points
0 to 3 would cost a total of 6 points

In earlier version of my game, I had the six ability scores from D&D plus five 'combat abilities' derived from them. The combat abilities are averages of the basic abilities. I did this because I wanted the basic abilities to have a lot of variation (to distinguish characters) but I wanted the combat stats to be within a much narrower band of variation for balance purposes.
The combat abilities were:
Fortitude = (STR+CON)/2
Reflex = (INT+DEX)/2
Will = (WIS+CHA)/2
Physical Attack = (STR+DEX+WIS)/2
Magic Attack = (CON+INT+WIS)/2

That was when my system was d20. Now that I'm switching to a card-based core mechanic, I'm changing up the stats as well.

>Stamina
(STR+CON+CHA)/2
Determines maximum hand size. Number needs to be in the 4~7 range.

>Readiness
(DEX+INT+WIS)/2
Determines starting hand size; you must put one card from your starting hand forward to determine initiative. Number needs to be in the 4~7 range.

>Physical Attack
(STR+DEX)/2
Added to physical attack tests.

>Magic Attack
(INT+CHA)/2
Added to magic attack tests.

>Resistance (?)
(CON+WIS)/2

I may rename the basic abilities as I fiddle around with the mechanics.

Does creatures being able to directly attack other creatures in a card game provide enough interactivity to make up for a lack of instant-use abilities?

Do you like Yugi-Oh?

SO, I am making a souls-bourne inspired game

I have the stats pictured.

I have problems assigning values to the right-most columns. because in the video-games, they are usually not particularly important or necessary

bare-bones, the system is a d100 roll-under like Dark Heresy or 2e WHFRPG

the stats are multiplied by 5 once character building is done.

I want all the builds to have the same number of points with a significantly lower point value for the waste of skin

I figure I will have to make a couple of new class entries for those skills

thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

My game has a kind of item basically identical to materia from Final Fantasy VII. It is the primary means of character advancement, giving you new traits/feats/moves/whatever.

Should this be explained in the "About Items" section or the "About Character Advancement" section?

Neither. A mechanic that important needs its own chapter.

But that chapter should be in the character advancement -section. They are not clear cut items in the sense of the word, are they?

Someone give me some general reasons not to use the White Wolf 3x3 grid for character attributes if I'm making an attribute + skill based dice pool system, I feel like I'm tunnel visioning and not really able to see my options.

Do you think Hearthstone feels interactive enough? (I personally don't, but it depends on your goals.)

I'm looking into creating a spell creation system for my project. The idea is basically that you can build spells out of different components to give the players tools to get creative and expressing their characters in a different form. Anyone got a good example of such a thing in other games? I'd like to gather some inspiration

So one of my friends is making a homebrew system and the math on it seems a bit off to me.

He has all characters divide their points between Accuracy, Damage, Evasion, and Durability with ratings 1-5. At first I thought they were opposed d6 dice pools but now I learned the defence numbers just set the target number for the offensive pools.

So Accuracy rollsa number of dice equal to the stat to hit and scores hits on dice with numbers higher than the target's evasion.

Then those hits are ADDED to the attacker's Damage dice pool and the total dice are rolled to try to beat the enemy's Durability to score wounds.

Is it just me or is it mathematically superior to max out Durability and Damage in this system?

Been kicking around this idea of a war/board game. Snap fit figures make the army pieces, and players draft forces up to their points at the start of a mission. The board is several double sided hexagon cardboard pieces that can be snuggly fit together to create an asymmetrical map with the details like height or LoS blockong terrain described. No true line, just measure from hex to hex and adding up LoS impairing terrain for penalties to hit. Each player also gets to add card stock, snap fit terrain to the board to make it vary, then determine the mission rules/ complications, as well as draw their objectives randomly from a deck of cards.

Is this too simple/complicated? Done before?

So I guess I'll post this link for feedback. I homebrewed Pathfinder quite a bit, purpose was twofold: make the game more accessible for my majorly beginner friends, and try to remove some of the issues I felt Pathfinder had (feat bloat and I hate Vancian magic). I fully expect balance to be a bit lacking. Classes are fairly to completely homebrewed. I admit this part was unnecessary but I enjoy building classes.

Also you can ignore the setting and rules file, that's mostly the same as normal.

drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByaNQkFBFgcFY05vRXMydEs3Tjg

Hey guys. I've got a question for you.

