/gdg/ - Game Design General

I have a weird love of high school drama/murder mystery combo shows like Riverdale, Scream the TV Show, and Pretty Little Liars. You know, stuff that's like Twin Peaks but everyone's a hot-headed teenager. I want to either customize an existing RPG to run a game like that, or roll my own more or less from scratch.

1. Any other shows I should look at for inspiration?

2. What RPGs exist that would be decently close that I could edit to make this work? I know GUMSHOE has good rules for mysteries, but I would really like to also have more character-driven rules like story-driven games tend to have. Mechanics that explicitly encourage exploration of characters' relationships to one another and so on.

There's Small Towns, I'd post the pdf but I'm a filthy phone-poster.

Googling around for it. Not seeing anything. Can you give me a link to a review of it or literally anything at all?

here. Never mind, I found it.

Odd. Can't seem to find it either. It's called:
Small Towns an rpg of urban legends by Brian Richmond.
It's probably in the Pdfs share thread's archive, it used to be posted in those threads a lot until Da Archivist showed up and changed the culture of those threads.

Not much of a rules writer but this page of rules popped into my head when I was half asleep one night. I typed them up when still half asleep so I hope they make sense. They're simple, incomplete and nothing special at all, but I like them and I thought I'd lost them until today. So here's the 5 S's.

I'm going to throw around a personal opinion

>If no roll is 4 or over, you 1 attribute dice by default, otherwise roll normally.

This definitely needs to be reworded, it feels like your pitying people who roll 0 4+'s. Make it sound like your rewarding people for +4's instead, something like "For every 4 or above you roll add a attribute dice". Also a popular feels good mechanic is for 6 to equals two successes (attribute dice), think about adding that maybe. Also do you have a "S" fetish?

You're right. Tricky coming up with a way of saying, 'you got unlucky but don't worry your average'.
The sentence is weird to start with. I don't even know why I've got " otherwise roll normally" in there, there's no otherwise about it. I'm missing 'get' from 'you (get) 1 attribute dice" also!

I get what your saying about 6's = double successes, but beyond three in any stat starts to make you into a demi-god.

Thanks.

Couldn't you go with the established "I couldn't think of a name" route and just combine random Latin words until it sounds cool?

Can you tell us about the rules? I'm sure there's a few people who'd take the time to spit out a few suggestions.

Oh and try not to do "X and X" or "Title - X and X" it's a bit dull. Hind and Seek, which has been mentioned is different. it's got layers, like an onion. I mean, X = generic, cool sounding word, blood, steel, fury, etc.

Long story short a D&D 4e inspired game with an iron age setting and aesthetic. Our team are all people who enjoyed the mechanics of 4e, but we're trying to improve the non-combat side of the system alongside removing some of the lingering issues the game had in its original iteration.

>Thread Topic
I always prefer systems that modify the chances while not changing the maximum and minimum.

Advantage is a good way to do it. Another is an extension of it: You always keep the same amount of dice, but you roll more dice to keep from.

Step Die is another good one, because it keeps the numbers in check. Another would be STEP DIE WITH SUCCESSES.
Imagine you have a system where the specifics is that 1-3 are failures, and from up there, everything is a success. Or inverse, if you're a weirdo like me. Combine this with the Step Die, and your chances of getting a success are miles better with 3d8 than 3d6, for example.

To make it a little more crunchy, you can make the die steps individual, so a roll might have 1d6+2d8+1d12 or such. The numbers doesn't matter, because the base of the game is that as long as the roll is not 1-3, the die is counted as successful.

Could they still be called modifiers? Not really, but the line between dice mechanics and modifiers is drawn in water anyway.

Bumping with some stuff...

I'm thinking of making what I call an "Ulti-lite" version of Misfortune. The game is already a superlite, so it's going to be very very simple.

Thinking of making the ulti-lite version a freebie, and have a small advertisement for the main game on it. The game does work pretty similarly to the base game, just streamlined to an even more extreme degree.

I probably need to run it through some people before I finish it, the game might be mightily lacking, due to being an even smaller version of an already small game.

