/gdg/ Game Design General

>Do you make deadlines for yourself? Do you ever meet them?
Not really, I am motivated to do the game and I know that quality takes time. Currently I am revising the attributes in my game for the umpteenth time but I feel like I am getting closer to stability now.

>Mage Knight
Looking into it now. Some of the mechanics definitely work.

High, they have to have some force of personality in order to be controversial. Otherwise, no one would notice or care about them.

Qhich is curious though because it means that, in spite of their high Charisma, they'd be unpopular in many circles and would be met with eye-rolling when they're not looking.

Should a Charisma stat instead represent the ability to be seen favorably in all kinds of circles?

Axe beauty.

For many people, being desirable in some way is part of the fantasy. Beauty just puts a tax on that. And it is a subjective value, you could measure the average impact of beauty, but once you deal with an individual the stat goes out of the window.

Dexterity, Agility and Speed are at least one too much. Agility lacks identity if dexterity and speed are present, but it is a good name for the overall category.

Well, Agility is generally gross motor skills and Dexterity is fine motor skills. And just because you're musculous (STR) or adept at dodging an arrow (AGI), it doesn't mean you're a top sprinter (SPD).

How can one, from a mechanical perspective, introduce and force horror (specifically bosy horror) onto the players? I want to make a game where the players are extremely deformed and mutated, and to have horror and body horror be core components, but I'm not sure how to make it hard to avoid for the players and GM?

Maybe take a look at Necronica, where body parts are your abilities and stats.

What is the secret to making a compelling setting that players care about?
Ongoing wars?
Heaven versus Hell?
Vague indeterminate wilderness exploration or specific quests?
I have a suspicion it's dramatic background characters, but RPGs focus on the PCs so it's not fair to the players.

I feel it's about having a setting that serves the purpose of the game. If you're making a military operator game but you make a setting that has intense politicking, ancient ruins to explore, and a weird heaven versus hell overarching storyline, you have a game that supports none of the interesting parts of the setting, and thus, is uninteresting to the players, as they'll likely never get to explore any of these things.

The three components of a good story of course:
conflict
conflict
and conflict

But it is impossible to cater to every type of player. Basically you can inoffensively target the lowest common denominator and try to rope in the biggest haul, design for a niche or design for yourself (possibly in the thrust that you are representative of a group of players like you).
Pick your poison.

A nonetheless big part is player personality and socialization, over that you have no power with your setting.

A developed meta plot with many factions that have competing ideologies are usually the best selling and well liked, people also tend to like the meta plot advancing at a crawls pace.

It depends what level of realism and abstraction your going for, in real life constitution doesn't really exist as a separate stat from strength/agility, most skills derived from dexterity are learnt skills that aren't dependent on genetics.

Personally I'd merge agility and speed and move dexterity to a trait based system.

>in real life constitution doesn't really exist as a separate stat from strength/agility,
Yes but in fiction there are characters of varying degrees of toughness.

>Personally I'd merge agility and speed and move dexterity to a trait based system.
That's what I was thinking. Plus you could introduce traits that modify your speed. HOWEVER, it's more fun if starting chars all have slightly different speed. Anything that helps with distinction is good.

No, a Charisma should be what Wisdom is in D&D. Charisma like what your describing is way to complicated to be gamified; nearly everything makes a human a person is also highly correlated with being charismatic.

>Charisma should be what Wisdom is in D&D
What do you mean?

>but in fiction there are characters of varying degrees of toughness
>it's more fun if starting chars all have slightly different speed

Both can be easily resolved by stepping-up hit dice depending on what class, profession, background, etc a character chooses.

The ability to connect with the divine.

lol it's like I'm really browsing Veeky Forums

Has anyone made a nontabletop game? Like an advanced gamebook? What worked?/ what didn't?

Like a MUD?

Or simply a very complex ruleset that requires external tools to properly work?

I'm interested in the methods used in gamebooks, and also in certain paper games like mazes and geometric logic puzzles.

Every time I post this, it feels like there's a loud record scratch while everyone stares at me like I'm loco. If anyone could just point me in the direction of gamebook stuff, I'll show myself out.

