/gdg/ Game Design General

Ah well, depending on how freeform I will make it, I might just have a table with 2 columns. The common side for when you cast the spell and specific symbol is the common one, and another one for what happens you do this AND Mooncast, which means basically doing it the black magic way.

I could probably just simplify the spells to the schools, like...

Might - Destruction
Grace - Transmutation/Enhancement
Insight - Divination
Heart - Conjuration
Valor - Restoration
Darkness - Necromancy

And any spell you cast is divided to those schools. Then there is an effect for the common symbol, but the only problem is that the effects to the spell would need to be universal, and somehow effect any spell the character makes.

Valor and Darkness work as the character's moral axis, where you gain Darkness when you bottle up your character's dark impulses, and gain Valor when you roleplay the common symbol in a roll (Being especially forceful in a persuasion attempt when Might is the common symbol) or do some definitely Valorous good deeds.

It kind of makes the entire thing into Paladin: The Game honestly, and is kind of about how you either die a hero, become the villain, or fight the evil within you so devoutly that you become untouchable.

I think you might have a problem which seems to be quite common here that you overthink in terms of dice. Try to first phrase your system in narrative terms first and foremost, and then represent it with some math giving an argument for how that fits the narrative. Last of all select dice mechanics to represent the math while reinforcing the narrative.

Your current mechanic tells me nothing except that you want to renumber 1 to 6 with alternative names.

The game is basically ruled like this:

You have dice with symbols, and each symbol is represented as a stat on the character sheet.
You roll dice equal to your stat, and need to get at least one of your symbols to be the stat you're rolling against.

That sounds random, but here's the kicker.

Your character has traits, and these traits can change the symbols of a roll. If your character is Kind, they can turn Might symbols into Heart symbols. This is shown in the way of the roleplaying too. Having Heart as the common symbol means the character is very gentle in whatever they do, and having Might as the common symbol means the character is forceful or aggressive. So, a Kind character can turn the Might symbols into Hearts, to show a disparity in it.

Also, if they roll zero successes, but have Darkness symbols on the roll, they can use them to succeed in the roll, but they gain a point of darkness from it if they don't act it out as being a dastardly asshole. This applies to casting, too. The character can mooncast, meaning they use dark magic on the roll, to succeed in casting a spell when they shouldn't have.

So I'm thinking of good ways to implement this system in a way that the magic itself stays somewhat mystical.

I've been considering character health recently. In modern games the subject is treated as meaningless. In 5e D&D it's possible with two or three minor character choices to create a weak wizard with roughly 300 hp. During a short lunch break they'll recover most of this hp and after a night's sleep they are fully healed.

Those systems heavily focus on fast play and low impact danger. To increase danger in such a game you can beef up the monsters but that is only for short term impact that disappears after they break for lunch. If someone dies it's often trivial to bring them back. Such games are repetitive and have little to no risk which causes players to soon wise up and not take it seriously.

Conversely games with much lower health rangers, much slower natural healing, and harsher costs for bringing back the dead are frowned upon as tedious and boring.

Now I'm thinking of ways to keep combat fun and a game well paced while not trivializing war and hospitalization from injury.

Lasting injuries from certain thresholds, climbing wounds instead of dropping health...

There are ways. If you want to have larger health pools, introduce lasting injuries that aren't trivialized (such as healing magic not being able to replace body parts), or create a system where each point of damage is impactful, but said damage is hard to gain. Like, you can gain minor wounds that heal with relative ease, but each time someone gets a crit it's seriously dangerous. Still make the minor wounds a nuisance, but the lasting injuries from grievous hits should be front and center.

You can also look into systems with several damage types and take strides from there. Like Exalted 3(god I hate the game itself though) with its Withering and Decisive damage. Cool stuff, but the system around it is such a mess that taking it as is is not something I recommend.

It seems rather arbitrary to first roll stats and then roll multiple dice again for the same number.

Your traits seem to just turn a d6 into a d3. Your darkness seems to always allow casting but with some penalty?

What you described is an implementation of a system but not the mystical magic.

Is there a specific narrative reason why their required stat has to change each time?

If a character wishes to be evil is it not simply a matter of forgoing the rolls altogether and taking darkness?

Hey folks, I'm in the "prelim" stages of development, and I'm toying around with the idea that instead of XP classes "level up" based on say numbers of combats or situations relevant to that class.

Example being.

