/gdg/ - Game Design General

It could be fun, but the word permanent kind of ticks me off.

Didn't read the blogpost (yet), but if a spellcaster uses a spell a lot, if they've learned it "badly"... I would more likely see the spell mutate rather than stay bad forever.

Of course, as long as in the long run the choices don't come bite in the ass.

If they take points willy-nilly to every direction, versatility will be their advantage.

But that requires a system where versatility can be advantageous. And naturally also a player who can handle that.

I threw the idea originally due to my own biases, as my games tend to run on so heavy fiction logic rather than real logic that what the character has becomes meaningless, rather, what the character is is all that matters. Sounds like a shitty storygame, I know.

Like, the latest addition to my system was something to make failing fun. Nothing about making failing possibly useful, just fun. That tells you something.

Once I get the rules into a form where they can be played out, feedback and fine tuning should take care of any of those types of problems. I'm ok with their being "optimal" growth, as long as it's not making all other routes invalid.

You're gonna have to reword those last couple of lines- it sounds pretty Krishna though.

Thanks for this! I'll give them a proper read later tonight, I've liked all of your input so far!

Thanks.

Reposting from mear the end of the last thread.

Here is my mechanic so far.

XdYk2 format. X is 2 + ranks in expertise (skill level, 0-5). Y is the type of dice rolled and is based primarily on attributes. K2 meaning keep and add two of the results for the rolls result, discarding the rest.

Attributes range 1-12. 1 means you roll 2 d1s by default (automatic 2). 2 means you roll 2 d2s (coins). past this point things are pretty straightforward (and really, attributes should never get that low. 5 is default). On even numbers you roll 2 dice of sides equal to your attribute (attribute 6 = 2d6), on odd numbers you roll one of each dice you fall between (attribute 7 = 1d6, 1d8)

Gear determines kind of dice are used for dice beyond the default 2. By default, all bonus die are your lowest default die. However, equipment increases your effective attribute when rolling bonus die.

So if you have 6 Physique, 3 Expertise (sword), and a +2 sword, you roll: 2d6, 3d8, keep 2.

If you have an odd number of bonus dice and the bonus die score falls on a odd number, round in favor of the smaller dice.

So 6 Charisma, 3 Expertise (etiquette), and +1 finery, equals: 3d6, 2d8 (the bonus was 3d7, so +1d6 and 2d8)

Some equipment, weapons in particular, give other bonuses like a flat increase to damage dealt.

So really I guess 2dA, XdE, k2 is a better way to describe it.

What do you think, too much?

I think it is very intriguing.

But the final notation (the X) makes me stumble;
is it 2d[Attribute], [Expertise]d[Gear] k2?

Going down to d2/coin size always feels like a little blemish to me. It's not a problem but it always bugs me.

Thats exactly right, yes.

Yeah I'm not happy about the d2 either, but there shouldnt be many situations where it is called for, and feeling silly for flipping a coin does drive home how pitifully bleak the character's odds are. Honestly, the bigger problem is what happens when you get bigger than 12. Obviously jumping all the way to a d20 is absurd, so Ill probably just have to give some token addative bonus for ranks that high and do my best to make it unlikely to happen too.

Gotta source on that original image?

How can I add an element of tactics to a combat card game similar to MTG?

I was thinking of making the order of the cards placed matter, but that just sounds like a lot of useless mental gymnastics during the damage phase.

Placing cards into frontline and backline zones is always a good mechanic to explore.

>Placement on a field matters.
and/or
>Adjacency matters.

3x1 center+ flanks
3x2 center, flanks + reserve
3x3 castle: 4 towers, 4 walls, donjon
5x3 detailed battlefield
5x5 the realm

...

Can anyone think of a good way to have players manage a Battlefleet Gothic style naval detachment? Right now I'm toying with each player having their own group of ships, with the number of ships you can control going up every level. It just seems too... to simple. Being able to captain another frigate should be easier than commanding an extra battleship, shouldn't it?

Thinking of something relatively simple:
The governing attributes (strength, mental, agility, whatever you'd like to call them) are represented as different sizes of die. The more skilled you are in a particular area, the bigger die you roll.
So while a Warrior might have a d10 in strength and a d6 in agility, a Wizard might have a d4 in strength but a d10 in willpower

Dragonstrike did something to that effect, but I haven't actually played a system that works like that (I suppose Shadowrun and Werewolf are along that vein, just with a number of d6s)
Think the reduced scale of results would negatively impact the design?

Really wish that diagram of tone was more fleshed out, because I think it has merit but it's missing a lot of information and misses the mark here and there.

Make sure you're not confusing complexity and depth. Sometimes simple is better, but you don't want to complicate the system with finnicky edge casings and rulings.

What do you mean? In tabletop BFG you just commanded fleet formations and squadrons, and raised the point level as you succeeded in the campaigns.

Ironclaw is quite good and works like that.

You could give point values to ships.

Well, sounding like Krishna was not my intent, unsurprisingly. Like, if you read my posts by the end of the last thread, it's just trying to make mechanics anti-frustration, in a sense.

Like, there is always a choice to autosucceed in a roll, it just will cost you your health and wellbeing. Similarly, failure is singled out in my system as the time the player can influence what happens to the character most.

Like...
Success = What you described succeeds
Autosuccess = ... But at what cost?
Failure = Why did you fail?
Crit fail = What did you fuck up?

By singling out negatives, the game kind of asks you whether you really want to succeed. Of course you do, because the status quo otherwise never changes... But failure is always an option...

