/gdg/ - Game Design General

I'd like to talk initiative systems really quick. I thought something up and while it might seem like a good idea to me that doesn't necessarily make it one.

First, a bit of background information. One of the base physical stats is Speed. Characters have floating pools of stamina that recharge at the top of the round, typically by about 25% for a character with perfectly balanced stats. Stamina (or STA) is spent to perform most physical actions.

>Turn Order
>The order characters act in is a vital part of any encounter. Going first can mean disrupting the opponents strategy or eliminating a weaker foe before they have a chance to act.

>At the start of an encounter characters are listed from highest speed to lowest. This is the default turn order, with faster characters acting earlier than slower ones.

>At the start of each round, after STA and WIL have been recovered, characters can spend STA to increase their effective speed for the purpose of determining turn order. Each point of STA spent in this manner increases their effective speed by one, this change in order only lasts until the beginning of the next round.

>In the event of a tie the characters involved each roll a d10, with the higher roll acting first. Further ties are settled with further d10 rolls.

The idea here being that faster characters have an advantage in acting first, but players can temporarily modify the turn order if they've the Stamina to spare.

I don't think having a fluid turn order would be too hard to manage, but that may very well be the case. What's more is that the members of a party are always going to know what order they'll be acting in. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.

In a game played on a grid I think the area might be better described by drawing/pointing. However, if the game is more contextual in its movement/positioning stage area descriptions could actually work really well.

The issue I see with it is more with the players. They may or may not understand the terms used and it could take a while for them to pick up on the idea. For example; I, personally, would have no idea what you're talking about.

Sounds fine.

Is it a bad thing to present a TCG to a company without illustrations?

No, since they'd be the ones contracting illustrators. But some doodles or prototype artwork taken from Google (and probably sourced) is going to be a lot better.

I know I once saw a Kickstarter game with art from a Magic card with TEST ART across it. And Magic itself is playtested tested without art.
Also just a suggestion but I'd say not to take it to any company (they're unlikely to want your idea to begin with) and instead do some research on how to kickstart an idea. There are a lot of card games that have been kickstarted. Of course, you'll want to playtest it first.

For the graphism, I guess I do like you said and use some stock illustrations for now.

For the way to publish it, that's a good idea, but the problem I have with kickstarting it is that I don't know how to make my advertising.
I'm a game designer, not an advertiser.

What can you recommend for doing the layout of a rulebook? I habe been using Open Office thus far, but ever since inserting a background image for the pages the resulting PDF runs like shit.

Anyone have either any tips on how to insert a background into a Open Office document without screwing document performance, or just generally a program that does it better?

Google it.

Make the margins 0, then set them up by hand with the little arrows at the top of the page on the ruler. Hit enter for about five lines at the top and bottom. It's not perfect, but it's more impressive than a Word file saved as pdf. Don't bother doing the fancying until you're ready to show it off, though. Since you're faking the margins at the top and bottom, you'll end up needing to fix those whenever you edit it.

There's also LaTeX, but that's complicated and I still haven't figured it out myself.

Only works if you have an audience. Otherwise up and down are indistinguishable and therefore so are left and right.

Can players delay their turn?

If an effect is reducing a players speed, does it lower their place in the turn order? If it does, does the change happen immediately or at the start of the next round?

Are stamina points spent secretly like a bid and then that's it?

Can players keep pumping points into their initiative to try and act first until one relents and stops spending them, like a game of chicken?

Here's the idea:
The players are instructed to imagine the tabletop as a stage, and imagine the GM screen as the backdrop.
The end of the table closest to the GM is up stage.
The end of the table furthest from the GM is down stage.
The part of the table to the GM's right is right stage. The part of the table to the GM's left is left stage.

Tactical positioning in combat is handled with a simple 3x3 grid similar (plus an additional 'off-stage' zone.)

What happens if they go onto the apron or into the house? Or the wings?

>right stage
>left stage
It's stage right and stage left.

I think you might need to learn a bit of theater stuff before basing a system on it.

>What happens if they go onto the apron or into the house? Or the wings?
That would be "off-stage".