>Do you make deadlines for yourself? Do you ever meet them?
No, and considering I started my main project back in 2011, I wouldn't make my deadlines even if I made them.

Check out the game Zombies!! It's mechanically the same as your option 1, but obviously about zombie apocalypse.

>Do you make deadlines for yourself? Do you ever meet them?
No, because I know I wouldn't meet them.

My beer n' pretzels, osr/rougelike dungeon crawl project. Fixed some typos and wording from last time. Still need to create more random equipment tables and monsters.

Derive Beauty from Constitution. Derive Speed and Dexterity from Agility.

I had to look up "Gamebook" to figure out what you meant. More people are familiar with the term "Choose Your Own Adventure", which has its own thread running >.

>Derive Beauty from Constitution.
You need to be able to have dead ugly characters with a high constitution and vice versa. If anything I'd fold Strength and Constitution together but then again, I might wanna have characters who aren't super-strong but very tough.

>Derive Speed and Dexterity from Agility.
Similar problems but I guess at least one of the three attributes needs to go.

Well, it's less system design than scenario creation/world building. Do you want to build a simple system from scratch or shoplift a system from an existing gamebook?

It also depends on how you define each of those terms. Constitution could be just as much health as toughness. I feel like for your desired system, you'd be well served to have meta and sub stats. How exactly you create those interactions is another matter. I envisioned something like taking DnD's 6 as a base. Con and Cha are 3d6 (or on a range of 8-18) while Beauty could be ConMod+ChaMod+1d6. You wouldn't be the only game with attribute trees either, should you go that route.

Are there any games that do narrative chargen? I know Fate/Spirit of the Century does something like that. Anybody else?

Traveller

The Burning Wheel?

Very well done, very simple, nice. Loving the magic system, maybe go more original than the D&D copy-spells, Phantasmal Killer could as well be Death Ray.
For the finer ranged weapons, how about firearms? Otherwise go with short, recurve, longbow, small handcrossbow, big crossbow, huge crossbow. Maybe throw in throwing stars, knives, maces, hammers, javelins if you want to.
A simple system can have easy skin-switches for weapons, say a falchion is the same thing as a sabre and that's equal to a longsword (+2). So you can go throwin stars/shortbow (+1), throwing knives/recurve bow(+2)...

Everything checks out my system's basically like yours but with a Shadowrun-inspired dicepool instead of single die +mod, and a "create your own spells" shtick.
Now, a mechanic suggestion is that you can switch to 2d6 + mod for a wider probability range but still a sweet middle 7, so AC turns to 7+agility and so on, with a critwin at boxcars and critfail at snakeeyes. Also toying with the +1d6 advantage that 5e has, so if you've an advantage you roll 3d6+mod instead of 2d6. I've been toying with this idea and should soloplaytest it.

Though a single d6, while extremely simple, can get out of hand quickly if your bonus to roll outranks +4 (personal opinion is that a die's +modifier should never go over 75% of the die's range, such as +15 on a d20 should be the max you could add).

Keep it small and simple, my shitty system's under 12 pages +FAQ/commentary.
Interested in your playtesting, how did it show? Any gaping holes your players or you encountered?

I've been doing a ridiculous amount of research on the different dice mechanics in games after trying FATE, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the d20 system is actually genius, it allows you precise control of power levels while still making the players feel like they're in control.

Shouldn't 3d6 give you even more precision? A bell curve is easier to predict than a flat die. I respect the d20/d% but prefer the dice pool.

3d6 isn't as manipulable, you can't predict the impact of your changes on the fly, for instance giving a ailing player a +1 magic sword wouldn't be a huge advantage in a d20 game and it's a constant static improvement that doesn't alter, in a 3d6 game that +1 can provide as little as a 5% improve or as much as a 300% improvement.

>For the finer ranged weapons, how about firearms? Otherwise go with short, recurve, longbow, small handcrossbow, big crossbow, huge crossbow. Maybe throw in throwing stars, knives, maces, hammers, javelins if you want to.
May end up using most of these.