A warrior levels up from level 1 to level 2 after 5 combats.

A wizard would level up from 1 to 2 after say 8 combats. Or 5 Combats and 2 Magic User specific encounter like identifying spells/dispelling somethings or other things along those lines.

Thief levels up based on how many "thief things" it does.

And so on and so forth.

Not sure if it would work or if its been done before and it is good/bad.

Not really, they roll is d6, and each symbol is supposed to be a real aspect of the character. Traits emphasize this, allowing the characters to change the symbols on their roll to better fit the character they're playing.

The common roll mechanic is important because the traits also change this. A patient character gets more Insight symbols than a character who isn't, thus they will gain valor more easily by roleplaying that. But there's always a chance of things hitting a sore spot (A roll where they can't turn anything to Insight) where they either have to cheat (with Darkness, if they rolled any) or accept their defeat.

The game isn't focused on... Success/Failure dichotomy, as much as it's focused on the roleplaying dichotomy of playing by the character and using Darkness to succeed. As I said in , the dichotomy makes the game into Paladin: The Game.

You see, the only way player characters CAN kill ANYTHING non-monstrous is when they Eclipse, meaning they have fought the opponent until they're at their mercy, and roll Darkness whether they kill them. If they straight up kill someone without this roll they automatically gain a point of darkness.

Lasting wounds specific to certain appendages wouldn't necessarily have the same impact as abstractions like hitpoints. I also prefer not to over complicate with multiple damage pools because that wouldn't appeal to the lazier fast thrills players of today.

Using critical hits to represent severe damage might work however. Maybe if damage dealt with critical hit cannot be healed normally. This would separate normal hits from critical as exhaustion or bruises vs cuts and concussion.

A critical hit could have a secondary roll as well to cause a specific wound. So on a d20 system the chance to decapitate would be 1/400.

And Eclipsing, by the way, is a serious matter, usually showing the point when the character starts turning into evil.

Every time they Eclipse, the character's base Darkness rises, and at a certain point, the character is not fit to be a hero anymore in a... Fairytale.

Sounds good, as long as the crits don't become the ONLY way to properly incapacitate someone, because that makes the game tedious.

Could be used to homebrew D&D (3.5 I ain't familiar with 5e)
Wounds, and if they run out, any damage the character takes makes them roll on a Death Check, with lower rolls being loss of life, head, limbs or eyes, average being unconscious or tripped, and best being +Wounds or +Attack because they're angry. Any consecutive death check until healed is -3 on the result, often leading to decapitation, death, or at least, loss of limb. An unaware target might have to Death Check with the first attack.

d4/d6=4 wounds, d8/d10=5 wounds, d12=7 wounds
Characters can gain +2 wounds from leveling up, Toughness is +1 Wound, Diehard is +2 on a Death Check (which is a big boon, if you're using 2d6 to determine what happened to the wounded character).
My table's 2d6
1- decapitated; 2-gruesome death; 3-unconscious and bleeding;
4-loss of limb; 5-loss of eye; 6- bleeding; 7- KO; 8- KO;
9- Stunned 1round; 10- Tripped (knocked down); 11- Angry (+4 to any 3 rolls until the end of combat); 12- Miraculous Respite +2 Wounds regained

This keeps everyone on their toes and focused players get downed fast, and makes healers worth anything. Also, IMO (but I might be a fucking retard) this requires you to let players take hits for other players at the cost of actions/resources to share the pain around if you don't want it fast and deadly.

Onehanded weapons and anything that does... bellow 1d8 damage is 1 wound, >=1d8+'s 2 wounds and d10+ are 3 wounds (with maybe making the greataxe doing 4wounds). Most enemies have 1 wound, 2 if armored, 4 if heavy armored; apply more Wounds at your judgment. Bosses have about 5-10 wounds (and minions) or 15 wounds if they're solo.

Sounds a bit fantasy hearbreaker, if I'm honest.
Why does Wizard need more encounters?

Maybe you need to "Spotlight" aspects of your character, to resolve your personal story arcs (a good way to have the players buy into the game world is collaborating on these, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying had a system where you set milestones). Exalted, for example, has "Cede the spotlight to another player" as one of its methods to gain bonus XP, that could also be interesting to stop players fighting to be the most useful.
Another problem may be getting specific encounters for some characters - If there's not going to be a lot of chances to steal it may lead to the thief player being disruptive to the game in order not to fall behind. You want to be careful how you pitch this stuff - wording may be important.

