/gdg/ Game Design General

That's a bit vague user, can you electorate with some specifics on how it does that.

>What are the key elements that create depth in your game?

What's depth? Complexity, characters leveling up, modifiers? Different actions that a character can do in combat? Half-swording as a viable option? More options for character building, careers or NPC interaction? Explain depth.

Gimme that same thing you said but make it so a 90IQ fuck understands it.

Thanks, that was a great read. Here are some ways I try to mitigate the problem:

>GM chooses the path to roll, with an emphasis on being adamant about this in the GM chapter
>emphasis on teamwork in the player chapter makes a point of letting someone else have the spotlight instead of trying to cram your best path into every situation
>most importantly, non-binary resolution leads to consequences, and sometimes your Force 4 is going to have a hell of a lot worse consequences than your Insight 2 regardless of whether you succeed or fail

I see what you mean about Insight, too. I'll try to rewrite it once I've had my coffee.

you need to delineate cunning from calculated, rational, logical better.

Pretentious, bitter, and furry.

Fitting.

I know this is silly issue, but can someone please help me?

How do you guys deal with the fact that pretty much everything has been done and tried by someone at this point in game development? All mechanics and everything that come to my head... I always end up realising that someone else has done it before? I'd just like to think of something actually original for once. It makes me depressed.

>Explain depth.
this

>How do you guys deal with the fact that pretty much everything has been done and tried by someone at this point in game development?
by finding something that hasn't been done yet. which is where i am going.

>I'd just like to think of something actually original for once.
why? so that you can be recognized for having had an original idea?

>why? so that you can be recognized for having had an original idea?
I don't look for recognition. You've never had the feeling of being first to do something? It feels really good.

>How do you guys deal with the fact that pretty much everything has been done and tried by someone at this point in game development?
Realize that this is just a inconsequential truism that sounds profound but doesn't mean anything. There has been a finite amount of people working for a finite time. Everything can't have been done before.

How so? It seems pretty clear to me, so I don't know how to improve it.

Cunning is "having or showing skill in achieving one's ends by deceit or evasion", which is pretty explicitly different from merely thinking something through logically or rationally.

Don't worry about being unique or original. Worry about making a fun and fulfilling design.

>You've never had the feeling of being first to do something?
yes but it's not a good basis for being an innovative designer. being at unease with current games seems more solid.

the proof is in the pudding

>merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cunning
>1 :dexterous or crafty in the use of special resources (such as skill or knowledge) or in attaining an end
>2 :displaying keen insight
>3 :characterized by wiliness and trickery
>4 :prettily appealing :cute
both seem to be intelligence-related

What's a good general term for the following four discrete stats:

>self-perception
>external, societal perception
>wealth, money and other resources
>endurance, perseverance, durability

I was thinking something along the lines of ranks, grades, measures or similar (i.e. "These are your four grades."), but none of those really roll off the tongue.

I've been analyzing game design from video games and tabletop games in articles for many years, researching talks from game designers in things like GDC and especially postmortems. When you listen to game designers explain their rationale enough times you start to realize the underlying crutches and shortcuts that system designers use to escape having to create a deep system. In video games the logic is obvious: it costs tons of money (or a singular genius) to program big rich systems. But in tabletop games? There's no coding to worry about, players interpret rules automatically and adjudicate their implementation. There's literally nothing easier in the game design world than making an RPG system.

If you want something more specific, think about the tools given by the Dungeon Master's Guide to help DMs create their worlds and settings. Completely shit, right? Almost nonexistent. Where are the tools to generate logical societies, topography, climates, pathways, etc? They don't exist because the creators have no fucking clue what they're doing and don't actually understand the way reality works. If you want to create depth, you need to create tools for DM's that help them understand economics, geography, political structures and the trends of civilizations. Read "Tragedy & Hope" by Carroll Quigley, or "Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu" by Maurice Joly for good material on those subjects. We live in the internet age, it's easier than ever to learn.

I've come up with many original system ideas and mechanics, largely out of necessity. The key question is whether you should be making a game at all. Do you have the ambition and focus to identity what your system is trying to accomplish, and then break it down into steps to get there? I've been working on my system since 2006 or so, imagining it as a hypothetical MMORPG at first, but then realizing that it would work way better as a tabletop RPG.

Make it setting specific.

If it's a high school harem anime ttrpg, "grades" sounds perfect.

If it's a realistic military ttrpg, "ranks" is better.

Lean into your genre.

>What are the key elements that create depth in your game?

Fundamentally, it's that no one can be good at everything. The better you are at one thing, the worse you are at another.

There are a million ways to hack that system to be amazing at 1 or 2 things without autofailing others, but doing so costs resources that could otherwise be spent filling out a concept.

