/gdg/ Game Design General

To get used to the structure, my first advice: Don't start with a behemoth opus.

Try making a L&F style game, one-sheeter in general or a pamphlet game. Instead of relying on the shortness of it all, just try to make the layout as clear as possible. Make it so that a person can read the entire thing and understand the mechanics as they're explained. If you don't have an idea for one, just condense your own game like that.

It's a useful practice task, and you will end the endeavor with a playable little game in your hands.

This practice helps you with layout, explaining visually, page restrictions, conciseness in general, and helps you realize what is the core of your games.

I will admit that I am someone who loves one-sheeters and pamphlet games, but making small things feels quite rewarding in on itself.

That's for you to decide

And the people who may or may not neglect me.

>How do your game's mechanics create tension?
Most rolls are opposed, characters can choose modifiers in secret before the roll. Due to the games high lethality, a bad roll or even an unexpected modifier from an enemy can spell doom.

Already dead?

Lurking.
Thread topics and the direction of other peoples games haven't been interesting to me for several threads now.

Yep, we kinda burnt ourselves out so quickly after 3~ highly successful threads in succession a while back.

Just gonna copy-paste the way my system handles losing all of your health.

1: Delayed Death: You’ll definitely be dead at the end of the scene, but not yet.
2: Illness: Long-term illness or injury. More minor problems are more permanent.
3: Break: One or more pieces of items or an npc follower are damaged or destroyed.
4: Separate: Forced to retreat in an inconvenient direction/captured/mind-controlled.
5: Unconscious: Like a sleep that lasts until this quarter of the day is over. Doesn’t have any of the benefits of sleeping.
6: Death with Benefit: You die, but somehow something good happens for your allies

The player rolls 2 d6s, and chooses which of the 2 possible results they want.
If both of the numbers are the same, then the result is an even worse version of the result.
Every time your health goes down to 0 or lower you must do this at the end of the turn of whatever did the damage to you.
Having this happen once doesn‘t mean you’re immune to it happening again.

Gimme criticism and praise plz

Ironic that I'm still the only OP, I think in the past 2 months only 1 /gdg/ was not by me.

People are eager to talk, but not eager to start.

I'm quite burnt out in the moment, so I've been pretty inactive in the threads themselves lately. I've just OP:d them pretty regularly.

I've actually thought about creating a /gdg/ multiple times but decided waiting giving it a week cooldown was a good idea, then a couple of days after the last one it pops up.

You will hear a lot more about my game here once my website has launched.
Anybody here who can recommend an editor? Ideally someone with experience in copywriting.

page 10 bump

What's a mechanic you shamelessly stole from another game? Come on, I know you've got at least one.

I stole Blades in the Dark's health system.

Advantage / Disadvantage from 5e DnD. Except instead of 1d20 -> 2d20, it's 2d6 -> 3d6, and I call it the "Modifier die". The only difference is that it comes from the characteristics of the character instead of situations.

That's probably the most blatant thing I've taken. Most other things are influenced greatly by my game's weirdness in that they work pretty differently to the norm. Or at least feel like they do.

It still isn't like any unique special snowflake system if you look at it real hard. It's just not immediately obvious when the context of most of the mechanics is usually handled differently, even though the mechanic itself is basically the same.

Honestly, I really can't think of anything that would fall under that which isn't generic enough to cover several games.

I did have a weird moment recently where I was reading KS alpha rules from an established company that used eerily similar rules to mine for line of sight.

I mean, I'm essentially stealing Dark Heresy wholesale, replacing character creation, and refitting it into a more focused Firefly-esque setting.

Oh, and my Post-Apoc homebrew stole the Outbreak Undead Looting and Crafting system. Seriously, one of the few good parts of that game.

Can't really think of anything that I took from another TTRPG, but I have translated or was inspired by a lot of vidya. Right now I'm debating how much Fire Emblem I want to add.

I appreciate the advice, but I'm in a different boat. I have a fantastic system and strong lore ready to play, but now the challenge of organization is here.

I haven't seen any handbook yet that feels right. The small ones are too small, the big ones are too big. There needs to be a strong vision to make it compelling, but that vision needs to leave everything open for people to mix and match.

What if your system is supposed to change the way people GM? What if players need to be told to roleplay in a way that's unusual? Rules for people, not just crunch?

The Discord channel has been doing well

I can't stand discord, it very quickly made me realize how somebody from /co/ can go full /pol/ in just a couple of days. In a kinda related "experience" I stumbled upon a podcast while researching fantasy heartbreakers, they spent 40 entire minutes discussing how sexist the game was because it specified a gender in one of the spells even though it was a obvious fucking mistake not intended by the developers. Not like this.