Playtests so far have been strictly combat sims because most of the exploration/puzzle solving/trap-avoising bits aren't really system-dependent.

Yes, combat the single d6 + (1 to 3) + (possible weapon bonus) can be tricky. So far it's been okay at when just using freshly rolled characters, because even if you have no gear and crap stats, typically a 6 on a roll will get be a hit, and you'll deal a wound. Sure it's a one in 6 chance but that's like 17%.

I think the biggest challenge in keeping things balanced is going to be primarily dependent on the dungeon itself, because players get all their gear by picking it up mid-game. If they go into a fight they're not ready for, some characters may be completely useless, but this is meant to be a really deadly game where characters die several times a night, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the course of a night.

I think I need to write a really solid sample adventure to really make it "playable" by other people who don't necessarily understand intuitively know what I'm going for, but that will be a challenge for me so we'll see hot it goes.

True, but personally I don't like working within +5% bonuses, they feel to small to matter but they do add up (and boy do they add up). Still prefer the overpowered +1 in 3d6, feels great and meaty.
I do heartily agree that the illusion of power a player gains when they get the +1 sword or a +1 strength potion or something in d20 is fantastic, and D&D's mastered this.

Roll some mid-level and end-level playtests with your friends, they can teach you weird stuff.
Fun story, one of my playtesters has a Cleave that does Life damage, and he's using it to strike 2 undead enemies and hit himself too (all damage is life damage that heals the living and damages the undead). I was really impressed when he used it like this.
Other time one of my friends used Magic Missile as a vehicle for a Stun debuff, applying Stuns on any cast (I had to make a ruling that the enemies have a saving throw vs. Stun, even if they had no saving throw vs. magic missile).
This later got me to drop magic missiles alltogether from my system.

Adventures are simple to write, read up on some quick and dirty modules for opend6 IIRC or some similar system, they're usually below 20 pages.

I still strongly suggest you test out 2d6+stat keeping your current mechanics (and raising every DC by 3), interested in how well that could go. 1d6 is a very unforgiving friend.
I also strongly suggest you read Mordheim's rulebook (google it), it has cool mechanics and ideas that can be applied to a simple RPG, and shows you a way to utilize 1d6 in conflict resolution.

Further idea, do you have a Perk system? Like Toughness (+1 Wound before death) or Shield Bash (use the shield like a weapon once per round)? It will add on to complexity in a big way, but it might allow your players and you to run longer games.

I'll check them out but isn't Traveller just a lifepath system whereas in SotC you derive your aspects from the background story you invent.

>d20 system is actually genius
d100 is superior as it is basically the same with the added benefit that every pleb can read of success chances without any mental gymnastics. So what if you don't need the addes granularity? It literally comes at no additional cost.

d100 > d20.

infinitely expanding +1 bonuses are a symptom of 3.5's 3rd party content (and not making enough sources mutually exclusive) and not inherent to a d20 system.

Eh. D100 has the problem, in my experience with it, of creating instances of extreme minmaxing and crushing any desire to do things outside of what you're set up to do. Basically, no one wanted to have less than a 50% chance of success so everyone just dumped 2 or 3 skills to boost them up to 90%ish chances rather than having a bunch of skills at 50 or 60%.

I have managed to combine roleplaying, deck building, and wargaming into a single game. The game is called War of Regrets.

Is this too dumb of an idea?

depends how its handled

Isn't that what 4e and Warhammer Fantasy RP 3ed do?
Not a dumb idea depending on what you want, be it a homebrew system for you and friends, something to publish or something to sell boxes of. It's not a dumb idea in either of those categories.

That's not inherent to d100 itself. It might be for that particular system, but you could have minimums of 35% combined with diminishing returns so that most skills have about 66% success rate (which is people think is 50%) and still have some room to specialize. Still d100, but solves that specific issue.

Just like the d20 concerns above, its not the system you use that's important, its how you use it.