The apron isn't off-stage. The house technically could be called that I guess, but it's really not because you're still on display to the audience.

>Can players delay their turn?
Yes, I suppose they could. I'm not sure if they'd be doing it at the start of the round when turn order is modified, or declaring it at the start of their turn.

>If an effect is reducing a players speed, does it lower their place in the turn order? If it does, does the change happen immediately or at the start of the next round?
Changes to speed would change turn order, but those changes wouldn't come into effect until the beginning of the next round.

>Are stamina points spent secretly like a bid and then that's it?
That was the idea, yes.

>Can players keep pumping points into their initiative to try and act first until one relents and stops spending them, like a game of chicken?
But this idea is nice. I like the "game of chicken" angle.

Not every stage has an apron, and it doesn't matter if the house is arguably off-stage or not because no one cares.

You are arguing semantics that the average player won't care about because they didn't take drama in high school. The only real criticism to the idea is that it brings a heavy thematic sense to it, so the rest of the game should reflect that. If you use stage directions, but then the rest of the mechanics and terminology reflects smash and loot instead roleplaying, then there'll be a conflict which draws players out of the game experience.

>Not every stage has an apron
I challenge you to find one in the last three hundred years excluding stages built for the round and symphonies that lacks one.

A bit of an open ended question but I'll ask: thinking in MTG terms, what does it take to make an interesting aggro creature? There are only so many ways you can say "when X happens this gets +X/+0".

So I've been thinking about one of the most common actions found in wargames: the charge. In most games, the charge usually combines 2 actions in a model/unit's economy into one, movement and attack into one action, at the cost of both items normally separately but with a bonus, usually an increase in movement and a boost to the attack. Examples include Warmahordes, which gives +3" to movement and Boosts the damage roll, or Malifaux which uses a separate movement stat, which is usually higher, and allows 2 attacks to be made.

But recently I've been looking at the game Dark Age a lot more, and they do it differently. Instead of charging being a separate action, any move that takes you into melee range of an enemy counts as a charge and let's you attack. I've been looking at it and been thinking about a similar system, since I've already been trying to encourage more movement in my game, instead of the standard issue most games have, where once everyone hits the centerline and engages in combat, they tend to sit there and whack at each other until someone dies. I already have it so you don't need to charge to be able to attack in combat, and you get a benefit from actively trying to circle your opponent. I was thinking of having it be that if you move into melee with a model and you were not engaged at the start of the move, you charge and get an attack with a boost. Most models will have 2 AP, and one thing I can forsee is models engaged at the start of their activation will have 3 choices if they want to attack back; use their AP to attack twice, try to disengage and then charge back in, or move around to try and get the backstab. It also would mean powerful models wouldn't have to sit around with a thumb up their ass if they charge in and kill a model in one go.

>Game Design General
>Bloodborne art in the OP pic

You are making the Doll proud!

Which of these ideas sounds better /gdg/?

Players secretly bid Stamina (essentially action points) to change up the turn order. All bids are final upon the reveal.

Or...

Players openly bid points to increase their position and can continue to do so until everyone chickens out. All points bid are spent.

Secret bids sounds better. The open bidding brings up images of people trying to push the other out of spot in a line, or when you have a race and one person catches up to the other, so the other tries harder, done for comical effect.

I would prefer open for logistical reasons. You would have to write a hidden bid down which hampers flow.

Actually, I was planning on giving my players a number of pennies equal to their Stamina and nickels equal to their Willpower.

Points spent are slid out from the player, points recovered slide back in, points burnt go back into the change jar. It keeps people from "forgetting" to write something down while also providing a visual to just how much they have to work with.

In the case of a secret bid, it'd be "hold out your closed hand with the STA you want to spend, all hands open at once"

Something I want to talk about that I have been thinking a lot about lately is this:
>For a complex dedicated system you need to provide something unique, and experience not catered to by other systems

For this I examined my homebrews and came to a conclusion. The most unique experience I ever game as a homebrewer was one of my first, years ago. It was founded on the concept of a hybrid wargame and ttrpg that would transition from the control of individual characters to units in large scale combat.

