/gdg/ - Game Design General

Status - added a cooling system to ships (to nullify the OP lasers) and made the ships a bit sturdier.

>the list of brews in progress
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/134UgMoKE9c9RrHL5hqicB5tEfNwbav5kUvzlXFLz1HI/edit?usp=sharing

I finished the rules bits of character classes in my game. I have to write out what a minstrel can do with their songs, and what potions an alchemist can create.

I didn't read the whole thing but I'm impressed with how much there is. Good luck doing that for the rest of your armies.

Anydice is the website you want.

The formula you want is, if I remember the syntax right:

loop N over {1..5}{
loop K over {1..5}{
output [highest K of Nd6] named "[N]k [K]"}}

Obviously change the range (1..5) for N depending on the range of pool sizes you want to measure, and K for the range of keep scores. I threw a 6 after the d in the last line assuming d6, but you can change that to anything.

You may need to delete the brackets around the highest of part, i forget.

On second thought, change the second line to:

loop K over {1..N}}

That way you dont get a bunch of useless results.

I don't know why that link wasn't in the OP.

>change around some shit on the character sheet and my pile of notes
>>I could probably do ________
>leave for another two months

ayy lmao

Nice and clean. I like it.

Status: 30%

For the life of me I can't create a satisfying equipment or damage mechanic. It's a rules lite-ish game.

I had to start the sheets from scratch because I realized that my previous model was messy as hell and had some very major issues regarding colors, fonts, line widths and layers, so I went with a cleaner approach to what I had before

but on the other hand my game is barren once again and I'm barely paying attention to it, making my character sheets and backwards engineering futile

Sometimes though scrapping it all and starting over nets the best result. It looks good.

Crunch in a rules light game is hard. Maybe take a peek at how other rule-lite games handle it for 'inspiration' (or inspiration).

>tfw i have so many questions i want to ask i dont even know where to start

5%

I'm trying a stamina-based system. Would using d20s to track stamina instead of writing it down on a sheet over and over be the best approach?

>Would using d20s to track stamina instead of writing it down
You mean using it like a counter and turn around when stamina changes? Yep, it could work.

Probably a stupid question, but what's a good and easy to learn system for starters?
I wanna make my own homebrew system eventually, but I don't think I'm ready yet.

I'm looking for one good for medieval fantasy settings.

85%
I have what I need, I just need to refine and play around with everything to make it perfect. I'm running a Changeling: The Lost game in my system currently and it's going great so far.
I actually took out weapons and armor in the move to 1.7, they ended up as uninteresting and tedious, but I'm adding them in the Alternate Rules section.

I'll do my best to answer any questions people have, I'm just excited to see a /gdg/.

>Question
What setting do you wish you could play in, but it doesn't have rules or a setting book for it? My system is dedicated to being able to run any setting the GM/Players want to and I'm cracking my knuckles to see how fast I can make a small document full of rules for it.

Thanks!

It all depends on what kind of game you want. Do you want a game that caters to the "This is realistic, dark fantasy and you'll die in a ditch of dysentry", or do you want more of a "Let's go on a pulpy adventure, slay some fools and woo some [insert preference]?"

I tend to reccomend Savage Worlds to newcomers. It's a setting agnostic pulp game that's more on the light side, but still crunchy enough to give a good feeling of RPGs.

I was planning on using counters (pennies) to track Stamina.

Players have a number of counters equal to their maximum Stamina, they slide them out from their pile when they spend them and slide them back in when they restore them. Points that are Burnt (not normally recoverable in combat) are put back into the penny jar.

You could try something like that.

Purely player centristic design in RPGs grinds my fucking gears. One guy is already carrying 90% of the game, please don't make his job harder by designing overcomplicated or bookkeeping heavy mechanics. Shit like that might possibly be fun for a player, but remember that the GM has to use mostly the same rules for several characters at a time.

Something intermediate, I guess. I'd say realistic, but not as much as that.
I want give them some challenge, have them struggle with basic encounters at the beggining if they're outnumbered, like pack of wolves, but I also want them fighting much stronger foes, like dragons, but only at really high levels, after they experienced and having them struggle more than ever to win.
Basically, I want to give them a sense of progression, so they can see how much stronger they got since the beggining.

Yeah. It just seems so much easier to track than writing a change down every time. The only problem I could see is some idiot jostling the table.

The problem is there might be too many stamina points. Ticking down a die seems easier. But if you're working with less stamina, using something like pennies, or just smaller dice should work.

