/gdg/ Game Design General

It's technically saturday edition

/gdg/ is a place for full-on game designers and homebrewers alike. Feel free to share your games, ideas and problems, and comment to other designers' ideas and give advice to those that need it.

Useful Links:
>Veeky Forums and /gdg/ specific
1d4chan.org/
imgur.com/a/7D6TT

>Project List:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/134UgMoKE9c9RrHL5hqicB5tEfNwbav5kUvzlXFLz1HI/edit?usp=sharing

>Game Design:
indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
diku.dk/~torbenm/Troll/RPGdice.pdf
therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21479
gamesprecipice.com/category/dimensions/
angrydm.com/2014/01/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/

>dev on Veeky Forums discord:
discord.gg/qRHhfZ6

>Online Play:
roll20.net/
obsidianportal.com/

>Games archive:
darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/fulllist.html
darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/
docs.google.com/document/d/1FXquCh4NZ74xGS_AmWzyItjuvtvDEwIcyqqOy6rvGE0/edit
mega.nz/#!xUsyVKJD!xkH3kJT7sT5zX7WGGgDF_7Ds2hw2hHe94jaFU8cHXr0

>Dice Rollers
anydice.com/
anwu.org/games/dice_calc.html?N=2&X=6&c=-7
topps.diku.dk/torbenm/troll.msp
fnordistan.com/smallroller.html

>Tools and Resources:
gozzys.com/
donjon.bin.sh/
seventhsanctum.com/
ebon.pyorre.net/
henry-davis.com/MAPS/carto.html
topps.diku.dk/torbenm/maps.msp
www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/demo.html
mega.nz/#!ZUMAhQ4A!IETzo0d47KrCf-AdYMrld6H6AOh0KRijx2NHpvv0qNg

>Design and Layout
erebaltor.se/rickard/typography/
drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4qCWY8UnLrcVVVNWG5qUTUySjg&usp=sharing
davesmapper.com

>How do you approach designing non-player characters in your system? Do they have full statblocks, partial or a different system entirely?

Other urls found in this thread:

docs.google.com/document/d/1-x7vMbcJeXps8ZaeTa2ovoXK2yoB7ICqcEmNKP1dlww/edit
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/134UgMoKE9c9RrHL5hqicB5tEfNwbav5kUvzlXFLz1HI/edit?usp=sharing
dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/134421010799/phb-homebrewing-tutorial
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>tfw you get nothing done in a week because of work shit

>tfw you get nothing done because you're a lazy piece of shit
Well, at least I got the dice system down.
Please rate and review.

Very interesting.

>tfw a player wants more options so you add some and then tweak half your system to make it work

A little earlier than I expected, but I can't complain about a thread on my birthday.

Haven't really done any work on my system, so there's nothing to post, but maybe I'll get some stuff done over the weekend.

>tfw you get nothing done in months because you're doing videogame development instead

BUMP-- You almost 404'd on me you guys.

At least you're doing something. I spend most of my work day thinking over game ideas, and then forgetting to write them down.

Are these rules clear and understandable?

>All protagonists are also equipped with jump kits - ion booster equipment that greatly increases their mobility - that allow them to perform amazing feats of agility. The jump kit itself has zero weight and its effectiveness is determined by the wearer’s weight.
>Protagonists carrying five or fewer weight gain the [lightweight] tag. Their jump kits allow them to double jump, hover in mid-air and run along walls for extended periods, in addition to the below features.
>Protagonist carrying between five and ten weight gain the [middleweight] tag. Their jump kits allow them to gain a boost to jump height before gliding down and to briefly run along walls, in addition to the below features.
>Protagonist carrying ten or more weight gain the [heavyweight] tag. Their jump kits only allow them to gain a sudden burst of momentum in any direction (including vertically), safely bounce off of walls and withstand falls from great heights.

Yup, nice and clear.

One quick bump before I go to bed.

Here's the most current version of my Ace Combat homebrew.
To Do:
First pass stat blocks for planes and weapons
First pass pricing on planes, weapons, and upgrades

Since I'm basing many things off of one specific game in the franchise, I just need to get that running and I can probably straight rip the stats/cost and adjust from there. That'll allow me to get into deeper playtesting and closer to share ready.

Comments always welcome.

Google Doc: docs.google.com/document/d/1-x7vMbcJeXps8ZaeTa2ovoXK2yoB7ICqcEmNKP1dlww/edit

>docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/134UgMoKE9c9RrHL5hqicB5tEfNwbav5kUvzlXFLz1HI/edit?usp=sharing

How many are D&D/fantasy heartbreakers or OSR games?

Finally (kind of) finished this fucking homebrew class.

I don't think there are any glaring issues anymore, but still gotta keep proofreading, because I realized that I got frequent brain farts while writing, there are a lot of incomplete or incoherent sentences.

At least the class features should be kind of clear, I hope.

In other news, I've been reading up on Legends of the Wulin, and finally now kind of get it. Interesting system, but horrendous editing. So horrendous, that I'm gonna make a better characters sheet for it. The lines are really uneven. That just doesn't fly.

Well, the unofficial rule is to make a new one on Saturday, so if it dies before Sunday, new one can just be made.