I think I remember reading somewhere that game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. Now, I'm working on an RPG that borrows heavily from the mechanics of at least half a dozen other systems, so I'm wondering if anyone can confirm or allay my suspicions.
I'm not expecting to make big bucks off it and I'm fully aware that no one is likely to bother suing me, but on the off chance that I ever manage to get my own game system online, I'd rather have some peace of mind first.

Good question! Do any of you fine /gdg/s know the legalities of game mechanics?

Same user. I did some superficial research, apparently it's legal to use another system's mechanics as long as you don't copy the rules text verbatim. A book's text can be copyrighted, a game's mechanics can't.
If anyone knows better, please chime in.

That is pretty muc correct as far as I know. It also applies to videogame mechanics. You can copyright and trademark names and stuff but not mechanics

Good to hear. I will probably need to do a rewrite of my rulebook once I'm done, but it's nice to hear that I can, you know, write it in the first place.

Does anyone have any advice on writing the rule?
Not making them, just writing them.

Look at technical manuals

Well...
That doesn't really help

Be as clear as possible. If necessary, write what you're trying to say multiple times, with plenty of redundancy.

After you're done writing a chapter, go back and do a read-over of what you've written. Cut out all that's unnecessary and redundant and try to make sure it reads well. Check your spelling. If necessary, show your work to a friend and ask them what they can glean from the text, so you can get a feel if the rules are immediately understandable by other people. Playtesting helps showing if the rules are clear, comprehensive, and so on. If not, integrate what's needed. Rewrite if necessary.

Okay thanks

I believe this must be somewhere on the references....

Welcome

Shadowrun 4x2 grid is also good, you could also go for a 3x4 but it gets a bit redundant...

Wrong file...I'm unable to find it now but there was a manual to designing "spell circles"...otherwise you can just leave it up to the player to design their own spells (chants, movements, seals...just make them explain the rules and check their consistency)

No, you need to hit before rolling for damage....refer to:
anydice.com/program/9cf2
(look at the transposed data)

look at

Thats not what I meant.
The flavor of the spellcasting is up to the player (even if there is a in-universe explanation why different forms and traditions of spellcasting can basically do the same things).
I meant a game mechanic with which players can create their own spells.
The concept is kind of like this:
The Player decides on a range and area of effect for the spell, then the effects. These Effects should be more abstract so that they can be used as simple building blocks. On top of that, the player can put multiple effects together to create more elaborate effects. After deciding these things, the spell costs are calculated.
I haven't seen anything simular up till now (maybe because it is kind of complex?) and thought it would be nice to see another take on the same Idea to get some insparation.
The closest thing I've seen was Shadowrun 4e Spellcreation, although I thought it to be too loose and abuseable (especially when it comes to none-combat spells). We had a player who created a spell that turns stone (or anything remotely stone-like, for example concrete) into lava. Instant death for everyone in that area.
Iis rulewise totally legal to build such a spell but it is absolutely broken and our gm at the time didn't care or didn't pay attention.

Thanks, fine anons! Trying to come up with good/fun/simple mechanics that are totally unique is a bit of a chore, as I'm sure y'all know....Knowing I can use whatever randomizing system I want is a load off the mind!

Horrible. I had a great initial idea for using the framework of Only War Character/Regiment. Then completely fell flat when it came to ideas for rules and the actual Squadron creation.

It's a WWII game, Strike Witches universe, but based around the regular aiforce.

No worries, I asked that for precisely the same reason! No reason to try and reinvent the wheel, after all.

Many systems don't feature that kind of stuff due to balancing issues...on the other hand WoD has the mage line whereas you must craft every single one of your spells based on your number of sucesses on a dice roll and your fields of "knowledge"...

Now if you're coming up with a spell creation system of your own, it's not all that hard, you can "easily" make a point buy system, the standing problem being "utility" spells that will usually have "special properties" each with its own cost...

(I just remembered that in mutants and masterminds had something like that)

Too vague, you told us about a movement system and how LoS might work pre-testing, not a game.

What's the theme? How does the combat work? Is gameplay about murder with objectives or objectives with murder? How many points per side on a medium sized game? How many miniatures is a medium sized game? What makes your game worthy of being Physical as opposed to Digital?

Give us some information, or we'll just ignore you as bait.