It'll also let me use only part of my art assets to make a product that is already usable.

I don't know, from everything we've learnt in the last decade your "Ulti-lite" edition shouldn't modify or deviate mechanically but instead just be a stripped down version of your core rulebook with identical rules but less fluff and options.

>Advantage is a good way to do it.
Actually, I think it's a terrible way to do it. Advantages and Disadvantages don't stack. Plus, having a reroll decreases tension on your first roll.

That's only one method of doing Advantage and Disadvantage. Its not the only way.

The game itself is fairly unique in where the depth lies, so while I can't "cut the fat" away from a game that has been cut down to size for the last year. It's a medium-feeling game, even though it's only 6000 words (about 30 pages of A5 when finished with art etc), so I just cut it down to about one tenth of that to fit it on one sheet.

It's still very much the same game, from the kind of intuitive 0-second character creation (or session-length character creation, depending on how you view it), twists and foreshadowing and the concept of sacrifice taking the main part of the game's depth.

All these mechanics work pretty much as they do in the main game, of course, just simplified and explained with less words.

Some of the more nuanced stuff like subverting twists and a second type of narrative HP needed to be cut, but in the end, the game should work similarly to the main game.

I just need to playtest this version, too.

My main concern, honestly, is that people like the lite version more than the finished product. Which is a possibility.

But it's a risk I'm willing to take. Any game that people like is better than a game no one gives a shit about.

i am shitfaces so sorry up front, disregard advice that mkaes no sense

+6 to -6 is a really big thing user, it's like +- 10 on a d20, but even more because of the bell distribution; you really have to mess with any dice. A +- 5 or 4 on a 2d6+mod is a big deal too. The d6es are fickle damsels. don't fuck up your statistics do your homewroks on anydice

everyhing else seems to work okay, the equipment, the combat and etc.
grappling is "if you win, you now hold their (limb) and they can't use it, and if you win really a lot, you're piinning them down and they're "stunned" and can only attempt to escapeartist/coutnergrapple."; your verison is very simplified that can be okay if that's what you want

the spellcrafting thing woun't be used, i say from personal experience. Though you might game with players of morrowind so it works for you; i perosnally went with skyrim's fus-ro-da and other word combinations like "fire-burn-area" is a fireball. Your characters learn words instead of complete spells, so the fireball caster can learn ice-burn-area; or heal-area if he learns the 'ice" and "heal" word.

all in all everything is okay done and if used for friends it really works oky; but if you intend to publish or something, it's really average and pretty uninspired, work more and KISS (keep it simples tupid). Cut off the fat whenever you can

also DR based on dice is funky; you either need polyhedrals for different armor types like light-d4, medium -d8, heavy d10, ultra d12; and you wil need to rewrok your damage because now armor reduces damage instead of adding healt/flat dr; and you need to put in armor-piercing skills/spells/abiilities/weapons/AP ammo.

It's a pain int he butt to do armor right, i personally just add +HP when armor is worn in my shitty little homebrew game; the ugliest, but the simplest and fastest solution

By the way, why is stacking important? I get that in a game like D&D, it undermines your ability to make superb builds, but on the other hand, it forces people on a more even playfield (not like 3.PF Feat-fest where you need to have a degree in character building to make an effective fighter).

Also, for more narrative-driven games, you don't need stacking. If you have advantage in a situation, it should be just that, advantage. It undermines "narrative chance" in a way if you can just stack advantages on top of each other until the underdog has no hope of beating the powerhouse. That's just not interesting. What is interesting is the underdog getting a lucky stroke and winning against all odds.

Remember, dice don't exist in the world of the game. The fact that you have full cover, a magic shield, a shielding spell and clairvoyance should not make you invulnerable in all but 1/80000 chance, because that is not interesting, narratively speaking. It's not a story if some guy is invulnerable, it's a story if apparent invulnerability is somehow overcome.

Mine adv and disadv are both rolled at once; you can have an adv and disadv at once, but it's 2d6 (base roll) +1d6 (adv) -1d6 (disadv that the GM rolls and subtracts from the result).

