Homebrew/Game Deisgn General /hbg/ /gdg/

i dont think it will hurt to try bits of the system one by one, but yeah you will get a better impression if you test it when it is more advanced

1s subtracting from successes seems unnecessary. Surely you eould get very similiar results by making it 5+ succeses, unless you were going for some sort of critical fail system where things go bad if you manage to get negative successes.

Well, with 6 counting as double success, one d6 falls squarely into being an average 0.5 success.

As long as he doesn't do stupid shit like raising the number needed on the dice, I think it could work nicely (although I dislike dice pool systems unless you have a good reason to use them, like multiple actions or splitting them for offense/defense).

Exalted did a d10 pool system and handled crit fails with "if you get no successes and at least a single 1", which I thought was pretty elegant.

The specific issue is trying to test progression mechanics takes a long time. With weekly sessions and an average power increase period of three sessions, that's a month and a half to run one test. Sounding like something to mess with when other rules are more stable.

What's the general opinion on reuse of terminology? IE, if I want to include an Attacks of Opportunity mechanic, doing I need to and/or should I come up with a new name for it, for the sake of not reusing terminology for another game? Same goes for Standard/Move Action, Checks and so forth.

There's no reason to worry about reusing terminology from other games. There's really only so many words and terms out there.

To add to this user's question: what are the legalities of game design and copyright? Are there any online resources that cover this topic? How different from everything else must a game be to be 'legal' and saleable?

It depends. If you're recycling ideas and concepts from other games but reworking them differently I feel like you should do yourself a favor and consciously try to avoid calling them the exact same thing to avoid confusion from people who expect it to work exactly like the mechanic its based on. But its just shit like "HP" "Action Points" "Skills" or "Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence etc" then just fucking call them that. Nobody really cares and it conveys what that rule means way better than whatever you can probably think of.

But if its just*

I see this a lot in CCGs as well. I swear I've seen five different names for Trample or Deathtouch.

Anybody played The Ladder ? I'm running a small campaign for a total newbie, and it seemed good enough. It even have potential to be finetuned for decent players.

What do people think about this system ?

What is the best sistem I can play alone?

Lone Wolf.

You can protect specific terms used in a specific way, but not the actual mechanic concept. MtG is a big one for it, you can't protect the concept of turning a card sideways to activate a rule, but you can protect calling that action "Tapping".

So I'm homebrewing an RPG system where basically everything comes down to an opposed check (unless it's affecting the environment). And when you make a check against someone it is actually possible for you to LOSE and have them beat you, so you're always putting yourself at risk when you take an action. Instead of being a single dice though, you have a pool (which will be limited to a maximum of five dice) and you compare your highest dice to the opponent's highest dice, your second highest to their second highest, etc.

To give a basic example of the core mechanic:

>Your Fighting skill is is 3/2
>This means you roll 3 d10s and add 2 to each of them

>The enemy's Fighting skill is 3/3
>So they roll 3 and add 3

>You attack, roll a 4, 7 and 2, which become 6, 9 and 4
>Enemy rolls, rolls 5, 3 and 2, becoming 8, 6 and 5

>So comparing highest to highest etc
>9 vs 8 - you win, deal 1 damage
>6 vs 6 - draw, no damage
>4 vs 5 - you lose, take 1 damage

Also I should note, if there is a mismatch in the number of dice, the extra dice are treated as though the enemy rolled a 1 against them, although these "dummy results" can't generate extra wins, they can only block the enemy from winning if you happen to have a high enough number added to it.

What do you think of this mechanic? Mainly I want to know if it seems to disruptive and convoluted or if it sounds reasonable for a a game?

Thank you, that helps! Any other legal advice out there? Or where to find it?

Any idea where one would be able to look up whether a given term is protected?

It sounds potentially interesting. Is the damage dealt based on the margin by which one beats the other, or is it set at one (can't tell from your examples)? What role do you intend combat to play in your game? Is the idea that you'd have many rounds of this? How /would/ rolling vs environment work with this system?