And if you're going to fail, better make it as entertaining as possible.

Maybe I should have used entertaining rather than fun in the post, but whatever.

I more meant in the sense that you use direct contradictions to make a profound point.
"How does one not fall into despair, Krishna?"
"By abandoning hope, Arjuna."
Similarly, the impetus for entertainment comes from the consideration of failure, as opposed to considering and expecting victory (as is the case with many TRPGS)

In any case, I think it's a worthy endeavor. RPGs are too focused on victory conditions and conquest- Zero Sum. It fosters a mindset ill suited for compromise. But if you can make failure fun, I think you've done something really special.

It's not like my game isn't already breaking the mold in several ways - even though they are mostly subversions and simply reversals of what already is. But I found an interesting way to explain my game: It's very literal.

When you're on the table, playing, there are way more literal representations of things than normal.

Like, think about attribute modifiers, something we're used to seeing, especially in OSR and D&D. It is an abstraction of the fictional space, in every sense of the word.

Whereas, my attributes, while abstractions (No real person has an innate clumsiness rating), on the table, the number given to it is literal. For the character to be able to achieve anything, that number becomes in the way, and it must be overcome (hence why the roll is called overcoming). Similarly, each numeric value on a character sheet can be tested against. And now that I've said that, I realize that I've reduced the crunch in the game to nigh zero.

There are no more calculations (other than +2, +4 or -2 while calculating difficulty), simply rolling the dice and applying that number directly to the character sheet.

Want to use your magic? You roll against 3 different numbers (and always passively against Despair) on the sheet, each of them telling you a different thing:
>The difficulty usually built on character's Dullness, it is to see whether whatever the character is trying to do succeeds (this part gains +4 if the magic works)
>If the roll is doesn't exceed ordinariness, the magic is resilient and focusing requires straining (Causing one strain)
>If the roll is same or under as Strain (only gonna happen when you start overusing magic), the magic refuses to come, or goes awry

And finally
>if the roll is below despair, some fucked up shit happens that makes you incapable of continuing

It might sound like an unfair system, but if the ball hasn't started rolling, it's just rolling against 1s or 2s (on 2d6). Especially because each check is individual.

Full rewrite, work in progress. Still missing some of the frills and the army lists, but the core rules are there. Biggest thing I'm having issues with is just writing, feel some parts are clunky and awkward.

So I'm implementing single-roll accuracy and damage rolled together.

I'm developing a stuck-in-an-mmo game.

Attributes are Tier, HP, Damage, and Soak right now. Damage and Soak will be derived from character statistics later.

Tier represents character level. It is equal to 0-9. T0 equals in game levels 1-9, T1 equals in game levels 10-19, etc. T9 includes the 100th level.

HP is only 100. This represents the percentage of the character's health bar.

Soak is subtracted from all incoming damage before anything else is done. It is a value that maxes out at 20, but should rarely reach that.

I haven't pinned down exactly how characters determine what they roll for damage, but I know I want it to be one through three dice and a single static bonus (all of which may be derived from other statistics)

Damage works as follows:

The attacker rolls their damage (only once per round, as their total damage represents their damage for the round) which they can then apply to any target within range.

Defenders may commit an action which they would have taken later in the round to decrease their damage with any active defenses they may have. If they have none, or the final product does not include active defenses, they reduce the incoming damage by their soak.

If the defender is of a lower or higher tier than the attacker, the incoming damage will increase or decrease by 10% for each step difference.

If a T9 character attacks a T0 character, they deal 190% damage (after soak applies.)

If a T0 character attacks a T9 character, they deal 10% of the committed damage (after soak applies.)

There are four steps towards determining a successful attack and damage. Roll dice, add bonus, subtract soak, multiply by percentage (if hitting a lower or higher tiered enemy)

Determining bonuses to soak and damage are two additional steps to the whole process.

Comparatively, D&D's process is to determine to hit, roll, add, determine damage, roll, add, determine AC and subtract that.

The attached screenshot shows the average damage and accuracy against most possible enemies. The x-axis is equal to the target's soak. The y-axis is equal to the tier-difference.

The damage dice here are 1d10+1d8+1d6. No static bonuses are shown.

The left-most graph shows the percentage chance that the damage roll chosen will deal at least 1 damage to a target with the applicable soak and tier difference.

The graph on the right shows how many HP damage that target will suffer.

This graph shows minimum and maximum damage values.

Larger dice have higher variance, but lower accuracy. It looks like it could potentially model critical hits.

I still need to fiddle with the numbers, but it's really not looking bad to me.

Equipment will be able to modify soak and damage, and possibly grant additional HP. Until I determine how long fights should last, it's impossible to determine how many HP a point of soak is worth: however it's easy to say that one point of soak is worth as many HP as the amount of instances of damage you would suffer in a conflict.

Rerolling would be highly valuable for characters with larger dice, and less valuable for characters with large static bonus. A static bonus is worth about 2/3rds of an increase in die size equal to two points, and this will factor in the character creation/modification.

I need to determine exactly how long a fight should last. I intend to have several categories of enemies such as someone might find in an MMO. Mooks, Elites, Sub-bosses, bosses, and raid-bosses, I suppose.

I intend to give either mooks a low HP pool, cause them to suffer multiplied damage, or just die after they've been hit once.

Elites will take 2-3 hits, I think.

Bosses should be about on par with characters, and they might take 5-6 hits from someone with moderate optimization in dealing damage.