Say your sniper has high ground but the target is running. He's both advantaged and disadvantaged, and I like having those two dies fight each other. Personal and mathematically inane view, balancing my shitty homebrew is a nightmare.

They don't stack though, having a 1000 advantages and a 1000 disadvantages is still a +1d6 -1d6; your point is great and makes sense ingameworld. They shouldn't stack, if they did it would be a clusterfuck in any system.

On similar notice, any "auto-win" spell or ability is a pain in the ass and unbalances shit hard, like protection against arrows or huge DR.

Though in your case, you've said an actor has full cover, which means there is no LOS from the attackers, which means any direct attacks miss (or at least, if it's like bullets penetrating walls, a big miss chance). Full cover's big deal, both because it prevents attacking the target, and prevents the target from meaningfully shooting back from full cover. (though our views may differ and definitions of full cover)

Well, it was an exaggerated example anyway. I'm the guy who made a game so free-form-ish that you can literally have a shining golden god and a dirt farmer in the same party and the dirt farmer can be relevant in the game nonetheless.

I'll just wait until my artist gets one particular piece of art done and I'll finish the layout and pretty it up so it can work as a freebie quickstart kind of thing.

The point with character balance is that it kind of irks me how in actual stories, the characters are almost never on the same approximate power level, which happens to be the case in every RPG ever. And my best friend hates character deaths (in his fiction, anyway) so much that he's fixated on immortal or semi-immortal characters.

How many pages is too many for a character sheet?

that'sa valid point, in stories you oftgen have a golden god with some helpful idiots along, and this makes for good stories; but in rpgs the premise is that players will usually want to have equally powerful PCs and the whole group is a "character", "actor" ina story

depends on your system, mine's a A5 and about ... 20ish words or less.
Seriously, you cna have a starfleet deep-autism with 30page warship stats and parts if you can find an audience for it; depends on what you want to do, and compare it to the pen-n-paper dreadnought that is D&D which has about 2-4 pages on a character sheet.

I personally try to get my sheets one page, front and back.

4 is the absolute upper limit for me. More than that and I will come to your house and teach you how to make character sheets properly, or alternatively how to make games properly.

Having 4 pages on a character sheet is excusable if you have special sheets, such as a separate combat sheet, a reference or SOMETHING that kind of requires its own thing.

But having 4 pages regularly? Inexcusable. D&D is a good example of a kind of well-crafted character sheet, as generic as it is. It's 1-3 pages, depending on some factors.

>1 is default, you must have the first page.
>2 is if you want some additional character details OR you have spell slots you need to track
>3 is if you have spells AND want to have additional details of the character

That is some excellent character sheet design, page-number wise anyway. If you make a fighter for playing Tomb of Horrors, you only need the first page, unless you go Eldritch Knight etc etc.

My own "goal" with any given game is to keep it simple, with the maximum of 2 pages, one for out-of-conflict, and one for in-conflict. Flipping pages is something I want to avoid, as is unnecessary scribbling.

If you're making an extra-crunchy RPG and your character sheets absolutely require three or more pages, include reference materials on each page so there's less need to flip back and forth. The Dark Eye does this - a character sheet will usually be either three or four pages, but each page includes copies of all the stats you'd need if you would want to be on that page. Your main attributes are on almost all the pages.

How does something like D&D 4e relate to this, since the actual character sheet chunk is only two pages, but then you'll often have more than two pages of power cards appended to them.

I would still argue that with clever game- and sheet planning you could get rid of a lot of extra fat on many 3-4 page character sheets.

Of course, I'm someone who basically designs games while taking character sheets into accord in every step of the way, so I'm probably not the norm on this.

Like, I designed a mechanical idea of "known spells" and "missing spells" solely on the basis of thinking: "How can I simplify spell listing on a character sheet?". The mechanic itself basically just works by having you roll a check before you cast a spell you don't have on either list, and you put it to either list after you finish. If you fail the casting, you don't have the spell, and if you do, you get it to your known spells, which makes spellcasting easier.

