/gdg/ - Game Design General

I've been working on a homebrewed Space Opera setting, and something I want to try is a kind of trading system. I'm new to ttrpgs, so I was wondering, how could I do this? I was thinking something like each ship large enough has a set size of cargo storage space measured in Units, and any kind of potential cargo could have a size measured in Units, and any potential currency could be determined by a number of factors. Where you're selling it, are you an official trader or a smuggler/scavenger/pirate, and of course how much of what it is you've got. I think this might be able to tie into a Ship system, where ships have different traits (Large Cargo Bay, Concealed Compartments, Respectable, etc). I was thinking of keeping detailed track of currency, with detailed prices attached to items and ships and whatnot.

Is there any worth to this idea? Is there a system that already does it or something close to it? Is there anything I'm overlooking? Is there anything I can look to for inspiration and ideas? The end goal is to just have trade be more of a tangible undertaking, since the system I'm familiar with has nothing for this.

Just read through a lot of it, so far I have to say this looks promising! I would totally play this

Those are called sect/cults/orders/etc. they’re supposed to be powerful but narrow. You give up versatility for specialization.

An example is:
>Parent Religion
Christianity
>Demonination
Methodist
>Sect
African Methodist Episcopal Church

Sounds basically like real life. Personally I would add just a bit of low-tier magic just for convenience/flavor for the religions. Might give them a better identity and give the players more of an idea of what to expect from choosing that path.

>I need opinions on how you guys would feel about a setting with no magic that places a huge emphasis on religion.
I'd give it a shot but I'd be really skeptical going in.

I considered adding basically alchemy and that sort of thing, not lead to gold alchemy but wormwood and leeches alchemy. Also I considered stuff like rituals but don’t like the idea of actually adding magic. Maybe old magic tools and artifacts religions possess.

It doesn't have to be traditional magic, but something just to add more to it. Otherwise you'll have to have quite a strong plot and setting for it to make up for the lack of character options.

Look at Traveller, it has rules and systems for this.

The Mongoose Core book will have everything you need, at least give you some ideas. Its in the Traveller general OPs but there isn't one up at the moment so just look for an archived one.

Thanks, based user.

I don't know if you understand what I'm saying.
I'm asking how possible it would be to justify the PCs being adherents of different faiths or denominations from each other and still working together.
Presumably, different players will want to play different things, right?

Basically a party of people who worship different gods.

Yes, that's what I'm asking about.
How tolerant would these different religions be of each other?

Is it sane to have a difference between "disarmed" states and "unarmed" states?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: It depends on how you differentiate them, but it's ultimately the same unless you do something specific to set them apart.

Here

On a scale of 1 to 10, how okay it is to rip off a design from another game? Would changing some of the designs make it any better?

It's basically what I do the most. Know what to steal, and steal it properly.

>trying some random skirmish game
>initiative is hugely important
>initiative is randomly rolled off every round

it pisses me off a little bit more each time

It was in Alpha state and it was abandon 2 years ago.

Initiative is one of those tricky things to pull off correctly. It can make or break your combat flow, and it's a pain in the ass to work with.

I'll tell you how the summon spell works in my game; I could use some advice. The game is meant to be a light dungeon crawler.

the spell has two phases, each has it's own roll:

1 - contact a nearby spirit and see if it's friendly / up to the work.

Failure here can mean that you fail to contact or that spirits are not in a friendly mood.

2 - Channel the spirit energy to do 1d6 damage or grant another minor favor (answer a question, open a door, guide you through a labyrinth, etc)

Failure here means that the spirit doesn't understand your command or wants to play with you a little. Either way, you lose mp.

For each charisma point (0 to 3) you can befriend a spirit like forever; so he'll come to help you wherever you are (and thus, skipping phase 1).

What do you think?

I think I should do a list of ,~6 different kinds of spirits with a one-line description, so even if they can do more or less the same, each one implies a different "method" of doing it, or something.

I had thought about letting people describing their own spirits, but the game I intend is more OSR than narrative, and my players get lost if they have to put weight into their own things' description.

What kind of things should I put on the table? I'm thinking on the classic "forest spirit, fire spirit, water spirit, death spirit, etc" but maybe there is a better approach.

Give me your ideas/questions.

I think faster units or characters should have better initiative score

Good to see you picked up the project again.