I don't actually know. I think we should kind of just restart the project list, because I think many of those are probably obsolete these days.

How do i into nice visuals like you?

The entire thing has been made in Homebrewery, and the image is a photoshopped version made with Walrock's photoshop tutorial.

Just google "D&D layout photoshop" or something to that effect to find the tutorial and the resources.

Anyone feel like looking over my skirmish wargame draft?

Here's a link.

dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/134421010799/phb-homebrewing-tutorial

Thanks man, have my Stalker homebrew in return.

Seems a bit bloated, but your character sheet is pretty neat.

What is bet of the following two core mechanics?

>GM sets a target number between 1 and 6
>the player rolls 2d6
>dice that meet or exceed the TN are keeps
>choose one die to be the success die; if it is a keep, narrate how the PC achieved their intentions
>if it is not a keep, the GM narrates how the PC failed to achieve their intentions
>the other die is opportunity die; if it is a keep, narrate some additional advantageous element into the scene
>if it is not a keep, the GM narrates an additional disadvantageous element into the scene

>GM sets a target number between 1 and 6
>the player rolls 2d6
>dice that meet or exceed the TN are keeps
>0 keeps: "No, and", failure and negative consequence
>1 keep: "Yes, but", success and negative consequence
>2 keeps: "Yes, and", success and positive opportunity

The former allow more flexibility but I feel most players will use it in the latter way regardless. It is meant to be similar to FFG Star Wars, but using only 2d6 to determine both ends of the outcome.

Where does character variability come in with such a narrow dice range?

I like the second, simple and elegant. I take it there are few, if any modifiers?

So with the 5 Pip Dice of Fate, the character will always find a new problem coming in the way of the problem they were originally trying to resolve; doesn't matter what the numbered dice are. Am I understanding this right?

Yes.
But like mentioned in the examples, the event could make the problem resolve itself i.e. someone unlocking and coming from the other side of a locked door.
So if a lot of 5 pips are getting rolled the DM has the option of showing some mercy.

I like both, to be honest. I would, however, suggest to use something else than 2d6, because both dice are independent, so the game is basically 1d6, meaning getting modifiers to the rolls could easily break the game, where as not giving players modifiers can make the players frustrated and reduce the amount of important choices they can make.

Do you have a ready system for how stats are going to work?

Because my idea for stats, for the former system, could be something like:
Stats are rated 0-3
>0 - No effect
>1 - You can reroll opportunity die once
>2 - You can reroll either die once
>3 - You can reroll both dice once

The experience system should be incremental, maybe even exponential, meaning something like: you get 5 exp per game session, raising a stat costs 5x the rating.

That actually reminds me of Interesting Times from Legends of the Wulin

Characters have four stats, each one used contextually, that range from 0 (human average) to 5. Enemies or obstacles have a similar number simply called an "Obstacle Level" from which the character's stat is subtracted. The result is the TN.

For example:
>The merchant has a Logic of 2, he is pretty smart.
>The PC has a Guile of 1, he is a pretty decent liar.
>Because 2 -1 = 1 and 100% of d6 rolls will be >= 1, the PC successfully dupes the merchant and gets a good bargain.

Contrast:
>The merchant has a Logic of 3, he is very intelligent.
>The PC has a Guile of 1, he is a pretty decent liar.
>Because 3 -1 = 2 and only ~83% of d6 rolls will be >= 2, the player rolls 2d6.
>If both dice are If one die is >= 2, the PC convinces the merchant to buy the stolen item but gets shorted on its value a bit.
>If both dice are >= 2, the PC convinces the merchant to buy the stolen item and the merchant gives him a bonus (thinking it is more valuable than it actually is).

The only modifier is advantage/disadvantage.

Advantage:
>If the player can describe one positive circumstance, useful tool, etc. they have advantage on the roll. Use the highest die result twice.

Disadvantage:
>If the GM can describe one severely negative circumstance, disruptive factor, etc. the player has disadvantage on the roll. Use the lowest die result twice.

>If both advantage and disadvantage are described, roll as normal.

Players are awarded EXP by other players for good roleplay and clever thinking. Similar to how an audience applauds. They use EXP to buy gear, heal wounds and create new narrative elements in a scene.

EXP is not used to increase stats because then the party could get uneven. Instead the GM awards everyone a stat advancement at narrative milestones.

I like it!

Though I think with the 5 pips one, and if it were me designing this, I would include the result of the numbered dice into the descriptor of Fate; and differentiate it from a Success and a Failure. Because right now, it shows (at least to me) that it doesn't matter whether the numbered dice are amazingly rolled or not.

You mentioned how Fate can be "positive" or "negative". If it were me, I would say, "If the numbered dice rolled come out to be a fail, the Fate is 'negative'. If the dice rolled come out to be a success, the Fate is 'positive'.

Like you mentioned with the unlocking of the door, only for a guard to open it from the other side- resolving the problem just like that. That could be a 'positive' bout of Fate.

But a 'negative' bout will be that maybe the lockpicks got stuck, or maybe the sound of the footsteps of the guards are coming closer from around the corner, and the door still didn't open up. It's 'negative', because Fate didn't solve the problem; it just make for another complication on top of the one you already have.