Similarly, many of my mechanics come down to "How can I present this in an interesting way in a character sheet?" and went off from there. Produces from novel ideas, at the very least, and they're almost always intuitive, because if it works on a character sheet, it works in the game.

I was actually referring to 5e.

Thanks, really appreciated.
I will have to look over ranges of bonuses and perhaps look if I wanna use other dice. I just settled on d6 because it is easily available.
Not really intended to be published, but probably will throw it on somewhere for grabs once it is done.

if you can, better use a d20 or something, it's far more forgiving and nice to work with; if you have to use d6es, you really have to do your homework on anydice and accept a very numerically limited system due to the bell curve.

a d% or d20 is a great idea for a homebrew

My biggest problem with this wording is that the drawing of the line can be abused. Something that can counter this, while keeping it simple could be a "corridor" system I've seen used before. Its simply draw lines from the widest parts of the base to create an area between the 2 models. Then its simply falls into the flowchart logic I'd also need to drop the source references to if you have it or not. My idea is relying on the target. The idea is if you had a Size 2 model blocking LoS from another Size 2 to a Size 3, you'd still see the Size 3, since he's bigger than both and you can aim over the blocking model.

I can elaborate on what I mean when I get home and I'm not having to type on a phone.

Page 10 bump!

>My main concern, honestly, is that people like the lite version more than the finished product. Which is a possibility.
Happened with GURPS and split their product line.

Well, unlike GURPS, the choices are a light game and an even lighter one.

I can see why people could prefer the simple version, but it does lack some of the nuance, even though it works pretty similarly. It is, however, kind of designed for oneshots, so the crowd that just want to use it as an intermediary game between longer games might just go with the short version, because the core gameplay is very similar, it just has less granularity.

Actually, let me rephrase that and let's just compare the two:

Original
>2d6 -> 3d6 if modifier dice
>Weaknesses rated from 10-3
>Traits are split to 3 categories (Problems, Powers and Saving graces)
>Despair and Misfortune as Dangers
>Challenges are the main way of handling conflict, where the players roll into a common pool and the total must exceed the sum
>Contested rolls are an optional rule

Ulti-lite
>1d6 -> 2d6 if modifier dice
>Weaknesses rated from 5-2
>Traits are simply either positive or negative
>Misfortune is the only Danger
>Contested rolls are the way of handling conflict

The Ulti-lite is kind of like an toybox version of the main game, designed for shorter games for sure, but also teaching the basic elements of the main game in a similar-feeling environment.

I've become more and more interested in the business aspect of ttrpgs lately, but it's depressing as fuck, in a earlier thread somebody kept talking about a 5k unit sales being the magical number to be considered successful so I actually spent looking where they got that number and found out they were being extremely optimistic; even successful games like Dungeon World and Hillfolk are selling less than 1k units a year with a decreasing y-o-y sales of 15-25% combined with the high production costs I've come to the conclusion that indie rpgs are entirely vanity projects for Silicon Valley puritans.

Looking for feedback on a small game I am working on. I feel like it is just about done but I would appreciate any insight, good or bad. In return I will read over other rule sets and give whatever feedback I can.

youtube.com/watch?v=F9L4q-0Pi4E

I have no idea whether it'll work, but I'm trying to go for an opposite kind of publishing tactic from most. Games being expensive is usually a big barrier to cross, so making a game that is a budget title from the beginning could help selling it, no?

Although some people would probably just dismiss it DUE to its budget price, I think it might work decently. Better to have 100 sales with 5 bucks than 10 with 20 bucks, and so forth.

I think it's too depressing to watch those stats and wanna make a living of RPGs, at best you're gonna part-time some beer money for doing what you find fun.

They're incredibly niche, especially now when casual videogames overpower older boardgames.

There was that guy that writes games that talked about this shit in detail, the box size and contents are more important than the rules, how colorful and inviting the boxart is and so on. Can't remember which RPG designer it was, but it felt really fucky to read about that, their marketing schemes and shit; all I want is a simple homebrewed budget D&D that drunks or children can play comfortably, and I don't think I'll ever publish what little shitshow I can make.