The original hack used Warhammer Fantasy as a base.

Essentially every Player would have a unit that they themselves own. This unit would generally be from 5-10 pieces. This unit would be defined by a "Standard Job" which every member of the unit has as a base for their stats, and "Promotions". Promotions came in a variety of flavors, including making someone a bannerman, musician, or leader of the unit. However it also gave specializations like physician, scout, woodsman, accountant, and more. Each individual piece contributed towards a unit's stats. A big part of the game was making sure your army was supplied, they had work, your pieces were outfitted, morale was high, etc.

These indivudal pieces each could be controlled and their specalizations made use of out of combat. Therefore you essentially have several characters each with their own thing.

Now the players together came to form an Army. An Army has both the units of the player's, but also Army Resources. These were often in the form of siege engines, monstrous creatures, and other strange units.

When participating in engagements both the Army and the Units earn XP. These are used to purchase those jobs I talked about earlier. For armies it is used to purchase tactics and clout. The army sheet has such things on it like Army Relations with various factions, your current contract holder, army resources (like the siege engines), etc.

Now I have gotten off track and rambled. What I wanted to talk about is that I do not know of game that tried to do this blend of having units, engaging in combat, and transitioning to controlling only a few pieces. What I want to ask /gdg/ is this idea something worth moving forward with?

As well I have had more ideas on "Unique Experiences" and the sort of niches one can try and fill. I have ended up throwing out a lot of old stuff in favor of this new design concept. The idea of if one wants to make a rules heavy system the rules must be used to anchor oneself firmly to a niche of a unique experience.

Well the game idea I wanted to start the thread for was Bloodborne related.

Unfortunately no one really seems interested...

dunno man, your idea seems way too complicated for no reason. I'm not in the everything needs to be super dumb and simple camp, but what you presented is not elegant which is imo very bad. I usually don't post when that is the case esp if it looks fresh, people quit way too easy cuz of bad feedback.

I'm trying to keep it simple. The only complex part to me (at the moment) is the different maneuvers, but there isn't really any way to fix that. I mean, it's not much more different than having several powers in D&D or something.

It's a simple roll under system. The only thing that's really different from Dark Heresy or something like that is the AP costs for different actions instead of having a set number of them.

ofc it is not complicated to you, you fucking made it. do you make this just for fun or? what is the idea behind AP point cost system?

To feel more like the Soulsborne franchise.

I mean, let's be honest, I barely RP and my friends barely RP, so it'll probably never even get out of the planning stage.

I like the idea of tokens in tabletop, they're an excellent way of tracking constantly changing values.

You might not want to use coins though. I did that for one group long ago and found myself running out.

I've got a question:

I've got a post-apoc style idea where everything from the mechanics to the rules writing says the world sucks and you're probably going to die. Part of this will be driven by a metacurrency the GM uses to create problems (Think of it like going into xp debt and you need to claw your way out). Now, I want the game to tell players that they should avoid other players, but have a hidden mechanical benefit to actually accepting help. For example, Player A needs to move a boulder that requires Strength 12 to move, but Player A only has 10 Strength. If Player A accepts help, then both players get a -4 Strength penalty. On the surface this discourages seeking help, but mechanically both players together can actually move that boulder (10-4=6, 6*2=12).

The problem happens when more than one person wants to help, or if skills are different than each other. I also need to maintain negative rules language (only penalties, never bonuses), so I can't just say "Additional players only contribute 2 extra to the DC" because that's essentially phrased as a bonus. Is there a good, simple way to express that regardless of differing participants or skill values while maintaining negative language?

Who would even bother to steal pennies and nickels? Or were you using quarters as your tokens?

It was dimes and I'm pretty sure I know who was doing it. The best word I can think of to describe him would be Troglodite

It depends on the tone of your game.

Silent bidding works well with other stealthy and secretive mechanics you might have, while open bidding works well with revealing your powerlevel, intimidation, and rap battles.