Quite honestly and under the guise of anonymity: pretty sure that it's - none. I think pretty much everything in my game is lessons drawn from other people's mechanics. And while with many mechanics it is clear where they have been drawn from, they are always combined with something else for a different take.

wait what...? what the fuck are you saying?

sounds like System Mastery

Is that the two guys who go to basically every convention ever and try to convince everybody there they're experts in game design?

Oh no, that's the GeekNights guys.

Don't know if they go to conventions, but they are two guys. One gay, which is probably why they get hooked up on the "opposite sex" line whenever a game has it in the seduction ability.

They also quickly shut down when rules just look complex (but not actually are) in my opinion.

Cross promoting since you guys weren't up when /rrg/ was started:

Choo Choo motherfuckers

I have been relatively busy over the past month, but am back at Warstack. This is my attempt at building an "Alt Activation" game where you can spend "Tactical Points" as resources to manipulate the turn order. It uses a stack ala Magic the Gathering for resolving "Interrupts," and "turn order" is less about die rolls or "initiative stats" or so, but rather about deciding when to outbid your foe.

The main update is an "untested" part about how to handle Interrupts versus attacks that target multiple units, as well as how Interrupt mechanics work with 3+ players. Let me know your thoughts so far. Rulewise, I feel pretty solid about the turn-structure crunch, I just need to get the thing edited and formatted prettily (as well as adding a summary sheet, etc).

docs.google.com/document/d/1N0bbT2a0y_THicAgRS1SxKZA9ZKtDmJpDsiDSyKAkAQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

From everything I've seen and heard all "game design" is considered a trade secret, all research is tightly controlled and isn't shared between separate companies hence all panels are nothing more than truisms and advertising fluff pieces. Even Mearls has said that the research conducted during and after 4e was so extensive people have written dissertations on it.

>all panels are nothing more than truisms and advertising fluff pieces.
This. It's about creating "star designers"... and dumb neckbeards are eating up that slobber like it's french cuisine.
Although the claim not 100% true. You get the occasional nugget. Maybe slip of tongue.

>Even Mearls has said that the research conducted during and after 4e was so extensive people have written dissertations on it.
And yet they had to scrap most of it for 5th ed. Embarrassing.

Because we've gone down the demotivator route, If you want to see these comments in action watch PAX East 2014,

>The business guys doing a panel who all have real industry experience at large companies are talking about how dead the industry is and how even the most successful indie developers can barely sell more than a couple of thousand units even though there selling their products below production costs
>Said pink-haired indie developers are doing a panel in another room talking about how they've saved the industry by reinventing the wheel for petty change on kickstarter

Okay, to add some content to this thread, let me just ask: Which big game design innovations do you think we have seen since the turn of the millenium?
From the top of my head, I can think of three major ones:
- The way FATE leverages Fate Points, particularly Compels.
- 'Success with Complications' aka 'Failing Forward' a la Apocalypse World
- FFG's Narrative Dice.

Disadvantage/advantage.
13th Age’s Background-based system.
Numenera's Stat Pools and Edge.
Mouse Guard's Skill Advancement.
Dungeon Crawl Classics' Character Funnel.

>Disadvantage/advantage.
Nah, although a major innovation, that is clearly 20th century.

>13th Age’s Background-based system.
>Numenera's Stat Pools and Edge.
>Mouse Guard's Skill Advancement.
>Dungeon Crawl Classics' Character Funnel.
I'd probably rate all of these as more minor innovations. They don't stand out as much, imho (I really like the Backgrounds though!). I am a bit curious about the Numenera one. What's the big deal?

Anyway, I have a minor one to add myself:
Trail of Cthulhu/GUMSHOE and the narrative cost of skill use.

>What's the big deal?
Alright, I'm terrible at explaining this; Numenera's innovation is about the consistent mechanical interaction between separate components, next to nobody seems to have digested the core rulebook properly.

It's sort of hard to compress how well designed and streamlined it is. It's telling that many people describe it as 'My GM's favorite system', as opposed to 'my favorite system.'

That sounds like marketing talk desu.

same desu, my system takes a good few things from Fire Emblem, and i guess SD Gundam G Generation

New question, how much of an influence should race have, when creating a character? (Like, if they's an Elf, they oughts to be a Ranger or a Wizard, but if it's a Dwarf, a Fighter, or the like.)

That is as much a question of individual player personality like it is of game design.

After all a the smallest unit of bonus possible will lock some players into a class 100% of the time.