I'd repeat my reccomendation of Savage Worlds in that case. It's crunchy without being overwhelming, has a sense of progression through upgrading skills and getting talents and it has a bunch of fun stuff to play around with as the GM. I'd recommend playing with the Action Card deck because it's fun as fuck, but I'd add my own cards to dillute the pool a bit. A lot of people get incredibly triggered at the mention of it, though.

How is this for a lite-ish gear system? My intention is to not worry about numbers very much, not obsessively track items or worry about this stuff much, but to give players the freedom to narrate their PC having what they want, even if it functions similarly.

>PCs begin at level one, with one weapon and one armor of their choice
>weapons do damage equal to your level
>each armor you have can be sacrificed to block one wound
>each level they get gear point
>investing a gear point in offense increases their damage by 1
>investing a gear point in defense gives them 1 extra armor that refreshes after resting
>points can't be changed around later

Seems like it's missing something though. For one thing, I'm not happy with "after resting" crap but I don't know how else to limit it. For another, I don't know how to really explain that PCs can be described as wearing whatever they want, but narratively only armor points can be sacrificed to prevent wounds (so basically closer to "luck" points I guess).

Finally I don't know how to model "What if my character puts on a heavy suit of armor? Shouldn't he have more armor?" The answer would be that sure he is wearing it, and maybe he can pass as a knight in the court, but beyond that 1 sacrifice you're going to take wounds. Armor is less of a "done deal, what you're wearing makes you invincible" and more of a "regardless of what you wear you have this much get-out-of-jail-free". Don't know how I feel about that.

I actually like this a lot senpai
Good luck on sorting out your issues sry im no help

Thank you user. I've been thinking of getting rid of armor altogether and just calling it luck. Letting PCs wear whatever they want but only having a few "escapes". Or something like that.

I've also thought about just doing 1 hit = 1 wound, you get five and after that you're dunfer. But I feel that while simple, that is a little unforgiving. I need some kind of buffer.

In this game the players give each other "XP" whenever someone does something that is fun. Instead of spending it to level, it is used like money, to improve rolls and to heal up. So I've been thinking of letting players sacrifice XP directly as a buffer.

What sort of games would you be running?

I'm curious what setting, etc. this is for

I've had a few ideas. Basically I'm making the skeleton of the game first, incorporating broad mechanical concepts I like - this is why stuff like the core mechanic, companions, stats, XP, shared worldbuilding, distributed narrative control, etc. were relatively easy for me to grasp (though I went through a LOT of iteration to get them working together smoothly and simply, and I am sure to change it more with playtesting). In contrast, mechanics about which I don't feel strongly (gear) or don't feel have ever really been done well (health) are harder for me to arrive at satisfying conclusions.

Then I've got four different settings/genres I want to "fork" the game into (it's all in markdown to be hosted and forked on GitLab). Each one will need adjustments to the core and a few of its own mechanics. But I want to polish a really fine skeleton that allows for the kind of play my friends and I enjoy, and doesn't get in our way. Then I can refine to the specific genre. The core is more of a broad pillars/concepts/collected philosophy and isn't intended for play outside the setting forks.

So for example, each PC has a companion. In one game there are special rules because your companion is a 20 foot mech. In another the rules are different because it is a ghost attached to your body. They still function pretty similarly (they fulfill similar narrative purposes as sidekicks) but it would be too FATE to make them function identically.

Bump!

So I'm re-looking at a dice pool roll-off system, and I'm trying to decide how armor fits into it.

Base of the system is attacker gets a pool based off of their Power and gain a success for every die that rolls over their Attack; defender gets their pool based off of their Resilience and cancel an Attacker's success for each die that rolls over their Defense.

Now is when Armor comes into it. I have 2 ways that I'm looking at it. The first is Armor is how you determine damage, once the successes are rolled and cancelled, you compare it to the armor. Each set that matches is a point of damage. So, if Armor 2, each 2 successes deal a point of damage.

The other way is to reduce the natural defense pool and make armor count as auto-cancels. If the defender has Armor 2, it would already absorb 2 successes on the attack roll, the defense roll would cancel more on its roll, and what's leftover does 1 damage per success.

The biggest factors that really influence the two choices is also that the game uses exploding dice and when attacking in combat, the defender can choose to fight back, making an attack roll instead of a defense roll. The second system is swingier and puts a heavier emphasis on defense while in combat; while the first makes armor exponentially more important, but cuts into the importance of defense in combat.

I'm leaning towards the second, but open to feedback.

