/gdg/ - Game Design General

Easy. If the result is 5 it's a critical. Relies on a 6 plus takes advantage of a fumble to happen.

Post armor

I had a system where stats would gain stat xp every use. You got more xp the closer you were to the TN and less or none the further you were. I dropped it when I realized skills might not even be part of the game, but I'm trying to remember for relevance.

If you rename Off-road to Terrain, you could increase the coverage of vehicles to boats, aircraft, and hybrid vehicles like hovercraft. It could allow you or a prospective GM to expand the game's setting.

Sure. It's very simple though, and works only in a low-granularity game (think if all the stats had 4 steps).

Imagine you have green dice and red dice. Green are Positive dice and red are Negative dice.

So, rolling a difficulty 3 (difficult) roll with a stat of 4 (master) is 4 green dice and 3 red dice. Only the highest die of both are counted, so imagine I roll 2, 4, 3, 3 with Green and 5, 5, 1 with Red. That means you fail, because the largest singular die is on Red. All the other dice can be ignored.

I was thinking of putting this into my new project Never After, where the idea is that the rules of the game are going to change continuously. And that's how the rules of the game operate. Every time someone breaks the rule (say, uses this same system except the positive dice are d10s), that becomes the new rule everyone follows.

A one-shotter, obviously, because the rules would just get out of hand in a longer campaign.

That is a possible system, although it makes the crits really something of an ace-in-the-hole, because unless you're doing something really easy, you're chances of critting are miniscule.

Miniscule just brings to mind the rolling system of 3d10 that uses digital root. I might also use that for the game I'm talking about in .

Crits happen once in a thousand, but crits are things that can alter entire timelines, so it's wild.

Is rolling 1d6 and having it be odds you miss and evens you hit then roll either 1d4, 1d6, or 1d8 depending on how much DMg you deal seem like it could work?

Alright, so here's what I think I did:
Assume d20 system.
Take the absolute value of skill check result - target number. Then subtract that from 10 (half of die roll). That result is the skill xp where 20xp increases the skill.

It worked because you would only get skill xp by using skills near the TN, but you would get xp whether you succeeded or failed. You wouldn't gain any xp from anything that was too easy or too difficult so you're discouraged from grinding for xp.

There's no doubt a way to convert the concept for any die mechanic so see what works for you.

That's a little finicky and requires an extra bit of math after every roll, so it slows the game considerably. Of course, it has the side effect of shutting up the player who just did things, meaning others have a short period of time to jump in. But if a scene is centered around one player it might get messy.

I would rather just do it with a separate die that you use, depending on similar factors, and get die roll amount of skill experience. So, if you do something way below or above your level, you roll a d4, and if you do something relative to your own level, you roll a d10. Then there's steps for d6 and d8 in the middle.

But that's just me though.

Not that deep really
Basically most armors are divided in Sets (unless they're unique equipment) and they include helmets separately
Sets contain parts that list the total defense they give (chest, shoulders, greaves, etc) but you only list one thing: the armor set, and its total armor
If you remove a part of the set, you simply subtract the armor given by that from the set, and mark it as incomplete
Any other part foreign to the set is listed separately, and clumps of more than one set are listed as incomplete sets as one item

I.e. I wear a Soldier's Guild armor set which gives me a total of 20 armor, so i only list
>Soldier's Guild Armor: 20
But I obtain better gauntlets separately, so I negate the gauntlets (2 armor each) and I write them down as a second item:
>Soldier's Guild Armor: 16
>Elite Soldier's Guild Gauntlets: 6
>Total: 22
That's about it
You can go the whole game with just whole armor sets (in adition to cloth and accessories, of course) or you can go full autism with your bits and pieces, without making everything overcomplicated

So how do you know the defensive properties of each individual item? Do you list them with the armor set as "20/ HALT 6/4/4/6"

HALT as in H(ead)A(rms)L(egs)T(orso)

Made that 3d10 digital root in anydice. anydice.com/program/c023

This is one of the weirdest dice curves I've seen. I managed to create a flat 1-9 range with a really really small chance to get 0.