You can take this or leave it. But if it were me, that's what I would do.

I like your dice system, as it provides the GM with some direction for the chaos they can put into a situation (ala the Ming Vase rule, or others like it).

Seems a bit counterproductive.
The dice system tells me you're going for rules lite and minimalist rules, but because of the way it works everything that's going to be rolled against needs a stat block.
That, or the DM has to wing it. That's terrible, because then it means your stats are meaningless because the TN is always going to be relative to the player stat in question.

I'm not saying you can't make it work, but as someone who tried to do something similar I couldn't think of a fun away to do it. Or maybe my expectations were too high for my own untested homebrew. Not like I ever ran a session of it anyways.
I like your advice. I thought of a similar thing but the way you put it makes it sound functional.
When I was thinking of "success is a positive fate, failure is a negative fate" all I could think of was "isn't that just a regular pass/failure mechanic?" But yeah now that's it's actually been written out I can see that it can still have ramifications on the narrative.
I'll make that change to it.

>That, or the DM has to wing it.
That's the idea. For context the player characters are magical robots in the far future that also pilot mechs. The intersection of Destiny's guardians and Titanfall's pilots.

The GM chapter gives a lot of advice for setting target numbers, based around the idea that the PCs are big fish, just in a big pond and that they shouldn't need to roll every single thing they do - only when they are actively opposed. Instead of setting up a 6+, break the action up into multiple rolls. Generally anything the PCs are gonna face will initially be around a 6 at most, then their stat is subtracted.

Glad I could help.

What's your game going to be about? It looks like in a pinch, you could apply it to all manner of themes.

Don't know, just came up with it. Most likely going to write rules for generic fantasy, but I've been wanting to sci-fi or sword and sorcery lately.
Thread is active enough, I'm going to write up the magic system rules really quickly because I've been needing thoughts on it.

While it gets across the feel of how I want magic to be, it's easily abused and relies on DM fiat heavily.
But then again, that's what happens when you want to include something as unrealistic and arbitrary as magic.

Can't settle on a good health mechanic.

Right now weapons do 3-4 harm a pop. Every five harm you take a wound and go back to 0 harm, take five wounds and you're out of the scene (not necessarily dead, just helpless).

Harm is sort of like bumps and bruises, you don't have to worry about healing it. Wounds have narrative consequences and cost resources to heal even after a fight.

My goal is to give lasting (but not permanent) narrative consequence to being in a fight but also providing some leeway. A good comparison would be the Halo video games: your shield bar regenerates after a few seconds, but your health bar stays at the same level unless you use a health kit.

But this feels kind of contrived and like it would take forever to kill a PC (NPCs don't take wounds, just a few harm).

So it seems that in your magic system, observation plays a significant role (since it seems that viewing the magic in action can do some nasty things to you). Not something I've ever thought to do before, but I think it's neat.

With this, and correct me if I am wrong, but I can cast spells of literally any magnitude or power, so long as if I can fool observers into believing it wasn't magic.

Not sure if you intended it or not, but when you wrote up about Level 1 effects, you have the sentence: "A Level 0 Spell effect must be subtle enough to be explainable to witnesses other than the spell caster through ignorance or coincidence such as: ..."

What then is a Level 0 spell? I don't see any Level 0 spell descriptions, but I can't imagine their effects doing any actual damage (since 0d6 Psychic Damage always is 0 damage).

I'd also like to hear your answer in how you think this system can be abused by both DM and players alike. I want to know where you stand in your own system.

This isn't a bad mechanic if your PCs are big larger-than-life heroes.

You can also maybe use this mechanic to "set" the gritty vs. heroic level. Maybe make 5 Wounds be for PCs who want to be heroic, 1 Wound if you want to be gritty, or 3 for middle ground.

And also if the game is about the PCs trying to manage their resources, this is a fine system. Don't worry about it being contrived/ being realistic. Realism is the biggest pitfall a game designer can fall into. Believe me.

>This isn't a bad mechanic if your PCs are big larger-than-life heroes.
They are, but I still feel this might lead to the D&D 4E problem of too durable characters making too long combats.

>Don't worry about it being contrived/ being realistic. Realism is the biggest pitfall a game designer can fall into. Believe me.
I agree 100%. I didn't mean contrived as in "unrealistic" but that maybe my description in the book is too meandering or complex:

>One tag in particular does have a mechanical impact: harm. Harm is a measure of how severely damaged, exhausted or otherwise drained a character is. It is applied like any other tag, but unlike other tags, harm can stack - characters can have this tag more than once.
>Wounds are severely negative tags attached to one of a protagonist’s approaches, loweing that approach’s rating by 1. Whenever a protagonist reaches five harm, they gain one wound; if a protagonist would take more than enough harm to cause a wound, disregard any harm over the five required to cause a wound.
>When a protagonist would gain a fifth wound, they instead gain the helpless tag - they cannot take action and are effectively removed from the scene. They may be knocked unconscious or even killed, as appropriate to the fiction.

Since this is a sci-fi game, I have debated renaming harm to shields or something to more accurately encapsulate the comparison to Halo, and also because I feel harm is inaccurate when it doesn't effectively hurt the PC.