I think the easiest way to read a dicepool is looking for the biggest/lowest number or searching for pairs, interpreting that result is up to you

Basically you both deal damage to each other based on the number of times you *beat* each other. So in that example i gave, they would each damage each other once, so representing a back and forth sword fight for example, parrying and getting in strikes wherever they can, instead of taking turns delivering decisive blows. For now I'm using a basic "you're fine until you hit zero" hit point system while I tweak the core mechanic of the game, but that might change.

Some examples of how this might work outside of combat, if you're making some sort of social roll against someone, say you are trying to convince someone to let you borrow their yacht or whatever. Getting a success against them will convince them to let you do it, and each success on top of that could be an additional thing you ask of the person, but each success they get against you would be a concession they ask for in return. So you get one success against them, and they get two against you for example "Yes I'll let you borrow my Yacht BUT I need a $2,000 deposit AND I want you to mow my lawn." which you can then accept or turn down.

Combat will be an important part but I don't want it to be as overwhelming as it is in say DnD. If I end up running this system for my group, I expect there will on occasional be several sessions between combat. I don't want combat to be any more or less convoluted than any part of the system, so that the system will work equally well with plenty of combat or with little to no combat.

As for rolling vs environment, I'm not totally certain how it would work yet. It could be something like a target number to accomplish a certain task, and the player can roll their dice and take the highest result to compare it to the target number, so that players with higher skills have a better chance to succeed, since they have more dice and add more to it, while minimizing the chance of rolling a ridiculous number and basically hulking out and performing impossible tasks.

MtG is an interesting case. Their copyright *predates* the idea of game mechanics being uncopyrightable. If you look at their trademark carefully, you can see that not only are terms like 'tap' and 'library' copyrighted, but whole mechanics are also copyrighted. According to their patent, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'turning a card 90 degrees to indicate a change in its status' is a copyrighted mechanic, as is 'building a deck of cards from a collection drawn from randomised boosters.' Technically, they hold the sole ownership of these two mechanics, and to this day some companies (like FFG) pay licensing fees to use them.

If they were challenged in court they'd almost certainly lose, but no one has tried. As such, they're also not likely to challenge another company using these mechanics unless they've also violated a more defensible tract of the copyright, like using words which are unique to MtG. It's a fascinating case study, if you're interested in law.

In the US, if you mail something through the postal service, it can be used to protect your trademark in court. If you are serious about marketing your rules, going through the whole trademark process is better, but its a good way to get protection on WIP stuff or test materials.

I'm sure there are resources for trademarks and copyrights, but I'm not familiar with the whole process, just some basic ideas.

Luckily my card game requires you to turn cards 80 degrees.

You'd still be in the shit, because the actual wording is:
>"Entering one or more trading cards into play by placing the one or more trading cards face up in a first orientation on a playing surface, and at the player's option, using one or more trading cards that have been entered into play in accordance with the rules and tapping each trading card used in play so all players are aware the trading card is in use by turning the trading cards from the first orientation to a second orientation on the playing surface."

And that's why you always read the patent.

Which would also include turning the playing card fucking face-down.

Well, its a bit like the recent Time-Warner case over the 'Happy Birthday' song. No one tried to challenge their claim for decades because of the weight the pulled until a few years back, when it came out that they didn't actually own the rights. No one wants to spend the money on challenging a large established company.

Yep.

That's exactly right. Wizards is big enough in that field that none of their potential challengers could go toe-to-toe with them in legal fees. Maybe one day an outsider will have a go. Blizzard seems interested in the market, and if they ever get serious they've got the cashonies to take Wizards on.

>>"Entering one or more trading cards into play by placing the one or more trading cards face up in a first orientation on a playing surface, and at the player's option, using one or more trading cards that have been entered into play in accordance with the rules and tapping each trading card used in play so all players are aware the trading card is in use by turning the trading cards from the first orientation to a second orientation on the playing surface."
God that's fucking dumb and vague as all hell. Why is the american patent/copyright system so fucking awful?

Well in that case I'll just have players put an MTG card on top of their card to show it's been activated.

Because it was founded by crooks and conmen.

It's such nonsense. Reorientating cards has been a thing for centuries, and is used in games like bridge. Wizards gets around this by dedicating about a thousand words in the patent to differentiating 'trading cards' from 'playing cards', and that reorientating 'trading cards' is a different thing. If you want tapping in your game you have two options, really:

1) License the mechanic, as some other companies have.