It's definitely not a terrible idea though.

I think it really depends on what you want out of your game.
How do you want combat to feel: Do you want it to be a grim necessity that should be rare and final? Do you want it to be a good option for players to engage in?
Legends of the Wulin, a high-combat game, has a system where you make a roll for a serious impact /after/ combat (as well as those that occur in combat) and the resulting conditions can include things like infection, disabled limbs, or even respect for your opponent. It certainly makes people think about staying in combat too long and not de-escalating before things get really bad. That said, the setting is not one where you tend to fight until one side is dead!

Here's the thing: increasing the probability of character death tends to make players LESS invested in their characters, not more. I'm not going to put a lot of work into playing a fleshed out, rounded player character if they could get fridged at any time with no possibility of revival, nor am I going to take tactics seriously if bad luck or an honest mistake could be just as culpable in my character's death as a lack of care on my part.

I think it's a balancing act, like anything else. Too little danger, and the story has no teeth. Too much, and the players won't bother getting invested, and thus it still has no teeth due to players having nothing to lose.

I guess I should have clarified, I was trying to type with my daughter trying to go down for a nap.

So the whole wizard thing.

My thought behind it was, early wizards, or wizards not specialized in attacking or evocation or whatever spells would need more combats because that's not their focus.

I kinda see it like this in my mind.

Warrior needs 5 combats
Thief needs 5 "thievings"

However a Thief can substitute 2 combats or other events that he participates in successfully to count to the class progression. Where it encourages the different classes to tackle the thing that their class is known for. So many different games I've played where 1 or 2 characters where built to cover 4+ roles efficiently and everyone else was second rate or just extra bodies for combat.

I can see the problem about getting specific encounters off however, and it might not be the direction I wish to go in after all.

So, encounter solved (fight, trap, magical puzzle/solution) is 1XP; but Fighters gain +1XP per fight, Thieves get +1XP per trap, Wizards get +1XP per wizard solution to a problem.

It works in theory (and really feels OSR, if you've wanted that you got it), but you, as the GM, will determine how many encounters and what kind of encounters there will be. If you seek balance, this is a bad idea. If your random/encounters will be determined by dice or cards *(And a perfect 33% fight, 33% trap, 33% magic), giving +1XP to the player that used his class to solve it is then a good motivator; otherwise it's kinda unbalanced and it will make fighters seek out fights, trappers traps, and wizards bog down games with "can I magic my way out of this shit?".

I think MouseGuard's progress might be more what you might seek; say a Fighter needs to win 2 fights to level 2; but needs to win 3 and lose 1 fight to level 3; win 4 and lose 2 to level 4, because defeat teaches lessons that victory can't (but hacking this from Mouse Guard won't really work for D&D-like games though; but it can be a weird lesson, such as getting full (or at least 50%) XP for being defeated).

IMO (and I might be retarded), the way to make everyone not step on each other's toes is to make sure players make non-overlapping classes, so if your Wizard's the wizard guy, the Rogue can't take Decipher Script and Use Magic Device (though these are great choices especially in D&D where magic is so powerful and uncorrupting), and if you have a Fighter, the Wiz can't summon any creature (unless it's utility, like wind elementals carrying characters over gaps). You have a Rogue? Nobody can take any spell to open doors unless they're magically locked. You have a Cleric? No one can get potions of cure disease easily anymore. Giving every option to every character (and expecting balance) is going to be hard; but restricting options depending on party composition is a tad easier (though a draconic).

At some point it should have become a jailable offence to have a Noun+Verb magic system.

Entirely depends on the system weight. In a heavy system, is usually a big no-no, but in a light system, who gives a shit?

People who appreciate diversity? Only PbtA has done more damage to amateur game design than Ars Magica.

Please. An expansive spell list can be longer than the rules of a light game. My entire game is what, 16 pages long, which is less than what many games have for their spell lists alone.

I admit that noun+verb is extremely abusable due to its vague nature, but making a magic system not reliant on prewritten spells is usually pretty difficult. Difficult, but definitely possible.

I'm doing a skirmish level wargame/card game hybrid thing, the mechanics are done, now I'm at the character design phase. My question is this: do I go for generic characters (The Knight, The Rogue) and allow players to fill in the blanks, or do I go full DotA/LoL and create characters with names/personalities ect (Helric The Knight, Blackscythe - Master Thief). I prefer the former, but the latter opens up more creative options.