Basically, "I want to be the best sniper I can be" is just as good a character design plan than "I want to be a stoner wizard that really knows his fucking plants."

What do you guys use for graphs, charts or other graphics in your text? I'd like to include a grid showing all the possible die results in my game but don't know what to make it with.

>There's no coding to worry about, players interpret rules automatically and adjudicate their implementation. There's literally nothing easier in the game design world than making an RPG system.
t. never dabbled in TTRPG design nor has ever learned to program
the "rules" part of vidya is generally really simple, comparatively low in cost, and the stuff that gets the least attention. they don't care about innovating in that area and there's little about vidya RPG design that has informed TTRPG rules design.

>Where are the tools to generate logical societies, topography, climates, pathways, etc? They don't exist because the creators have no fucking clue what they're doing and don't actually understand the way reality works.
that doesn't make for good nor for interesting settings. westeros is in a number of ways quite unrealistic (change of seasons is retarded, for example) but it's a very good setting in spite of. the genre is called fantasy which means you can dispose of some rules on which reality operates. plus, if the consumer doesn't perceive something as unrealistic, you don't need to bother.

>How do you guys deal with the fact that pretty much everything has been done and tried by someone at this point in game development?
Don't give a fuck about it. Copying's a form of flattery.

>All mechanics and everything that come to my head... I always end up realising that someone else has done it before?
This is good, means that it's a real problem people have tackled and solved before, and you can see how they've done it and solve it in a similar manner.
Have you ever tried to build something from scratch, in industry? Shit's horrible, you need to test concepts and prototypes innumerable times before something sticks to the wall. Better to copy and tweak what's done before than to pioneer something completely new that could be a wasted investment.

>I'd just like to think of something actually original for once. It makes me depressed.
Original doesn't mean functional or workable.

What matters more is how you mix and match your shit up.

You're right on DMG not equipping DMs fully; in a way, a 2000 page book couldn't equip them, but the 400 page one does a bang up job. Cost to benefit to sale ratio; though I don't think a DMG was ever marketed as "learn how to build complex geopolitical settings", but as "here's how to run a regular dungeon game, and some extra tools for behind the curtain mechanics like NPC generation and travel, have fun". Technically, you can run D&D with only the PHB (and maybe the monster manual). Your standards for depth are pretty high, not wrong, but high.

How do you breath with your head so far up your own ass?

Considering mixing and matching, my shit's basically 3d6 D&D with power words for abilities; been done before by many and done successfully (and I don't coddle myself, my system's shit, but it works), but I like my shit better because I'm the only one who's done it this way.
Character generation takes 10-15 minutes, or under 3 if you really know your shit. Races and classes have no ingame benefits and are flavor text; rarely conferring an appropriate bonus, such as "Thieves" getting + to steal.
Spells and abilities being one and the same, an alchemist's fire ability is mechanically equal to the wizard's fireball spell, though rolling a different stat.
Combat's lightning fast, as far as D&D-like combat goes because monsters/NPCs don't roll but are considered to take 10 on their every attack, initiative and AC/resits. Wounds instead of HP. WFRP crits and deaths. GM-less option where one person at the table GMs one encounter, the next person GMs the next encounter, in a megadungeon generated by a deck of cards, and we use this when I'm too tired to GM or don't have enough prepwork done.
Swords, Axes, Spears, Halberds, Bows, Crossbows, Guns, Crosses and Wands; all work. D&D-like magical items with no +N to hit and damage, but Fiery, Vorpal, and other enchantments.

It's shit but it works for me and my table; we're axeheads that play paper Diablo more or less. Most people wouldn't find it fun, and that's okay; but it's in almost no way original but a mish-mash of existing stuff.

The first D&D was a remix of a tactical wargame where miniatures clash; the great idea was that you control only one mini and that one mini levels up with time/can change equipment/spells/etc, D&D didn't get conjured up out of a vacuum. Don't be afraid to steal.

We don't even know what those standards for depth even are. All too often someone complains about an impossible standard without even saying what the threshold is. Obviously if all you have to say is "not good enough" you can endlessly complain about how terrible and horrible everything is and improve nothing.

Whoah. Are you me?
>offers feedback I would offer: understand the world to build a world
>been working on game since 2006
>drawing elements from vidya and ttrpg
>designed many original mechanics out of necessity

Y-yeah... I think you're me. So how's time travel working out for us?

But seriously, I'm piqued to hear about some of your original mechanics. If you're at all interested I might share my influence-network social combat design.

Lately I've been floundering to create a cleric archetype that's both satisfying to play and actually looks and feels like a genuine clergyman, but still allows for fantasy elements like demon summoning and faith healing without deconstructing the concepts of "faith and belief". yet ideally doesn't look to the GM for divine intervention either, since worshipping the GM is just kinda shitty. Any ideas?