2) Never show your cards being changed in orientation, but in your instructions tell your players to 'note' which cards have been activated through the use of 'tokens, notes or other.' Many games do this, and players automatically reorient their cards because they're used to tapping. It's a great workaround.

I'm back. You guys were awesome at critiquing my last effort at a card frame. Since then the mechanics have changed, and so the card frame has needed to change.

The borders in bronze, silver and gold are used to differentiate three types of cards (reactions, free movements and capstone) which will also be indicated by different images and a word in the keyword box. I'm being lazy, so I've only used the one image for all three. The image is a draft sketch from my artist, I'm waiting on her to finish the colour version, so please forgive the image.

I'll probably hire an illustrator to draw the frame properly, so I'm looking for critique not so much on the quality of the brick texture or the gold, but on the clarity, layout and readability of the card. Thanks!

I'd use an actual symbol or word to denote the type of card, personally.

Yeah, it's a three-part identification system: the border, a word in the keyword box, a different character image.

The main reason I ask about role of combat is that that's a very laid-back mechanic for it. If combat isn't the main focus, that's totally fine, but you probably won't be scratching the itch of tactics-junkies.

The social mechanics sound really interesting, and I think you could apply them to vs environment. You could have a series of either set values for an obstacle, or roll for it anyways based on the difficulty, then have effects for success/fail, or have success be based on successes minus fails.

IE you need 2 successes to pick this lock, each fail increases the time it will take.

Bronze and Gold are commonly confused for each other. Its the same reason you don't commonly see Silver and Platinum together. You could get around it by making Bronze a Blue or something, but I don't know if you plan on using other colors to denote even further differences.

Good note. I went 'bronze, silver, gold' just because it's the thing. No other colours over those three will be used, so I might need to find a clearer third. Maybe 'jade' or something.

Well I'm going to have abilities that are basically like feats, there will be combat ones and not combat ones obviously, and with few exceptions they will all interact with the dice rolls in some way and I want each of them to have a downside and an upside to make the player consider risk vs reward. I haven't put any of these to paper yet but some possible examples.

>An all out attack ability, you get one extra dice, but your opponent wins draws

>Team attack ability, if there's two of you fighting the same enemy, you can give one of your dice to your ally for the turn, opening yourself up to more damage but potentially letting your ally do more damage.

Things like that, not too in depth, but enough to open up some tactical choices. I'm also planning to have a magic system which will encompass magical attacks which mechanically will work similar to normal attack, so they can end up damaging you if your opponent rolls well, I intend to fluff that as magic being less "I summon fire" and more "I try to force my will on this other person to make them burn".

and magic themed abilities, so you will have the opportunity to support allies with magic or mess with enemies. In addition to magical utility abilities. Though I intend for spells to be acquired the same way as abilities meaning you are giving up a lot to get even a small selection of spells so magic doesn't end up being the be all end all of the system.

--

Anyway I'm glad the social roll idea interests you. And I like the idea you put forward, I guess the contested dice rolls could be used for most things. Navigating through a forest could have you rolling against the terrain, your successes determine how far you get, the terrain successes determine how long it takes you. I could write up an example for the usage of each skill while leaving it reasonably open to GM interpretation.

So my friend just messaged me after our usual session of homebrew traveller-esque with the message "hey I wanted to ask you about a game idea I had"
and then posted this in a .txt

>"Turbo Killer"

>In the near future of XXXXX all firearms have become obsolete because of eye mods and because heat swords fit the 80s cyberpunk AESTHETIC better anyways.
>You fuckers are 3 randies drafted into a cop program to take down the three biggest criminal organizations in Corruption-City. You and the whole PD are employed by Moneybags Inc. a defence contractor who is hired by the wealthy to take out pesky criminals.
>This contract bars you from helping anyone in the city without a Gold police membership, any actions that you take to help these plebeians will be on your dime.