Raid bosses will be more like a set of challenges which must be accomplished rather than a large pool of HP. They may have a set of goals to achieve before they're defeated.

All this said... I might be autistic. I don't even PLAY mmos.

Looking for opinions/feedback. Trying to come up with a simple RPG system to run a one-shot shopping trip adventure for my wife. Theme fits the kind of thing she likes, want to get her involved with rolling dice for discounts and stuff. Here's what I have so far:

>Numbered floorplan of an IRL shopping centre, with a number on each shop
>She's been giving a shopping list as her objective
>Each numbered store has 3-4 items she can buy
>Each item has a cost, and some point value
>She has x hours to complete her list, and Y starting balance.
>Browsing a store takes 10 mins, trying on clothes in a shop takes additional 10 minutes
>Player has limited use abilities that either give a discount, or appraise items
>Bought items are worth more/less points depending on who she buys them for. Player does not know the point value whilst buying

It's that last part I'm finding trickiest. There are about 100 shops in the centre, but since she won't have time to visit them all, I can reuse some of the item lists. I want something a little more nuanced than "more expensive item = more points". Thoughts?

how cute.

It's a bit complex but not all that much...just one question that isn't all clear you roll [2+Skill+Gear]d[Attribute] keep 2? If that's the case which dice should I add on odd attributes?

Actually that's better for more deterministic results, aka there is "little interference" from dices (compare it to a everyone rolls 1d20, where even some with poor skills can beat an "expert" with some luck)

It looks like you know your math well enough...do you have any question?

A fair point, but if we're talking on a scale of:
d4

You didn't get your math right...
anydice.com/program/a2ac
But on overall, with a 1d6,1d8,1d10,1d12 you are going to be rolling 1, 2, 3, 4 above the 1d4 player on average.

On that scale it may not look all that relevant, but your ranges for a roll change a lot, and that may be VERY significant, on that note you could instead add more dices instead of only changing it....just be sure to make it so that your mechanics support your game properly

made a mistake when reading the results...your calculations were pretty on spot (except for the last one)

That seems really complicated. I don't really want to divide the card area up too much; right now I have spaces for two different "types" of cards that would fight: capital ships and strike craft. I didn't want to divide those up into sub-regions because I was kind of hoping to keep it freeform enough for players to decide how they wanted to arrange their "formations" and dictate their attack/defense.

I might look into frontline/backline to balance "production" and actual cards that engage in battle. That could work, simplify things. It'd either come down to absolute attack/defense values on the cards, or I could make it sort of Risk-like and have those numbers indicate how many dice to roll, I guess.

All I really did was do a table of possible results between a d4 and a d6, found out that only six results could beat a die that ranges 1-whatever when you roll a d4 and then just did multiplication for finding the potential number of results.

I considered more dice but I didn't want to tread on Shadowrun's design (and all the problems that come with it). That said, it might be prudent to add very small modifiers to the rolls a la the d20 system.
Say a class starts off with 1d6 agility and then the character picks up an ability that gives them a passive +1 to agility, thus making their agility stat "1d6+1". At such low value rolls, a flat bonus is never anything to sneeze at.

I'm not sure which attributes I ought to use, since it's a stuck-in-an-mmo game, most in-game attributes would only affect combat, and I really only have Defense and Damage statistics, since HP is equal to 100. Healing can be thrown in there as its own distinction.

Critical hits don't exist, not as such, as it would add another step to combat.

A possible way to get the difference down easier, is to always roll 2dX and take the higher one.

anydice.com/program/a2ad

It needs some super magic to beat d12 with d4, but it IS possible.

Then have other stats on clothes than price.
for example
>Label
>Sexiness
>Trendy
>Quality
>Uniqueness
>that-bitch-from-office-already-wears-that-malus

This way, the chance of beating the lower die is 60-70%, and the difference decreases from 70% with d6 vs d4 to 60% with d12 vs d10.

With 1dX, the fight against the "one tier higher" is always only very slightly advantageous to the stronger one. Like, 5-8% more advantageous, where as 2dX is 10-20% more advantageous.

Of course, the dice.

anydice.com/program/a2af

Okay, apparently it's 8-19% with these, to be exact. The numbers eluded me before.

That could work, although now that I've thought of the flat modifiers I'm beginning to see how that might connect with other design elements.
That said, maybe the bumps to stats could instead be another die to roll and you just take the highest of the group rolled. The problem there being that it limits the upper levels of "mastery" if die sizes are assigned according to class.

Its more like
2d[Attribute] and [Skill]d[Gear+Attribute], keep 2

On odd Attributes, you use one of each adjacent even number die (7= 1d6, 1d8)

On add skill ranks, you break in favor of one extra of the larger die. (skill 3, gear 2, att7 = 1d8, 2d10: this is in addition to the 1d6 and 1d8 provided by att7 by default, for a total of 1d6, 2d8, 2d10, keep 2)

I like it because:

Attributes increase what you are capable of by a lot, but don't guarantee you will be able to hit those highs constantly. They still provide steady and significant gains in mean result, and more importantly, make every other kind of bonus (besides additives) multiplicatively more powerful.

Skills increase precision, giving you more dice to roll and drop so you can skew your average towards your potential, and don't have to worry about embarrassing failure when you really need to pull through. Skill by itself wont actually increase your potential though, and doesn't provide as great an increase in mean as Attributes, but Skill synergizes amazingly with

Gear, which lets skilled characters use their skill with the equipment or accessory to reach beyond their normal limits. Gear provides little to no bonus to the unskilled however. Interestingly, increases in the bonus provided by your gear are extremely non-linear, ie, a +1 is immensely more valuable to a att6 skill1 character than to a att7, skill1 character. This means finding the right gear for your character is more a process of finding the right stuff that they uniquely get the most use out of, rather than just quickly buying everything they can afford and use with the biggest numbers.