What's your favorite mechanic you've designed? Favorite you've harvested?

A lot of my systems have a lot of pieces that you combine into workable parts, but limited amounts of parts that you can have at a time. You have a high degree of customization, but you'll need to work towards creating a synergy not only with your own available options, but with other players also.

Bump.

>the "rules" part of vidya is generally really simple, comparatively low in cost, and the stuff that gets the least attention. they don't care about innovating in that area and there's little about vidya RPG design that has informed TTRPG rules design.
Why is "rules" in quotes? Do you not even comprehend what a system is?

If you want to create a world where plants grow, tides change, day and night affects everything, seasons happen, and the whole earth can be terraformed, it's simple to implement in a computer RPG?

>that doesn't make for good nor for interesting settings.
No, but it makes for a robust world that has internal logic and consistency. A setting that can withstand a level of scrutiny, which in turn allows players to push and pull on parts of it. And if you knew anything about what I was actually talking about, you would wish for the kinds of tools I'm referring to because they actually make building settings many times easier and faster than doing it the old fashioned clueless improvised way.

>Your standards for depth are pretty high, not wrong, but high.
I don't think so. I know how lazy and incompetent Gary Gygax and his imitators were (extremely) and I think it's outrageous that nobody has build a good system for this yet.

Traveler has world generation systems that are interesting, but they're extremely shallow by design. Planets meant to be visited for a few hours and abandoned, like some ancient Star Trek episode. Imagine something like that except full and dynamic.

>How do you breath with your head so far up your own ass?
Sheer innovation, as you'd expect.

>But seriously, I'm piqued to hear about some of your original mechanics. If you're at all interested I might share my influence-network social combat design.
I don't plan on sharing my mechanics or system details until I can create a decent presentation for them, since they defy conventional logic in several ways and need to be presented holistically.

>No, but it makes for a robust world that has internal logic and consistency.
only a certain degree of that is required. beyond that it becomes autistic and nobody cares.

>I think it's outrageous that nobody has build a good system for this yet.
because people don't care.

>I don't think so. I know how lazy and incompetent Gary Gygax and his imitators were (extremely) and I think it's outrageous that nobody has build a good system for this yet.
you realize that there are scores that have built more realistic and consistent versions of D&D? this class of games has generally become known as fantasy heartbreakers.

>>How do you breath with your head so far up your own ass?
>Sheer innovation, as you'd expect.
yep, straight out of the fantasy heartbreaker's playbook. i'm sorry, man, but you should have done more research.

>Lately I've been floundering to create a cleric archetype that's both satisfying to play and actually looks and feels like a genuine clergyman, but still allows for fantasy elements like demon summoning and faith healing without deconstructing the concepts of "faith and belief" yet ideally doesn't look to the GM for divine intervention either, since worshipping the GM is just kinda shitty. Any ideas?

I don't use class character structure in a traditional way so I can avoid this problem for the most part. But I think the key parts of what you said are the questions: 1) "what makes a cleric satisfying?" and 2) "what is a genuine clergyman?" If you're designing classes instead of systems, this sounds tough. The priorities of a real clergyman are so vastly different than any adventuring party would typically be.

>What's your favorite mechanic you've designed? Favorite you've harvested?
My favorite original mechanic is the dice resolution system, which took me almost 10 years to reinvent, refine, and forge into something that accomplishes everything I wanted while simultaneously making the game easier and faster than anything I've seen before.

Rather than harvesting mechanics I like, I tend to harvest systems for everything I DISLIKE and then deconstruct why it bothers me. I then reverse-engineer those complaints to create a priority list for myself, which fuels my brainstorming. I'd say that the formatting for handbooks is the biggest thing I try to harvest from, with different ideas totally changing my outlook, although that's more about opening my mind to possibilities than directly borrowing.

>only a certain degree of that is required. beyond that it becomes autistic and nobody cares.
Correct, I've seen how people on Veeky Forums try to imagine "deep" worlds or systems for generating them, and it is usually autistic. But again, if you understood what I meant you would see that people don't have to obsess over or even care about the tools I'm talking about in order for them to be useful and important.

>because people don't care.
Nobody cares about anything they can't comprehend.

>you realize that there are scores that have built more realistic and consistent versions of D&D? this class of games has generally become known as fantasy heartbreakers.
I'm not making a version of D&D at all, that would be a complete waste of time. My game system doesn't derive from any other system in existence. It is a whole cloth creation. And yes I'm not new to Veeky Forums actually, usually I'm here shitposting with the rest of you, so I know that dumb people with no imaginations tend to polish turds instead of being original.