I already have a game set for this resolution method, but this seems pretty usable in other contexts, too. Anyone interested?

As of right now, you just look it up int the armor catalog once you feel like breaking sets, it's not like it happens often
But I might revise it later if I want to make it simpler or more complex - HALT works only halfeay because my races have extra bits

I'm having trouble with my games, and it's causing me to stop designing.
One thing to know is that I don't just get rid of mechanics. I'll just spin them off into a new game, which is part of my concern.

I have one game that's standard fantasy with a particular attribute system. Part of that game was supposed to have piecemeal equipment like armor and they played into the attribute system. I have a second game that's a post apocalyptic style game. In post apoc, it makes sense to get gritty and have piecemeal equipment in addition to hit locations and resource management. Now, as I've designed the fantasy game, I've been adding more of those elements. I've thought about just combining the two games to be post apoc fantasy, but I there are some issues. I've mathematically balanced attacks and spells, and they each benefit from resourceless use, so it would run counter to most post apoc. It would be difficult to add in things like durability, and that's something I think would be almost needed in a post apoc game, at least one that I would make.

I'm just not sure whether I should try to hack together both games because they seem to be naturally converging, or whether I should break them apart and completely redesign core pieces so that they can use mechanics that naturally fit better.

I love this actually. Won't steal it, but want to hear more about how you use it.

Yes, but it would be to light for my taste. Not much to hold interest.

If it is the tracking part of durability that is too cumbersome you could do breaking rolls.

Do you have aimed shots that can miss their target and still hit another location? If so I would be interested in that.

I am not sure where I should go with it, honestly. It gives a really straightforward -5 to 5 curve, so it would probably work well with success tiers, going into narrative stuff with additional advantages and disadvantages.

Basically, 0 is the point where it can go both ways, depending on one factor: Is the POS die bigger than the difficulty (the amount of NEG dice total)?

If the answer is yes (Say, rolled a 4dPOS 3dNEG, result was 5-5), the answer is: "Yes, but!"
If the answer is no (Same roll, but the result was 3-3), the answer is "No, but!"

I made a new anydice code to accommodate that anydice.com/program/c028

So, with 0 being the cutoff point, the rest of the stuff is probably like this:
>-5 = Massive disadvantage
>-4/-3 = Major disadvantage
>-2/-1 = Minor disadvantage
>0 = Yes, but / No, but
>1/2 = Minor advantage
>3/4 = Major advantage
> 5 = Massive advantage (crit)

A pretty sleek resolution system, the only problem might be the very low granularity stat-wise. But that is on the game, not the mechanic.

I think if you want a crit system on top of that, maybe look for matching results?

Let's say that the "green" dice beat the "red" dice, but two green dice match (Let's say you rolled two 5's), and the highest red was less than that (Let's say 4).

Because your matching dice beat the highest of the other suit, you get something else out of it?

I would suggest just seeing how many more went over the highest roll, but if you do use that for crits, then the crits can only be so much stronger since I can imagine those things happening a lot more than when they match up.

Not currently but it would be easy to implement. Right now I have 6 locations, but you roll a d8 to determine which location. Head, R arm, L arm, 3 torso, R leg, L leg. All I would need to do is swap the targeted shot with the torso. In effect you'd have a 3/8 chance to hit your called shot and a called shot to the torso would be default. It works well because killing in the game depends on reducing 3 target areas to 0, with each target area having separate health. That's also a reason I have piecemeal armor. Covering your head and torso are priorities which is pretty accurate with historical outfits like the Roman breastplate.

Durability is a different kind of problem. Armor and weapons make sense. However magic doesn't require any equipment to use and doesn't "break" like an item might. Both attacks and spells don't really use a resource, it's assumed and balanced around you doing everything at full power. Then again, if I really wanted durability I'd rather use a completely different mechanic that combines damage and durability in one, and that causes problems with the previous math. The math balances martial and magical effects perfectly and any durability rules I can think of disrupt that balance multiple ways.