>Not sure if you intended it or not, but when you wrote up about Level 1 effects, you have the sentence: "A Level 0 Spell effect must be subtle enough to be explainable to witnesses other than the spell caster through ignorance or coincidence such as: ..."
That was a mistake from when everything was a lower level. I increased the levevel range from 0-2 into 1-3 to make the DC for casting spells more fluid.
I probably could have kept it to 0-2 and make spellcasting (3x Spell Level)d6 with the base as 6.
>I'd also like to hear your answer in how you think this system can be abused by both DM and players alike.
Following RAW and a permissive DM, a Level 1 Spell is more powerful than anything a level 2 or 3 spell can do.
You could poison a dish with a poison just as fatal as an empowered poison from a Level 2 spell, as long as you did it while no one was looking. And because of the fact you're poisoning someones dish, it means that you're going to be doing it when no one is looking anyways. A level 3 spell could also work for the same effect, but it's far less likely to succeed. So you might as well go with a Level 1 spell as it's far easier to cast.

And I just realized I wrote "A level 1 spell cannot be observed under any circumstances". I should have specified "cannot be observed being cast" or maybe "if the spell cannot be rationalized the spell fails"
Anyways I'm glad the concept of the spell system is understandable ( at least, you understood the idea behind it ). The problem is without arbitrary rules a lot of game breaking stuff could potentially be done.
It's not balanced, but I could pass it off as "It's magic, it's not supposed to be balanced. It does have rules though"

You can rename Harm to Damage perhaps? Damage is neutral, but you find it all over SciFi.

Also, not every situation has to lead to death.

For example, at least in the old D&D, the focus was on the resources characters had; be it their hitpoints, their spells, their gear, and even food and water if the dungeon goes a long way. The point was to gather as much treasure as possible and get out.

Monsters, especially the wandering kind often didn't harbor much treasure while still having the means to wear out characters. It just wasn't worth it to fight monsters more than you have to.

My thinking is that the "hitpoint system" you made should be taken in the context of the entire adventure, and not just each individual encounter. Plan the whole adventure to be deadly to players, but each individual cog in this machine exists to wear the players down to a point closer to death. Perhaps the monsters, instead of killing players, are instead geared up to make the PCs suffer Wounds.

Of course if they kill, that's gravy. If not, then let the PCs have whatever it is that remains.

I think that's why a lot of designers tend to weigh spells by Power, so that a higher level spell is always more powerful than a lower level one (Unless you're playing 3.pf, but in principle...)

But what I do see here in your system is that it ranks by situations in which it can function.

You're right about the level 1 spell being more powerful than the level 3 spell in that regard, but I also think that making the conditions for a level 1 spell to work would be more difficult than that of a level 3 one.

The only thing stopping a level 3 spell is whether or not an observer is trained in observing them when they come.

I have an idea. Make a note about the leniency of the system. But maybe suggest to the GM that if a powerful spell might be so easy to apply that it compromises the need for teamwork, then make up another situation that can impede the casting of that level 1 spell.

Like what you were saying about the making of the deadly poisoned dish. Perhaps a sudden problem came up in that the king's guard arrived that are trained in catching magic usage and are now overseeing the chefs cooking the feast for the king you wanted to poison?

This way, you're not saying "no" to the idea, but it provides incentive to use a more powerful spell, or even get your friends to distract the guard?

See what I'm saying?

I'm using a heroic 3d6 roll-under system and trying to decide what the main characteristic (str, agi, edu, wits ect) values should be.
So far I'm thinking 6 should be for people who never need to use the characteristic and also the starting level (office worker's strength), 8 should be for people who use the characteristic for their job/casually exercise it (avid reader's Education), and 10 for people who focus on using that specific characteristic (competitive gymnast's Agility).
I was also planning the skills to be 1-4 (adding that number to the characteristic for relevant rolls), with a 4 being a master of that skill.

What do you guys think of this? Should I bump the base characteristics higher or should I keep them as is? There's 8 characteristics total and they all start at 6, so do you think I have 10 points to spend at character creation?

I'd raise the amount of harm you could take before you take a wound, make it so that the only way to only way to heal wounds is to spend you game's fate/hero/drama/whatever points if you have them, and kill the character if they take more than 5 wounds.
That's if you're making a heroic game though.

namefags pls go

My game features collaborative worldbuilding. I want to let everyone have a say, but I know I need to acknowledge some people are just fucking stupid without it devolving into limp-wristed X-card bullshit. How's this:

>As with everything in GAME, participants are encouraged to always work together and collaborate when creating facets or factions. No one creative vision should dominate the creation of the world, nor should any individual be shouted down. The game trusts the group to take action and moderate as necessary to create an interesting, compelling game world together.

Just a disclaimer at the bottom of the worldbuilding chapter's intro. Too much? Not enough? Poorly worded?

u wot m8

At this time I can't see anything wrong with it. Not sure what it's missing if anything at all.

Honestly, no matter what you write, shitty groups gonna be shitty and good groups gonna be good. Having some sort of guideline stated in the rules might help but I wouldn't worry to much about it.

Thanks. I am hoping it will be enough.