Open bidding, hands down. Silent is a hassle to do and doesn't allow any kinds of mindgames or deeper strategic behavior.

It's really complicated and strange with too much fiddly bits. I played in a basically homebrew system with similar mechanics (d20 roll less than TN) and Fallout like AP. And it still was less complicated. Though it had other problems.

For example why do you need this shitty "funny die" roll in combat? What does it achieve? If you want some criticals you can just give bonus for rolling exactly TN on d20.

Another way to do or support it is non-linear damage bonus from attack roll. Not adding d20 or d20/2 to damage. Instead if you roll 1+ you deal [Damage] if you roll 5+ you deal 2x[Damage] and if you roll 15+ you deal 3x[Damage].

Counting from 1 to 3 successes instead of exact number on the roll also let's you to not transform combat into "whack a mole" fest. Because with your proposed system characters with good skill have 50% chance of hitting each other with normal attack. Not very Soulsborne where defence and positioning play a critical role.

Try Scribus

That's not necessarily true. Shouldn't bidding is like Poker, and Pulley is a literal embodiment of mindgames and deeper strategic behavior.

Make the penalty escalate with the number of helpers for instance it could be each player takes -(3+number of helpers) or -2*n° of helpers...Different skill values is not a problem, supposing one player has STR 11 and the other one has 10, together they would add up to STR ((11-4)+(10-4))=13 and be able to move the boulder.

I agree with , just one point about silent bidding is that the participants should be aware of each others "pools" so that they can plan accordingly.

Non-linear damage ftw,
By the way what do you guys think about "armor" as an expendable resource that reduces damage multipliers (to the minimum of 1x)? In my system damage multipliers usually range from 1 to 6 (with the latter usually having less than 3% of chance against a passive target), and most player can only take 8~12x damage.

Are you phoneposting? It seems like some of those words are wrong.

What the fuck.

Then again, I've gotten plenty of people that scrounge what they can to pay for their smokes dump a few dollars worth of nickels and dimes on my counter. Gotta beat that nic fit.

It's... literally just a simpler version of Dark Heresy's system. The only addition is the AP costs instead of juggling Half/Full/Reaction Actions.

In DH you roll d% and compare it to a target number, then for every ten points *below* that target number you get +1 and then you roll your weapon's damage, which will probably add the Bonus of your Strength, which is [Strength]/10 rounded off.

d20 is d% to the 5% place, and getting *higher* on the roll is mathematically equivalent, but easier to figure out since it doesn't require subtraction. "Half your Strength" when Strength is going to always be bellow 15 or so is also much easier than "only the tens place". Treating the damage die as the same roll as the to-hit roll just speeds things up, instead of waiting until after the hit is determined.

>Because with your proposed system characters with good skill have 50% chance of hitting each other with normal attack. Not very Soulsborne where defence and positioning play a critical role.
And characters with a good defense have 50% or more chance of *avoiding* an attack. But that costs AP, which is required to actually take actions like your own attacks. The idea is to make it so that dodging is viable, but also costs effort that is necessary to do other things. And if you get ganged up on or overwhelmed, you can end up expending too much energy dodging to launch a counterattack.

here. I've opted to go with an open bid. The players/GM are aware of the turn order (though only the GM is aware of the exact Speed stats of NPCs) and can openly spend Stamina to pump up their Speed for the purpose of acting sooner.

This can and will result in bidding wars as characters may continually spend more STA to get the edge over one another.

Of course, since STA is used to perform physical actions/reactions they need to keep some in reserve so they can actually do things on their turn.

Managing these pools of resources is going to be an important part of the game, since Stamina and Willpower don't fully regenerate each round.

Phoneposting bump.

It was right before I went to bed, so I'm not surprised I didn't catch those.

Silent bidding, Pulley=Poker

The main problem is explaining that as easily as possible. I want each person to contribute 55% towards a task, but I can't go the easy route and say 50%+x. Both of the formulas you offered are pretty good, but they rely on certain value ranges to actually work. That's not necessarily bad, but it does mean that event DCs and Skill values need to be hardlocked for the math to work.

the skill differences issue was mostly for large gaps. If one player has STR 10, but the rest of the party has STR 3,4, and 5, there's no way to move an STR 12 boulder. With the above, that might just mean I'll have to hardcode minimum skill values so that the math always works. Skill variety might not even need to be that important depending on exactly how I handle it.