Interesting, more elegant than the buggy patch I had. Maybe I can work from that to satiate my simulationistic boner. I'll have to use a d20 for my more granular parts, but at that range the opportunity opens to attach a precision modifier to it.
I could also add stances here, by arranging the bodyparts from most guarded to least guarded.
And that would mirror my armor system nicely.

Thank you, that helped a big deal.

Do you have some specific magic fluff you want to maintain? Maybe you can use something like exhaustion on magic? A mounting +1 difficulty per spell (or 3/5/10...) or something?

I designed magic to be used at any time without many of the common restrictions. No vancian, no spell checks, no spell failure. Players would be able to create their own spells and they would want to use them as often as they can. Spells use the same accuracy checks that martial attacks do but attack different defenses. Spells use MP to cast, and because MP replenishes every round, it's effectively a limit on how versatile the spell is. By comparison, martial skills are smaller chunks, but investing in the martial attribute increases the amount of actions you can take during battle. Think of it as a more versatile BAB from dnd 3.5. You can take additional move actions, cast multiple spells, make specialty attacks, or any combination up to 5 actions at multiple investment. The math works out that with maximum investment, you're doing either 10d6 or equivalent regardless whether you're a martial or caster. Any other effects will reduce that damage, so I can plan around that expectation.

So that's part of the problem. Adding durability would be thematic, but adds overhead and inconsistently affects different parts. My preferred durability mechanic also completely destroys the balance that both spells, weapons, and armor are built around. Maybe I can find a way around all those problems, it's going to be a huge effort.

Maybe you could manipulate the size of the MP-Pool, or the refresh rate. All mechanics building up from that would remain working the same, but supply would be constrained.

After messing around with the idea, there's nothing I'm satisfied with. I'd only want to do it if it didn't require extra overhead, and that's all I'm seeing. My other durability mechanic directly correlates damage with durability, where lower durability visibly causes lower damage, but that's not possible with my current math. I'd either need a separate tracker or additional rolls and I don't see enough benefit for the cost.

...

I'm working on an Al-Qadim 5E conversion. Here's the PDF (with survey) for some player options and some variant rules if ya'll interested.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B7sTLtS0sF-9NkVrR2M4aXdXTWM/view?usp=sharing

Bump

I was actually thinking of that, but decided against it.

I'm kind of stumped with it though, because even though I have the mechanism ready, I need to create a system that can handle it. Currently all my systems are honestly kind of incompatible, but I will make one someday that can do the job.

How can I deal with improvised actions and giving characters a chance to do something they don't automatically fail if my entire system revolves around characters knowing what they're doing?

Hiya, thanks for your post.

So, the vehicles are using 4 stats only because I had successfully used this type of array for ballistics and melee. However, a vehicle typically has more going on and is much closer to being a full "character".
The stats give, deny, or enhance access to what one would call feats, I suppose. It works great when you're doing this for a firearm but it's rough when a vehicle is being shoved into this type of description.
I'm probably going to let other more in-grained game mechanics govern the fuel economy--since that would be rather weird, worrying about that in the middle of a fight (unless it was appropriately dramatic).

Definitely a good idea. Another word I tried out was "trekking", to convey how effectively the vehicle can explore. While boating and aircraft would be odd in the campaigns I anticipate, they would be options within the setting. I guess I just didn't think of air/water fights coming up much to demand vehicle granularity, for those circumstances.

I hope this is a place to ask but I have taken to trying GMing for our forever GM and I want to know if there is a program that can manage locations and creates it all as a web or something.

Example: I have a big web that is "setting." Selecting the web brings up everything that is connected to each other, Town A is connected to town B and they are connected to town C. Then each town is made up of smaller webs that have key locations like Inn, Temple, Mayor's house, Guard tower, Plot location 1, plot location 2.

Think like a point and click video game or a text adventure game like Zork expect I would be writing it.

Are you asking how to deal with if lets say:

Bob has cooking, shooting, and weaving trained but lacks the cleaning skill so he fails because he doesn't have the skill?

Breaking mechanics out into different games is a good habit, it lets you deal with having two good ideas that don't belong in the same game.