Just make it so heavier armor gives you multiple saves. Or if you want no difference in armor, just fluff it so light armor is light enough that you just dodge the hit, heavy armor makes the hit bounce off you.

Just pick one and go from there.

Is it possible to give players a map while hiding hidden rooms that would otherwise be present on the map?

after two long years, i have nearly finished it. in less than three weeks will post my game and be free. besides like absolute shit made in mspaint, how does my cover page look so far?

i dont like homestuck (i dont actually know anything about it, just remember an annoying group of friends)

with that bias in mind i think it looks reallly fucking trippy and cool

Hey /gdg/, how much text is too much for a playing card?

Heh, I recognise those game-icons.net game icons. Pretty good for your content matter, though.

What systems do metacurrency best?

I had to drop the sub class feature on the smash up game. After killing movesets, the only appeal to subclasses was being able to hold specific weapons. In order to keep the weapon aspect, ive had to replace subclasses with keywords. Keywords can be more broad and expansive than the subclasses. For instance, a Samurai is a Human class character. Before he would just have the Armsmaster Subclass but now, hed have the "Armsmaster" keyword as well as any other keywords such as "Bipedal" or "Stealthy." Keywords can even have their own little abilities that come with it.

Im running into a problem describing some of the more extravagent characters. Characters like the Titanoboa, Giant Centipede, etc. How yould you describe the following characters using your own keywords:

Titanoboa
Tyrannosaurus Rex
Magician
Giant Centipede
Mermaid
Witch Doctor

>Titanoboa
I don't know what this is, but it sounds like a big girthy snake that wants to choke bitches.

>Tyrannosaurus Rex
King of the Dinosaurs.

>Magician
A master of sleight of hand, card tricks, pulling rabbits out of hats, and convincing women to wear leotards.

>Giant Centipede
Like a regular centipede, but it's fucking huge. Still only has one hundred legs though.

>Mermaid
Half woman, half fish, all slut.

>Witch Doctor
Bingo bango bongo I don't want to leave the congo whoa oh oh oh oh no

>Magician
Magical, Good
>Witch Doctor
Magical, Poison
>Mermaid
Magical, Illusion

I like the idea of using magical because supernatural was a subclass/keyword but magical sort of bridges the gap between normality and fullbliwn paranormal phenomena

Forewarning, I may use these descriptions.

For character generation, I have a stat called awareness, which represents the acuity of a character's senses. If in character generation they roll the lowest possible number, I had an idea of giving them the option to choose to give up their sense of sight, hearing, or touch, and keep their others average, instead of having all-around bad senses. What do you think of this?

What mechanical value does Awareness have?

Can you give an example in which it would be used?

What sorts of powers does each character have? I could probably come up with one or two more if I knew where you were going with each one (your definition of wizard, for example, is probably far different from mine)

Awareness would most commonly be used to help you in your ability to recognize or find things. It can help you search a room, follow tracks in the wilderness, or even determine what someone might be thinking. Those abilities are also governed by skills, but having a higher awareness will help you.

Yeah, but what's the difference between a high awareness and low awareness

For what it's worth I do like the idea

As you get lower awareness, your ability to perceive things decreases. You can't see as well, hear as well, etc. Either your senses aren't as good or you can't easily pick up what the information you're getting means. I thought of the lacking a sense option because I think it might be more interesting than just having a really hard time with perceiving things in general.

theres 100 basic characters in the game. listed beneath them are their enhancements (evolutions if you will). Bold and asterisk characters are special enhancements that require some sort of feat to accomplish (this character must be holding this item when leveling up to become this enhancement)
Thier Classes are listed at the top of each list. Hybrid Characters and Obtainable Event Characters are rough drafts of character sets right now but the base 100 is set although it is actively going through changes, such as the introduction of keywords.

each character has 3 effects/abilities. All effects and abilities are unique to the characters and affect aspects relative to the game (such as battle buffs, moveroll increases, die rerolls, etc)
>Mercenary effect
An effect the character has when encountered as a convertible mercenary (read: wild pokemon)
>Character effect
An effect the character has while in the players party or when encountered in an NPCs party
>Leader ability
an ability the Character has while it is the designated leader of a players party

Keywords play a new role that allow Characters to still have access to weapons but still limiting who can wield what (A giant scorpion cant hold a battle axe but a minotaur can). Keywords also include a new element that can be changed or altered via effects and abilities

I also need to mention of the character enhancements are being removed to account for hybrid and obtainable event characters and also for being lame
>tf is a tiger rogue

>Status report!

I just quit working overtime every week. Might finally have a chance to finish that draft of a stance based dungeon crawler.