Hmm... Well, I'm trying to go for several lower-budget games (with innovative mechanics to boot) released at a somewhat brisk pace.

I gotta see whether anything comes out of it, but because I don't feel a big necessity of writing more than 20000 words of rules, I could do several games in a year with relative ease.

Making a living with it is still mostly a pipe dream, but I can't help myself from trying.

Similarly, making an overly simplified version of each of my games and calling them "A taste of (x)" could work.

Most of my games aren't that complex when you get down to it, they just have mechanics that have nothing to do with the norm, so I usually need to explain them in great detail.

I think that might be an apt marketing tactic, honestly. Even though I'll start eith Misfortune, my everygame engine, it might work even better with other games, like The Coven, Fairytale or ReBuild.

They all have strong bottom lines, with mechanics very different from the norms (Okay, can't say so about the Coven yet, but eith my track record, I'll say it's likely). I get to make full games, and I get to make one-sheeters as advertisement for the games themselves. It's like a dream.

>There was that guy that writes games that talked about this shit in detail, the box size and contents are more important than the rules, how colorful and inviting the boxart is and so on. Can't remember which RPG designer it was
Funnily enough somebody mentioned this in a earlier thread as well, and In my personal opinion it rings true, people are willing to forgive borderline unplayable games if the cover art looks pretty (The Burning Wheel ) or neat campaign settings (Rifts) etc.

My god does that annoy me. I just have to hire some talented artists to make that up.

I really want to commission some preliminary art for my games down the line, but I would need to finish my current game first.

my batch of friends/playtesters didn't show up, questioning now if I'm a shit game designer or a shit gamemaster, or maybe it's just real life eating them up this evening

don't know which of the 3 options is worse

Calm down senpai, entire groups of players not showing up is disgustingly normal and indicates literally nothing.

Thanks man... My boys have an around 75% show up chance but it's getting lower and lower, probably exams and shit. I was really blessed with lots of IRL friends that game too.

Anybody else have difficulty understanding peoples inability to digest rules? I'm finding it impossible to make players understand that they can freely spend their metacurrency (Bennies/Fate Points) because they're literally impossible to hoard and regenerate on demand through various systems.

A player is smart. Players are stupid.

You need to give examples

What program do you guys use for making rulebooks?

windows office

You just use Word I take it?

I don't like having just a plain white background for my pdf's. Looks too plain.

Anything even approaching professional is all done in inDesign which is the industry standard for publishing.

>want to make my own game
>read/play lots of games that interest me to develop a good foundation
>think I have some good ideas, write about half the book
>start reading FATE SRD because FATE aspects are similar to a mechanic from my game
>realize just how much my game has in common with FATE
Philosophically, though, aspects in my game ("details") have not ties to metacurrency because they are simply facts about the world, and it seems wrong to me that an out-of-fiction game mechanic should have that much of an impact on the in-fiction - all of my mechanics flow outward from this similar but different point. Do you think this is enough to differentiate myself from FATE or should I give in?

I think my mechanics are also generally better explained than FATE (or its SRD, at least), but that's neither here nor there.

As said, InDesign is the industry standard, but you absolutely should not draft your text in InDesign - that is only going to lead to misery. InDesign should ONLY be used for translating a finished manuscript into a finished book.

I recommend using a simple, distraction-free text editor (like vim) and preparing your manuscript in markdown, then using another utility that can translate markdown into HTML/CSS or PDF. This will let you get a rough idea of your layout and instantly create shareable/playtest documents without any hassle on your part, rapidly iterating your rules. If you know about git or other VCS this will also ensure you can revert unsuccessful changes to your text, and can host a repo on GitHub or GitLab.

Later, you can import the markdown directly into InDesign and it will look mostly okay. You will need to polish it all by hand but it is the most efficient way to get your text into and styled by InDesign that I'm aware of.

Google Docs

Ah, I forgot to mention: If you find InDesign too expensive ($30/month in perpetuity) or philosophically objectionable, look into Scribus. It is an open source layout software. Not quite as powerful or easy but if you take the time to learn it you can create an equally professional document.