Yeah, kind of what I figure. One of my design tenets is to trust the group. I don't want to fall into the rabbit hole of trying to regulate everything. I was reading a few other games that attempt things like this (Questlandia and Forthright Open Roleplay) and they talk mad shit about making the game "safe" and "affirming" with detailed rules about unconditionally vetoing others' ideas. That's what I want to avoid.

Posting latest version of Hellsgate. Need to expand on it when I have a chance.

First thing after giving it a quick glace is that the cover rules are a bit much. I get the concept, but the writing needs a little cleaning up.

Other question, when attacking, you choose 2 dice rolled, but that's not in the defense roll. Is that intentional?

And forgot to attach it, or check if I did before leaving the house. Fuck.

Does harm roll-over into the next wound pool? Whether it does or not will affect the time to kill a PC. Other than that, you'll just need to look at the ratio of damage dealt to health and adjust accordingly. If we math out a PC punching bag, it would take 9 hits to be helpless at 3 damage, or 7 hits at 4, with harm rolling over. Without roll-over, you're looking at 10 hits regardless.

Consider how approximately long you'd like combat to last and how long a PC should live. Also consider if you expect or encourage players to stay at 5 wounds, or if you can keep them wounded for much of the game. If you have a lot of ways to heal, then players will generally have more health more often. There's a trifecta to consider between Damage, Defense, and Recovery that will determine how survivable your players really are.

Hmm... I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle EXP in a game with relatively low granularity.

The jist in the current iteration is that you can gain experience in two ways:

>You solve a problem that your character has
>You take a new problem (Max 4)

If a condition is filled, the character gains one development point in the end of the game (only 1 ever). It would push players forward, but it might bring intraparty conflict.

My friend suggested something to allow players to exchange things 1-for-1, like raising a weakness to lower another, or change a saving grace to another one.

I thought of a minor development point system for that, where at every session, all players have one minor development point to use for a thing like this.

But if I were to bring that system, I should probably relegate Major Experience to truly character-changing moments, like major character deaths, betrayals or the like.

You might want to consider hardcoding a milestone system into the game which would provide context as to when exactly you could make a major or minor change. Overall I think you're on the right track with xp in a game like that.

Welp, today I got my letter from the library of Congress about copyrighting my system.

So my shit is official, dawgs.

Oh nice. Congratulations on that.

It's just the basic system, sadly.

I'll finish my book and copyright that. Still, it's enough to cover my ass.

Roast my "luck bonus" system. It's sort of a low-magic wild west setting where you'll have a good number of anti-heros. Basically, it relies on a combination of playing your class well and roleplaying your character's strengths and weaknesses properly.

Grit
>Activated during a check to draw the top card of a poker deck in the middle of the table.
>The value of number cards are added to the roll; face cards make the check a success; aces are critical success; jokers are critical failure.
>Can also be activated to go at the start of a combat round, barely survive lethal damage, etc.
>Classes and feats offer new ways to activate it, such as to instantly reload or double the range of a weapon.

Gaining Grit
>Characters start with 2 and gain 1 every level.
>Grit is also awarded through great roleplaying.
>Grit can be gained through completing certain tasks based on your class, such as getting a critical hit with your melee weapon, or using X amount of gold to craft items.
>Grit is also gained (or lost) by your character's Vice and Virtue, explained below.

Vice
>Vice is a destructive tendency or habit a character has.
>Vices include addiction, a bad temper, etc.
>Vices must be satisfied on a weekly (if not more) basis, or you lose Grit.
>Vices also grant a small bonus, such as a +1 to bluff for a gambling addiction.
>Characters normally have one Vice.

Virtue
>Virtue is a character's most righteous quality.
>Virtues include mercy, bravery, faith, etc.
>Virtues grant a small bonus, much like Vices.
>Taking actions that embody your Virtue grant Grit at gamemaster's discretion.
>Taking actions that run counter to your Virtue remove grit at gamemaster's discretion.
>Characters normally have one Virtue.

Lets get a little discussion going.

What is your health system, and more importantly, why did you chose it?

There are many health systems out there, and all of them "work", but why you chose one way over another has a lot more meaning. Was it because of familiarity with other systems? Did it look interesting because it was novel, unused, or misused? Was it because of tight math? Did it allow you to expand or reuse other mechanics? If you don't already have a health system in place, what kind are you looking for? What do you want it to accomplish in relation to the above?

Ok, let's see if I can upload it this time.

Whoops, wrong one.

Aight.

My system, personally, is all about the dramatic context, so having something as vague as Despair is perfect. It also helps that while it is mechanically a system that is not that unique (If you roll under Despair, you're removed from the scene, and if Despair is high, it's more dangerous), but what sets it apart is that first, there's no separate roll for it, and second, the player themselves causes most of the damage a character takes.

My health system is basically the thing I'm most proud of in Misfortune, I think I managed to weave the most important things about the game into it.

World favors the bold, but they must br vigilant, to not die like dogs.

