I'm sure there are other students or just genreally interested people on Veeky Forums that want to make a RPG for themselves, so lets get some vets to share their knowledge
>Should lore be in depth or should a setting just be provided and we have GMs make lore for their games?
>How crunchy or how free-form should a games rules be for a novice designer?
>What kinds of dice should be used? I personally enjoy Little Fears use of lots of D6's
So, not OP, but any of you faggots got any good books on game design? I don't really care about lore questions or any of that, but I do need an overview of possible mechanics for a homebrew I was thinking up.
There's been more innovation in tabletop RPGs since 2010 than in all the years prior. Alot of it in games that are easily had for free.
Do your own research. AFAIK nobody has boiled it all down into an easily digestible "for dummies" book because it's a constantly shifting niche publishing field.
I think all of your questions are a matter of subjectivity, except for
>how crunchy
You should almost certainly start with rules light. And make sure you're actually interested in designing a game, rather than a setting or a sourcebook for a game you already like.
These are all subjective questions that are not easily answered in any context and therefore are not helpful or conductive to game design hopefuls, but instead counter-productive in the way that might imply that the answer to these questions are the "Correct" method of designing games, which in fact the answer to all three is...
D E P E N D S
O N
T H E
P R O J E C T
But that's silly though, you really expect everyone making an RPG to just take blind guesses at making well designed game systems, Someone at some point must have realized how absurd that is and actually compiled some knowledge on mechanics.
>There's been more innovation in tabletop RPGs since 2010 than in all the years prior
Such as?
I have this if it helps
Anything and everything you can spare helps, I appreciate it user.
I'm saying it's a niche hobby that changes quickly.
If you want to delve into it, you're better off reading (and for gods sake playing) a few games than waiting for some publisher to spoonfeed you with a dead tree book.
I actually used to have a book about writing RPGs--it was written in the 90's. I picked it up again recently, and in hindsight it's super primitive
>some games use dice!
>others use cards!
That kinda thing.
You can find lots of "creative writing for dummies" books... they won't turn you into a novelist. If you can't be bothered to read and play a few different games, why should you think you should write one?
re: innovations in gaming
>apocalypse world and its spinoffs (storygaming in general)
>the resurgence of interest in old school D&D and other old stuff like Traveller
>Dogs in the Vineyard
>Call of Cthulhu has always been awesome
>One Roll Engine games
>the sheer variety of "generic systems", starting with GURPS, savage worlds, Cypher
>ultra light one page games like Everyone is John
When I was growing up in a small town, the only access to nerd stuff was a half hour drive to a suburb to the one comic shop... where there was a rack with AD&D, Vampire the Masquerade, and Palladium books.
>You can find lots of "creative writing for dummies" books... they won't turn you into a novelist
Unlike creative writing where shit can be subjective as it wants to be, game mechanics are systems built from constituent parts that are objective, uniform, and better studied in a vacuum than by trying to find a few scattered example in already existent systems which doesn't actually help you grasp the nuance.
>You should be playing a bunch of games
I find it hard enough to find strangers who will even play the most popular shit out there regularly, it's neigh impossible to find people who will play the odd shit that no one bothers with.
>Lore
Lore can be as complex as the GM wants, but should be fed to the players in small, easy to digest chunks as the game progresses. No long expositions, and NO mandatory reading.
>Crunch
Start out more free form, then add crunch as you like until you find your balance. Starting out with too much crunch may bog the game down with numbers that you may later find unneccessary.
>Dice
Personal choice. I like multiple d6s, but thats just me.
>objective, uniform, and better studied in a vacuum
No. You might as well say your shitty fanfic novel should be a best seller because the grammar and style is textbook perfect.
I know
>tfw no gaming group
but if you don't play games, it's just guesswork. Too bad if you find it hard, but that doesn't change the fact that experience beats theorywanking.
For example--One Roll Engine is very elegant on paper, but it's got a learning curve that will turn people off in a casual game. Basic D&D has a lot of goofy old mechanics and weird dice that seem difficult, but it's one of the few games where you can ask an utter noob three questions, and be up and running an adventure in ten minutes.
At least read a few games to see how different writers approach the same material. Dogs In the Vineyard and Pathfinder are both adventure games about wandering heroes, but the mechanics of each create totally different experiences at the table.
It is much better to study a game mechanic and it's implications than trying to reverse engineer the mechanic from various games I refuse to cede this point. Furthermore a game is ultimately a collection of mechanics, if all mechanics are sound and well thought out the game by extension ought to be too. Whether the resulting game is enjoyable may be up to personal taste, but knowing those mechanics is key. To use your own analogy, just because you wrote a beautiful Pulitzer prize winning novel, doesn't mean anyone's going to be able to ignore the fact that you can't spell above a 2nd grade level and the entire book is one run on sentence with no punctuation whatsoever. yes I realize there are actual books like that, let's ignore that for now
>but if you don't play games, it's just guesswork.