The main interaction throughout the game is going into Powerlevel debt, and having to claw your way out of the debt+interest that accumulates. This "aid another" idea will also be used for removing some of that debt. Two ways you can go into debt are from expensive one-time purchases (a sandwich costs x metacurrency), or by accumulation (get a house you character can return to, but in exchange you have a Vice/Addiction that ticks y metacurrency per session). Getting rid of the accumulation only works if someone else takes on your burden (increasing the amount per tick initially, but over time reducing the original amount. I.e. an addiction causes 10negxp per session. Overcoming that addiction requries someone to copy that tick to themselves (20negxp per session), but after every session reducing the new total by 2 (18, 16, 14, etc.). Eventually you can reduce the debt to 0 and remove the addiction, but it takes some investment and more problems by way of the GM being able to throw more obstacles in your path (the NegXP metacurrency, name tbd) is spent by the GM to craft encounters like monster attacks, skill challenges, etc).

I just need the mechanics to reflect the theme as simply as possible.

Have you ever played poker, nigger? You raise or match in full view, it's not silent at all.

I don't have problems with underlying system. Why are you describing it again? I pointed to the retarded "funny die" that doesn't serve much of a purpose.

>And characters with a good defense have 50% or more chance of *avoiding* an attack.
Well. Let's look at it more.

Will you make Soulsborne like HP/Damage balance? Because if you will it means characters and smaller monsters will die in 1-5 hits. Averaging 3. Now let us add AP in the equation which means possibility of multiple attacks with 50% chance of scoring a hit. If character can throw 3 or more attacks in a round there is almost no incentive to defend. And if he can't use 3 or more attacks your AP system doesn't serve any purpose because you can use something DnD-like without adding complexity of AP system.

Well actual best formula for aid another is something like X = sqrt (A^2 + B^2 + C^2).

It works the best but, yeah, that's square roots.

So Veeky Forums, what would you want to see in a Pacific Rim/Evangelion inspired board game? This is an idea I've had kicking around for some time but I'm having trouble settling on exactly how the mechanics should work. I play a lot of the fighting game inspired board games (EXCEED, BattleCON, Yomi) so a deck system seems to make the most sense. Different decks for different mecha, and I guess an AI deck for whatever the big bad monster is. So generally speaking the ideas I've cobbled together:

-Different decks for different mechs.

-An 'overdrive' system for each mech allowing you to push your limits in exchange for handicaps.

-A variety of human/alien factions that focus on different strategies and powers. E.g. the UN prefers guns and has high-tech mechs.

-Grid based combat system.

Those are all super vague because I'm bad at this and know this is all just half baked nonsense that probably won't materialize. Still, I like thinking about it.

I've always liked the idea of creating a mecha out of multiple cards. Like having slots for Body, Core, Cockpit, Limbs, etc. Perhaps the way you build your Mecha determines what action cards you can use. I.e., Parts with weapons let you add more Attack cards to your battle deck, while parts with Wheels/Tracks/Wings or whatever let you add more Movement cards.

Something like combining Yomi, Dominion, and Munchkin together.

How would you handle a game that uses cards?

I don't mean combat, because that's a thing everyone always thinks about, I mean in general. How would you handle things in general, how would you theme it, what would you do? I know there are games out there that use playing cards--like Deadlands originally did--but most of them seem to only use the cards for small aspects of it, like initiative.

Off the top of my head, I think that hand size should vary and be related to some stat, as well as the ability to draw more cards at a time. Special abilities should be activated through things like pairs or straights.

>So Veeky Forums, what would you want to see in a Pacific Rim/Evangelion inspired board game?
I've actually seen that before. It was on Kickstarter and most of the pieces/3D models were tweaked copyright friendly versions of super robot characters, and the characters themselves were all fan art recolours.