On the downside, it makes relative probabilities nearly impossible to calculate, with 4 different variables and irregular formatting. I know how to calculate it on a case by case basis, but doing so for every possible combination of variables would be beyond tedious.

Maybe make some customization, such as possibility for 1-tier jumps within the class: such as a wizard could reduce their charisma die (d8-->d6) to buff their strength die (d4-->d6).

And upper levels of mastery, in my head, are more about ability to reproduce the best possible result than being able to go beyond the best possible result. Thus the dual-dice system makes sense. You just gotta buff what that flat 12 means.

That's an interesting way to think about mastery and it's one I should definitely consider because, at least form one perspective, you're right.

Thanks! I don't remember where that thought came up from (I vaguely remember someone mentioning it in /gdg/), but that kind of line of thought has influenced a lot of how I design my games.

So, how about starting some meta discussion, because that is always fun:

>What defines how a number should be treated on a character sheet?

I mean, stuff like, should number progression always be toward higher numbers? Why would that be?
What is too much numbers on a sheet, what is too little?

>Depends on the game

Yes, but this is not about absolute values, it's about the idea.

Also:

>Which is better, changing the difficulty of the roll or adding modifiers to the dice? When you're calculating your positive numbers on top of the dice, are you really just subtracting them from the difficulty?

Bit of a weird question, but is cardgame design also allowed here? I'm not sure.

Yes.

Oh, shite, didn't notice this.
pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=34849197

There you go. Noba is an amazing artist.

Okay so I'm working on my physical card game. Do you know where I could find guys to work with me on the game? It's a scifi themed cardgame and seriously I think it's impossible to work alone on this thing.

Depends entirely what kind of help you're seeking.

Are you looking for mechanics? The thread is usually a treasure trove because you can get opinions from multitude of people.

Need art? You're better off trying to find some drawfriend from drawthreads than find one here, I reckon.

Need fluff for the world the cards inhabit? /wbg/ is there for a reason.

Need someone to grunt out more cards etc.? You gotta sell us your game first, we won't do shit if we don't care.

So, let's start with this:

What's your killer idea for the game? Is it an interesting setting? An unique mechanic? Or is it still so undeveloped that you can't say yet?

Shit, I feel like I'm sounding like
youtube.com/watch?v=ftFAbPnNYrg&ab_channel=jedi420

Or something.

Shiitt. Was not my intent.

Well of course I'd need help in all departments but I'd say that for now everything needs serious work except artwork. The idea is making the base game, letting anons here playtest it and give their opinion then maybe consider hiring drawfags to make the art.

Basically my game is a scifi game where the universe has been figured out. Factions started taking places and are all direct competitors towards each other but still try to maintain diplomacy as no faction has the power to annihilate the others, so they're basically " holding fire ".

My game has 5 factions and cards called " Mercenaries ", which belong to no faction. The ideas right now are extremely primitive so this is why I really need people to help me figure out a whole setting and historic events, how the politics are held, etc...

- PBC ( Post-Bio Corp ) -> Technology based tribes, trying to use technology as a way to make people better and eventually making the whole universe robotic.

- VKC ( Vassal-Knight Corp ) -> As the name says this is a corporation solely based on a vassal-knight system. Basically, these are overlords that enslaved entire species and use them as sheer power to establish dominance in the universe.

MGC ( Matter-Gate Corp ) -> In the universe there is an area called the Matter-Gate, which seems to lead to an alternate universe, leading to what people believe " an alternate universe where deep-space horrors reside and where time, space and physics don't make any sense. Opening the Matter-Gate is the whole priority of these tribes as they seek enormous power out of it. The way of trying to open the matter gate is by letting the deep-space horrors have sacrifices and summonings going on.

NEC ( Natural Evo Corp ) -> As the name says, this is a corporation that was born solely as a response to all these other corporations as they believed one of them would completly destroy the whole ecosystem of the universe. They're kind of the guardians of the universe, sorta speak.

ARC ( Antiquary Research Corp ) -> As the name suggests, these individuals are highly intelligent species that seeks to know everything about every specie. They continuously try to search knowledge about all the other specie so they would find a way to instore complete harmony within the whole universe using a power source known as " The Antiquary ", which, with enough power, would essentially connect everyone to the same brainsource, hence making everyone's will the same within the universe.

And then we have the mercenaries. These are just people that work outside of corporations and work for their own profits. Whether they're good or evil ( we have space pirates in there, how cool is that?! :D), they're just the outcasts of society that will do anything just to make sure nobody wins.

And then there's you. In the end who the fuck are you in this universe? Well, you're just another one of these mercenaries, except that you're trying to muster up an army of some sort, either by recruiting people from factions or other mercenaries like you. The aim? Overthrowing other dipshits that had the same idea as you, and trying to gain the most power possible, essentially making you the winner of this whole faction prison that has seem to have plagued the universe.

( Next post developping the game itself )

The core of the game resides, of course, by using cards from the faction at your advantage. The unique aspect you might ask? My game has no bullshit ressource system.

That's right. Contrarly to other games like MTG where you would need to play " ressource cards " or Heartstone where this ressource is given to you automatically and the restrictions are class-based, my game has none of that. The whole system of my game resides in the fact you can play any card you want, from any faction!