Sometimes you stumble on an idea that's just plain better than another (or better in a wide variety of circumstances). In that case it's worth dropping old ideas. Doing this will naturally make your projects converge a little.

Having a few mechanics start to converge doesn't mean you need to merge projects. You should be aware of the possibility, so you know to keep an eye on if it leads to further opportunities, but you don't need to actually do it immediately or at all. Your converging mechanics might mean a unified system instead of a unified setting.

First branching out then converging back on using the same elements across projects is one of the signs of someone maturing as a designer. It means you're getting closer to the optimal way to express whatever it is you're about.

You're looking for a mind mapping program. I don't use them so I don't have recommendations, but they're popular enough (and easy enough to make) that there's a zillion options.

Add a "faking it" skill. Or let people use their closest incorrect skill at a penalty (e.g. I don't have firearms but I do have archery, which isn't great but it's better than nothing).

When mashing up settings in a generic system, is it reasonable for characters from different settings to always be equally effective?

For an example of that being weird: if we grab some fighters from the fantasy setting and some soldiers from the modern tactical warfare setting, they'd be a roughly even match.

hey guys I wanted to share this!
If any of you are doing map stuff or ANYTHING in a modern setting check this link out.
smartdraw.com/floor-plan/examples/
There's a free trial but then its 10$ a month, and frankly if you just get it for one month you can get a TON of maps done.
ALSO, crime scene photos, accident mock-ups, all KINDS of stuff

Well, part of the problem is that each system is about 50/50 able to in either direction, but it's the wrong 50/50 parts to actually act on it. If I wanted to split or converge, I'd need to carry a bunch of other mechanics that they depend on, but that don't fit with all the other parts.

It's just difficult to try and get anything done.

That would depend on the theme you want. You could see two systems where both characters are equal and where they're unequal. I'd say it's quite reasonable if there's a focus on lighthearted time or universe hopping

Both combatant groups would need to change tactics; the fantasy fighters would be devastating up close but denied easily at range.
I guess the disparity increases as it is tied to how many mechanics are in play. More movement and equipment rules will make the "less tacticool" side weaker overall.

I am working with ways myself to make ballistics not 100% reliable against certain tactics/foes/equipment, though I only have one setting to worry about.

> You could see two systems where both characters are equal and where they're unequal.
GURPS is probably already the system where they are unequal.

Glad it sounds reasonable. I actually hadn't considered universe hopping, oddly enough. I had considered a space-fantasy setting where your ships engage in laser battles but your boarding parties are D&D cliches.

Yeah, the actual way that specific combat would pan out with what I have now would favor the modern party, but only because it's all ranged specialists vs all melee specialists.

>I am working with ways myself to make ballistics not 100% reliable against certain tactics/foes/equipment, though I only have one setting to worry about.
I'm focusing on the fantasy setting for now and have still run into this problem (well, archery not ballistics). Ranged ambushers still completely dumpster certain parties. Also centaurs.

I guess going cross-setting means I'd have to worry about centaurs with sniper rifles. Which, at the moment, would be nearly game-breaking.

Oh, well then that's easy enough. Shields are developed such that they can stop ballistics and ballistic-like things while they either forgot about or cannot defend against slower, massier melee weapons. Kevlar already acts like this. Stops bullets, but cut by knives and even arrows (too much mass in a .22 sized or bladed puncture). Likewise, a ship's shielding might need to be bombarded constantly to keep it down so that your boarding party can do its thing. Similar questions have been discussed before so it wouldn't be too big of a surprise as part of the lore and world building.

user here. Just a bit after posting that, I've had a breakthrough.

After reading some Angry DM articles, I thought more about the core theme and mechanics of my game. The biggest and most exciting thing about my game is the equipment/ability creation. I will have to drop current mechanics to make the change in focus, but it will make the game more focused and will allow the post-apoc game to also be much better then what it currently is. I'll have to completely redo Armor and Health, but it should work out better in the end. Fortunately I can just direct port those rules to the post apoc game where they have a much more natural fit. Now in my fantasy game; weapons, spells, and armor will all contribute to character ability. Skills, which I previously didn't yet have, will be an aspect of armor while weapons deal with attacks and mobility while spells still keep their original spot.