Since my system is about modern aircraft and dogfighting, focusing on the planes makes the most sense. Taking from the Ace Combat games, planes have 100% health (really its 10 health, but since the games use 100% it doesn't hurt to have 10% chunks). Most missiles/special weapons will end up doing 100-150% health without Defense factoring in. Defense (rating 1-10) reduces damage by 10% for each point, which instantly makes the average missile (100%) take two hits to down a plane. Planes can be shot down in 1-4 missiles (includnig special missiles), so emphasis is more on avoidance. You can either evade missiles by beating the attack with an Evasion roll, or just not put yourself in harms way to begin with. Enemies will have a hard time landing a hit unless they're behind you.

Players/Pilots don't die when they're shot down. Instead, its intended that planes are your fighting resource, and losing or needing to repair a plane will eat into your xp reserves (money). Pilots that are shot down can re-enter combat with either a different plane they own or a "rental" once they've been rescued. This deviates from the games a little, but they weren't designed with cooperative tabletop in mind.

The Ace Combat games gave me a lot of things to work with, so all I had to do was translate their mechanics to tabletop. As far as health and damage goes, I think its pretty decent. Knowledge from the vidya will largely transfer to the tabletop which was a goal of mine.

I did something similar for a shitty unfinished GMless system.
If first d6

On the topic of dice, how do you guys feel about a game that uses a deck of cards instead of dice? Or, in the very least, a deck of cards in addition to dice. I've been watching/playing a bit of Malifaux recently and I got a bit interested in the system.

I'm having reservations about my health system so here it is.

Currently, I have 8 hit locations determined by a 1d8 roll. Head, Right Arm, Left Arm, Right Leg, Left Leg, and 3 Torso. Health is determined by a health stat and is applied equally to each hit location, so if I have 5 in Health, I have 5 hp in Head, 5 hp in Right Arm, and 15 hp in Torso. I have small penalties when a hit location drops below 50%, and a larger one when it hits 0. Unconsciousness occurs when 3 hit locations hit 0, and death occurs when all are 0. You can also take a special action to sever/impale a hit location when its at 0 which makes that damage unrecoverable without a special recovery to heal it. Hit locations are designed to be weak since you need to disable multiple and you don't have tons of control over which is hit. Armor will also change how much damage you end up actually taking.

So that's basically it. The problems I'm having are that I'm not sure if that's going to be the best system for the tone of game I'm running (it definitely makes creating a Monster Hunter module easier) and that I don't know if it'll end up slowing combat down too much. There's also a lot of interdependent systems, so making any large changes might cause a lot of problems. A replacement I've thought of was actually inspired by a /gdg/ a few weeks ago, where you have multiple levels of hp within one hp pool. The problem with that is determining what exactly contributes to hp. One idea is to have all 7 stats contribute and have one uber-resource as Health. It would give characters of the same level the exact same health, and characters would use each of their 7 pools of health as resources to perform actions (instead of mana, you cast from your magic's contribution to hp). This might be some bookkeeping to take care of and still not speed much up, but its extremely interesting nonetheless. The other option is to be boring and just have health = 5*stat or something.

I've seen a couple systems that do that. Deadlands and Aces & Eights, both of which are western in theme. It can be a lot of fun to do something different though naturally it can take a lot more time if you need to shuffle for any reason.

HP, with a tweeeest. HP is arguably more representative of the characters stamina. If it gets set to zero, the character is knocked out/disabled for the duration of the encounter/dungeon/whatever. The party can opt to take a rest outside of fights to restore HP/rez unconscious characters. This takes about an hour of in-game time, and if they're in an unsafe area, they may risk having their rest interrupted, with whatever finding them naturally being able to attack/move first, along with other consequences that are mostly time-sensitive, like being unable to get to a slowly-closing vault door in time. An interrupted rest does not count as a full rest, and for the sake of simplicity, they can't take a fraction of a rest and heal for a fraction of the health. When an unconscious character wakes up after a rest, their HP is reduced by one flip (IE, drawing a card off the top of the deck and subtracting its value from your HP. Probably the only time you really want to see Aces and Twos.), and they can choose to flavor it as getting a cool scar or wound. If your max HP is reduced to zero, you obviously die. Other things, like Radiation and certain attacks will also have a chance of either mutating or reducing max HP. Getting hit by huge stuff, like a car, a falling boulder, a rocket launcher, or anything that would deal your max HP + 10, will instantly kill you, and it probably won't be a pretty death.

It's my attempt at creating a very 'lethal' system that's also semi-forgiving.

How would you create a scale for hit points? For example, the game we're designing also has stamina points, and we decided that an average human can throw about 20 good punches before getting exhausted. So using that we can create a scale for the stamina pool without deciding on the exact numbers.

All-in-one abstracted resource. It's thematically appropriate in my setting for exhaustion to be every bit as deadly as bodily harm, and I want to keep things light and bookkeeping minimal. To make sure players aren't dropping like flies for wanting to do something cool attacks that do direct damage are quite rare.

Figure out what the smallest occurrence that'd count as damage is and the smallest occurrence that'd cause instant death for any character. Your health scale is the second value divided by the first value.

A problem with that is dealing with the force used in an attack. Stabbing someone in the arm compared to the eye, heart, lungs, throat, etc. will hurt them differently, despite the same force being used. Considering using a system that has damage to body parts in addition to overall health but that may be too complex. Also still deciding on how abundant healing options are. I think it'll have to be a style where everyone can be easily killed, but they also have a limited number of instant heals.