I personally believe that Races should give abilities and tertiary skills, rather than flat stat bonuses. Honestly, I liked that 13th age just put stat bonuses into the Class itself.

what haven't I. Easiest one is advantage/disadvantage but 2d6>3d6 for adv, and 2d6 (or 3d6, you can still have an advantage) -1d6 (rolled by GM) for disadv.
For specific cases such as your sniper having higher ground but the target is hauling ass making him hard to shoot.
Perks from 3.5. Tristat from Herring Farming and many others (such as Warrior Thief Mage). Attempted Mordheim-like initiative (everyone does their move action, then everyone does their standard action). Great idea, clusterfuck in practice.
Words of Power from various sources, thinking about making it Skyrim-like with users shouting, whispering or hand-gesturing/gangsigning Words to cast spells.
Like Fire Area Burn is a fiery damage explosion that leaves a burning component on the site, Blink Bleed Vampire is a blink-attack that leaves a bleed but heals the user.
Arcane and Divine magic's the same mechanically, only ones use latin and the others arcane-gang-sign, and the two can never settle on which's better.

I don't mind /rrg/ but I don't see how it's relevant here. Or is it supposed to be a place for game designers who are playing their systems with people, and not just normal GMs ?

My skill system is a simplified version of Mouse Guard/Burning Wheel. I straight up stole the mechanics of helping yourself also.

Banging out cool shit for days over here. Writing my rulebook is finally becoming easy as I understand the secret of what they're actually about.

this cannot be answered without knowing what type of game it is meant to be on the GNS scale.

fuck GNS

You're a marketing talk.

Sorry for calling people out for their bullshit.

This, using opposed roles between soak and damage as well as botches from Storyteller to port BTs armor mechanics for a more narrative "rules lite" version of what AToW does. Between botches and Revised/V20's version of the exploding tens rule (10s grant a bonus suxx in special circumstances or with a specialty) and adapting the way New plays with 9-again/8-again bonuses, there's tons of bell curve manipulation to play with to make each system or weapon type feel special without creating a grimoire of special rules

It isn't marketing talk, I'll give you an example:
You know there isn't any no hit points right? all damage is dealt directly to your stat pools, theses pools also fuel other abilities, if your illiterate like most of the hobby are your first reaction is "wow I'm going to be tittering on the edge of death all the time" but if you actually read the rulebooks you'll notice there's several ways to almost always keep your stat pools topped up to full without breaking the flow of the game, first and foremost resting is stagnated, your first rest only takes a single action, then 10 minutes, 1 hour etc.

Your probably thinking everybody already knows this is how your supposed to play the game? fucking nope, most people didn't even know there's a first aid/heal system.

Well, the mechanic is pretty crisp and cool, but an underlying problem is that if the players don't know the rules, the rules themselves are almost meaningless.

Is Anima well written and laid out? Do people find these intuitive rules quickly and intuitively? Or are they borderline hidden?

Not the previous user, just asking because Anima looks like a good game to derive inspiration from.

If you want positioning to matter in your combat, but don't want to make things too complicated, is it better to just bite the bullet and use a combat map? Or could handwaved maneuvering movement actions handle it?

I guess what I'm really asking is what people prefer. I'd like it to mean something if you're fighting with your back against the wall, I'm just not sure how best to represent that.

Hi, care to r8 my card layouts?

I'm well aware their aesthetic might hurt readability, but I try to make the borders an important visual element. You can still point out the cases where I went over-the-top.

They've got sort of a mid-2000s tacky gradient thing going. I kinda like it.

Zones are my personal favorite. If you want positioning to matter, don't stop just with zones, make special rules that can be used within said zones, maybe even define a couple of different tags that a zone can have.

Actually, now that I think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Define whether a zone has walls, obstacles, and such, and make rules that can be used only when those special definitions are at play.

Walls allow cornering, obstacles provide cover, pits allow pushing someone in, that kind of stuff.

What do you think? Zone-based movement is always interesting to handle, honestly, and it's quite intuitive with how people handle space in their heads.

would anyone mind play testing my homebrew system with me? it'd be about an hours time on discord. I'd have no idea how I could repay you other than reading your system but I'd really appreciate it.

I handwave it. Crude drawings of the battlefield and eyeballing the movement.
Tanks can intercept an attack and take it instead of the one they protect, so they can "hold the line". You could have the good ole front row and back row, or zones/arenas like Old School Hack.

I doubt other gamedesigners are good playtesters.

So it's degrading pools (introducing a death spiral) with refreshes? What's so innovative about it?

>if the players don't know the rules, the rules themselves are almost meaningless.
Not a problem of game design per se though.

>I doubt other gamedesigners are good playtesters.
Why do you say that?

You get kinda complacent with what you like working with.

Not OP but game designers are notoriously wrong about pretty much everything.

Actually pretty good.
Dawn and Inferno's textboxes are risky. I'm not actually sure what Dawn's meant to be - a dead leaf from underneath?
Primal is cute although I'm not sure if it needs some tweaking to make the drawings more brown (/lighter).
I also wonder if you're going to strain against the space you've given yourself within the white-tinted section of card.

I'm not digging the flat color under the card names. The rest of the cards are so heavily designed that it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially with the shadow under it. I'm also not a fan of the shadows in/around the textbox.