Last time I had the rules almost totally ready, but fell short on the powers list and weapon stats. I have a weapons list now, and enough powers to give most of my classes a playable first level.

>Status Report! Edition - Expressed as a percentage, how close are you to finishing your project? What was the last major element of your homebrew that you finished?
>Project 1
25%? All of my previous work is still on a computer I haven't bothered to fix in years, so I'm rewriting it from memory whenever I work on it. Its your generic fantasy heartbreaker that takes a lot of inspiration from both current tabletop and vidya. I spend some time here and there thinking about the mechanics and makes sure to drop notes into google keep so I don't forget, but progress is slow. I design almost exclusively by inspiration at this point. This project, even though its changed drastically throughout the years, was started in 2011.

>Project 2
85%. Its an Ace Combat homebrew that's close to full playtesting. Its pretty lite, designed to be played from a "war room" pov. It takes a lot of mechanical inspiration from Ace Combat Legacy+ as mechanically its the best Ace Combat I've experienced.

>Project 3
10%? I have some guiding design decisions and an emotion I want to evoke through gameplay, but after that I'm missing a lot of pieces. I want it to positively drip with grimdarkness, but without the edge. The idea is that even the wording of the rules are against you. You create a character by going into experience debt (with interest) which the GM uses to create encounters. You are encouraged to gain vices like addictions to offset your debt, but if you do satiate your desires you spiral deeper into that debt. Receiving help from another player grants a penalty instead of a bonus, but it'll be up to you to determine if those penalties are net gains or net losses. The only way to remove the constant accumulation of debt is through the help of another player, but as above, there are penalties. Right now I'm just trying to find the mechanics that best fit the theme.

I'm flattered! Thank you :D
Well, since either everyone is either still reading or was scared away by 80+ page long books, here's a small preview of what Army Manual I'll do next!

I'm working on a renaissance/western esque setting.

The world is a very similar to North America(South America will be worked on later).

The USA is an alliance of smaller terroritories that are very losely ruled. Most states are weaker and poor, some even sparely populated, and filled with unintelligent but gentlefolk, racial majorites being geography based. The weaker states are mainly pushed around by the larger more powerful states close to them. So its like a country divide into a few cultural/political different countries, each with their own vassal states.

Canada exists as a sort of frontier/western kingdom. It is made a a few large city-state like hubs surrounded by small settlements.
Newfoundland(not including labrador) is its own republic, divided into 3 sections, that has a surplus of strategic minerals like iron, nickel, and sulfur, as a well as loads of fish and exotic wildilfe.
Quebec, new brunswick, nova scotia, and a handful of states make up a French-type kingdom with a focus of navy and trade.

Alsaska is known as the free territories, filled with viking like epic stronghold that behave like city states.

Part of northen canada, inhabited by subhuman cannibal tribes(similar tribes litter "canada") and undead/spirits. Far north is the cursed lands.

Part of southern USA, Texas, and a bit of mexico is its own democratic state that behaves a lot like Texas/the confederation. Xenophobic and isolationist, also contrarian(although rarely violent) to Northern governments. Uses slaves from south america, hawaii, and mexico regions.

Hawaii is a far off, peaceful islander area, filled with exotic life and friendly tribes. A place of mysticism.

The Caribbean is a pirate-friendly nation, more like a band of wartribes. They pillage and raid the coasts of north america and south america alike. Often taking slaves.

Mexico is a spanish-esque kingdom that is extremely religious. To the point of commonly burning foreigners for heresy, no matter where in the world the find them, assuming they have the force. Their military is extremely strong, and also lead by gluttonous politicians. The only 3 things keeping them from dominating most of the continent is a the Caribbean raids, Sub-humanoid goat people tribes that are native to the mexican region,
The cannibal warbands from south america that constantly try to rape/enslave/pillage along their borders.

There are a few big religions, a few minor religions, and a few pockets of unique cults.

The area mainly uses renaissance technology, with a few coal powered elements like trains, Deadly but inaccurate turrets, and steampowered ferries/freighters/warships.

The only big geological differences are just the sizing of some spots. The only major change is that the Atlantic ocean and the great lakes are connected by large straight that sort of eliminates the land between them. Except for an island, that is a city-state. A very posh spot and vacation home for many politicians around the world. Also very religious.

I'm currently adapting the rules of other works to fit my setting. I'm currently trying to think of different player/npc races that I can replace dwarves, halflings, and elves with.

I've got a lot of cities, local cultures, variations among common troops, a few famous people, and some notable savage territories places throughout.