Hello /gdg/, I've encountered a math / balance problem in my system and I need some help. Here's how the system works:
>Characters have four Attributes, let's call them Damage, Speed, Energy, and Health
>Attributes range from 2-4 at character creation and can go as high as 15
>When you attack you roll 1d10 + Speed against their Defence (6 + average of Speed and Energy)
>Depending on how high you roll you deal x0, x1, x2, or x3 your Damage to your opponent, subtracted from their Hit Points (which are 10 times your Health stat).

Here's the problem; at low levels Speed is balanced against the other attributes, but at higher levels Speed becomes overpowered. When you have 5 Damage, a +1 only gives you +20% damage, but a +1 Speed gives a +20% to your average damage AND a bonus to your Defence. At 10 Damage a +1 is only a 10% increase, while a +1 Speed is still a +20%, making it far, far superior.

The current fix I have is mathematically functional but it's inelegant; Damage,Health, and even Energy gets non-linear bonuses as you raise them, as follows:

Stat/Bonus
1/1
2/2
3/3
4/4
5/6
6/8
7/11
8/15
9/20
10/30
11/40
12/60
13/80
14/110
15/150

This keeps those stats on par with Speed, but I don't like how it looks.

So, does anyone have any ideas? I want this system to be simple and straightforward but also balanced. Any constructive criticism would be excellent.

I'm working on a stratego like board game that's 1v1 and uses hexes. Goal is either eliminate all enemy units, or get one of yours to the enemy's "gate" (board is hexes in a roughly diamond shape (loosely based in Enders Game battleroom)).

9 pieces, in which you take the beginning turns placing them one at a time on your end of the board in a given range (say, the first few rows). On your turn you can move a piece or attack with it. Attack is done with a d6. Only attack in a straight line, and you have to meet or beat the number of tiles between attacking unit and target unit. (4 tiles away, roll a 4+ to hit). A hit incapacitates an enemy, and another removes them from the board.

Anything immediately broken about thus?

You've ran into the issue every game with a speed stat has, the best solution we've come up with so far is simply making speed either twice as expensive or by doing what you've already come up with.

Depends on the side of the board, but no, I don't see anything immediately wrong with the idea. You might want to have pieces that have different functions like in Chess; for example a piece that can move and attack on the same turn but has its range halved, or a piece with additional (maybe double) range but that dies in one hit, or a piece that can take three hits but has a small range penalty. Something like that.

I'm wanting to do a fantasy version of something like pic related, are there any out there? (short, one page all inclusive system for that game. Enough for both players and DM, free form gaming)

5 attributes, and you rank them in order of importance / aptitude for your character

> Martial, Magic, Acumen, Acuity, Personality

DC is based on difficulty on a scale of 1 - 10. All checks are made with a d10 roll to beat the DC, + whatever attribute is tied to that decision

> Checks made with 1d10 + (skill) to beat something on a scale of 1-10

Skills / abilities / class features are based on Star Wars Galaxies pre-NGE skill system

> youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ZvjxgT0DY

Thoughts?

Well, unfortunately I can't make Speed more expensive because it's 1-to-1 with a non-combat attribute, and that would really mess with the non-combat side of things.

The other issue is that, when Damage and Hit Points become non-linear like this, it throws all other sorts of things out of whack. I'm still grappling with how to make things like D&D's Damage Reduction work when those are generally linear while damage and accuracy are non-linear.

Like a megagame?

Do what Chrono Trigger did and make Speed, Attack, Defense, Accuracy, and Evasion separate.
That's what I did.

>I had to look up "Gamebook" to figure out what you meant.
Thank you, that explains almost everything.

They are, for the most part. Accuracy is my 'Speed' stat. Evasion is based on the average of Speed and 'Energy'. Attack is the 'Damage' stat. Defence is based on worn equipment.

Even if I made Evasion its own stat, that wouldn't change how powerful Accuracy is in the system at later levels. All it would do is make its weakness at lower levels more pronounced. People would just focus on other stats at early levels, invest more in Speed at mid levels, and maximize Speed at late levels.

Chrono-Trigger-esque Speed doesn't exist in my system because action economy bonuses can and do break systems in horrendous fashion. However characters with a high Defence score tend to go earlier in combat so there's that.