Time to research more Monster Hunter

That seems like one of those things that is less complicated when demonstrated. Keep working!in on it, man!

Sure, cuts abit to the quick.

Is this going to be alot of rolls at once or just one?

Animal Crossing user here, what kind of fluff and things should be added to make my pdf more than a bare skeleton of rules?

Hey, someone in the meta thread said something along the lines of "I wish /gdg/ also covered topics such as analyzing published games' mechanics" - I thought this was covered by the HOMEBREW part of the OP pasta but I guess it doesn't quite cut it.

How would all of you feel about including that topic into the thread? Thread could always use some more people chipping in from time to time.

Can't say anything against it, but without it being relevant to a current brew I wouldn't personally be interested in dismantling a RPG.

I already have the structure for spells and weapons. It'll just be a matter of pricing effects between those. Then I'll just do the same for armor and skill effects which is where Monster Hunter research comes in. They have a great system where sets or mix n match armor grant various effects. I'll just need to translate the concept to tabletop, and then my specific tabletop.

But it's good. I can focus on this game being about crafting and creativity and having mechanics that support it while the other game can focus on the resource management more befitting a post apocalyptic theme.

I can post some of those ideas later.

Yeah, it's be cool to have a board game analysis thread. Like why the Gears of Corn in Tzolk'in is a cool mechanic or the finer points of game design.

Breaking down mechanics doesn't really do anything unless it's in response to someone's specific question. Not to mention, we already have (or had) links that do exactly that. If anyone has a question about "what games have used x mechanic?" or "how do I implement this idea?" I'll answer as best I can and link anything relevant, but /gdg/ isn't really a YouTube series.

If it was a specific game per topic maybe?

But I don't really think /gdg/ is a great place for a mechanics teardown. There are wildly varying levels of experience in here, and a "talk about X game" would bring fans of that game in and probably turn into a troll thread.

I'm willing to give it a shot and be proved wrong though.

So on the suggestion of one user (Misfortune?) I checked out Don't Rest Your Head for the dice mechanics, I really loved them. I liked the idea of making a dice pool of different categories/colors of dice that determine success/failure but also "influence" the context of the check via which particular types of dice roll a certain way.

In short, all dice that roll 1/2/3 add a +1 success or failure depending on type, with the highest number amongst all the dice triggering a secondary effect.

For my cyberpunk action system I'm thinking of trimming it down to two dice types with a few secondary as well.

Blue dice: represent your skill check, composed of a number of dice equal to ranks in skill plus your ability score. Influence means the check succeeds/fails with advantage.

Red dice: represent a challenge rating to beat (must doll more successes than the amount rolled by red to succeed). Influence means the check succeeds/fails with disadvantage.

If there's a tie for Influence it cancels out, with pairs adding greater degrees of advantage or disadvantage.

Additional dice types (Influence stacks with above results, no worrying about what takes precedence)

Yellow: "Limit" dice that can be added at will to the pool (up to a certain amount, like five dice). These count towards your successes, but may cost something (Like an amount of strain). Influence is two damage per dice used or a related critical complication.

These dice are meant to "push it to the limit" and make the situation inherently risky or volitile. Also the only option if you have no dice to roll (possible in my stat system).

Black/White dice: represent a person's Synth and Ghost rating. During chargen a player spreads three points between the stats and then every session or encounter have that many dice of each type to use at will to add to their roll. It's got to be appropriate, with Ghost being for interpersonal/emotional/spiritual actions and Synth for equipment/netrunning/cybernetics actions. Influence means you get a narrative bump with the person/thing it was used with.

My current questions/concerns
>is it too much to expect players to have a bunch of dice type sets of different colors
>d10, d6, or a mix of both depending on situation (d6 for main checks with d10s as boosts since they are less like to give +1 but more likely to Influence)
>too many dice types or not enough
>should there be more than just Red GM dice or is that sufficient
>is this different enough from DRYH to not be plagiarism, especially if I want to publish with an OGL

I like the overall fe, there's alot that can be tinkered with, but I'd like to make sure it's robust.