For a game where combat isn't the main focus of play, would static damage after a hit be better to speed combats along?

Hey guys, I was briefly in the last thread talking about my class setup, and was hoping I could get opinions on some more things. Rather, Ideas might be more accurate.

I'm trying to decide what makes each class special. I'm thinking of a general, relatively unified system, where each class has Active, Passive, and Utility abilities. One thing i'm pushing for is squad abilities, things that help and benefit the other players as integral. I've been playing a lot of XCOM lately, and am thinking of using it's basic level-up system as a basis for my own, where each class has their own things they do, and as they level up they get new abilities and capabilities that compliment that. As I type it I realize that's actually pretty standard sounding, but talking about it helps.

I also want to do a kind of D&D style thing, where each class also has some power that has its own points and whatnot. Say, the Gunslinger class having whats called Gun Kata: "You have X Kata points, and can use these to create trickshots, special attacks. Each Kata point is spent on a modifier to the attack, and you regenerate Kata by doing Y. "

And with that, every class having something similar, a "system with its own points that let you do something special."

Any thoughts, either with this or something completely different and original to think about?

Combine accuracy and damage into a single concept.

I'd go generic. Unless you have a very specific background for the game, or want to emphasize a pick up and play feel for the game, generic seems to appeal a lot more to the tabletop crowd.

I haven't quite been able to parse how your system works, but so far it has made me irrationally angry.

Very.
Even more so.
You also godda define what combat's gonna be and how deadly it is.

This is a good idea, but instead of Gunkata, Rangerpoints and Fighterbennies you might want to use Mana Points or something more generic and make everyone a caster. Like JRPGs. This is gonna save you headaches later on with different point formatting, and might also save you from having the redundant Fighter using Rapid Arrowing and the Gunslinger using Rapid Shooting (which are the exact same ability but use 2 diff points).

What are the character choices that can create a 300hp wizard?

Dnd 4e conceptually addressed this with healing surges. Whether or not their math is what you want it to be, I think the idea is still applicable.

The premise is heroes might have 25 health, but they have 4 healing surges that can bring them back to full health. Throughout an adventuring day, they could potentially have 100 total health. However, if they ever take 26 damage without spending a healing surge, they're out of the fight.

What you should get is fast, simple, and dangerous combat. Player's can mostly control their own destiny through surge usage, but they're always a few missteps from disaster. It also allows a lot of customization, as you can modify things like expected player health, amount healed per surge, total amount of surges, and refresh rate of surges to name a few. Because surges are a resource, its possible to run out. That makes management an important game play decision, especially if you can spend your surges on multiple things. High healing and infrequent regeneration discourages taking unnecessary damage else you put yourself at risk of either the KO or wasting a precious resource. Its one thing for a surge to heal 5hp and return every day, but an entirely different thing if it heals 20hp and returns after a week. Its just numbers game to find the right middle ground between walking sacks of hp and death by stiff breeze.

So you DON'T appreciate diversity after all, only diversity that appeals to you?

Just kidding. Also, I have 4 different projects on at the moment, and I haven't talked about my main game in a while. If you're talking about Fairytale, it's still a prototype and is probably only coming out years from now.

Also, getting irrationally angry from design elements you hear out of context sounds unhealthy, seriously.

What's your problem with it anyway? Forcing roleplaying? Custom dice (not even necessary to play)? The fact that I don't want to actually bother making hundreds of spells? The fact that I want to make a game where killing people is treated with actual weight? The fact that it's a game that obviously caters to an audience different than you?

Wounds need to interact in someway that HP can't. Death checks don't cut it because you could just roll under HP. So unless you're doing death spiral, wounds are just glorified HP. Especially if you can just deal more or less wounds at a time. Hit location wounds are a more focused death spiral and is probably their best iteration because it offers meaningful choices during play. Hit the warrior in the arm to make his attacks weaker, hit the mage in the head to interrupt the spell. There's even the anti-death spiral where you get better the more something is injured which kind of brings a blackjack vibe.

You're absolutely right on all accounts; I use glorified HP, and my weak counterarguments are simplicity and similarity to "hearts" in videogames (though hated on Veeky Forums and among most ttrpg players, there is a very huge video gamer audience for ttrpgs, in fact, every player I ever had).
With that in mind, I make shitty simple games that the average video gamer (or a child, or a drunk) can understand and play quickly by removing any extra steps (such as called shots or roll-for-damage) from combat. Modifiers are also very rare to almost always have players roll dice+stat and +advantage or -disadvantage. Cancerous, but simple.