Yea this is something I've been thinking about, but I want to nail the core game first. But a mecha building aspect is something I'd want to do in like my first revision or whatever. Having small decks (e.g. laser rifle deck, pile bunker deck) that you can combine to make a custom robot would be awesome. I'd probably set it up like primary and secondary weapon (decks), support deck, and special deck. Combine all four to make a mecha.

>I've actually seen that before. It was on Kickstarter and most of the pieces/3D models were tweaked copyright friendly versions of super robot characters, and the characters themselves were all fan art recolours.

If you can dig it up I'd love to look at it, there was a fighting game esque one on a little while ago where you chose a mecha and pilot and mixed their decks together that looked fun.

I had a similar idea long ago.

Each Mech would have a small deck of cards. For example, one might have three movement cards, two cards for its primary weapon, one card for a secondary weapon, and a few cards for bonus granting subsystems.

Players would place two cards from the deck face down for each Mech they control, then the first card of the fastest mech would go face up and resolve. Then the second fastest, then third and so on. After all first cards have been revealed, the second cards come up.

Damage would be shuffling the deck of the damaged Mech and randomly discarding a number of cards equal to the damage dealt.

Lose all the cards for your primary weapon? It got blown off. Run out of movement cards? You're disabled.

"Funny die" means the nonstandard dice used in roleplaying games. The purpose the dice serves is as the basic damage of the weapon. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it was meant to be a sort of "critical". Though for other, non-weapon things, I guess it could be considered a "critical", though the idea there is to allow you to be treated as if you rolled higher than you normally would have. It's also a system that I particularly like.

I'm not really sure how you reach the conclusions that you do.

Defense is likely to have an advantage over attacking, though it will obviously cost some amount of AP. AP is, ultimately, a system that's "DnD-like", except instead of the complicated juggling of how many Swift actions equal a standard action or how many standard actions equal a full action or how many total move actions you could take, everything is given a cost based on what you're doing, and then you choose how to spend that cost.
It's essentially the difference between Spells-per-Day and Spell Points, or whatever the optional mana system is.

As for damage, currently the idea is for it to be similar to Dark Heresy in that regard as well: A buffer of Wounds for each hit location and then successive penalties.

I don't remember what it was called, sorry.

That's a pretty cool idea, thanks user. Mind if I borrow it potentially?

>I don't remember what it was called, sorry.

No sweat! The game I was thinking of is called Giga Robo.

And if anyone's curious, the general mecha/factions I've come up with so far:

UN: inspired by gundam, focus on long range combat. Primary mecha uses a combination of a laser sniper rifle and short range missiles. Overdrive allows for more shooting.

Sacred Circle: a collection of the world's most prominent religions, they channel divine power into their mecha allowing them to create miracles for their allies. Primary mecha is support oriented. Can overdrive to protect allies. Escaflowne inspired designs.

Illuminati: A collection of megacorps, wealthy individuals, and other extra-governmental interests, the illuminati has radical and dubiously legal mecha designs. They prefer fast, mobile strikes to preserve their investments. Can overdrive for more movement options. Inspired by Evangelion.

Scrappers: a collection of rebels, revolutionaries, and mad scientists the scrappers have restored old mecha to working order to protect those the other factions would ignore or exploit. Their mecha have poor stats and focus on close combat. They can overdrive for a boost to all stats, and boost more frequently than others. Inspired by classic mecha/Big O.

Take it, I'll never use it.

I also thought of using facing (certain mechs only being able to turn by certain value, firing arcs and so on), but that isn't done very well on a square grid. Hexagons on the other hand...

I'm building a card based magical girl game out of shounen final burst, castle falkenstien and a few deck builders.

It seems to work okay so far. Combat is done by drawing a hand of cards each turn, multiples of a number for defence and straights for attack.

Just working on some of the abilities. Stats and new items are all purchased with ex gained each session.

I meant playing cards, it sounds like you mean specially designed cards. Although if you mean something else, tell me more.

Nope, standard playing cards. Abilities are associated with certain suits or combinations of cards.