In melee, I believe more in whichever character has a reach advantage over the other will be able to properly attack first.

Realistically speaking, yes. But in a concession to gamism, you might want to make speed a more important factor than it is in real life. As for randomization, it keeps the game less predictable and the players more on their toes. Neither in real life nor in movies you know who is going to draw first either.

There's a good way to do randomization and a bad way. I'm not how they handle it in said skirmish game, but having some control or guarantee is always good. Even the most random system for piece activation I've seen
>take the stat card for every unit, both sides, and shuffle into a deck, activating as you flip from the top
had some control in the form of players being able to bank cards for later use.

I have made a stat/skill setup. The idea is basically changing up what is ability or whatever up, but in a way that is balancable. So each Primary stat have 3 sub stats, each substat can have specialties. Fx Grace → Agility, Dexterity and Speed. With Agility → Shadowing, Move Unseen and Dancing.

>The stats
Brawn(Strenth, Resilience, Size)
Grace(Dexterity, Agility, Speed)
Awareness(Perception, Notice, Insight)
Intellect(Cunning, Knowledge, Logic)
Identity(Passion, Presence, Willpower)
Social(Profession, Reputation, Oratory)
Communication(Wits,Charm,Command)
Manipulation(Haggle, Persausion, Deception)
They are described here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1LHMTqgoJs0A6virwFfuSFuwVwXGqTayNqP-Yu-kkxYQ/edit?usp=sharing

>Correlation
The grouping of 3s is to create correlation. So when you increase brawn you get all the substats. Not unlike how in DnD ability scores increase all skills. You can still increase each substat individually.

>Balance
For balancing reasons I made 3 substats to each, no more no less. Then you can have some nice symmetric character creation rules.

>Skills?
The usual idea of skills have been move around a bit and split up. Some thing have become substats and some are only specialties. A stealth roll will, depending on what you are doing: Move silent Grace->Speed; Move unseen Grace->Agility. If you have Move Silent or Move Unseen specialties then they would o/c apply.
In a way, some of the specialties feel like trained skills, but havent fully explored this yet, just a feeling.

>How to use
It should be adaptable. For dnd primary=Ability, substat=skill, specialties=also skills. For other systems, dunno, it's just a change up on abilities scores that most have anyway, so it depends more on that system.
I feel like specialties should be sorta thrown around, but they should be specific. Fighters should get a brave specialty fx.

>Feedback
Does it make sense? Should some be moved/exchanged? Did I forget something important?

Historically different geopolitical regions have ranged from incredibly tolerant to not tolerant at all. For example, early Islam (800-1100) was fine with other religions, so long as they paid an extra tax. In contrast, you wouldn’t want to be the wrong religion anywhere in Europe from ~1300 - ~1800, lest you get purged. The Romans, too, didn’t give a crap so long as you at least paid lip-service to the state religion above all other cults. So really, the answer to your question is driven by your setting: go with whatever you want.

What about a "karma" based combat?
Combatants starts, for example, with 15 in its combat score. At his turn he adds 2 to its CS, hitting an enemy. But because of that his defense is lowered by 2 until the next round, making it easier to hit. In his next turn he can increase/decrease his CS but can't choose by 2, since he already used that number the previous round.

I'm asking about the particular setting of the user who was posting about that system.

If I wanted to do that I would probably do that with die sizes, so you can easily shove them around for tracking.

It's only okay if you're making it better. Better is subjective though. The point is it's not okay to steal an idea and claim it for profit, it is okay to steal an idea, change what you think needed to be changed, and happen to profit from that. It's also okay to blatantly steal it if there is no profit whatsoever. Basically it comes down to motivation, effort, and honesty whether it's okay.

Need advice, making my a hack of some dead d20 game.

I want to adjust the mechanics to make it a little more balanced: I want 10 more likely to occur than other numbers. But I'm weary of a normal distribution because I don't want to buff skill ranks (for example in 2d20 or 3d20 take middle skill ranks need to be rebalanced around the new distribution)

I want a dice rolling mechanic which allows for keeping the traditional 3.5/pf way of gaining skill ranks per level up, which

2d10 instead of 1d20. Technically shortens the number range a bit since 1 is no possible natural result anymore and it's still no bell curve, but it averages on 11.
Here's the probability curve:
anydice.com/program/28b

Let's be honest. Even if I made a game straight from vacuum, chances are that I might took an element from a game.