Basic stat assessment for TRIANGLES - A POST-TRUTH RPG. My attempt at the "Spirit Science" game idea that had a thread the other day.

The hand icon represents PUNCHING - driving, shooting, jumping, intimidation, etc. Action movie shit.

The skull is THINKING, i.e. trying to rationalize weird shit.

The eye is SEEING, so observation skills, intuition, and attunement to weirdness. These two have a symbiotic relationship - SEEING generates noise, and THINKING resolves the noise into a signal.

Finally, the mouth is TALKING, which is cooperation and understanding - the non-violent counterpart to PUNCHING (note that violent non-physical interaction - threats and lies - is still handled by PUNCHING).

The idea is that you have a little pyramid chart on your sheet and you doodle the corresponding icon into the bricks according to how you want to focus your character. The capstone is the one you're awesome at and the bottom brick is the one you kinda suck at.

Skill pyramids are fun.
I enjoy the super-categories you've made; aggression and general "anti-social" behavior is clumped together.
I'm concerned about the utility of Thinking and Talking, if only because you listed so few descriptors for them (and not necessarily the intended frequency of their use).

Thanks. It's basically all I have at this point, but it's a start.

You use PUNCHING when you try to use physical, brute force solutions for problems and THINKING when you try to outwit them. If you're being chased by someone, and you're all "I'm gonna try do a badass leap down onto that fire escape there to make some distance", that's PUNCHING. If you're like "I'm gonna turn a corner and then duck behind a door so he thinks he's lost me", that's THINKING. It's more or less the opposite of the traditional sim mindset that you use [insert intelligence stat here] to come up with good ideas or justify one's you've actually had. Instead, you just roll to see if using your brain works out for you.

I'm considering making the game GMless, in which contested rolls of THINKING are literally how you decide whose batshit theories are "right", but that definition works for the time being.

TALKING is for stuff like talking down hostiles, convincing others of the earnest truth, inspiring morale, building trust. Threats - whether explicit or implicit -
are PUNCHING and lies/manipulation is THINKING.

>have ideas for making Veeky Forums games
>never motivated to actually create any games because I've never had a positive Veeky Forums experience.
>can't even go to a local game shop for dnd night because of constant night shifts

more power to the rest of you, I guess.

I would play a Gravity Falls game made with this system

Alright, good stuff.
Will the contested rolls always feature two similar stats against one another?

You're in a position to make the positive Veeky Forums experience you seek.
I've been stuck in development hell for years, often rerouting how I want my game to work entirely. And that has certainly reduced motivation: the feeling that I'm devouring my own tail.

Core Attributes are often an albatross around a developers neck, your problem isn't what to do with Speed but what variation of builds and gameplay do you want to allow, then make your attributes reflect going in those divergent paths. Often your source material will help guide the kinds of characters people would want to play, if this is a CT game I would assume you'd be split between two different axis; Technical & Magical Prowess then balanced by individualism and teamwork.

Crono being an example of a team-work technical character peppered with some utility spells + the standard 1target/multi-target elemental spread.

Magus being an example of an individualist, with higher base attributes than everyone else with a focus on offensive magical techniques.

>You're in a position to make the positive Veeky Forums experience you seek.
Yes, yes. Will to Power and all that.

>Will the contested rolls always feature two similar stats against one another?

Not necessarily. If you go "I'm gonna put some flour down on the floor to prove that the invisible mind roaches that Alice keeps babbling about aren't real" then that's your THINKING versus Alice's SEEING. If you win, the flour is unperturbed and Alice is just a silly billy (maybe). If Alice wins, there are conspicuous roach tracks in the flour.

If, for example, Alice lost that contest and then came back later with "No wait, the roaches have antimemetic properties, so your mind is actively editing out the tracks!" and you decide to keep fighting her on it, she'd be instead rolling THINKING, because she's now trying to explain something rather than raise a question or defend something from explanation (which would be SEEING).

I don't know whether you'd always contest factual disputes with either THINKING or SEEING. Maybe you can contest Alice SEEING the mind roaches by TALKING to her about how she should really be taking her meds?