Well tell me more.

Here is the rough draft I've been working on. Have a read tell me what you think. I still need to add the rest of the abilities and the technical write ups for them.

Though it looks like the pictures of cards didn't make it into the PDF. I'll fix it tomorrow.

Use the root of the card. Spades for combat/intimidation, clubs for peasant work, maybe wilderness exploring. The royal/army/folk/priest aspect can be worked to untie and allow a few mechanics.

Well, most of my game uses cards, you cant do pretty much everything if your conditions is just "my game must have cards".

That lack of some limits.

What is your idea of game? I could help better if I had something more than just "game with cards"

bump

How active/useful is the discord?

It depends a bit on who's online, it's a bit like /gdg/ where you can get better help with specific questions but it's a bit easier to engage in proper discussions

>body and toughness as separate stats
I'm sure you have an idea of that these should mean, but I recommend choosing terms that are more distinct.

I've been having problems with /gdg/, since its mostly just RPGers. I was hoping the discord was getting enough traffic as to lure in some wargamers for feedback.

Alright /gdg/. What's the most immediate problem you have about your project? Is it a Mechanical thing, a conceptual thing, a meta thing?

Lay it out here and maybe someone can help you out.

I can't make up my mind on the setting. Everytime I work on one, I start thinking of stuff for the other.

Have you tried thinking about both at once? I've done that when juggling multiple ideas. It allows me to filter and assign thoughts into whatever they fit best and later I can go through and dig deeper into each specific group.

>Combat

>My base system is 2d6 + Attribute (D8, D10, or D12) + Weapon (usually +1 - 4) + Trait (Average is around a +3, but may not even apply).
>Players roll that and you take off that much from the Encounter's Tenacity (Players x Difficulty Number).
>Encounter than rolls 2 die, and does what it says on a chart (pic related)
My players like it sometimes, other times it doesn't feel right, any ideas? I can post the full rules PDF if need be.

What are you thinking about? Sci-Fi? Fantasy?

For me, its juggling three different projects that each have their own needs. My first project is my favorite (fantasy RPG made out of mechanics I really enjoy), but all the information ended up not being on the cloud and instead on a computer I haven't been able to fix for over a year. I don't feel like I want or need to rewrite it because of how close I could be to fixing that computer as soon as I get some money. The second project is a dogfighting RPG/boardgame. It really should be easy to finish, but I just haven't ever felt the desire to do some of the more tedious work. Not only that, but I haven't been able to playtest the core rules either, so I don't know if it should just be scrapped period. The third project I mentioned a bit here and . It could end up anywhere between RPG and boardgame too, but I end up running into problems that require a lot of brain power for a tertiary project.

It just feels like I only think about one of the projects once a week and I end up never making meaningful progress. The first project was started 5 years ago, and though its gone through a lot of iteration, it's definitely not 5 years worth of work.

Yeah, I tend to do that a lot. That's part of the problem, being unable to focus on just one.

I've got both. I have a sci-fantasy about a near-future earth being invaded by demons, and a Classical era themed kitchen sink fantasy.

That's what I mean though. Use that lack of focus to build up enough depth for both projects. Then you'll have a lot of variety to chew through even though its just the one setting.

To help with that, assuming you aren't doing it already, have a place to write down notes whenever you get an idea. It'll help you brain think that you've fully considered the idea and you can move on to another one. I personally use Google Keep to write down any random thought that pertains to a game idea. If its something relevant to a game I'm already working on, I'll place it in that game's notepage. If its a new mechanic or concept, then it goes into a generic Game Ideas note.

And then of course I'll ask /gdg/ and /wbg/ for ideas when I'm stuck or as a pseudo-bump to facilitate discussion.

How does combat fit into your game? It looks fairly abstracted which makes me feel like it's more cinematic. In addition, do other, non combat systems use that same mechanic? If yes, then how do they work out. If no, then why are they different?

A means to an end mostly, I like to tell stories and have the players be the main characters, combat is important, but it's not THE GOAL, it's rather a way to get to THE GOAL.