Thanks guys.

My opinion on all dice availability concerns is this:
>We are making indie games and the majority of people we are likely to reach with our games are already P&P enthusiasts.
>With online shopping dice are not hard to get at all, there is no significant hurdle for purchases.
>Many gamers already own at least a set of every type due to the market leader D&D .
>If you don't have different colors a functional human can manage to roll in two different spots.

The only exception would be custom dice and exotics like d30, d60.

Use the dice that work best for the game.

Very true. I just don't want it to be burdensome or a roadblock to trying out the system. I. Also don't want a dumb dice buy in cost like Star Wars FFG, but at least you can use the dice for any other game.

Although, it's not too bad, especially if the DM and player roll seperately, then you just need to keep track of the "not blue" dice and it's all fine. If you want the thrill of rolling and counting everything, you'll need a Skittles bag of dice. But if you want fast and cheap then the dice you have on hand should suffice. Plus then you could use your own dice.

Yes, I'll bump this.

Could you give a full exemple?

I'm here, bumping thread so I have time to read this and answer properly.

Have a preemptive giga puddy as my sincere appreciation.

I finally finished the base rules for my 10mm wargame system T.A.C.T.I.C.A.L and I started on the first module!

docs.google.com/a/ghchs.com/document/d/1iJVaPD0VXYfQ_xhv__J6Ne01CtgXp-ONOGeTEbbLPeU/edit?usp=drivesdk

Before I convert to PDF and put in images, someone mind taking a once over and checking for anything ambiguous or weird?

I'll give it a look over once I get a break long enough to do so.

I like how you twisted the very negatively based DRYH:s system and combined it with FFG Star Wars, taking ideas from both and kind of simplifying them somewhat. Having an actual advantage instead of "Well, nothing bad happens" is a pretty big change to how the system represents itself, and honestly, while the influence can be seen, and the system can be explained by saying combining these two, they are not the only systems that have end results with advantages, disadvantages, or not even the only ones with multiple colors of dice. The only thing similar is the way the dice are rolled, and as you use the same dice in a same but different way, I think it's not similar enough to count as plagiarism.

A good little exercise is to simply get dice and start rolling. Get all the colors of the dice and roll them, maybe even while doing something else, and try to become efficient at reading them. If you can learn to assess the rolls' end results pretty quickly without much hassle, it should be good. Especially try mixing the two dice types (d6s and d10s) and get a feel for it. I played Deathwatch today, and the rules are just too much, even though the rolls themselves were just d%

Also, coding some probabilities with Anydice or such would give you a good image for how much of each there should be... Although, with a system that is entirely dependent on dice that is not as important.

I think having another die type for threat / GM could be good, because even though DRYH only has one, 2 of the 3 positive dice types were already risky, where as here only 1 of the 4 positive dice types is risky.

I might continue tomorrow, but I'm going to sleep for now.

As always, thanks for the advice.

So after doing some rolling I think I see that d10's really bear heavy on the "Influence" of the roll. While a little disconcerting at first, I remembered that was the idea behind them. It's a clear visual indicator of "watch out for this in the fallout"

As for rolling, it's even easier than FFG, just look for 1/2/3 and the highest number. No matching and sorting symbols. I'll have the DM do the challenge dice separately to speed things up. But its still feasible to do the whole thing in one giant fistfull and figure it out.

As far as probabilities, it really comes down to who has more dice, just like in FFG. Which makes the limit dice so interesting, because it's the risky stop gap the players can take.

As far as dice type distribution, it really comes down to 1.5 types for the player, 1 type for the gm, and 1 that straddles the middle.

Blue skill dice are always good for players. The Black/White dice are expendable booster dice.

Red challenge dice are a bit boring, but the d10s wind up being a little frightening because they can so easily trump the Influence of anything else in the dicepool.

The Yellow Limit will most likely help out the player, but also has the chance of boning them as well.

That said, I would like having a little more GM variety than "add MOAR DICE" Any suggestions?