I do love higher roleplaying and more complex systems that I've never ran, and most likely never will due to never finding players or how impossible it is to make someone read a rulebook.

This is what I was thinking when reading your op.
Something you could add to the idea is having daily or per session maximums for xp.

Let's go with the idea that performing a generic action is 2xp, playing your class's unique role is 3xp, and doing someone else's job is 1xp. One way to go about it is having only the highest instance count. If you ever performed your unique role, you'll get 3xp and no more. Players who don't fulfill their functions will get left behind while staying on track is relatively simple. You can expand that to perhaps 5 actions, so now your maximum is 15 xp and you can have more granularity between 5, 10, and 15xp per session.

You can also apply that to character building. Each class will have its unique functions that grant 3xp. On top of that, you can have specializations that either enhance the current class's focus or grant new things the same high status. So Thief for example. Sneaking, Lockpicking, and Trapfinding are Thief things that all grant 3xp. There could be (at least) two Thief specializations: Thug and Trickster. Thieves don't usually focus on combat, but the Thug allows thieves making a Sneak Attack to earn 3xp instead of the neutral 2xp. Conversely Trickster might allow the Thief to cast spells in exchange for lowering combat from 2 to 1. Casting spells is normally someone else's job, but the party might not have a mage (or might actually want two), and so the Trickster can cast spells for 2 or 3xp depending on how you want to handle that. Because of the maximum limits explained above, there isn't much gaming of the system. You'll just have to adjust the numbers for whatever you feel is appropriate action per player for each session.

Don't get me wrong, I describe my games almost exclusively by relation to or inspiration from vidya, but hearts in Zelda are HP. 20 hearts for 20 hp (or 80 because of quarters). Wounds in vidya would be something like Fallout which does locational damage like I mentioned. Get hit in the arm and your arm related things get worse without affecting your legs.

I just see the exact same thing everytime someone talks about HP. Its like another Veeky Forums meme where when someone asks about DnD, you can bet someone will say "Have you tried not playing dnd?"

If you want to mix things up without making things complicated, you can make a climbing wound threshold, and injury rolls that must beat it (or be a complete sadist like me and make every roll need to beat it).

Seriously. Having a some kind of random element in the health system makes fighting... Actually dangerous. I dislike regular HP because it has no tension unless you're at low HP. Climbing wounds keep the tension omnipresent, and makes the players play smarter.

But it should not instantly incapacitate them, they should make a conscious choice to either get incapped or gain an injury.

>tfw that wasn't even the same user

Is there any system that uses a d20, and skill mods are dictated by increasing die size rolls?

IE: I have a rogue who's good at stealthing, and he gets to roll a d20 + d12 for his stealth roll.

Whereas the fighter is okay at it, and rolls d20 + d6. The wizard however sucks at it, so only gets to roll the d20.

Other mods with a flat value may still come into play, or a certain competency / proficiency dice pool they can add to anything.

In that case, disregard my first jest.

D&D 5e DMG, page 263: Proficiency dice & Ability check proficiencies.

Does using the dice like that negate the inane 1 is a failure idea?

During combat, rolling 1 on d20 is still autofail, and nat 20 is still a crit.

Crit and autofail rules do not exist outside of combat.

Protip: Fumble never existed as a core rule. It's only ever been a house rule and yet you can see how impactful it's been.

Since critical successes are a thing, the polar opposite makes sense to include.

I'm suddenly interested in reviving this mechanic, I've been running a Ryuutama campaign for a while now and it suffers from the same problem as other mana magic systems of casting spells being too easy and free.

Instead of Earth/Water/Air/Fire/negative/positive mana I'm thinking Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter to fit in with the existing theme.

i have to disagree with the others. i challenge you to go to youtube and look into a number of combats and study what takes how much time. also, if you have to calculate damage instead, it'll be even slower.

>Now I'm thinking of ways to keep combat fun and a game well paced while not trivializing war and hospitalization from injury.
the actual challenge is a different one: if you increase lethality, you generally decrease player investment into their character. nobody will write an extensive character background for a high lethality game.

it is a main staple outside of D&D; a widespread tool in the RPG world.

generix plus named characters for hybrids/multi-classers

Hey, that seems like a pretty good idea. My setting is scifi cybverpunk so mana wont work, but thats just a matter of wording.