I'd really prefer a less steep curve.

Something like where lowest and highest values are a between 4-5% chance of occurence, whilst keeping the middle values most likely

I've been playing around with something simple like this: anydice.com/program/e2e1

It seems ugly but i feel adds the right amount of balance

Also, does anyone know where I can find free to use concept art (bar asking artists). Like on artstation or something?

Obviously if my work gets close to finishing i'll invest real money, but until then I'd like to use filler artwork

>that
>simple
holy shit, user

Post charts

2D6 is nice

...

Agreed, my zombie apocalypse baee-management game uses 2d6 +modifers as it's core mechanic

Likewise, it's ok to take ideas from games if you use them in a distinct way. Sometimes you shouldn't do different just to be different, if you catch my drift.

My game's schtick in to take the idea of stack preemption from Magic, and apply it to an alternate activation wargame. Turn-by-turn Strategy Points serve as a resource mechanic to allow chain interrupts, chain activations (both of these have slowly incrementing costs), bringing in reserves, and "fake outs" (swapping one unit in the stack out for another unit outside the stack prior to carrying an attack).

It's also good to take inspiration from other games to decide what you don't want in a game too. :)

How about 2d5+4? Results range from 6 to 14 (each a 4% chance), with 10 being the average at a 20% chance.

anydice.com/program/e2e4

Since the results that matter in your system are 9-, 10, 11-17, and 18-20, here are the approximate odds of each result ranging from 1 to 5 dice rolled:
- Failure has a 70% / 36% / 15% / 6% / 3% chance
- Half Success has a 20% / 9% / 6% / 4% / 2% chance.
- Success has a 10% / 49% / 64% / 65% / 60% chance
- Critical Success has a 0% / 6% / 15% / 25% / 35% chance.

I see one problem with this math. Half Successes happen too infrequently to matter unless you're rolling a single die. If the 'inconvenience' they provide is meant to be minor, the Half Success result may as well be removed from the system. if they're meant to have more serious consequences, the range should probably be expanded to make them more frequent.

My solution: A Failure is a 7 or less. A Half Success is an 8, 9, or 10. A Success is an 11 through 17. A Critical Success is an 18 or higher. This changes the odds thusly:

Failure: 70% / 21% / 7% / 2% / 1%
Half Success: 30% / 24% / 14% / 8% / 4%
Success: 0% / 49% / 64% / 65% / 60%
Critical Success: 0% / 6% / 15% / 25% / 35%

This math also includes removing the "A 10 on 1d10 is a Success" rule, which means that characters with no meaningful skills or background can only get a Half Success at best. I also recommend that a character attempting a Complex check with only one die should either (1) automatically fail or (2) roll 2d10 and and take the LOWER of the two (91% Failure, 9% Half Success).

Those are some pretty good observations, user. I'll cap this for reference later down the line.

Agree, according to that chart 2dX is sexy. Hmm, that curve.

...

It's really quite nice. It simulates ""realism"" better than d20 or d100, I believe.

Can someone do me a favor and find the probability of the following

Let's say I roll 3d20:
1. if there is a 20 and no 1s, the result is 20
2. if there is a 1 and no 20s, the result is 1
3. Else if the middle die is 1-10, take the lower die's value, if the middle die is 11-20, take the higher die's value.

Can someone please map this on anydice for me? been trying for ages can't seem to do it

...

bampf

The more dice, the better the bell-curve approximation.

Trying to hack a Front Mission style system out of the O.R.E. If I go with individual parts for mechs, then other vehicles don't benefit, but the alternative is to use the same system for every vehicle, which would need to be balanced.

Any suggestions?

I'm working on a system for my RPG that's basically magical equipment. Without getting into specifically how the system works here and now, how many examples of different pieces of equipment do you think are required?
Examples below (if you're familiar with 13th Age's magic items system, mine is similar but modified for a D100 roll-under sci-fi):

[Carbonweave Cloak of Evasion, Level 3
Default Bonus: +1 Physical Defense
(recharge 70): When you take damage from an attack of opportunity, take 7 less damage from it.
Whim: You cannot answer a direct question, even if you want to]

[Reckless Shotgun, Level 5
Default Bonus: -10 to hit, +2 Damage
(recharge 70): When you miss with an attack, reroll the attack with a -20 bonus. In addition, until the end of the battle, enemies attacking you subtract the escalation die from their attack roll.
Whim: Low impulse control, particularly when it comes to impulsive movements through doors, onto railings, or over tables.]