The only problem though is that you have to collect the factions' trust to let them use their little toys or military systems. I mean, what kind of dumb fuck would let their military ressources by some kind of BBEG wannabee that would inevitably cause intergalactic wars with the other faction?

So the game works this way: You have cards. These cards fill you up, uses or destroys what I call " Faction Trust ". Whenever you play a card, it generates 1 Trust of the faction this card belongs in. For example I could play a card that would belong to the ARC, that would look at the top card of my deck, and this card would generate one ARC trust. The more trust you have, the more cards from that faction you can play.

But it's not that easy. Whenever you are getting to a certain threshold, other factions are seeing you're doing nasty business so they will start not liking you at all, so you will lose one trust point for every point over that threshold. For example imagine I have a trust of seven with VKC, then I would get a permanent -2 trust with all other factions. If you go to negative trust, then your opponent gets " trust reduction " for these factions, so that essentially makes the game what it's supposed to be: a political game.

The only cards that do not work this way are the mercenaries. Basically, mercenaries USE the trust you've gathered to do something. For example a typical mercenary card would destroy a creature and would use 3 trust from your " best " faction.

Now the other parts of the game are essentially the same: Both players start at X life, the first one to be at 0 loses, you play cards, you can attack your opponent's cards, play spells, etc. The whole design space comes from the trust design and how it makes you feel like you're an actor of this political stalemate that has taken place in this universe. Hell, I count on making cute cards like " Total Diplomacy ", where it would require you to have 5 trust exactly for every faction to be used at all.

So yeah, I'd need more people to work with me on the whole lore of the universe, some " overlords " of the factions, and also work on the card design with me. This game is supposed to be a physical card game because I believe that's how a cardgame feels best.

Don't hesitate to tell me how you find the idea and if anyone is willing to work with me, because without lying this is a collossal task.

>I could make it sort of Risk-like and have those numbers indicate how many dice to roll, I guess.
Is this a bad idea or a terrible idea?

Well, I can tell you, that personally, I have no time to be messing with a big project like that, I can only give pointers.

Hmm... Where to start...

How would trust be measured? With several spindowns?

The objective of the game as a political warfare kind of brings the old Illuminati-boardgame to mind.

It kind of brings into mind some weird political YGO, because in YGO your only real resource is your card hand. All the others are just conditionals.

I am unsure how the trust system will work, because it seems like it either requires some fiddling with multiple dice, cards are going to be pretty much all over the table (if cards that gather trust don't go anywhere) or keeping track of the amount will be confusing.

Anyhow, the game is still very early in development, so I can't tell you precise factors that will come into play.

But, if Mercenaries USE trust, does it USE UP trust, or is it Mercenaries' effects are akin to X-mana effects in MTG; the more mana you put in it, the harder it will hit.

How will you limit the amount of carnage wrecked in a single turn, btw? Can you play only a single card, or more if they're of the same faction? Will the card hand play an important part in the game?

I gotta sleep, I have an exam in eight hours. Think about those questions.

I think the trend towards higher numbers is purely for psychological purposes.
Having a 3 in strength compared to someone else's 10 immediately brings to mind "10 is better", but if you've got something like "illiteracy", you'll want that to be as low as possible. Really it's just a common sense kind of thing, but it's entirely defined by the context of the statistic in question.

Also, I think whatever you do as far as "meet DC or fail" rolls go: whatever you do you should be consistent. 3.PF fails a lot in that regard- you've gotta keep track of modifiers left and right and it's just a mess. Good DMs will typically defer to flubbing the roll entirely and go "yeah, that's about right" instead of strictly counting up all of the miscellaneous modifiers.

Also consider: perhaps there are no modifiers and instead the roll itself contextualizes the nature of success/failure. Say you need to open a DC 10 lock and you roll a 2 while having a +7 to "Open Lock". You're skilled in the subject, but the die roll represents the circumstances that caused you to fail: the sun was in your eye, the lockpick you were using was rusted and broke off, or you became briefly distracted by an errant thought.

Might as well take a tripcode from now on.

1.You bring up a nice point with how the trust is counted. Personally I think that the best solution I could come up with is releasing a board that would count trust, that would work like image related. Probably drop a dice, counter on anything to the number of trust you have for each faction would be enough. That should make any concern about clarity go away.

2.The game has numerous " classic zones ": you have the battlefield, the graveyard, but you also have a zone called " Prison ". It's basically an exile zone but if a card is sent to a prison it's sent to that ability owner ( except if the card in question says otherwise ). So for example you'd have a mercenary card called " Emprison " that would take a creature on the battlefield in your prison. Basically, except if mentionned otherwise, the card in prison zones cannot do anything, but cards can get them out of prison. There are multiple ways to get permanent/temporary trust but not one set way to get them.

3.Mercenaries generally use up the trust. Thematically wise it's like stabbing in the back the corp you have that trust in. Destroying a creature is something considered outrageous because it might cause a lot of trouble with a lot of other factions. But you bring up a nice idea, I'll note that somewhere

4.Think of it like Hearthstone. In hearthstone you have a mana container that gives you one extra mana per turn. In Mercenary it's the same: Your trust counter is the maximum trust you can use per turn. If I have 8 trust with the NEC, I can use a spell that uses 5 trust and another one that costs 3.

5.I am unsure by what you mean with " card hand ", but any zone in the game ( like your hand ) is a ressource that can of course be exploited down the line.