Also, this dice pool seems to allow for multiple levels of success (like getting a net win of 3 successes, which might be able to be spent).

Alternatively, to pull a page from Dungeon World or The Sprawl, abilities/feats could be scalable with different levels hard written into "if you succeed with disad. get X, if you flat succeed get Y, if you succeed with adv. get Z" or something written a little more streamlined.

This is some great stuff to work with.

Sometimes you're doing test rolls and you get btfo'd so hard you can't help but laugh and swear and realize you love the mostrocity.

Pretty average high level roll (three levels of skills, two attribute points, even threw in a Ghost and a Limit dice against four challenge and two danger dice)

Zero successes, four failures, and disadvantage and limit breaker tied for Influence.

I cannot imagine a worse roll, or a better one to watch as a GM. Disclaimer: results not typical

Correction, one attribute point. Between the six stats it's going to be a 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, -1 starting spread, with the last tossing a red d10 into the mix instead of blue.

That's pulled from The Sprawl, but I like the lower number. Zero will represent the average skill level of an average person. Interesting with this system is that even the highest leveled player has a non zero chance of failing vs a commoner if the dice decide to absolutely shit the bed.

At the same time, even with zero ranks as a player you can always make an attempt with Limit and booster dice, even if that's a very risky thing to do. But, that gamble is yours to make.

Bump to get this through the night.

We need to set up a night watch.

This is just a friendly bump but I will be back with some new rules I'm trying for a game for the kids I teach (5th graders) so they will seem a lil simple but it's kinda what I'm aiming at

book smarts
- +2 in some knowledge skill
- +2 in some other knowledge skill
- once per encounter, you can use one of these melee abilities that you read out of a book once
--- cleave: +0 attack vs defense, 2 dice of damage, two targets
--- disarm: +1 attack vs skill, armed target drosp weapon
--- hold the line: +1 attack vs skill, 1 dice of damage and target lags behind
--- trip: +1 attack vs skill, one ally can make a close attack against the target this turn

This is one level's stuff. The current state of the system is that I'm homebrewing levels on demand, on the fly, as people need them for a campaign I'm starting.

Here are my melee weapon creation rules:

Weapons are created by combining a handle and a head (the damaging portion). Handles come in 3 main varieties, 1 handed (1h), 2 handed (2h), and reach. Each of those have two sub divisions. 1H and 2h handles are Hafts and Hilts. Reach handles are Whips and Poles. Heads come in to main types and three varieties: Bladed and Bludgeon in Small, Medium, and Large. Both Bladed and Bludgeon heads come in Piercing, Slashing, and Blunt damage types. So to recap, you just combine a Handle with one or more Heads to create your weapon.
A Dagger would be a 1h hilt with a small straight blade. A Halberd would be a Pole with a large Axe head and a small pick/spear head. A Flail would be a Whip handle with a medium Mace head, etc.

Now, those weapon parts also determine the damage and who can wield which weapons. Each handle and head grants a Complexity score. 1h and small parts add 0 complexity. Reach and Medium parts add 1 complexity each, while 2h and Large parts add 2 complexity each. The total amount of complexity you can use depends on your martial skill, but weapon damage is determined according to the Handle and the specific weapon Head being used.
0 total complexity deals 1d4
1 total complexity deals 1d6
2 total complexity deals 1d8
3 total complexity deals 1d10
4 total complexity deals 1d12.
So in the example weapons above, the Dagger deals 1d4, the Halberd deals 1d10 or 1d6, and the Flail deals 1d8.

I really like how it's turned out, and there's not a lot of weapons I can't create with those rules. I did notice a few places I could streamline the rules and they're written much better in my design doc anyway.

But, now I have a question. Using these rules as a guide, how would you create ranged weapons? What weapons would do you think are necessary, and how would you categorize them? I can easily think of bows, crossbows, blowguns, slings, and thrown ammunition like darts, but that's where both my ideas and word count end.