Damage, Energy & Health
Accuracy, Initiative & Evasion

Now that I know how the physical production of cards goes, I'm moving on to my second-to-main project. Here are the card mockups.

GodHand is a pretty standard card game in terms of setup: 35 card deck, externally constructed. The only resource is 'power' - which functions both as the 'mana' and the 'health' of the game. At the start of each round each player draws seven cards, and after a limited mulligan, those are the only cards the player gets for that round (there is no function to draw during the round). Players play their cards, paying power from their own pool, and losing power through opponent's attacks. The round ends when each player has played all of their cards, in which case, whoever has the most 'power' left in their pool wins the round, or it ends when one player concedes the round. Whoever loses the round gains three power for the next round. The game is played for five rounds (35 cards in deck / 7 draw each round). Whoever wins three rounds first wins the game. Alternatively, whoever loses all of their power first loses the game.

This mechanic encourages players to pick their moment. Tricking your opponent into going big on the first round, just so that you can concede, giving away a win but conserving your power, might be enough to win you the next two rounds. Likewise, if your opponent is up two, you need to go huge or lose the game - and that big play could be worth it, because the next round could be your god hand. It creates these great moments of tension.

GodHand is a sort of a double-entendre. The theme of game is mythic in nature, taking in elements of the Greek, Nordic and Egyptian pantheons, but it's also the way the game is played: the game is based around timing and combination plays, so you want to be drawing a 'god hand' to win the round, and the game.

Thoughts on the card design? Thoughts on the sparsely described mechanics?

I know your pain. 5 years nightshift here, finally got out last year. It's the worst.

Is it a best out of three kind of game?

I would make the little victories a game mechanic that can also be played.
i.e. have cards that do "two damage and two more damage for each win this set of games".

Yeah, best of three is the control win condition. Aggro will be trying to batter you down before it gets to that point.

>have cards that do "two damage and two more damage for each win this set of games".
That's a great idea. Consider it stolen.

Keep pursuing different text options, specifically what you want is to have flavor quotes somewhere

Hm, I have absolutely no room for flavour text. Normally I try and leave some, but the text on these cards requires a lot of space for the timing and combination rules, which kind of squeezes flavour out.

General discussion question: how important do you think flavour text is? Be it a line on the bottom of a card, or a box on the page of a splat. Do those little excerpts add a lot to the gameplay experience, or is it okay to leave them in blocks at the start/end of your rules?

We frequently have 'Favorite Flavor text' threads here.
So quite important.

The text is only a fraction of the problem, your card layout is essentially MtG layout that mixes the top name bar & the classification belt into one thing.

Hiding the artwork in bubbles that sit on a larger square is wasting a lot of space for potential rules/art/flavor text.
You could better manage your space by sectioning every card into thirds and having a square for art, a square for rules, and a square for flavor text.

Here are some audatia cards, every part of this card is useful and immediately tells the player and opponent what to expect.

It's not a Chrono Trigger game but it's somewhat inspired by it, there are rules for Dual and Triple Techs for example. The balance of attributes is indeed based around what kind of role you want to have in the party. A character like Crono would be average Damage and Speed with below average Energy and above average Hit Points, while Magus would have lower Damage and much higher Energy.

My system doesn't distinguish between magic and non-magic attacks stat-wise (you use Damage and Speed for all of them, and Energy can boost both) so a split there would be difficult to implement.

Interesting, but even if I create two additional stats that determine Initiative and Evasion that just hoses Accuracy at low levels and makes it overpowered at high levels. It doesn't solve the scaling problem, it just moves the problem down the line.

where do you get your art?

>The balance of attributes is indeed based around what kind of role you want to have in the party.

Like Tank, DPS, Healer? Maybe a utility/control?

Maybe

If those are the roles you want to promote then go for it, but its not the only way to do things.

That's funny, I always thought the Audatia cards were rather dull. To my eye, Audatia cards are all function over form, or perhaps all function at the expense of form, which makes sense because that game is a bit of a clusterfuck. If the cards were even slightly ambiguous, it would go off the rails. Also, notably, they don't use flavour text.