I actually do like the idea of having a generic kind of point system, and each class can use their points differently.

>I actually do like the idea of having a generic kind of point system, and each class can use their points differently.
40K Roleplay handles it somewhat like that with different classes being able to spend XP on class-specific skills and talents, grouped per rank (level).

How do I make an incredibly simple game for roleplaying that doesn't stifle anybodies creativity but at the same time doesn't allow for freeform fighting where no one wins and it just devolves into arguments until everyone rage quits?

*points you at Lasers and Feelings and it's derivatives*

It's memetic because it works.

Criticals hits sure, but not on other d20 rolls like skill checks. Those were also house rules.

How much of that is because of dnd? No doubt there are older games that have used critical successes and failures for various things and ways, but there are a lot of games, even just in /gdg/, that will just have those thrown in because.

i don't think D&D is generally a paragon system outside of the d20 world. it's kinda it's own thing.
i would guess that, for example, rolemaster has been more influential than D&D regarding criticals. (although D&D has influenced rolemaster by extension.)

critical success/failure are a main staple because they raise the stakes. they're here to stay.

So i'm still working out the exact workings of my classes regardless of abilities, and trying to figure what each class revolves around. Want opinions on a certain idea.

One of my advanced classes is the Panzer, or the Tank. My idea for this class is that it's the big guy, dealing and taking damage in stride. But to make him special, I had one idea totally not inspired by XCOM: Mech trooper. My setting has several types of power armor, mecha, and other such vehicles players can pilot. I have a couple options:
Either I treat mecha and power armor as a special kind of vehicle that any character can learn to pilot. This leads to the Panzer having special abilities for it. Or, I can have Power armor and mecha be near exclusive to the Panzer.

One other idea I just had is for there to be several types of power armor and mechs, and only X class can use Y armor. IE, the fast melee class can use the fast mech while the Panzer uses the heavy one. Just a random though.

I think it's mostly having every face entirely different, and using them as an abstract that doesn't fit well. And I suppose irrationally angry was a bit over the top. Feels more like an itch.

Critical systems in other games don't work exactly the same as dnd or it's memes, so comparisons are difficult. I'm not saying dnd invented criticals, but I'm sure you can see where a game took their inspiration from. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of mechanics point back to dnd, either as positive inspiration or negative inspiration (I don't like this thing so I'm going to do the opposite).

all D&D crit memes i have seen so far were based on the GM acting like a drunken 15 year old retard. or the players expecting him to be one.

"Doesn't fit" is a subjective measure. To me, the system feels extremely natural, honestly. Not as thematically engaging as my other ones, but those are hard to beat, honestly.

But that's personal bias anyway.

"D&D criticals"? Critical hit = extra damage is hardly owned by D&D. The poorly homebrewed memes is all there is there. If D&D weren't the most popular the memes would lie elsewhere.

What can I say, it's hard for me to explicitly state how things calculate weird at the back of my mind. I'm sure my opinion could be swayed by a complete description of your system, as I'm mostly just imagining things at this point.

Well, I am expertly bad at explaining my mechanics, because they happen to interweave insanely much, meaning explaining one without the other is very difficult.

Other people are better at explaining my mechanics than I am. So I usually need some kind of a translator between me and the players. Thankfully my best friend is quite capable of deciphering my speech.

If you want to see the hard numbers, there's this anydice thingy I made:

anydice.com/program/d1c3

1 or more is a straight-up success, 0 is a failure, and -1 is success initiated by using Darkness. In the last table, Darkness is initiated every time, but the -1 is when no eligible numbers are got.

As I pointed out before, the game doesn't revolve around the success/failure dichotomy as much as most games do. During combat, however, the multiple successes do have an edge. Especially if you are ruthless and use Darkness to beat your opponents.

It's nowhere near as... Intuitive as Misfortune or god forbid, ReBuild, but the mechanic and the idea of character traits changing the symbols of the roll (which does extend beyond the anydice script, due to common symbol mechanic) is pretty cool in my perspective.

Hmm alright, I get it a little better now. Multiple successes aren't expected or necessary, and all the other results don't actually mean anything for that particular roll. Not totally proficient in anydice's language so I'm not sure what else is going on there.

How many dice are you rolling for one check, typically?