Can someone point me to anything new from an Indie developer that is one of these

>Isn't a Apocalypse World clone
>Isn't a Retroclone
>Has some crunch to it, but not too much

Str controls damage the higher the stat the better the dice, 1-9 a d4, 10-19 a d6, 20-29 a d8 30-39 a d10 etc.

Dex controls whether you hit, based on enemy's toughness you roll either a d6, d8,d10,d12 to see if you hit, every 5 points into dex goes 5 1-4 for success, 10 1-5, 15 1-6, 20 1-7 etc.

End is the defense same as attack depending on the level you can roll at lvl 10 end 1d6 for def, 20 1d8, 30 1d10 etc. also add any defense from gear or skills

Agi is similar to dex only change is it goes backwards from 8-10 to 7-10 and so on based in 5s and toughness of enemy

Sorry not best explaining but it's what I'm working with so far

I'm shit at reading anydice. Can someone explain this to me please?

It's a 1d9 except one in a hundred times it comes up 10.

Would help if it wasn't set to private, so people can read it.

It works like this, you roll 3d10 (0-9 rather than 1-10) and if the result is over 10 (say, 4, 7, 2 = 13), you break the number into an addition (13 = 1+3) until it gives you a single-digit number.

With 3d10, there's actually only one number where you need to add the results twice, that being number 19.

There are actually some quick counting factors, such as making pairs of 9, because 9+X's digital root is always X. And naturally 0s can be ignored.

What is this, the Zero Escape: The Nonary Games?

What you explained (and demonstrated) about it is kind of the reason I kind of avoid static modifier numbers these days.

With modifiers, you can stack them indefinitely, and when you do, the roll loses meaning. Of course, that should kind of be the case, with a person being more proficient with the thing, but that only works in the context where there are static modifiers.

The reason why people dislike crit fails is because by the rules of, say, D&D, rolling a 1 would always mean a crit fail, which feels stupid if you have something like +15 to the roll, because numerically, you should be able to pass the roll. People don't like that.

That's why having modifiers as dice is much better in my opinion. It makes the chance of crit failing much smaller the higher your stats, but it should always still be possible in some shape or form.

But I digress.

Both DRYH and FFG SW have Fate points mandated by the GM, so maybe something along the same lines, with an original twist to it? Hope / Despair tokens and Light-side-Dark-side tokens are actually quite similar, now that I think about it.

You can also twist the influence bits into something that ties in to the number of influence itself. Such as there being minor influence (largest number is under 5) and major influence (largest number is over 5). Or alternatively count the influence by how many of the largest dice are the influence's color.

From there you can give effects or even choices to the players depending on the levels of influence. Of course that depends on how much you want the players to play the rolls rather than rolling the plays.

I ADMIT NOTHING.

Yeah, I took influence from that game, but digital roots did exist before that. The resolution system is kind of neat though.
The game I originally made it for took even heavier influence, even having a time-map and allowing you to jump to timelines where you have that 1/1000 crit.

For ranged, you could go propeller and projectile (PP to follow the HH from handle and head).
Propeller can be self (throw), string (bow) or mechanical (crossbow).
Projectile can be pierce (dart), blunt (stone), slash (knife), pierce/blunt (bolt), slash/blunt (throwing axe), pierce/slash (arrow).

This is a good start. I was originally just going to give a thrown property to certain weapons (like all d6 or below), but thrown should probably be separate from melee. I'll definitely keep the Thrown, String, Mechanical categories. If Propeller becomes Propellant, I could add gunpowder and then get another division: strength based (thrown and string) and non strength based (Mechanical and alchemical). The other aspect should definitely be Projectile, but I'm not quite sold on any one way quite yet. But, I am a lot closer to filling out the mechanics and then it's just finding more intuitive names afterwards. I check the robustness of my rules by creating weapons from medieval and fantasy lists and it worked wonderfully. I feel like these options should get me a good spread of 400ad-1400ad ranged weaponry.

String should get a better name to allow slings and atl-atl to be used.
Good luck on your system, but if you allow my 2cents: put the weapon creation in the DM or crafting section. Some players, new or old, may only want a concise weapon list to choose from instead of having to build a longsword.