The funny part is, you'd like my system if you knew what it was because I know where you're coming from and normally you'd be right.

>The funny part is, you'd like my system if you knew what it was
interesting. let's put that claim to a simple test: where does your game fall within the GNS triangle?

>because I know where you're coming from and normally you'd be right.
where am i coming from?

>Where are the tools to generate logical societies, topography, climates, pathways, etc?
...because that is not what I am coming from. any consisteny in that regard is a nice bonus, nothing more.

>where does your game fall within the GNS triangle?
Is this a trick question? I understand GNS theory but do people really try to label their own games this way? My priority when designing is to balance the needs of all types of players, not to maximize some meme design approach.

>where am i coming from?
opinionated Veeky Forums skeptic

>..because that is not what I am coming from. any consisteny in that regard is a nice bonus, nothing more.
Right, well much like a good dice system, thankfully it's something you don't need to think much about in order for it to be good.

>My priority when designing is to balance the needs of all types of players
my skepticism just doubled. if you cater to everyone, you cater to no one.

>>where am i coming from?
>opinionated Veeky Forums skeptic
what do you expect when you make grandiose claims without anything to back it up? given that, you have been treated mildly here so far. more derision would be actually warranted.
it's put up or shut up.

>Right, well much like a good dice system, thankfully it's something you don't need to think much about in order for it to be good.
i am saying that it's not a critical success factor but alright.

I enjoy bumping the thread together with you friend. I feel bad that I can't share details yet, and I don't expect people to believe me just because I say things. When I do post a PDF eventually I expect it will have a slow burn effect as resistance to new ideas is always really high on Veeky Forums.

>my skepticism just doubled. if you cater to everyone, you cater to no one.
But GNS doesn't accurately capture the priorities of players. There are much better metrics to track. Plus, it ignores the importance of accommodating the GM.

>ahuhuhu my game is so sophisticated and good-perfect but I don't have anything postable so you just need to trust that I'm not just pulling shit out of my ass like the self-righteous faggot I am
>b-but when I do post it once I actually have anything, everyone'll line up to suck my knob like the 200IQ autist I really am, I swear!
Off yourself, kindly.

I can't disagree with your attitude, but maybe you'll be surprised some day.

>But GNS doesn't accurately capture the priorities of players. There are much better metrics to track. Plus, it ignores the importance of accommodating the GM.
completely disagree. also, the GM has his own preferences in GNS terms. i know i do.

he is right in that your bragging isn't worthwhile.

well at least I contributed to the thread topic.

Here's a question for you lads: what system elements from other games have annoyed you to the point of reinventing them for your own game?

Sounds peachy and all. The only thing that sounds a little dumb to me is that monsters take 10 to attack as that makes some irrelevant once your ac gets high enough. Sure the others remain an insane threat as your AC doesnt even matter to them, but it kinda defeats the point.
But you do you, i guess. The rest sounds reasonable. Have fun getting a legendary drop or so.

I mean your S-bent is clearly showing here:
>Where are the tools to generate logical societies, topography, climates, pathways, etc?
that's neither gamist, nor narrativist talk

I started off with Excel, personally. It looks really clean and nice when put to paper for a draft and is pretty easy to add into your graphic design layout later on.

Would you folks mind giving me feedback on art? The setting first started with humans are slaves to a race that doesn't exist anymore so there is supposed to be a utilitarian aesthetic to the clothing and armor. It's backwards to how we developed, they started with a cut and clean style and moved in a more culturally defined direction as time went on.

Well there isn't tehnically D&D-like AC, so every monster's attack has a chance to hit I just used "take 10" as the most approximate thing that matches what happens; though whenever a PC is attacked, the monster has a good chance to inflict wounds unlike D&D... But yeah, it's ugly, it's primitive, but it's fast and it works AFAIK.

It also used to be a thing back in my D&D homebrews where I had the idea that only the PCs do all the rolling; they roll their AC, their Spell DC versus the monster's regular "take 10", they roll the attacks, etc. It works as long as D&D works, and that's up to around level 6-8.

Concerning the thread, I'm kinda sad that the D&D homebrewers are quite rarer these days; it might be easy and quick to homebrew for (and sadly, often wrong, contrary to the rest of D&D's rules and makeup), but I like seeing new people's ideas. There's much more elitism around here lately (starting about 6 months ago).

Also what was your first real attempt to homebrew something? (and I mean a game, not content within an already existing system)
I tried to make a d20 Castle Crashers inspired game that crashed and burned but got pretty cool ideas from there that I kinda drag on to my current games I make up.

I'm trying to design a play by post (mainly character/narrative focused) system, so I'm trying to figure a basic mechanic that has minimal back and forth between player and gm.