Apart from the flavour text everything that I need to express is expressed within this form. There's no need to squeeze any more out of the space, because everything I need to say is being said. That gives me the luxury to play with the space, and do things like put a circular shape on a rectangle card, which creates, I feel, a more interesting profile than the nested rectangles of a typical ccg card. But I will think on your critique going forwards, thanks.

Micro-commissions, free domain websites, personal contacts with artists etc...

>Audatia cards were rather dull

I was looking at better art of them and posted the only example of the swings I could find.

Was originally gonna go with this

That's a fun looking card. Horizontal orientation? Now there's a way to maximise space utilisation.

It's two cards

How heavily should I focus on pvp balance? in a 30-Minute playtest my players figured out if they faced a enemy built like players build their character a bunch of "joke" options combined together (added purely for flavour) would actually always win.

>How heavily should I focus on pvp balance?

Some games - mostly older ones like 3.5 D&D - handle it very poorly and yet no-one complains. It's nice when games do it well, but players who are actually interested in playing PCs with cross-motivations tend to be in the minority.

As for the question of balancing NPCs who use the PC character building rules, I would suggest against doing that in the first place, honestly. It horribly bogs down GM prep and adds nothing to the experience for the players (if it never comes up that you dumped two of Hrothgar the Insatiable's spare skill ranks into Bolivian Cuisine, which it probably won't unless he appears in a lot of sessions, what do the player's care?)

PC creation rules are there to give players the tools to assert their right to protagonism. You, as GM, don't need those tools, you need different ones.

For games which handles PCs and NPCs notably differently, check out pretty much any of Vincent Baker's games, especially Apocalypse World. In AW, the GM doesn't even roll dice, let alone stat out NPCs, and it works really well.

Neat

Having a diversity of feats and abilities is fun but will assuredly fuck up balance. Unless you restrict characters to very focused templates/classes for which you can then anticipate all the combinations of abilities/traits/etc., the brackets of power will widen.

My preference are systems where this numeral bracket—this expression of power—stays thin but the narrative explanations for what happens remains diverse. I do not believe "joke" options should exist, in good design.

>As for the question of balancing NPCs who use the PC character building rules, I would suggest against doing that in the first place, honestly.
Absolutely this. Even in Fate Core, GMs build much more anorexic versions of what the players can for their NPCs.

Depends on how much you want to have pvp combat in your game.

In regards to NPC creation following PC creation rules, If they're going to use the same or similar rules, then you should expect the same or similar results from both PCs and NPCs. Character creation should be fast and you should expect PCs to die a lot, just like the NPCs likely will.

One way you could make this happen is by having PCs play the role of commander. Instead of personal abilities, their combat power is measured in the amount of mooks they can mobilize. Games often consider PCs above NPCs (they're heroic, the focus of the story, etc) so the effort and granularity spent on PCs should outweigh that of NPCs. Players also only ever have one or a few PCs, while they might encounter dozens or hundreds of NPCs.

Does anyone know of a game where resource tracking was fun? I want to add a hunting skill for Rangers which would allow the party to survive longer out in the wilderness, but I don't want things to get too tedious.

>It literally comes at no additional cost.
>d100 > d20.
Other than rolling twice as many dice, or having to own a meme die

Thoughts on one page rpg systems like Lasers & Feelings or Swords & Sellswords?

Any other good ones?

I prefer when the mechanics to be very specialized and theme oriented because the strength of those systems is as oneshot material.

For any length of campaign I want a more mechanically satisfying system.

I think you need a kind of time mechanic to evoke survival mechanics. Instead of fighting a bear in an encounter, you must fight hunger... which only kills us over time.

In RPGs, it makes sense to keep pushing forward past the "nothing" that happens during travel, sleep, and so on. For this reason, it would be difficult to force the players to withstand a series of time-keeping mechanics if they somehow choose to stay stuck in the woods.
At least, this isn't usually done in real time. I've been in situations where a daily roll determined a summary of our consumption/success with hunting. Not exactly management: just luck, with some Nature checks.

I cannot think of a fun example of resource management but I would love to create one.