The amount you roll is simply the attribute you have. So, in that anydice script, from success/failure perspective, it has all the possible combinations.

Attributes are 1-5, and I'm thinking of making the character creation have a flat line of 1,2,3,4 that you divide to your four attributes. Raising attributes isn't going to be made easy (when going for maximum level or such, you get to raise an attribute two or three times max).

So, 2-4d is probably the most common rolling you're going to make. 5d (and more?!) is for higher-spec characters and 1d is for situations when you suck.

The chance base of the game being very skewed against the player in a way (even with 5d and trait, you still only have 90% chance of succeeding) is to make taking Darkness a meaningful decision (Succeeding with Darkness is 97%), and also bring in home that sometimes, you are just not going to win.

Also, villains rarely actually kill player characters, just as characters should rarely murder villains. The game is mostly about the moral gray area between doing the right thing and succeeding.

What does using darkness do exactly?

Darkness is connected to Valor, its opposite.

When Valor is the common symbol, you roleplay the effects of the common symbol other than Darkness or do a good deed, you gain Valor.

When you use Darkness to succeed in a roll OR Darkness is the common symbol, you are given a choice: either you act in a mean-spirited, cruel, ruthless or otherwise negative way (often losing Valor because of it), or you gain a point of Darkness as you let it well inside you (I'm still on the fence whether I should do this only for when Darkness is used, not when it's the common symbol).

I'm also thinking of making the progress to each point of Darkness and Valor into a slow one, where you need to get 4-5 strikes to get 1 Valor or Darkness, but that's not here or there.

So what do they matter when you play?

Depends on the combat system I end up on, but one of my current drafts has a token-based system without rolling, where you roll your token pool for each round, and the combat itself is handled with wagering tokens. You would gain Valor and Darkness tokens equal to how much you have of each, and they can be used for wagering.

But when combat ends, usually to first proper blood, meaning when an opponent is wounded and incapacitated, you roll for Darkness. You roll dice equal to your Darkness, and if you get more Darkness symbols than you have Valor, your character Eclipses (The symbols are sun and moon) and MUST do something irrevocably cruel, usually killing the opponent or doing something horrific like mutilation.

Eclipsing causes your character to gain semi-permanent Darkness (name pending, maybe Depravity) which is really hard to get rid of.

There's also States (like Hate or Obsession) that can turn specific symbols to Darkness.

For a game called Fairytale, it goes the whole way. It starts fun and happy like modern fairytales, but the longer you go, the more it treads into the old school style of borderline horror.

I've got a small math problem that I just can't focus on.

Spells are created by adding effects and multiplying the cost of those effects with metamagic. One effect is increasing the damage die which costs 1 MP. One metamagic is increasing the number of dice, 5 dice is x5 MP. Starting with 1MP for any spell, and maximum MP of 30, you can create any combination of multiple dice that equals a max roll of ~60 (5d12, 6d10, 7d8, 10d6, 15d4). Weapons also mostly follow these ranges and I've made some additional adjustments so that both weapons and spells should have an average of 35-37.5 damage.

Here's where the problem comes in. 15d4 is both a lot of d4 and has the highest realistic average damage (37.5 and high dice amounts). I need to get the d4 calculation to 35 average. 14d4 accomplished this and so does 10d4+10 (I used this for weapon rules), however I don't know how to make the MP calculation for either of those fit. Every time I try to solve this problem I get distracted by other unsolved problems that equally need my attention. I'm open to adjusting MP costs and totals, I'm just trying to find the most elegant, simple, and familiar option.

>I'm just trying to find the most elegant, simple, and familiar option.
Who the fuck wants to roll 15d4? Just remove the die type from the spell pool system. I'd stick to nothing but d6, myself.

Writing a homebrew Halloween Highschool Horror one shot campaign. Thoughts on my first version? this pdf is just for character generation. Gonna write up the general rules and starting items list later

Its pretty much a very simplified GURPS

I can do 10d4+10 like weapons have and price the dice themselves the same as d6.

The d4 is important for low level play, as everything scales from very small to large disparity before leveling off towards max ability investment (reason why everything is around 35-37.5 range).

10d6 is exactly, right on the money mean 35. Rolling that many d4 is silly, people don't have that many d4 in general. Hell, I barely have that many at hand and I collect dice.

I have the austistic idea of creating a TCG with nothing but lewd and unlewd waifu art. I wasn't going to give this much thought but just i designed the entire game aside from specific cards. So yeah.