I was thinking that for basic skill checks the player can set the difficulty of the task themselves.
Then they can decide what to do, roll for it, and narrate the outcome in one turn.
This obviously means there needs to be some sort of incentive for the player to set the difficulty higher, perhaps tied into advancement and character growth?

Do people think this can work?

GNS is bullshit.

Not the user you replied to.

I agree, you can't shoehorn every player and their wishes into GNS; I've had loads of social players that are a rather peculiar sort. They come over and just hang out, roll dice, and don't get engaged much. They don't care about leveing up or something, they're just there just enough not to be a bother or burden, but they really value both the game and the time spent among friends. Perplexing, because you can also spent time at a cafe or playing video games, but there's something about ttrpg + friends that attracts these.

That's why ttrpgs are so scary to quantify, because everyone at the table is an individual with his own goals and motivations for being there. You can get some general ideas and statistics, but still, most of everything you do is gonna be really influenced by the human factor.

Oh yeah, Google Drive also has a native program that isn't as good but still very usable for mock-ups and easily transferable via download, good if you don't have Excel and libraries are awesome for that if you need Microsoft stuff so you can work at home and do a quick print.

prove that the 3 creative agendas are bullshit

social players are not a significant factor in game design: they can enjoy systems of all stripes but probably prefer lighter systems.

I'm making a game where you start in a really primitive state and gradually unlock different types of knowledge, like language, abstract thinking, wtc, but I can't think or find any nice model on "types of knowledge".

Any idea on how it should progress / basic types of human knowledge / thinking / idefk how to do this

>The priorities of a real clergyman are so vastly different than any adventuring party would typically be.
Heh, yeah that is a consistent problem.

The best I've done so far is make them political agents using my influence system. Through this they gain influence over the peasant masses or the ear of kings depending on their efforts. Powerful enough, and they can proxy control an empire, like the Pope or the Sparrow.

I was then going to layer a divine casting system on that based on their influence. The idea being the more powerful they have personally made the church, the more miraculous powers their deity has bestowed upon them.

Unfortunately I'm still stuck trying to figure out what makes them better/distinct than shitty politi-mages.

I understand the temptation to go classless. It's more organic and natural from a player perspective. I'm held back by the fact that its far more exploitable and impossible to balance for- unable to quantify a characters strength. At any rate I'd consider my system pseudo-classless anyway. Purchasable abilities, but all of them are arranged in strict prerequisite trees and different trees require different purchasing currencies.

As for mechanics- are you the ORE guy?

Bump

Shat up something in about 4 hours, it's kinda OSR-ish (but not really) 1d6 system that I wanna use for my high-school buds that never played rpgs (not even PC games or anything).

Gonna watch Conan first, then run a Conan-esque game.

critique, insults, I'll take anything
If you like any idea, steal it.

Anyone know of some games that revolve around details/aspects/facts/etc? All I can think of are FATE and The Indie Hack.

My game is similar but I'm having a really hard time describing it. I especially struggle with drawing the line on describing things that are too obvious (i.e., do I really need to say that not every possible fact about a situation needs to be written down?).

GNS is bullshit because its meaningless. Its meaningless because the only meaning it has is what you invest in it.

It also killed the forge, but that may have been a good thing still.

Civilization series games. Their technology, economy, and religion trees (and probably more) are right up your alley.

>It also killed the forge
Can you explain this a little? Also curious what happened to that place.

Can we talk about dice?
D20 or D6s? Which is better and why?

how can you prove something like that?

That's not a good question - "which is better" depends entirely on three things:

>how many of these dice will you use?
>how does your system use these dice?
>what does your system hope to accomplish using these dice?

There is no simple "better" option, just like you wouldn't say a hammer is better than screwdriver, or a plane is better than a boat. They're different tools for different jobs.

1D20 + or -
2D6 + or -
It's a tabletop skirmish game

>Hella
Mildly want to punch you in the face

>Conan
Good taste.

>15 points into 5 stats, roll under
50/50 average chance for success is pretty alright, but since +/-1 is pretty huge on a d6, there's a strong incentive to ditch as many stats as possible to roll everyone with your primary.

>stats are hit with stick, anything involving dexterity like noticing traps, not taking damage, being a mage, and diplomacy
Oh look, it's another episode of Str=HitStuff, Dex=Everything, Int=UhhhhMage?, Cha=loldumpstat. Toughness is interesting mechanically, but sounds stupidly necessary. Death rolls are retarded, because there's a really low chance to die outright and a bunch more chances to accumulate obnoxious bullshit.

>Play it safe and play it smart, and have a GM with a rather abundant pool of common sense.
Sounds like a pretentious way of jacking yourself off to how realistic your system and players are supposed to be.