Also I forgot to mention this, but the game will probably be simultaneous turns, unless I see the game does fine without.

Well having a 3 means your odds of failing are greater.

Unless the system is doing a weird thing where you WANT to roll low or that low=better. The logic being "1 means you're 1st-tier" or some such.

No, it's still the same. If you're changing from a system where a 10 is normal to one where a 3 is normal, and you're rolling equivalent probabilities on your dice, the actual amount of faces you can roll drops down, which increases the chances of failure.

you and I might be talking about two different things, because that didn't make much sense to me.

If you also spend it to get gear and heal, there's then plenty of reasons to manage it.

There's more to character advancement than just character abilities.

If you're rolling a d6, as opposed to rolling a d20, you have far more chances to fuck up than you do with a d20 even if you think the odds for success or failure are 50-50. This is because the d6 has a different shape, and when you roll a dice what matters is the probability that certain faces will appear based on how you rolled and what it impacts, not just the number of faces that equal a success or failure.

This is a good idea, but when implementing you'd also need to go hard core into it. Not having enough uses for xp would end up running against the core of the design choice. XP is the player's way of influencing the world around them, like making the entire game run on Fate Points. Class progression, equipment, resource pools (healing, mp, etc) and all that function off the same resource. If you have some good pricing rules (so you wouldn't need to write anthologies on individual and specific costs), you could have a pretty good generic/freeform system.

The resources in OP don't really seem to have much to do with the technical side of game design, that is designing the game. Deciding on the maths behind certain actions. Are there any good sources on this sort of thing? Studies on the types of RNG that get players most excited to roll some dice. What kind of actions players find most rewarding to partake in from a purely mechanical standpoint.

Something that goes into player psychology behind whether or not to go with 1d20 + X, or 2d10 + X, or Xd6, or having a player draw two cards from a deck of 52 and have that determine the result. Or how often a player should 'succeed' at a task (or degrees of success) to provide the best results for enjoyment. Or the types/categories of choices/decisions that different types players like to make. Just anything that talks about designing a game from raw mechanical standpoints.

Obviously a lot of it depends on player type and game type. But certainly there must be some literature on the subject, seeing as people get paid to make products/keep businesses afloat based on it.

Intuition as someone who plays games is all fine and dandy and gives good context to feel out game mechanics but sometimes you just want something more concrete and tested to reference.

I'm , making that much more depressing game in #3 and this is some of the thematic design I was looking for. I hadn't really gotten around to this question before, but it definitely makes sense now.

Rolling over [Stat] would give me that dissonant feeling I want. It might also help me figure out some math things when only penalties, but not bonuses, exist. The rules will discourage players from interacting with each other at all (which is a theme you should obviously ignore when playing a game). The rules should personify Internal Doubt. However, I also want players to be able to actually help each other succeed in a real sense even though on the surface it appears like they're getting penalized for accepting help. I have a scenario involving lifting a rock that requires [12 Strength]. Players A and B each only have 10 Strength, and if they accept help they each are penalized for -4 points. However, both together still hit that 12 Strength requirement. The problem is that the scenario doesn't take different attribute scores into account (two characters with 10 Strength and 4 Strength respectively would be lower than just the first alone), and trying to say "You each take a -40% penalty" Is difficult to make simple with paper or mental math.

The first issue could be solved by limiting the variation that is possible and just saying "tough luck" if two people end up being less impactful than one. The second problem is a little more difficult. It'll require a simple solution that can be phrased correctly to create that subversion. Rolling over [Stat] wouldn't be related to that scenario, but it might also be the answer I need to make design progress.

Plausible in theory, but I'm not really looking to make a grand generic system. See pic related

The problem with percentages is that they don't math easily unless they're in multiples or 10 or hardbaked into a d%/100 soft-cap (as in, nothing gets higher than 100, so +47% is just +47). Usually you'll want math to be as simple as possible so that people can do it quickly. You might also just require/encourage a calculator for play.

I really, really like the graphs and the information they give. You should definitely include the first picture in your rules. Everything else looks good so far for the aesthetic you're trying to present.

Even the ideas will depend on the game.
More accurately, it will depend on the aesthetic. You should have rules presented in a way that reflect and support the aesthetic you're designing for. Like, if you're making a game about struggling with the grimdarkness of the far future, then maybe having large attributes with a lot of bonuses isn't the most appropriate. You can see DnD (particularly 3.5) doing this well. DnD is generally assumed to be high fantasy, and so rolling d20s, adding +55, and Full Attacking for 20d6+135 are standard-fare within the meat of the game. You'll start pretty lower in the first levels, but grow significantly towards the end. By comparison Brown Box DnD has a lot lower and more constrained numbers, and its dungeon crawling experience is much different to 3.5. Even 5e, with its bounded accuracy and Advantage/Disadvantage helps keeps things more consistent, reflecting its more uniform balance philosophy.

And like alluded, a lot of those decisions can be for psychological purposes. Bigger=Better is intuitive. Games and Sports usually follow that, but you could always subvert that expectation like Golf does. You always want to score more points, but when you're counting Strokes (Mistakes) instead, then your thoughts about performance change. Rolling d20+Modifiers to beat a Target Number is pretty intuitive. Rolling more and larger dice is also pretty intuitive, but 1d4+5 averaging better than 1d12 isn't quite so intuitive. However, you can leverage that to create different feelings or scenarios. 3d6 is more consistent than 1d20, but they average the same, and whatever level you use that difference can affect a lot of other parts.