It is currently playable but kind of limited in detail/options for different campaigns. I'm really trying to flesh out the lore, but mainly focusing on adding fauna, monsters, and types of tribes to replace orcs/beastmen/goblins.

>status report!

Just started, picked a dice pool system to use, named stats and classes (or niches), and I'm basing the whole setting and flavor text off of Megas XLR and just general shitty, edgy, metal and stoner culture that I fucking love

Still trying to figure out how to make multiple people pilot a mech and perform in a band into a dice roll

docs.google.com/document/d/14ofDUapXDzSJX_r2nUvfpDokyuHeGzi08el40o7vYrQ/edit?usp=sharing

>titanoboa
Swift martial artist with quick striking and strong grapples. Hard to hit and likes to knock opponents unconscious before deciding to kill them

>Tyrannosaurus Rex
Tough tank like character with good speed and stamina considering the heaviness of their armor class. Good at charges and carrying heavy loads. Faster than other heavy armor users. Strong but pretty low dex when using their hand weapons.

>Magician
A sort of acrobat/mage hybrid. Fast, hard to hit, charismatic, but rather fragile in direct combat. Moderate-ability magic users.

>Giant Centipede
A kickboxing type tank. Uses lots of kicking skills or throwing weapons. Also often uses flails if using a hand weapon. Must also have the skill "100 kicks" that is obviously a rapid fire kick attack.

>Mermaid
Sailor/fencer/mage type class. A mix of fencing, damage avoidant skills, a mix of low-tier magic, and also good at whatever job would make sense for this class to do on a boat. Could be exclusive to women and be cleric like with healing/dark magic.

>Witch Doctor

Obvious dark magic user/herbalist. Could be a mix of barbarian/mage type if you want that option. Specializes in curses/blessings.

Another weekend spent reading through 800 pages of operating system concepts and desperately trying to code shit good enough for an asshole professor. Not a single minute spend working on a rulebook that's 95% done, the alternative dice and combat rules I've been kicking around for a month or the two great settings that just need fleshing out and a little homebrewing.
Hold me, /gdg/

At least you have an excuse, instead of sitting there, staring at a blank page, stuck on what could've been, not what can be. Fucking writer's block.

I'm in a similar boat. Just want to /gdg/ all day and night, but higher studies are eating all of my time. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that in a few years you'll have the time to work on your projects AND the bank to finance them.

Have you heard of pomodoro? Take occasional small breaks from your studies to write out rules, then come back to your studies refreshed.

>tfw working with an idea until you remember something that messes with it
Damn you, ogre-sized creatures!

Is there any text that helps you condense rules text? While writing commands, particularly for card games, I know I could crunch the character count using synonyms and more concise terminology but my lexicon isn't so large that I could do so unassisted.

>My system is dedicated to being able to run any setting the GM/Players want to
Im interested in playing in a Vampire Hunter D-esque universe, and I planned some stuff for it, but im put off by the thought that I'm gonna have to adapt a number system from elsewhere or create my own. Could your system help?

Stick to one goal. I assume what's happening is you're being hypnotized by mechanics and the possibilities upscaling will reveal, but you're just gonna end up with a shitty wargame. If you know that it is a skirmish game and service only that than you'll end up with a great skirmish game.

Come up with mechanics so constantly that you can ignore ideas unless you need to do 2 things, 1) Fix a problem with the game. 2) Give the players enough options to have fun. Apply mechanics to those problems like salves. Don't just start grafting on whole new decrepit limbs, bloated and red.

Well, its mostly because I'm starting over with the main mechanic, and the setting fits a bigger game.

Right now, I'm struggling with the game scale. It feels weird going for a small scale game with less than 10 models per side, but having access to big monsters, like giants or griffons.

I believe the MTG homebrew thread has some advice on this.

What do you have planned for it? Give me a little to go on and I can see what I can do.

I've made a system I like, loosely based on shadowrun(dice pools, attribute+skill+cyberwear), but I didn't like writing fluff stuff and it largely went nowhere.

Now I'm in a blue planet game v2, and the mechanics seem a bit wonky to me. Has anyone used this system before and do you have any tips?

What are the benefits of square vs hex? I'm trying to make an arena combat game that (hopefully) supports a variety of playstyles.

uh....I like hex for outdoors, square for indoors/walls.

Triangles are objectively the best though.

Some time ago I posted the rules of a card game inspired by Touhou in another thread. Since then, I have change them quite a bit. I would like to know if the rules are readable now, at least.