I disagree, I think it's entirely possible to build a game to one's liking if one is at least given the knowledge of proper mechanics and their uses. It just might not be like other games, and that might be a good thing.
>At least read a few games to see how different writers approach the same material
I suppose I will endeavor to do so, though I still think that starting with a comprehensive understanding of mechanics is more useful than spending ages trying to pick apart an already existing system.
Well, no such comprehensive understanding exists. Partly because people are making up new shit all the time.
You can read broadly about things like video game design and incentives and apply that to tabletop RPGs if you want.
>Partly because people are making up new shit all the time.
There's limited ways dice, minis, cards, or whatever else in a tabletop game can work together. By necessity these types of games are restricted to some "comprehensive" list of prototypical mechanics from which others derive. Even if you make something up completely out of the blue, it will still have to interact with the rest of the system in such a way as to relate it to the basics. "There is nothing new under the sun" and all that.
>You can read broadly about things like video game design and incentives and apply that to tabletop RPGs if you want.
Well perhaps I may, that being said do any of you have any good books on video game mechanics that might be helpful?
>There's limited ways
There's only so many ways to roll a die, but nearly infinite ways to interpret them.
The whole point of a PnP RPG is that it's played face to face with other people, and you're interacting with human minds. The rules are a flexible guideline rather than a complete and rigid set of mechanics (like say, chess).
The fact you don't seem to get that is why you need to play some fucking games before you try to write one. Or write a novel instead.
>There's only so many ways to roll a die, but nearly infinite ways to interpret them.
While that statement may be true, there are still far more limited interpretations that are useful. Sure I could create a game that tied utter nonsense and gibberish to all the concepts and it would be truly unique, but utterly useless as a game. So studying a mechanic and assorted examples of how that mechanic has been used for actual real world games would still be very helpful.
>The rules don't really matter beyond being guidelines, it's the human element that matters.
If that truly were the case what is the point of building a system such as a game? The game exists to constrain and focus the imagination, it is not to be treated as mere suggestion to be ignored when one sees fit. It is true most are meant to be modified and changed because one user's needs will never match with others and to be completely rigid would be idiotic, but that doesn't mean that they can be ignored completely. Otherwise there would be little point in having a system at all when freeform RP could serve just as well.
>come into thread hoping for good discussion
>half the posts are a simulationist is and a narrativeist pointlessly arguing
Really?
>NO mandatory reading.
I agree that you should strictly limit the required reading, but saying that any reading whatsoever is bad is overdoing it a bit.
Welcome to Veeky Forums.
Here's your list of prototypical mechanics:
Dice:
>target range on single die
>target range on multiple added dice
>successes on multiple dice
>sets on multiple dice
Minis:
>represent relative position
Cards:
>random draw
>hand management
>value range
>suit match
>sets
Jenga Tower:
>play Jenga
I like Sirlin's gamedesign books/musings, but they are mostly for competitive multiplayer games, not RPGs. Still, it gets you the basics, and points out some pitfalls to avoid if you want to design some sort of adversarial/combat heavy game.
>I suppose I will endeavor to do so, though I still think that starting with a comprehensive understanding of mechanics is more useful than spending ages trying to pick apart an already existing system.
Fffffuck you.
There's no way to "comprehensively understand" RPG mechanics, because they rely on tons and TONS of various variables in them, from the fluff's context, to the character sheet, to the focus of the game. You seriously sound like you've never ever even read a single RPG rulebook, in almost every one that doesn't have it intertwined with other explanations, there is a separate, discrete MECHANICS or CONFLICT RESOLUTION chapter.
I'll give you an example - powered by the apocalypse games. 2d6 +character's skill, 6 and under = fail; 7-9 soft success, 10-12 good success. ApocWorld, mother of the system works great because it makes good use of the tropes, the moves are hardcoded into everything you do, they're themed well, and serve an overarching theming of "it should feel like a gritty HBO drama".
Clones of PbtA, though? Usually they go for 'do whatever, just roll 2d6, and have fun'. Unfocused messes that make no effort to push a certain playstyle associated with genre.
Then there's stuff like games that have the same core mechanic, but different numbers behind it, e.g. character stats - a lot of interpretation of what can be done depends on the semantics, which is what I love tinkering with personally.
tl;dr go to a goddamnfucking PDF sharethread, download some shit and start reading, then go to drivethrurpg, sort by price, download all the free games and read them too. Since you're willing to read dry, scientific publications, do yourself and us both a favor and read some fuckign games because a lot of the time, while you won't get a comprehensive analysis, you can tell a lot about the mechanics and how they feel just by glancing over the examples and core rules.
Just read a rulebook before you reinvent the wheel, nigga.
FUCK
Questionably necessary expletives aside, this user speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Check out Veeky Forums OCs and homebrews, particularly 'rules-lite' ones. That should get you started. It all boils down to your objectives or the goal your RPG wants to acheive. Take pic related for instance.
Word.
Honestly, the amount of argument in this bread almost makes me wonder if OP is pic related.
Oh dear, this is brilliant.