Emacs + LaTeX.

Emacs+auctex

>Better example edition

Yeah, but I don't intend to publish or anything, my eyes and friends eyes only kinda thing.

ugly but works, and relatively easy to format/rewrite

Dead of Night maybe?

Regarding Fate, I really enjoyed the idea of Aspects and the skill columns. I figured I'd just make a Fate-powered version of my setting.

That is, I'm hoping to do what Fate didn't do well (to me), which is organize the document better and teach Aspects in a linear fashion, then get into the setting-specific rules that I've been cooking up.

I've been thinking about integrating a wound system similar to fate points and aspects into a OSR game I'm running, basically players can use a point to activate the rule of cool and override the pre-established D&D wargamming like combat rules and inflict a permanent injury like losing a leg (It's impossible to inflict negative aspects like this without spending fate points)

Explain what you think could be abused. I'm interested in your interpretation.

The cover rule could remove the source aspect. I wanted to factor in obstructions near either model, but if the source was "kneeling" behind a short wall for cover, that would grant cover to his target, which obviously shouldn't be the case. It just needs a little clean up for other logic cases like that.

>not only opening with a quote, but opening with a quote about how this game is actually completely unnecessary instead of something that sets the tone
>expecting three-person teams to have fun co-managing a "character" that's simpler than most individual characters in rules-lite games.
>no built-in way to force the game to end in a reasonable amount of time instead of just making numbers go up and down forever.
>singular "dice"

These are the things I don't like so far

Well, most cover systems in wargames and RPGs make some effort to cover the cases where some lines are blocked and others aren't, something that can be determined relatively quickly with nothing but a tape measure. That's not the case here. Unless the models you're using have clear front and rear arcs painted on their bases, it's ambiguous where a model's "front half" begins and ends. Unless you come up with a stricter definition of "size," it's also impractical to determine which things are larger than others. What if something is taller but narrower? What if it's got jutting limbs that add to its dimensions but not much to its mass?

Also, under a strict interpretation of these rules, one model can't see another unless their front halves are facing each other. So if you can't see them, they can't see you. Bring a towel.

Thank you for taking the time to read it

I had the quote mainly to remind me that I should try and keep the rules simple.

Yeah I agree the idea was half baked, will drop it to one player per corporation.

>Each purchased rank increases the Investments dice pool, or score by one. Increasing each rank above the first costs an additional $. While an Investment can only be raised to five the cost always increases each time a rank is bought, or re-bought due to damage.

The idea for ending the game is that it quickly becomes too expensive to repurchase lost skill ranks due to damage.

I am confused by "singular "dice"

If you have anything you would like me to look over I would be happy to do so.

Dice is the plural. The singular is 'die'.

Really quick and crappy paint example, but in Example 1, where it goes off of just drawing a line, the green model has clear Line of Sight to the red target, because the line doesn't cross any of the blue models.

While in Example 2, where if we put in the "corridor" idea, you have LoS, since you can draw a line to the target, but the target would gain cover, since there are still models in the "corridor". The corridor idea is similar to my original wording, but can probably be explained with less words.

I also have it in the rules for terrain and cover that you can ignore intervening terrain for the source if its in 1", to represent looking around or over it. That's my bad for not having that in my original post.

Well I feel dumb now, thank you for the clarification

It's been forever since I worked on the rulebook

I think NaNoWriMo kicked me in the ass

Hopefully those who have taken off time can get back to it, because it feels good

Since they weren't my rules and the concept of forward/front was used in the original, I assumed that terminology was already defined. Likewise, my rewrite only mention the front of one model's base (inferring the source) and whether it can reach the target's base. The rules for the source don't care where the target is facing.
Size and whatever it means is also probably defined in the original system's rules, I just condensed what the prompt had.

That makes sense and is an easy fix if you want the corridor format.

Am I allowed to ask for criticism and advice on lore homebrew, or is this thread purely for mechanical homebrew?

/wbg/ is usually better for that

Thank you!

Yeah, Size is a chatacteristic, so everything has a well defined Size.