>Weapons

>Heat Katana
>-katana made with a tritanium blade able to heat up to extreme temperatures, d8 dmg, +1 to dodge rolls

>Lazer Guitar
>with a z
>Guitar with advanced speakers in the body allowing it to change the frequency of allied blades increasing their damage. Also shoots different colored lasers out of the top of the neck based on the chord played, adds d3 dmg to allied weapons, d3 dmg from laser

>Heat greatsword
>Large dual handed sword made with a tritanium blade able to heat up to extreme temperatures, d10 dmg, -1 to dodge rolls

>keytar
>ketar with advanced speakers in the body allowing it to change the frequency of allied blades increasing their damage.
adds d5 dmg to allied weapons
>gun
>dude what the fuck
>we talked about this
>d0 dmg

>mfw there aren't even any mechanics

Assuming he's hacking an existing system, does he intend to play this straight faced serious or just as a two or three session campy fun between real games.

I think he wants to do it for campy fun but what worries me is the effect on my mental health of playing such a game

>d0 smg
someone will find a way to get infinite damage out of this.

Take a look at how Traveller does it, but also what said.

Here's a bump to at least try to make it to the weekend.

How important would you rate ergonomics into your motivation for getting work done? I'd say pretty important in my case. I have to sit on the floor in front of my computer and it really makes me hate having to use it.

any examples of homebrew done with regular card decks / random figurines and stuff?

i want to make a game that has its components already available in every home, for example make it combining cards and chess pieces

It makes sense. If you are trying to work on something, and you keep getting distracted, its just going to take away from your work. Everyone has their own preferences, but in the end it all translates into comfort for them and what helps them focus on writing. I know I personally like walking to help with the creative flow.

So I'm making a homebrew heavily themed on and influenced by Digimon (I'm aware there's a Digimon ruleset, I don't want to use it for various reasons). The core ruleset will be from Pathfinder.

I'm trying to think up ideas for rules regarding the human partner character creation for stuff like a replacement for crests. Right now I've come up with a strong personality positive and a strong personality negative, the positive shows the character's strengths, the negative shows their weaknesses and what they need to overcome for personal growth (this is for roleplaying and I may include it in some actual gameplay akin to Digimon partners achieving their Ultimate forms).

I'm probably going to just let players choose their personality negative, however I'm torn between letting them pick their own positive or making up a kind of questionnaire that, for roleplay purposes, assigns them a positive (similar to how the digidestined in Digimon were assigned their crests).

Which method do y'all think would be better, or do you have any suggestions for a better idea?

Oh, I should probably add that each character will also have some sort of past trauma that could explain why they have their personality negative or else exacerbates the negative or makes their personality positive stronger.

Another character creation bit where I'm torn between a couple of ideas is the creation of the not!digimon. For gameplay purposes, a lot of stuff revolving around this is going to be based on Pathfinder's Summoner class, with some more homebrew stuff thrown in to mimic Digimon more closely, such as evolving.

I could go the normal route and let players choose their own starting partner and design it/theme it however they want, including future "evolutions".

I'm also kind of tempted to assign each character a base starting partner based on their characters and either then letting them have complete control over further designs or else making a full evolution line of base -> level 1 -> level 2 -> etc forms and then giving them control over designs.

Is this thread just for homebrew games, or does it also allow for things like items, spells and the like that've been created for mainstream systems?

I haven't seen Digimon since the mid-90s so I probably don't know what I'm talking about. My two cents would be to go with the questions about the character, and then assigning them a partner based on their personality. The evolutions also stem from their personality, like the difference between wargreymon and skullgreymon. Maybe?

Probably anything like spells and class features and whatnot would be looked at.

All right. Throwing one out there then, for the hell of it. 3.5ed, because that's what my group plays, so that's what I design for.

>Wandsplitter
>[TRANSMUTATION]

>Level: Sor/Wiz 3
>Components: V, S, M
>Casting Time: Special; See Text
>Range: Touch
>Target: One Wand
>Duration: Permanent
>Saving Throw: No
>Spell Resistance: No

>You are able to extract charges from a wand to divide among two or more otherwise simple, nonmagical items.

>Before casting this spell, a quantity of items of similar style and makeup to each other must be procured; the exact nature is up to the caster, but the items should be relatively small and simple in nature, and worked or manufactured at least somewhat (polished stones, carved sticks, tokens, etc).