Question 1, I should give up about this being in print at all and just try dulst or something correct?

Question 2, should I just stop because no one will play it?

Any experience in coding? Maybe instead of doing the thing in print, do it in vidya?

I'm thinking of just popping up the rulebook for my LCG and the PDFs for all the cards for all you anons to rip to shreds. Would that be okay?

Not too much no, I was thinking about putting the whole thing on a PDF and releasing it online for funsies I suppose though. I am kinda bad at coding admittedly.

The problem is noone wants to own more than one or two d4. They're like d12's, noone uses them for anything.

d6's are plentiful and are used in games other than your snowflake game, and so it's more likely to get people to play and get into it. If it bothers you, then use d3's for the low-level play.

looks fun but with 16 points only, your players are going to fail a lot. but then again it's supposed to be a horror game, so it's a'ight, i suppose.

sure but personally i am not qualified enough to critique LCGs beyond superficially

Yeah I want it to be very cliche, so you can get characters like the weak nerd, the dumb cheerleader etc.

I guess I didn't mention, but I modified each of the rolls so that they all fall within 35-37.5. Weapons assume 5 attacks and take dual wielding into account (any dX+dX combo). Max Magic is equivalent to 5 attacks, so the numbers will look similar.
Weapons:
5d4+5d4+10
5d6+5d6
5d8+5d4
5d10+10
5d12+5

Magic:
10d4+10
10d6
6d8+8
6d10+4
5d12+5

>d6's are plentiful and are used in games other than your snowflake game
No doubt. I'll probably just leave the 10d4 and let people decide for themselves if they want to roll them all. There's either no or miniscule difference between each of the die sizes, so players can opt for whatever tickles their fancy.

If all the rolls work out similarly, why are you using anything but d6s?

Actually, I can just have d4s start at 3MP, adding 1MP per die step so d12 is 7MP for straightforward and consistent growth. d6 and d12 can have an MP cost reduction to get that final mathematical balance.

Variety, and while the averages are all close together, the consistency of result is not. Smaller dice still have a steeper curve while the higher dice have longer ranges. Also, the scaling in between levels 1 and 20 will affect exactly how much you can "afford". Enough d10s might be slightly out of your reach at level 9, so you might opt for d8s. And if you don't have the bonus damage to d4, then d6 will be better. Since I've decided to include feats (which is where the bonus damage and MP cost reduction will come from, among other non-damage related things which was the true purpose of adding feats), there's also a tradeoff of investing in the damage ranges. The d8s don't require feats to be balanced, so you can use that slot for something else (not combat related, so there's no additional power gained). You get to make the choice between safer and consistent damage, more sporadic damage with higher extremes, or a middle ground that needs less investment to perform. There's also the entirely arbitrary want of using a favorite die size.

sounds like a solid plan, as confirmed by dubs

btw, if you look for additional inspiration, see if you can find the alma mater RPG in the archive

Sweet, thanks

>Its pretty much a very simplified GURPS
Indie rpgs are fucking terrible for this, It's absolutely shocking how little creativity and originality there is compared to other scenes.

>Check out a game
>Several editions all utilizing different systems released in last two decade
>Started d100
>Switched to D20
>Then to 3d6
>Then to dice pools
>Then to Fate
>Now they're getting ready to release another edition that utilizes the Savage World engine
Fucking
Dying

Generics, with namedrops in flavor text.

>all these flavors and you chose The Month

>Variety, and while the averages are all close together, the consistency of result is not.
I don't see varying the shape of a bell curve a good enough reason for anything. A 2d6 vs 1d12 is at least a little interesting because the swing is very different and the average isn't the same. After half a dozen dice you lose any semblance of distinction.

All I see is "excuses to roll the buckets of non-d6 you have for no reason".

For 10d4 and 5d12, the difference between peaks is ~7%. That's decently significant.

I would enjoy this.

As another user mentioned, this would probably find its most success as an online game. With something like Unity you don't even need to know that much coding - you just need time, and to own the copyright (or have the permission of the copyright holder) on the images.

Alternatively, you can try a third-party printer like admagic or thegamecrafter. That would depend on lewdness and their individual responses to lewdness (which I don't know).

Or, you know, just WordPress. Either way post your least lewd mockup here so I can take a gander at it.

Yeah, and their max roll is a 50% difference, so what? Their min roll is a 100% difference. What's your point?