You shouldn't have too many that you can't sell a additional splat containing further examples.

It's not even the marketing that I'm concerned about. I want the system to be about DMs crafting stuff specifically for their players and storylines and I don't want to pigeonhole them by giving them too many examples to pick from. I guess I want to force them to make up there own. In this case, less is more, right?

so, i've been trying to make a homebrew for star wars, i started with Xwing tmg and cannibalized it to start making this thing

docs.google.com/document/d/1taT9gkyI9AD8YbRLRhkhh5FLWA-56kz5A71hC5yDyjU/edit?usp=sharing

thought? good? bad?

I've been working on a political game with some fantasy elements. I've got most of the basics down, but I can't figure out how the mechanics should work. I don't want to have skills, but if I don't I'm not sure what I do to resolve problems encountered such as a public debate or trying to convince people to back your proposals. I'd also like to have magic, but I haven't figured out what kinds of magic would be useful in a game based predominantly not around combat. (Though I do want to have duels and the like as an option, and perhaps magical duels as well.) Any thoughts? At the moment all I've had to work on is setting material which is somewhat pointless since I may never get to play or run this game.

The smoothness of the curve isn't what matters, just the effect of having an "average" score and smaller probability edges.
Having fewer dice is better design imo. 2Dx is all you need, any more and you're counting too many numbers, rolling too many dice.

Simple is better with game design in general imo

Checked. That and rolling 2d6 is just classy as fuck. You have literally all of cinema to draw on to feel cool doing it.

I keep getting frustrated with a mechanic I'm testing. I can't tell if its the mechanic, or just my own weird luck messing with it. Seriously, it technically shouldn't be this hard for the attacker to win.

Bumping with the latest version of Aegeos: Searing Shards.

Its in a rough play-testing state. Eventually, I do need to come up with some stand-ins for the miniatures to start testing with other people.

>any more and you're counting too many numbers, rolling too many dice.
How is this a problem? How is adding up, say, 5 dice a burden? It's like saying
>My core rulebook is only 40 pages thick because 40 pages is easier to take with you to the game than 150 pages.
Well, yeah, but no one struggles bringing a normal rulebook to the game. It sounds like trying to solve invented problems tbqh famalam.

Your attack and damage system seems a bit all over the place. It looks like you want low attack and def, hi pow and arm, and you still have two sets of rolls: 3 dice for attack (>= attack rating), successes+pow - (3 + arm >= def).

How many models per side will this game have? This dice mechanic feels extremely clunky for larger scales. As easy as it is to mock GW games for using D6s, dicepools of those sort are innately faster IMO; the reason those games did rolls as hit/wound/save was so that once you discarded all misses, you would have the exact amount of dice needed for the next step.

On another note, your system is simple AA and a single pass doesn't fix that so much, especially when your commander CP is scarce and also used for rallying. Simple AA can be exploited by taking extreme MSU for skip-actions. I recommend doing like SGII and making it so the player with less unactivated units can freely skip, the other player cannot.

>How is this a problem? How is adding up, say, 5 dice a burden?
It takes longer. Speed is key with tabletop games. I believe resolving a test quickly is more important than having a really smooth looking curve when you graph out the possibilities. No one cares what the curve looks like, but rather how quick the game is to play.

Adding 5 numbers every time when you could be adding 2 adds up over time.

Its more like saying
>Having a 40 page rulebook is easier to find the rules you need than having to search through 150 pages.

There's no reason to add complexity purely for the smoothness of a curve on a chart that the player will never see.

>It takes longer.
And 150 page rulebooks are heavier. Did you take any measurements how much time adding up dice consumes? Or is this blind optimization?

Anyway, I have a counterhypothesis: it's a saturated market and designers fabricate issues they then solve to create unique selling points. Case in point: GUMSHOE.

Also, you don't see the curve, but you experience its effects during gameplay.

>designers fabricate issues they then solve to create unique selling points
I guess there must be a certain part of the market that gets excited about a game based on the dice dynamics it has.