I'm not sure I understand the problem, or how your system is incompatible with the basic health scale I described. Locational attacks causing different amounts of damage is irrelevant when you're setting an arbitrary scale. Figure out what the smallest unit of damage you care about is. Maybe this means a paper cut is 1 damage, maybe that's a weak punch instead. Then figure out an example of minimum fatal damage to be the soft maximum, like getting crushed by boulders or in your limb-based case something like having an arm mangled/cut off to be 100 damage (or whatever, the number is arbitrary and largely dependent on target granularity). Once you have that scale you can place attacks logically along it so that your arm stab does less damage than an eye stab.
I'm making assumptions here, but I imagine your proposed system would effectively resolve a successful attack like [method damage]*[location multiplier] = Limb Damage*[limb multiplier] = health damage.

Hate to break it to you but I don't think you can copyright mechanics. You can copyright the wording but the abstract is fair game. You may have just wasted some money

So I actually need help with a health system. I have an idea for a game that's really just an idea still. I don't even know what the health system will look like conceptually, but here's what I have so far.

People struggle and scrape just to get by. The world is out to get you. People are judged and known by their faults and failures. Survival is the expectation, and the exception.

The idea is that weaknesses will be player stats, and you roll high to overcome them. How health fits in will be interesting. In some ways it could be as simple as renaming health into damage and counting up. I also really like the idea that healing can cause cancer/overhealing is detrimental, so that's going to be a factor. Like I said, I haven't really gotten anything solid, so there's a lot of flexibility. Any suggestions /gdg/ might have would be nice. Getting a good idea on health might help other parts fall into place. I could go a lot of different directions with stats and stuff, so I feel its like sudoku in that finding that one number can open up the whole puzzle.

So you want to have optimum health at 0 with death being say 30 and negative numbers causing some form of malus? I can see it working, especially if everyone has the same amount of damage they can sustain before death.

That, or possibly two ways to take damage. One being normal wounds and the other being something related to indulgence and gluttony. I could try making a dichotomy of Deprivation and Indulgence which could apply to more than just health. But, I don't know if I want health to be abstract, or meat points (which would definitely be fitting), or perhaps just a stat death spiral (also fitting). I just need to find something, health or not, that speaks to me and the design.

Could use a standard health system and a vice track. Health can go over "max" with certain types of healing - food, drink, and drugs for example - but having more than max hp accrues points towards Indulgence where having less pushes it towards Deprivation, possibly in greater amounts the father their health total is from max. This creates a desire to balance the the need of not dying with the want of extra hp. You'd definitely need to carefully balance the malus each side of the scale causes against its requirement though.

That's something that's crossed my mind. I'll need to think deeper on it. Whatever I end up choosing has to positively drip with theme. Its quite possible that it ends up being the right fit, but it doesn't feel like it can carry that weight on its own. It could work well if it was supported by something else though.

Now, I do also vaguely remember a mechanic that would play into a Deprivation/Indulgence track, but that doesn't initially look like it would represent any meat points well, and I feel like having meat points is in some way necessary. The most annoying thing about this system is that its so much easier seeing what doesn't fit rather than what does. Again, like Sudoku, I can't just throw something random in there and build off that, else I'll get something less than desirable.

Sounds like a combination of food mechanics in Fable and drug mechanics in Fallout. Not sure how it would work with pnp but I'm certainly curious to see the result.

So I think I've decided that I'll have 7 stats/attributes/skills/things. One for each of the 7 Deadly Sins, because it makes too much sense. Now, this doesn't necessarily affect my decisions for a health systems, but it does give me some places to go. If I want to stay super abstract, I can makes something out of the Deadly Sins. If I want to add some more physical grit (aka meat points), then I can easily do that too with the stat/attribute system I'm thinking of. Its a pretty nifty mechanic that plays into some more numerology. Stats will range from 1-6, each point determining how many dice in the pool. When making a contested roll (against a player or special NPC), you add your pool with your opponent's pool together, and then add one more (so max 13 dice for any given contest). All dice are rolled together. You remove your stat's worth of the lowest dice, while the opponent removes their stat's worth of the highest dice. Whatever result the last die shows determines who wins (usually 50-50 high-low, but more granularity can be added). Against environmental obstacles, like pushing a boulder, you just try to beat a TN. Other players can attempt to help you by adding their roll to the total, but they also increase the TN by 1/2 the die max rounded down (I'm leaning towards pools of d6 for obvious reasons, so that would mean each additional die beyond your own increases the TN by 3). Its super arbitrary I know, but this is integral to the feel of the system.

Anyway, this was a nice bump for the thread and I actually made progress, so win-win.

bump

Bump

Cryptomancer smooshed with Black Crusade.

Featuring:
>unified dice system
>40K combat streamlined
>base building
>inevitable death spiral, for both PCs and the campaign
>status effect index card for combat worked on for over 9000 hours in inkscape

Food, drink, drugs (legal and illegal) heals. But when used add 1 to the respective vice track. If overheal, add the overhealing to track. PC lose 1 from track every 8h rest.

Then build upon it. Maybe after 5 in the vice track, the item heals more per use, but not using it after (24 - track) hours, player gets a penalty. The penalty gets worse every hour not using, to represent withdrawal.