I may split the rules into two: basic LoS, where you draw a line like in your wording; and the corridor for determining Cover. The process is simple once you get it down and in your head, its the method of getting it into the player's head, and if cutting it into smaller chunks like that helps, its better. Plus there are instances that don't care about Cover, like close combat.

>Hind and Seek
I don't get it.

If anyone is interested:
>thegamecrafter.com/contests/hook-box-challenge
Microgame design contest (think Love Letter, Coup etc...) with the grand prize including consideration for publication. I'm working on two entries: one a set-matching party game where you one player needs to collect three cards of the same colour and then communicate this information to their teammate non-verbally before their opponent's team does the same, the other a kind of drafting tug-of-war where players draft members of a king's court with a dynamic king card moving between players depending on who's in the lead at a given moment.

If anyone else is inspired by this and wants to enter I'd love to hear about it!

I'm interested in it, but I don't think I have the resources to make the final game final within the time limit. The time to publish my first actual game can peek at me any moment.

The game I would be making is a mind game, a little like Love Letter, but in the end, nothing like it.

The idea is that the hook box is spread out, and each face has a symbol on it.

>a pentagram
>an hourglass
>a tome
>a throne
>a heart

There are 18 cards, 9 "Prophecy" cards and 9 "Action" cards. The game is played on tokens that are placed on a place with a symbol, and using action cards.

You have the player size +1 cards of each in game, and at the beginning of each round, everyone draws 1 Prophecy and 1 Action.

So, you have a prophecy. It has two things on it: It has a win condition and a win effect.

Like, say, "Emperor".
>If Throne has the most tokens, you get a point and you choose who goes first next round

Similarly, you have action cards, that can be stuff like "No tokens can be moved anymore, but new ones may be added" or "Move a token to any square".

Each win condition would be unique, and the game is about trying to figure out what cards the other players are holding while keeping yours obtuse, and your own win condition in the palm of your hand at all times.

The game would go on for 3 rounds, and you may play a token, an action card, or skip on each turn.

The thing is that multiple people can fulfill their win conditions in the same round, and some win conditions may give more points than others.

Just a rough sketch still in my head, but I think it would work as a simple deduction and poker face game.

Are there any good words for character race beyond 'Race' or 'Species'? I know GURPS uses 'Template' but that's a bit too mechanical sounding for me.

You can get fucky with the concept of race and simply call it 'Origin'. It's a nature versus nurture debate, but I would say that on average, nurture is more important.

If you need to define characters by their physical traits, you can use 'Lineage' or 'Kin' if they would fit better.

Sounds interesting, I like the idea of using the box as a component alongside the cards.

Hide & Seek - just like how the Mujahideen hid from the soviet forces for 10 years

Hind - the Mi-24's NATO codename - the mi-24 HIND being the archetypal helicopter gunship of the war - like the Huey in Vietnam (although fulfilling a very different function)

I guess it only makes sense if you're already familiar with the Soviet-Afghan war in the 80s and know what a Hind is

open office

You've been spending time on tumblr again haven't you user? anyway, "Clan", "Descent", "Moiety", "Genesis".

damn son
I hope you meant 'LibreOffice'

page 10 bump

I'm doing something akin to this.
Values on your character sheets build a pool of d6 and other values allow you either to increase pool size or step up dice (d8 d10 d12)
Successes are generated when dice hit a difficulty between 2 and 12 based on the taks at hand.
Modifiers step dice up or down.

>Come up with the idea of having a universal descriptor system
>Just learning from this comment that It's similar if not identical to FATE's Aspects
Well fuck.

Don't get discouraged, read Fate and learn how they did it. You might like it and copy it, really start liking FATE and maybe switch over to that, or learn how it's done.

You don't have to be exceptionally original; originality is overrated anyway, better a good copy that works than an experimental masterpiece that nobody uses.
Also, stealing from multiple sources and making a patchwork system is fine too.

The only important bit is that you have a vision and are working at it; sell me on your vision/goal.

Pitch your game to me in one 20 words or less sentence if you can, multiple if you really have to.