>attacking unarmored with a fast ranged attack weapon from the back row
Combat seems overcomplicated for what it is, and I feel like punching you in the dick for making ranged weapons objectively better than melee weapons in several finicky areas, presumably for the sake of realism. What's the difference between a maul and a longbow? Well, they can both only be used 1/round even if you have bonus actions, deal 2 damage, and force their targets to roll defense twice and take the worse result. Also one can't be parried with Str and can target either row, not just the frontline. Why? Probably because the author's a pretentious simulationist faggot.

>classes
I don't have the will to go any further, but this will probably further the idea that warriors leave Str (well, really Dex) at 0 and chuck everything else except Tough into the garbage, mages leave Int at 0, etc.

1d20 will be swingier with a broader range of possible results, and it is easier to calculate your odds before rolling because each result has an even 5% chance to appear and each +/- is just shifting the range of results in that direction (i.e. 1d20+1 produces a range of 2 to 21).

2d6 will produce a more average result from a narrower range: the middle result (7 in this case) will have a much higher probability than the highest or lowest results (12 and 2 respectively). It will be less predictable because most people can't intuitively do d6 math, especially for multiple dice. Modifiers will shift the probability pyramid in one direction or another in addition to affecting the range of possible results.

I think I'm preferring the D20 at this point

No, but you can read refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/remembering-the-forge/ to learn about its final moments.

Honest, thank you. There was extremely little though and work put into this system. I saw some user at OSRg make the base 1d6 mechanic.

Sorry, didn't write that maximum (minimum?) stat is 1; a quickgen PC has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 array with being extremely great at something and utterly shit at something else, or someone going 100%average 3, 3, 3, 3, 3.

Also, Dex isn't everything, it's traps/reflex/ranged attacks (most importantly, dex isn't initiative or AC), int covers hiding and spotting (regular rogue deals), and faith covers prayer that works (+1 to all rolls for 1 round) and miracles. Int casts and resists spells, Fth casts and resists miracles (which are the same thing).

The only God-stat is Toughness, someone exceptionally tough is gonna be unkillable and I have fucked up; especially with armor that's a flat +1 tough vs. phys damage.

>GM with a rather abundant pool of common sense.
This is my cop-out for "i have no fucking idea what I'm doing make rulings not rules have fun kids".

Oh, about ranged weapons, they attack fewer times when classes get involved with Warriors and Fighters having passive Cleave, especially when dual wield is accounted for, and can't use shields for "hurr instead of me take damage, shield take damage and get broken". I think it's a valid trade-off but I might've fucked up. So ranged shoot less more chance to hit, melee swing more and more possible damage/enemies taken out.

Also, you can't inflict debuffs with ranged attacks only damage unless you're some fancy class like Inquisitor. Debuffs are pretty big because they ignore Armor bonuses, and can inflict a -1 to any roll until cured.
Sorry about the classes they're more like perks, say you're a Warrior Thief Barbarian, you get all three class features (cleave 2 foes, +1HP, roll twice take better result for shooting, ignore trap/1pday, rage - any weapon you use is counted as a big one letting your onehanders make enemies roll twice and take the worse result and +1 HP).

>I know how lazy and incompetent Gary Gygax and his imitators were (extremely) and I think it's outrageous that nobody has build a good system for this yet.
Say what you want about this user here, but i think he's onto something about Gygax. I'm sure Gary was a swell guy, but the way D&D models... basically anything related to combat readily demonstrates how little to no research went into things such as medieval arms and armour.

>being that salty
no, the 3 creative agendas are useful. they have been useful as 3fold model, they are useful as GNS as well

d100

Oh have i fucked up, it's roll over stat to win, not under; say you're strength 3, you need to roll 4 or better to win the contest/obstacle.

About Death Rolls, I had it at 2d6 with more things that can happen but really wanted to condense it to a smaller 1d6 and it's very wonky.

Oh, and how Defending (that which allows Parries with Strength or Dodging with Agility) works is that it's a full round action that leaves your guy just sitting there doing nothing but concentrating on avoiding blows; it's a lot less preferable to attacking which will end the fight faster; some classes such as Knight give every ally +1 to any defensive roll if they defend during the turn (though this is an idiotic idea that I have to revisit because they're basically a bard that isn't allowed to do fun things so the rest of the party gets a +1).

Thanks again for the read.