My homebrew allows people to additivly stack effects for a mana cost, and then multiplicatively stack metamagic to modify.
For example, Fire Damage (2MP), Projectile (3MP) = 5MP total. Extra range (x2MP) for total of 10MP. MP regenerates each round, so it essentially limits how complex your spells can become.

Ars Magica and Mage: The Awakening are both good options also. They revolve around more freeform spell creation, but are well known games.

Working on my game's weapon construction rules.

Working on a mechanics idea I've had for a while. Basic idea is:
>Model A attacks Model B
>Both roll XD12, each die scoring a hit on X+
>X's determines by stats on models, weapons, etc.
>Rolling an unmodified '12' counts as 2 successes
>Each success Model B rolls cancels one of Model A's
>Count up all the successes Model A scores, compare to defense stat on Model B, each full count is a damage point (example, with a stat of 2, 2 successes would do a point)

What I'm trying to come up with now is a way to differentiate stronger attacks without relying on pure number bloat. Originally, an idea I had was weapons had a strength stat, which multiplied the number of successes after the defender's roll cancels rolls out, but this caused too much exponentially growth in the math.

Some other ideas was a multiplier stat thats worked on rolling a '12', but I think that wouldn't have enough impact. The other was something that would increase the chance of 2 successes, like '1' of it would mean 2 successes on the roll of 11+, instead of 12. The wording is a bit tricky, though.

>Both roll XD12, each die scoring a hit on X+

So if X is 5, then I roll five dice and score a hit on each roll of 5?

You might want to make it
>Both roll Xd12, each die scoring a success on Y+
Where X and Y are different values, so you'll have a little more design space.

Yeah, sorry, it is Xd12 on a Y+. So attacking would use their Attack Skill for the Y+ and the Strikes on the weapon for the X, and the defense would use their own set of defensive stats (Defense Skill and something like Protection).

My idea is to keep the dice pools small, 3 dice on average, 6 at the most extreme.

Is this where world building take place or should I fuck off?

nah, you want

This generally the mechanics end of things. Worldbuilding is usually posted for context for rules decisions and mechanics writing.

Ok thanks

>What I'm trying to come up with now is a way to differentiate stronger attacks without relying on pure number bloat

Reroll 1's?
Roll +Xd12 and drop lowest X?
'Great' successes canceled out only by opposing successes of N or greater?

Trying to suss out damage scaling.
You make attack tests in this game by playing two to four matching cards from your hand and adding the values plus bonuses.
2 cards is a light attack
3 cards is a medium attack
4 cards is a hard attack

But if a light attack deals X damage, then how much damage should a medium or hard attack do?
And how do I balance weapons that incentivize light attacks versus weapons that incentivize heavy attacks?
Still working it out.

I think the damage really depends on how valuable a card is and how difficult it is to refill your hand.

I assume the biggest factors for light vs heavy attacks will be what other card spending options the player has and how much card draw they have.

If you haven't already, you may want to check out the Baten Kaitos games. They're kind of mediocre and the first one has really shitty voice audio, but they use a card battle system and have a few good ideas.

Other card spending options:

Fatigue costs to move (run, leap, climb, swim, etc.)
Mana costs to cast spells
Use 'Dark Gifts' (requires major arcana cards)

Players can refill their hand by taking the 'Breathe' minor action.

So the combat stats of a normal dude in armor would look something like this:
Defense 4, Armor 5 [3], Vital 5, HP 4

A 3d6 sword needs to roll a total of at least 4 to make contact with this target(overcoming the 4 Defense), roll a total of at least 9 to strike past the armor, and at least 14 to score a double damage critical hit. The sword's damage is the number of dice in the roll, so 3 in this case. If the sword stops at the armor layer, it scores 1 damage for each die in the roll that equals or exceeds 3(the value in brackets).

The biggest problems is that a hit that penetrates armor can't ever deal critical damage; only hits that manage to completely go around armor can crit.

I want to post this for making books automatically

lyx.org/

Lyx is a Gui interface for the LaTeX language, that allows you to make very good looking books, automatically generate things like table of contents, bookmarks, and all other sorts of PDF wonderful things, as well as things that can be sent off for printing.

It turned my homebrew from a POS made in libreoffice to a pretty good looking book, and cut down the production time between modifications.

SO yeah, add this to the post.

Looks like it's a pretty recent release. I will give it a try just to see how it turns out.

i have this idea in my head of making a kind of creation boardgame. where each player has their keep in front of them and their is a playing field in the middle. i just have no idea where to start designing. it was gonna be some kind of x4.

boomp

I have a little survey for you guys.