The key all comes down to having your players "get" what you want them to experience. Your design choices should support that experience.
Balance is an exercise in Math, Design is an exercise in Art.

> My game has no bullshit ressource system.
Except it does. The resource are the cards themselves. I mean, I can't say I've seen that exact mechanic used before (then again, I don't play CCGs), but its definitely a resource that limits what cards you can play.

I like the core idea though. I feel like it would work best by having a single deck that all players draw from. Your strategy will depend entirely from what cards you draw a la Dominion. You could also see the trust you have with factions directly on the board. Active cards are trust, Destroyed cards are mistrust. Perhaps you could also have a forced discard (like something based on hand size) which could help generate that mistrust for other factions. This was written before I read , so the real issue is:

We don't know enough about what you're already done to actually help

That's dependent on many assumptions that become irrelevant with different design.

Math is easy because there's always only one answer to each problem. Anydice should solve most all those problems if you're good enough at using it. You're asking for Math and Psychology resources.

How or why you use the math is subjective and that's where designers actually make their money.

Math-design question:
Where do you draw the line between simple and "realistic"?
How do you approach the issue of intuitiveness and fun, from elegance of the system or from how players will handle the mechanics?

More asking for personal opinions and choices than a sort of definitive answer by the way.

That is a good point, I could add some resources about game theory and GNS-thelry to the OP.

Those are, of course, fine places to start... But now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen anything in-depth about the pros and cons of dice systems,that's actually something we would need to kind of approach ourselves, probably.

There are fine resources purely on probabilities but dunno how much about the application in tabletop context.

I bring out relativistic realism by things like unpredictable health systems, and with general applicability of "You can attack with any stat". Trying to make combat go into a point where a smart guy can beat a strong guy, even in a physical fight, if they're smart. But only if they're smart.

On the case of simplicity, I've said it that I'm trying to build Misfortune like how Ico was built back in the day: by subtraction. Although the ruleset has gotten larger, it is because the direction of the game has become clearer. If a system does not reflect the feeling I try to evoke from playing it, it's out. Unless the system can be reworked to fit the game better, of course.

Over the course, I've removed almost as many parts from the game as I've added to it. And the final result of the current game is that whenever you roll, your roll is compared to several numbers on the character sheet, and only one of those numbers can be influenced directly while rolling.

It might sound weird, but the idea is that instead of trying to make up new roll types or some more checks, the player must ALWAYS check against Despair / Misfortune (whatever I'll call it), regardless of the roll.

If it sounds laborous, but when Despair is usually in the range of 1-3, in a 2d6 system, it very rarely needs to actually be checked against.

I actually forgot the intuitiveness-part.

That is, by having rules simple enough that the most important ones fit on the sheet, explained and all.

See the pic related, it's my character sheet. Really, just look at it. It's the size of an index card, and it includes EVERY base number the player will roll against (inside the circles and squares), and all the modifiers, explained.

What it doesn't explain, of course, is the rolling itself, but the system can be explained in under five minutes to an open mind.

And most importantly of all, intuitiveness comes from the place that I call "no confusion". Anything you do in the game, if you need to roll, you roll 2d6.

Game Design:
>indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
>diku.dk/~torbenm/Troll/RPGdice.pdf

These could be included to the next OP, do they look decent?

Both seems good, but perhaps we should make a new doc with a summary of references and leave only a few here (or else we might be reaching the OP word limit pretty soon, also there is some stuff missing from there already)

therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21479
It doesn't deal with math, but it does talk about mechanics of existing games, including dice systems. Its my absolute favorite resource.

I research a game heavily, ideally from first hand accounts, then make sure I model the most important elements of the period. As long as I do this in a simple way, there should be a good balance of realism and simplicity. Its always a balancing act, and in the end play-testing will show you what works and what bogs everything down.

For example the WW1 game I recently finished (westfront) I listened to a lot of audiobooks of first hand accounts of the war, books like "Now it can be told" "a german deserters war experience" and "the eastern front 1914-1917" were all fascinating insights into the period and gave me a lot of ideas. Some things like Recon didn't make it into the final rules, as the system I had for it didn't really do anything, and plus recon is mostly handled by H.Q. and thats above the player in the game I wrote. Things like sending runners back to request more ammunition or creeping barrages working correctly in-game I felt were very important, so kept them in. The communication system could do with some streamlining though. Always room for improvement. imo It takes a few years of playtesting to really polish a game to a high standard.

Nothing beats play-testing.

I understand what you mean. It is still hard for me to actually provide you a complete PDF with everything because this isn't as detailed as I hoped it would be.

I feel the main concern for me is the card design and the lore. Do you think I can make a PDF with the core mechanics and then ask for help? This is something I've always wanted to do so it matters a lot for me!

Okay, this is pretty much a whole reference resource by itself, if the guy could go through the effort of putting it all on a a single bookmarked PDF or wikia page it would be "perfect"

>>Nothing beats play-testing.
Aye, this above anything else, I try to run a game using my own system, it's easy to see what rules are missing and which ones are going over the top once people are actually playing the stuff...The next step, once everything is ready, is to have someone else run a game for me, first one of my initial players (if possible with fresh new players) and see how it goes, then try to get one of those introducted to the game and see how he does, last but not least try to find someone to run the game without ever having experienced it before...the last step can also be your first release (but I would advise for you to tag a long one or two tables to see how players/GMs are handling it and see if you need to change stuff)

>>mfw I'm going to be stuck on the first step for a long time....