Mfw I've never seen one of these threads and I've been starving for help building a setting and story
>what creates depth in your setting?
Well so far my setting is a sort of space opera (or at least the skeleton that will become one) and i like to think that once I have my factions, tech, and "magic" settled and coherent, that my characters will be what gives my story depth

>what system elements from other games have annoyed you to the point of reinventing them for your own game?
D&D.
(Also The Dark Eye, likewise in its entirety. if you don't know what TDE is, it's Germany's biggest rpg and it's the most autistic, pedantic, unintuitive, complicated, and generic fantasy drivel game that's ever been published commercially)

>d100
You can do anything with it, but the grannularity is overkill most of the time.
You can use d20 if you want lower granularity or dice combinations to avoid tables and calculations for non-linear distribution

What the fuck is a "passive Cleave?"

Any melee attack the character makes will also target other melee-range adjacent foes.

Doesn't need to kill them like in 3.5 to allow the character to attack the first guy (kill), then the second (kill). Kinda like Whirlwind Attack (strike all foes within melee range), but with a limit on how many you can slash at once.
Action-movie like.

I think you're lucking for /wbg/ just down the hall:
That's the place to talk about fiction, settings, etc. This thread is about game mechanics.

the act of rolling a d100 against percent chance is a joy in itself for some of us, even if they are in 5% increments only.

Sounds like a valiant effort. The influence system sounds similar to what I'm doing myself, except I hadn't intended to integrate it into magic. I'd say that creating some kind of personal inner character system should handle the non-political aspects, challenging the player to align their beliefs with their actions in order to perform their miracles or spells maybe.

I don't know what ORE is, care to explain?

interesting, I'd like to know more about this autism simulator -- esp. why it's popular

>why is it popular
Same reason D&D is popular, really. it's simply been around the longest, and German players love having pottery 3 and all that other boring, barbie-tier detail written down on their character sheets. at least D&D doesn't do that.
it's also widely agreed upon even in the community that the game's rules suck and are the worst mess they could be, but the vets don't let themselves be bothered by that and many of them outright refuse to try out other things.
fixing the game would be impossible without rewriting literally everything, partly due to it lacking unified mechanics and every subsystem (and the subsystem's subsystems) existing basically on their own, tons of allegedly optional rules but the rest of the game is balanced assuming you're using them, heavy integration of game system and backgrounds, poor understanding of probability and dice mechanics... seriously the list is as long as their up to five 400-page core rulebooks combined.

also:
>magic is a separate book
>so is spells the spellbook

I'll have to give credit where due, though: the book containing all the spells is fashioned to look like an actual spellbook which is kinda cool and neat as a product. it's just silly what you have to buy it on top of the magic rules.

ORE is "One Roll Engine" which is some unique dice system a fa/tg/uy made a few years back. If you don't know about it, it presumably isn't your system. At any rate, I wasn't too impressed with ORE.

I avoid alignments like the plague. But religious factions are necessarily motivated by ideological differences- otherwise the "gods" would be in concord and there wouldn't be divine conflict. I'm not sure if gods would even care in my setting if you didn't actually believe in their motivations or philosophy, as long as you were actively promoting it and spreading it. Like a memetic virus, it cares more about spreading than it does if any particular host is symptomatic.

On the one hand, that may feel less like a genuine clergy since real belief doesn't matter. On the other, it allows for corruption and heresy within a church without loss of divine favor- so you can actually get things like the Borgia papacy without there being verifiable proof that the high priest has lost favor with god.

As a corollary, if anybody gained favor for being a true believer, it would be a visible distinction for the pure and the corrupt, and that would make corruption unstable and therefore non-existent.

But there is one reward you can get for being a true believer that wouldn't result in this- judgement in the afterlife. That is where the pure get their reward. The wicked, despite being useful and expanding the church in the mortal realm, are not needed at the deities side since they are no longer useful as a lost soul which has no resonance with their principle.

Then again, I wanted the afterlife to be accessible for high priests via a sort of astral projection. If they're aware of its existence, that would be a considerable motivation to align oneself with your deity's philosophy. Then again, perhaps the gods simply fail to mention that only the pure will be kept at their side. Its never a good idea to surround yourself with sycophants afterall.

But I digress. I've been struggling mechanically.

The influence system (aka Magnate) is completely mundane on its own, and not tied or required to any supernatural element. Works perfectly in a no-magic game.

I also have a magic system that works well enough for mages, though at high level play it becomes very frayed. It is extremely involved. Where clerics are to function off of popularity and influence, mages function off of information, data and details. Explicitly scientific in feel and approach, my world offers little distinction between a mage and a physicist or engineer in a world with more flexible natural laws. Some might understandably prefer a different aesthetic, but that is the one I'm committed to. I feel if it were any other way, you lose the aesthetic of power gained through careful study and intellectual prowess, and really you're just doing shit that makes no sense which if anything has more to do with intuition and ritual than intelligence.