You are dealt a hand of cards from a standard deck of 52 cards.
Play two matching cards to make a Light Attack
Play three matching cards to make a Medium Attack
Play four matching cards to make a Hard Attack
If you are wielding two weapons, you can play two matching pairs to make a Split Attack (two light attacks)

Each weapon has separate damage expressions for light (L), medium (M), and hard (H) attacks.
You may select one of the following weapons. All else being equal, which of the following weapons is most favourable to you, and why?

>1. Curved Blade
L[4], M[8], H[16]

>2. Straight Blade
L[5], M[7], H[10]

>3. Piercing Blade
L[6], M[6], H[6]

>4. Paired Blades (May dual wield}
L[5], M[5], H[5]

Didn't run calculations on probability on this, but the dual wielded Paired blades are probably the best option. The probability of getting a pair of a kind is pretty high and since getting a four-of-a-kind is pretty hard (see texas hold-em), you will put out more damage in the long run... even if the heavy attack is useless... The worst has to be piercing blade since it has a fixed damage and a heavy attack doesn't pay off at all with it

Thanks!
I'll be fiddling with it.
Revised version of my survey attached. Let me know what you think.

If four-of-a-kind is so difficult then I am going to need stronger incentives to go hard.

Just checked. The odds for a four of a kind in 7-card poker (which should be about what you intended for a hand of cards I assume?) are a whopping 0.168%. This is the second most rarest hand you can get, the only thing rarer being a royal flush

(Piercing sword is still fucking useless)
The odds for getting a 4 of a kind in a 7 handcard game are 594 : 1 (0.168%),
getting a three-of-a-kind are 19.7 : 1 (4.83%),
getting two pairs are 3.26 : 1 (23.5%) and
getting one pair are 1.28 : 1 (43.8%).
Getting nothing at all is pretty unlikely.
The concept is really interesting, but you should have considered the odds of getting the right cards beforehand.

A simple damage boost might not be enough then. Hmmm...

I was also considering wild cards, and card filtering mechanics (draw & discard) that would help the odds, but it's hard to calculate those in.

It seems like a three-of-a-kind should deal ten times as much damage as a pair then.
I'm not sure that a four-of-a-kind should deal a thousand times as much damage though.

Might need to go back to the drawing board on this and look at attack strength in terms other than raw damage.
A hard attack isn't just unlikely; it's also a huge cost in terms of card advantage. I have to figure out how I'm going to balance that.

You might want to look into Deadlands for some card filtering mechanics, both Classic and Reloaded. There's a player "class" whose shtick literally revolves around playing poker with demons, and your hand influences how much bang you can get out of your spell. Not to mention drawing cards is used for most everything in the system, from combat to character creation.
Dunno if that's what you're after but hey, might be worth a look.

I keep hearing good things about Deadlands. I will try it as soon as I can find a group that plays it.

I do know that I want to following mechanics in my game:
1) Refill your hand to maximum at the beginning of your turn
2) You can 'Breathe' as a minor action to draw a card
3) You can 'Commune' as a minor action to trade a card with another player
4) Dark Gifts give you wild cards in the form of major arcana
5) Divination magic includes draw effects and deck manipulation effects based on your Perception stat.

Deadlands Classic is a very immersive system, the poker chips, playing cards and dice perfectly evoke the western feeling the game is going for. It's also quite detailed, to the point where the rules often meander into very minute details that can slow a game quite a bit. Deadlands Reloaded simplifies a lot of things, but it also removes a lot of good stuff imo.
Anyway like I said, you might find something interesting by skimming it. I can send you both core rulebooks if you'd like, though I think you can easily find all the books in the PDF share thread.

I'll check the PDF share thread, thanks!

De nada!

Thoughts?

It's a miniature skirmish game?

obviously

It would help if tests only required cards to match suit. You can make a test by playing any four cards of matching rank or suit. You have a 3% chance of drawing a five card flush in a hand of seven cards. That's significantly easier than drawing a four-of-a-kind, and the only thing the light/medium/hard attack mechanic cares about is how many cards you play and whether either suit or rank matches.

This is the equation I need!

I'll have to take a look at it when I get home tomorrow.

That isn't a bad idea actually.
Itwould certainly even out the chancessomewhat and make a heavy attack more common

This gives me a thought.