>The spell itself takes a maximum of two hours to complete, or until no charges remain in the wand, whichever occurs first. For every fifteen minutes of the spell's casting, roll 1d6 and subtract the result from the remaining charges in the target wand. You may then distribute the same amount of charges in whatever manner you choose (as full charges) among the items prepared to receive them.

>Once the two hours have expired or all charges have been extracted from the target wand, whichever occurs first, the wand is consumed by the energy of the spell and the casting ends.

>Any and all items that receive a charge from the use of this spell function identical to the original wand - in other words, the item uses the spell trigger activation method, with the same casting time (usually a standard action) as the original wand, and without provoking an attack of opportunity. The item must also be held and pointed in the general direction of the target or targetted area.

>The material components for this spell are the items to receive the spell charges (which are not consumed) and a wand with at least one remaining charge (which is consumed in the casting).

TL;DR, break one wand into multiple wands, or items that act like wands.

None that I know of, however you could 'borrow' Malifaux's resolution system (cards instead of dice, the value of the card determines your result, the suit determines if your special ability triggers) and apply it to a chess board.

Go something like:
Knight
Attack: 4, Defence: 4.
If you play a card with the Diamonds symbol, you may also activate one other Knight this turn.

that's interesting, gonna have to look into malifaux rules

Its an interesting system due to just the change from dice to limited result pool that a deck gives.

The system is players get a hand of cards at the start of the turn. When they need to resolve an action, you flip a card from the top of your deck, and most checks are opposed, so your opponent flips too. Then, starting with the loser, you take turns 'cheating'; which means playing a card from your hand to replace tge flipped card. There's other little things that work with the limited result pool, like instead of re-rolls, you flip multiple cards and pick one, and jokers have their own rules. Its a really interesting system that fits the theme of the game very well.

so if you can pick any card of the leftovers to "cheat" how come it does not result in a draw provided each deck has the same cards?

You "cheat" from the hand of cards you start the turn with. Its 6 or 7 cards, don't remember off the top of my head.

Say you flip a '2' and your opponent flipped a '7', you could play a card from your hand if you had one high enough to beat them. There's also stats that add to the duel, you could flip a '4' against an opponent's '5' and still win if your stat is naturally higher.

There's ways to gain more cards in your hand, but generally its a limited resource that lasts you the whole turn.

ah ok seems like a pretty flexible system

Thanks user, glad for some input. I might do that. I enjoy the idea of mystery behind it as well. "What kind of giant monster is my cute little creature going to turn into?"

That was part of the fun of the original toy as a kid. You know, until it hit the school week, and you'd ask your mom to watch it for you when you went to school. But she wouldn't, and you'd always end up with that poop monster. Every. Single. Time.

Ha

I need some mechanics that would allow one character to outsmart another in combat against another. In other words, they're physically about at the same level, but the winner makes the right choices. Any ideas?

What system?

It's for a roguelike game, so I need to formalize everything before I can implement it, but I'm not tied to a particular existing system.

I was making it so that charisma characters can still be useful in combat because they can use charisma to bluff and feint, gaining accuracy and higher chance to crit.

That's not outsmarting your opponent. That's just using a buff ability.

Check out Dogs in the Vineyard, not so much their narrative system, but the way in which dice are traded back and forth during encounters (both physical and verbal) to create a flow that favors careful forethought and strict planning.

Doubleblinds. Either have actions on cards that RPS eachother, or do something like the Gambler from Strike!.

I gotta check this system out.

Does anyone have the pdf for that homebrew bionicle rpg? Rulebook and the bestiary got taken off the dropbox

At your service!

mediafire.com/download/m555wbs905jb00z/Strike! Core Rulebook.pdf

Bump

Someone post the OP

That is some massive bullshit.

I need a good impalement mechanic.

More specifically: This is for a bloodborne rpg, which generally uses a dice pool system similar to NWoD. Most weapons get a benefit similar to Cleave in D&D, but the ones that can thrust & deal piercing damage (spear, swords) have the capacity to impale.