I wanted Clerics to be something different. Functioning off the favor of a divine entity, they would be rewarded for furthering that entities goals- namely, getting people to worship them. So whatever power a cleric has should be tied to their influence. This naturally means they have to play the mundane influence game, and receive their rewards in proportion to their success in that arena.

That part is wholly functional. The question is what rewards do they gain mechanically? It has to be distinct form mages, otherwise why not be a mage?

To try and keep the aesthetic, I catalogued all the miracles I could find and looked for patterns. Broad categories include:
1) Faith Healing
2) Providence: fate, fortune and destiny
3) Biblical Plagues and Catastrophe
4) Goetia: Summoning and Exorcism of Archons
5) Revelation: prophecy and information from a god
6) Transmutation/Transubstantiation
7) Protection from evil spirits/bad luck/witchcraft

Not that those categories are all necessary or complete.

hard to say anything useful without knowing how your system works mechanically. At least the outlines of your system.

Other people chill out a bit.

Originality is overrated. No idea is original. Every single person posting in this thread who thinks they have an original idea are just rehashing ground trod by other people who probably died before they were born.

Focus instead on form and functionality. They're the real avenues of creativity. You might have a novel way of adding two and two to make four, but no one will care unless it means something beyond the raw numbers.

Broad outlines... not sure what would be relevant here. Intensely simulationist- realistic lethality, which encourages real life levels of tactical planning and engagement and, more importantly, aversion to combat and preference towards diplomatic resolution.

Magic has moderate proliferation. Common enough most people have heard of it. Rare enough that generally only aristocracy have access to it.

Considerable attention paid to economics. Anything that can be market optimized has been as part of the setting background. This has severe consequences for magic. In particular, if faith healing is available then I have to make it scarce in some way, or accept a society with post-scarcity healthcare. I've already built a pirate/merchant empire based on teleportation magic and warfare, so sometimes I'll play a consequence straight rather than limit it.

Likewise there's a civics ruleset I use to throw together cities and empires like I would a character sheet- based primarily off of what resources they have, excess food translating into population and therefore urban labor, soldiers, and literati.

Dice are only called for in a contest of wills- when somebody is actively opposing you. Man v Nature only gets a die roll in the event of a saving throw. There are no skill rolls. I use exploding d20's, but a 20 alone does not guarantee anything.

Contests which do not involve another NPC or PC simply use a static target vs (relevant core ability)*(investment in relevant overly broad skill category). Similar to WoD but no dice pool.

As mentioned before, psuedo-classless.
Core abilities form prerequisite barrier to entry into most trees.

I include aesthetic considerations since I want the mechanics to fit the setting.

What else is missing that might be relevant here?

Alright well, isn't there an obvious route of giving a character a prophetic vision, which then establishes a divine will, which then creates a basis for empowering spells and giving mechanical bonuses or abilities?

Your broad outline is giving me the "are you me" vibe as well.

That's true, and to some extent already considered. The only way for atheism to work in this setting is if mages can explain divinity away as a sort of spellcasting that utilizes the subconscious knowledge of the believers the cleric sways. Kinda like getting sleepers in Wod Mage to cast for you, except you're delusional and confused about how it works.

But taken directly, this just makes Clerics turbo-mages, since they don't have the primary prerequisite hurdle I give to mages- data, measurement, and parameters.

I could limit it so that they only can cast in accord with the god's will, but then it goes back to "god is the GM" and that's kinda shitty. In accord with the ideology or dogma is sufficiently vague as to default to "GM's will".

Got an email? Discord? We should probably swap notes. What is the time traveler password?

I should add that atheism is important only in as much as if it isn't a possibility, having faith doesn't mean much. There has to be room for doubt for the word faith to even make sense. And faith seems like a core element to the cleric archetype to me.

Thanks, that was a great read.

the author has demonstrated a fatal flaw in his understanding of the 3 creative agendas. in particular, he struggles with the concept of priority of a given agenda. a game can support all 3 agendas without being incoherent. coherency is merely a matter of giving priority to one agenda in case of clashes.i consider D&D pretty much coherent, for example, since it always gives priority to the gamist agenda when in doubt.

I'll be Pullman on the #dev channel of Veeky Forums

...

We moved some shit over to discord. I don't want this to die either, somebody complain about something

Sup/gdg/, I've drafted a magic system (intended as a variant to be applied to 1e or 2e AD&D) designed to bridge the gap between classic Vancian casting and MP/SP. Tell me what stands out.

All casting classes get a spell die, which works exactly like a hit die, and is modified by your casting stay rather than CON. Spells are prepared normally, but to cast a prepared spell, in addition to the prepared spell charge, you must expend SP equal to the level of the spell. Cantrips also cast 1SP each, but are still less costly because they do not need to be prepared.

(cont'd)