Card design is a big problem because it usually is a massive endeavor in games like the one you proposed, they are pretty much like trying to come up with a spell list (like DnD) or equipment, for this you should find a co-designer or players that would ask for stuff you haven't created yet. Improvise, analyse, balance, test, implement, rinse and repeat.

Lore is kind of a lesser issue (unless you want a very massive and detailed lore), mostly lore can build itself organically as you build your game, if you watch out for it you can see trends and reactions, and you just have to fit the theme/lore. But detailing lore would be more a /wbg/ stuff than ours, we can at most help you come with general lore-explanations for your mechanics...

Ok question about opposed rolls. A pilot inside a hardsuit adds one of their pilot stats (1 to 10) to one of their hardsuit stats (1 to 10) and rolls 1d20. If the result is equal to or below the sum of their two added stats it is a success. Outside of a hardsuit a pilot can only use one stat (1 to 10) but still uses a 1d20 to try to roll under. This massive difference is to represent the level of magnitude a hardsuit offers a person who without one is hobbled by bulky environmental gear, breathing apparatus and closed sensory ports which makes things infinitely harder to deal with. Pilots should be pretty rubbish against hardsuits without a mechanical backup, where a pilot would use one stat to attack but still use 1d20 to try to roll under (Even then the targeted hardsuit could elect to dodge and use two stats and do so on a 1d20 putting them at an advantage)

To account for the difference inside a city (where there is a much reduced level of environmental danger and no requirement to wear such gear) an ejected pilot still only uses 1 stat but instead rolls 1d10 to try to roll under. Would this be a suitable system for differentiating between the hazardous outside environment to pilots (and by extension unsupported ground troops)?

For physical tasks it sounds pretty okay, the only point is that hardsuits should have above average physical stats so that most people don't get hindered by their hardsuits on the city (unless you want that to be a thing, of course)

What mechanic would you guys use to represent the power to call for "divine intervention", being it either calling on a higher power (God) or employing lesser powers (imps/wisps)?

The general system is 2d10 roll under attribute+skill+Dif. Modifier, you get a higher degree of sucess for each 2 you roll under.
About the specific mechanics involved is that you have "Potential Points" that you spend to learn/level up your "powers", in theory all power groups can use up to 4 power points per level...

For instance, I have the "High Magic" power, which is divided between:
"Wizardry" that requires the user to use an action to gather mana/prepare before casting anything (they get +1 on gather mana tests, +1 to their mana pools and +2 spells per level).
"Sorcery" that allows the player to instantly cast their spells using only their permanent/current mana (they get +1 permanent mana point to use on sorcery spells, +2 to their mana pools and +1 spells per level)
"Spell Craft" additional practice studies on the field gives you +1 to mana pool and +1 spell per level (can be bought twice).
If you know both casting methods, whenever you want to use a spell you must choose between one of them, but the spells known and mana pool is shared between them.

Bamping with a new, updated version:

>Added All-Out Powers = Using 5 strain to get +10 to a roll
>Changed Detriments to Ejection = When you roll under your Despair, you get forcefully ejected from the scene. If Despair is high enough, you have a chance to die.
>Changed group combat so that a smaller group has a fighting chance
>Removed Succumbing rolls, they were useless
>Changed how strain works (slightly). You run out of juice by rolling under your Strain, it makes more sense in context of the rest of the game
>Basically, the whole game is now only about decreasing or increasing the difficulty of rolls, and comparing singular dice rolls with several things (like, while casting magic, you gotta roll over your despair, strain, ordinary and other weakness to get no setbacks. It's still kind of balanced because Despair shouldn't ever be over 3 and Strain only rises as you use magic).

When inside a hardsuit, the pilot uses a combination of the suits Bulk and Servo stat rather than one of their own so are still at a large advantage for physical feats of strength. In direct combat the stats used is the pilots Melee Skill stat + Hardsuits Servo stat or for ranged attacks, Ballistic Skill + Hardsuits Sensor stat.

While it might sound weird I considered using the pilots physicality as the other stat and I'm wondering if Morale would be a better choice given the cybernetic link. Should a physically or mentally strong pilot be at an advantage or should I stick to having it as only two hardsuit stats in feats of strength when inside one? Have some kind of small bonus when morale or vigour goes over a certain value?

I kinder like the idea of that dumb mecha cliche of a pilot screaming and the willpower having an extra effect in there somewhere

You could add a "pushing limits" action that allows you to give your hardsuit a boost, but it strains your body and/or your mind, getting gud at hardsuit fighting is not for the meek.

Or alternatively pushing it to the limits in a way that it endangers the hardsuit's hull integrity.

Stuck at work bump

One idea I've been toying with that would fit with that is the option to "push" on rolls where the standard critical failure rating of 20 on a 1d20 has 19 or even less counting as a critical failure too but at the benefit of adding an equivalent number to the base stat being tested against.

Like this a player could have their pilot 'strain' to say, resist a hacking attempt on their hardsuits computer. The pilots Intelligence stat would be boosted by 1 at the penalty that rolling a 19 or 20 will result in a dangerous critical failure.

An easier alternative mechanic might be that a player can elect to have their pilot 'strain' and prior to rolling, increase either their Vigour, Morale in certain situations with failure of the roll resulting in pilot damage or a temporary -1 penalty to the stat they were boosting.

I could instead use this as the mechanics for when pilots dose themselves with drugs in which case they might be able to boost any of their pilot stats before making the roll.

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