No, the main success-fail is a simple roll-over system. I use this method to speed up combat and to stop a combat monster from solving all the problems in combat and making everyone else feel useless. I took a bit from the a MMO Active-Quest-Thing, where a bunch of people could contribute to a common goal to beat it faster, better, and easier.

That and making combat a little more balanced for "Whoops, sorry I'll miss the session" moments.

I have a problem similar to another user in that I can't settle on a setting. Problem is, this situation cannot be solved by just mashing them together.

On the one hand the setting I was making it for is well known to my friends (likely the only people to ever play it, if I finish) and it being in that setting is something they would enjoy.

However, some aspects of this setting are limiting my potential. I had an idea I really like but I don't think it's compatible with this setting. Changing to another setting would grant me more freedom, but it would alienate my player base.

I need the Wound system to be scalable for different creature sizes. I would like to have it work from insect size up to dinosaur size ideally. (A slight break on the small scale using swarm rules is fine.)

PCs have 3 wound levels (minor/medium/mayor) per body section. Each level has a descending number of wounds 12/8/4.

Changing the number of body section works somewhat and is an assumption I made right away, but I can't add more than the creature logically has distinct parts when going up. And when going down even with three, two or one section total rats, snakes and insects would be to sturdy.

Next logical thing to add would be damage reduction or bonus depending on size difference.
This works too, but only for small differences in sizes. When size differences are large I have lots of unused granularity, because small creatures would always take a ton of damage the 24 distinct wounds minimum on them is ridiculous.

So ergo change the number of wounds per wound level, right? Except I'm not happy with almost any change interval there, because there will be debuffs that depend on damage taken the math has to remain clear for that. Basically I can't have more HP lead to a greater capacity for debuffs and I don't want to encumber the rules with players having to figure out damage percentages here.

Is there something obvious I am overlooking?

Give us the pitch for your setting, and we can see if we can help.

My first instinct is that it is a bit bare bones, but that doesn't apply because I'm to much of a simulationist type for that to be valid.

I assume the tables don't have to be written from scratch every time?

Doesn't feel right, hm... maybe because it has this named move character, where always one choice happens. Maybe a different nomenclature and a split in distinct phases would do the trick? Like you have 2 sequences, one offensive and one defensive.
Just spitballing here.

The system is a generic one, so pre-session a GM would have to write out the encounters, that entire document took me about 15 minutes, but that was mostly the tables and names (Spot the reference and you get one free internet).

An Offensive / Defensive Sequence would be interesting, kind of bouncing back and forth. Hmm, I'll think on it.

Or a three step rhythm.

*Defense->Attack->Disengage

*Setup/Magic->Attack->Defense

*Charge->Parry/counterattack->Strike

*Bind->Flank->? Defense

You could try changing the wound total to something more divisible. 60 comes to mind, as you can divide it by 2,3,4,5,6,9,10,12,15,18,20, and 30 very easily. That would allow you to use the damage scaling solution a bit better. It would also allow you to scale debuffs by percentages if you wanted, because you have so many of the easily mathed ones available (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 2/3, etc).

I initially started working on an RPG system with no setting in mind, it was simply an exercise in design. In time I began thinking about a science-fantasy scenario it could apply to.

I eventually realized that my system could potentially serve as a tabletop adaptation of a very popular franchise that myself and my friends enjoy, one that I know other people have attempted to adapt (with mixed success) in the past, Dragonball Z.

When I developed for no system I just brainstormed until I ran out of ideas. When I started thinking about science-fantasy those creative juices came back and a made a bunch of progress until again I hit a rut. Working what I had into a DBZ thing gave me more focus and honed a lot of ideas.

I'm now at another rut and I can see the the way out, the gateway to a bunch of new concepts, and it's by ditching DBZ and growing in a new direction. Of course, my friends may be less interested in playing it if I do.

Hmm...

Writing out my problem to ask for help has actually given me a way on how to apply the new concepts I was thinking of. I guess it's kind of like how talking about your problems out loud can present solutions, even when no one is listening.