If all healing have this, players either will play safe to not get hurt or go down their vice (the drunk cop cliche).

These threads average one interesting conversation per ten trite imitations

And the interesting bit is usually someone being trolled

I forgot to mention. I also have a meta-resource that is integral to to game. Any time the players get "better" at something, they increase this meta-resource, either in a lump sum or as a per-session ticker. This meta-resource (which I haven't named yet) is used by the GM to create events, whether that be combat, social, traps, bad luck, etc. Whatever my health system ends up being, it'll need to conform to the meta-resource concept. Its amazing that this was one of the two reasons I even wanted to make this system, and I forgot to mention it until now.

The premise of this is a lot of what I've been thinking about. I don't know if its necessarily the right decision, but its definitely one of the closest.

The biggest problem for me is to make creature stats scale with level properly and making levels feel meaningful without bloating the system.

How do your system handle levels and progression?

In the most basic way possible: No levels, players receive small amounts of exp often that they can spend freely.

I've never properly played a system that uses levels, what advantage do they bring? What are the reasons for using them?

Levels (and classes) are easier to balance, offer clear direction and theming, and help minimize the threat of tyranny of choice.

The obvious drawbacks are constrained character building and a shift towards gaminess as opposed to simulation.

Really minor stuff. Each player has one minor development point to use in a game session, and they can say anytime that they use it. They then can change their stats, but it's all 1-for-1.

Then, when major stuff happens, the characters gain major development points that give one freebie change. The game is rather small-scale so a one-point difference can really affect a character's effectiveness in a meaningful way.

NPC:s? They only have one stat, their story relevance. Less relevant characters have shittier stat, important characters have better. And because the power level doesn't change a lot during the game (unless the action scale subtly goes up), an antagonist with a 2 in a stat is formidable in any phase of the game, but always beatable.

Neither have I, but levels give this kind of clarity to the character creation, where if a character actually dies, it's really easy to see where the new character has to be to be useful to the party. It also makes encounter planning easier, because opponents can be rated and the ratings can be compared to the level of the party.

I think you should be taking the opposite approach. Create an interesting monster, and then see what level party would be appropriate to fight it.

Though in my early system levels are fairly simple, you get to put one point in an attribute and get a skill point that can either be used immediately or banked until a later downtime, because leveling up skills may require more than one skill point at higher levels.

>it's really easy to see where the new character has to be to be useful to the party

Eh, it's about as easy to keep track on the partys point total.

>It also makes encounter planning easier, because opponents can be rated and the ratings can be compared to the level of the party.

This makes sense, but only if the game have a very clear focus that all character types would be roughly equally good at, such as combat.

Usually the comparison to opponents is actually made from the party's total power level, you can think of it as a mean + 1 for everything.

So if you could rate each character's fighting ability from 1-10, the total challenge they can meet is the mean + the party size. I don't know the exact math, but something along those lines is how it should work.

>Eh, it's about as easy to keep track on the partys point total.

Yeah but unless everything a player can spend those points on has equal utility in combat that total doesn't necessarily tell you exactly how powerful they are. It's ultimately an issue of variance, with a point buy system you have to account for a player at a certain point spent total who has spent their points as poorly as possible and players who have spent them as optimally as possible which become increasingly broad as the number of skills they can buy increases. with levels and classes the choices a player can make in building are much more restricted, causing less variance and therefor easier balancing.

>>threat of tyranny of choice.
AKA how long can it take for a player to make the worst choice possible? And to complain about the game balancing later?

On the note, I find that "levels" (even soft levels) are mostly necessary, and exp-buy is usually very troublesome...

>This makes sense, but only if the game have a very clear focus that all character types would be roughly equally good at, such as combat.
This is not truth, a well balanced game will work anyways if you use the "standard" ratings for the encounters.
>>But my PCs are not playing "X-focused" characters, that said, tough x encounters will be very hard but whenever they are on their field of expertise it will go smoothly. Or if everyone is playing well rounded characters, it will provide the expected challenge

Good point.

>On the note, I find that "levels" (even soft levels) are mostly necessary, and exp-buy is usually very troublesome...
Yeah, point-buy systems often use scaling skill prices for this reason. It's not a perfect solution but it does help smooth things out a bit.

these threads are mostly a bunch of half-assers fapping to their own homebrew

All characters will be within levels 1-20. At character creation you choose a stat array which will grow without player input. Stat arrays go between 0-20. At each level up, the player can choose to add 1 point into any stat unless it would push the stat total above the maximum. Each stat has multiple thresholds that can be reached at various times, which means there's lots of opportunity for meaningful growth beyond just the free +1 stat, or even the normal growth from the array. This also means every character will have the exact same number of stat points when they're at equal levels. The only difference is stat allocation. Its also impossible to either min-max (in a negative sense) or gimp yourself. You are guaranteed to have strengths and weaknesses no matter how you allocated your stats or what array you chose. Even characters made to be as average as possible stay completely viable.

I haven't gotten to enemy creation rules yet, but I've laid the framework for a solid system with my characters. I always know what might be possible at any given level, and so I can design creatures that fit within that power band. My design choices might not be for everyone, but they work for the intent of the game.