A big assumption in the premise for this game is that the healing benefits of having taken Blood are so strong and invigorated on the Night of the Hunt that flesh wounds (say, from getting shot with conventional bullets) are of little inherent consequence, and that hunters are taking down prey more through exsanguination. Impalement is thus meant to be this system's slasher-movie equivalent of grappling someone? You restrain them by physically nailing them to the floor/wall.

So far what I have is that weapons with the ability to impale give you the option to do so any time you land a heavy attack that's solid enough to Stagger your target. Considering just giving players the option to spend stamina to automatically follow through and Impale the target, no further attack roll needed.

I guess consequences from there:
-An Impaled target can't change position or Evade (try to dodge) attacks. Neither can their attacker, unless they let go of the impaling weapon.
-Impaled target makes skill checks to try and free themselves; if attacker is still holding the impaling weapon, they can make opposed roll to prevent victim's escape. Otherwise, impaled victim is just rolling against a fixed difficulty.

Unsure how to handle things beyond that- like, do I allow either party to take other combat actions?

So I had to put down a system core mechanic recently, and now trying to rework it.

>When you attack, you choose a weapon and roll a D12 for each point of Power the weapon has.
>For each one that rolls equal or over you Attack Skill, you get a success.
>Your target has an Armor value, which they add to by rolling a D12 for each point of Resilience they have, and each one that rolls equal or over their Defense Skill increases the Armor by 1.
>Each point of Armor absorbs a success on the attack roll, if any are leftover, they become damage.

The old system also had natural 12's counting as 2 successes, not sure if to carry over that or not.

How does this system sound as an initial thought?

I'd say yes, but at a reduced efficiency. Its difficult to do much with a sword sticking out of your gut, but not impossible. Same with the reverse side, unless its a rather large creature carrying the impaling weapon. A human impaling another human is greatly hampered, but something like a bigass troll could probably flail the human-on-a-stick around.

So my armor is a fixed value plus the result of my Resilience roll? Do I make said roll every single time I'm attacked?

Also you appear to have written it so that a lower Attack Skill value means better odds your attack will hit. Is that intentional?

12s could explode, letting you roll again.

Well, I'm sure you've seen movies where the impaled de-impales itself...so why not? I can't help with system specifics, but being impaled doesn't seem to necessarily be action-restrictive. The impaler, tho, has to keep at least one hand on the weapon to keep it impaling the impaled.

Couple things to specify:
-Impaling big things will be inherently harder just by requiring an attack to Stagger them before you can do the follow-up Impale action. Skill roll to free self will also presumably get significant size category modifiers.
-Impaled is gonna literally mean the weapon is going through the target and into a wall or floor. Thus the victim having to roll to free themselves even if the person who impaled them lets go of the weapon and runs away.

The only real interesting homebrew thing I'm fiddling with is using mutants and masterminds as a base, and removing ability scores and tweaking other aspects to basically make M&M3 homebrew edition

Yeah, an attack is done at once. The Attack Skill and Defense Skill are going to be a straight X+, with modification for most rolls affecting the number of dice.

So an example average attack against an average fighter with light armor would be something like 3 Power against 2 Resilence and 1 Armor. The defender has a slight advantage but that's because its easier to raise Power than Resilience. Close range shooting, charging, and being larger have higher Power.

And I can go exploding 12's. Originally went with the 2 successes because the first version used Power and Armor to modify how you scored them.

Ok, so impaled means more pinned than skewered. I'd still say you can try to do something other than freeing yourself, but it'd be at a disadvantage, more so if the guy that impaled you is still there, holding you put.

Hmm. I think it's worth noting that the premise here involves the impaled party being bodily shoved down through the force of the impalement... that, plus me not wanting mechanics to get into exactly what body part got impaled, makes me favor a more restricted state. Like, we can assume the victim is left in an awkward position... maybe able to use one-handed actions with a penalty? But I don't currently have a system that gets into which enemy attacks are one-handed...

gotcha! Well, can't move, obviously, so no dodges or leaps. Both hands can be free, but with awkwardness of impalement, yeah, can't really do two-handed things. Maybe two-h actions with penalty, 1 handed actions ok? And they can prolly still throw stuff fairly well......

I think if I want to KISS then I should just make it a significant penalty on other physical actions and not sweat the details too much. Should at least work for getting things into playtest state.

Thanks

One more bump