What if your core mechanic revolved around a deck of playing cards. Each "class" uses the rules of a different card game in order to succeed at a given task. For example, One player accomplishes tasks by playing Poker. another uses the rules for Hearts, and even another uses the rules for Rummy Gin. The playing field is used among all of them, so while the Hearts guy may want to beat the two Eights on the field, the Poker and Rummy guys will want that 3rd Eight.

The only question is how the GM/Opposition would play in relation to all those games. Perhaps they choose their own ruleset to use, but then there would need to be equivalencies between each game's results. Its still an interesting thought.

It has the potential to be very cool, though you would essentially need to follow the rules of at least 5 different games at the same time (provided you have 4 players + the rules of the "main game" itself). There would probably be conflicts among the various rulesets

This could be problematic. First, the GM has to remember a set of different rules. This can bog the game down a lot and become really confusing.
Also, this can fuck with the probability of success and lead to total inbalance.
I would advice to go with a single system

So I was thinking of making an asymmetric card game, one player would be an "expedition leader" while the other would be "dungeon master".

The Expedition leader would build squads of adventurers to raid the dungeon while the dungeon master would build room with monsters and traps to kill the invaders.

The goal of the expedition leader would be to get to the treasure room, while the goal of the dungeon master would be to get rid of three squads of adventurers before they reach the treasure room.

There would be "avatar" cards that would work like identity cards in netrunner or ruler cards in FoW, they would say if the player is the Expedition leader or Dungeon master.

But then I reached a problem, I wanted to add "elements" to the game, they would work like color does in mtg, but how I would make it matter since there was only two resources in the game, actions and xp points ? I didn't want to differentiate them so I though about giving the avatars elements so if has chosen a certain avatar, you could only use the elements it has, so they would work like something color identity does in magic. And that's my issue, I had decided to the "colorpie" of the Expedition Leader and Dungeon Master would be really different, in theory they should not share most of the mechanics and effects, but the addition of elements to this seems to go against it.

Should I keep elements ? Should I get rid of them ? Should I just mix them up and go on ?

I need some help with the thinking.
My system uses 6 Base-stats:
o Might (Strength)
o Fortitude (Constitution)
o Finesse (Dexterity and Reflexes)
o Charm (Charisma)
o Cunning (Intelligence and Intuition)
o Will (Willpower)
There are also Combat stats (base stats are mainly used for skills, combat stats derive from the base stats).
I'm not sure what the statrange should be... the dicerolls have a resault between -10 and +10 and I thought a +- range would be cool for the stats as well (like, 0 is average and you can be worse or better than average) but I couldn't figure out how to combine those with the combat attributes.
I want a more or less even destribution so that every basestat is represented in combat and nothing is really "useless in combat"
o Initiative and Dodge are Finesse + Reaction
o 3+Will is the number of wounds a character can take before losing consciousness (i.e. HP)
o Attunement is given by 3+(cunning + charm)/2 statistic (basically MP)
o Might*2 gives the damage done by physical attacks. This may be modified by weapons. If Might is 0 or negative, the attack causes 1 Damage.
o Charm*2 gives the damage done by magical attacks. (This is like using the strength of once aura to battle enemies.) Charm is 0 or negative, the Damage cause is 1.
o Attack-value for physical attacks is finesse + dexterity

What do you think?

Is this inspired by Dark Souls?

Bump

How would I figure out probabilities of two players rolling against each other with a pool of dice, with the highest being compared to the highest, second highest being compared to second highest, etc, and the higher dice winning, basically like rolling in Risk?

Is there a name for this sort of distribution?

Actually no... The game is set in the Touhou Project Universe (Or should I say multiverse? Idk)

Would anyone mind looking through pdf related and building a couple of weapons using the weapon construction rules for me? Thanks!

Neat! I love Touhou. :)

How do I make my adventure fun for my group? Player 1 is amazing at knowing what to do in a situation, but is bored by stats, and hates having to choose race/class/abilities. Player 2 is the opposite, with an amazing character sheet, but has no idea how to handle game situations and just freezes. Player 3 hates character design and math, and has caused TPK with her decisions, she's a murderhobo from the MMO world.

I want to reward any clever situational play by all of them, and I want to help Player 3 to not get smoked without making the game so easy that Player 1's character work becomes meaningless. But I don't know what to do.

R8 my one-page homebrew