>Did you take any measurements how much time adding up dice consumes?
Adding more numbers takes more time. I'm sure you can see how this works.

The question is: Does the effect of a 5D6 vs a 2D6 really provide so much of an advantage as to outweigh the slightly slower gameplay?

I don't think a "unique selling point" should ever compromise playability.

I'm finishing up the last of my Stalker system, mainly writing up the GM guide. But now comes the question, what essentials should a game master's guide have without being too much?

A bestiary? Stats/npc generating guide? Setting lore?

Not all issues are fabricated. Sometimes game design follows a trend just to follow a trend. For example, company-level wargaming is relatively out of vogue compared to skirmish-level but I imagine the pendulum can swing upwards.

For me, my main issue with such games is turn structure, IGOUGO having long periods of player downtime, AA systems being gameable when you have units of varied power, etc.

>my main issue with such games is turn structure, IGOUGO having long periods of player downtime
I'm trying Numenera's "player always roll" to diminish this.

So, if a PC attacks, the player rolls against the NPC AC.
If the NPC attacks, the player rolls against the NPC "AS" (Attack Score).

This way the GM can distribute attacks for their players to roll, the players keep focused because he might need to roll to defend any time, and reduces "game" activities to the GM, allowing him to focus on the "story" activities like positioning, tactics and motivations and less about rolling dice and checking numbers.

From a processing standpoint, that could be helpful, but from a decision-making standpoint not as much. Ymmv of course.

One option could be that both a player and an npc "engage" each other, select a maneuver in secret (with "success/fail" results and a roll mod) and make an opposed roll.

In play there's a noticeable difference between adding 2 dice and adding 3, and it's enough to break up the flow of things.

An issue that pops up in Alternating Activation games, whether its old-school games like Battletech or attempts to port games like 40k over to an AA system (ex: Beyond the Gates of 40k) is the fact that in many such games, not all activations are created equally. Activating a single "Power 1" unit is a single activation, while activating a "Power 20" unit is a single Activation. For games that are strict "activate one unit," this can be annoying (one player takes a bunch of Power 1 units for pseudo "skip turns" until the Power 20s can act and shoot something dead), while this can be disastrous for games where out-uniting your opponent increases your ability to get consecutive actions (whether it's an activation ratio or a die-draw system).

While the "lots of MSU" can be countered by allowing the player with less unactivated units to skip, this still doesn't solve the innate issue of units that concentrate too much power into a single activation. Some might state such units "simply don't belong in a game," while others might suggest making said units require more activations to work in full. Personally, I consider the first a cop-out, while the second one has the risk of making the game become more "IgoUgo"-ish if one player skews towards superheavies and the other doesn't.

My view is more that certain "super-units" should actually be treated as one model, where certain components activate/are targeted as separate units. So a supertank might activate its engine block as one component, its main turret as another, auxiliary weapons as another, and those would have to be targeted separately and destroyed in turn. While such granularity could break down if applied on a larger scale, my view is that since such vehicles are costed pointwise similar to multiple squads/small vehicles/etc, they should have roughly the same amount of activations.

Does such a concept seem workable or a bit too overengineered?

>tfw haven't touched my game for months
How do you deal with the burnout, lads?

>I guess there must be a certain part of the market that gets excited about a game based on the dice dynamics it has.
A part of the market gets excited over a game which by design makes you never miss an important clue.

>Adding more numbers takes more time. I'm sure you can see how this works.
In code optimization, you don't optimize code before running it through a profiler to identify the bottlenecks.
Has anyone here done the equivalent?

>Does the effect of a 5D6 vs a 2D6 really provide so much of an advantage as to outweigh the slightly slower gameplay?
The inconvenient truth is: any advantages/disadvantages are slight, including the supposed speed-up in gameplay. If this was untrue GURPSfags would have switched to 2d6 long ago.
Imagine this: you can cut down effort even further in half by rolling only 1d6! Or even 1d4! Is the 2d6 distribution curve really worth THAT MUCH effort :^)

I wonder how GURPSfags, Vampire and Shadowrun players can even cope, they must be geniouses.

Thinking about the general subject but outside of the confines of what you have already created.

Do I make a system for layering armor or just a bunch of different armor items

Won't work if you can deploy 20 super tanks, but I can see, and I like, the idea of a gargantuan battlemech being so huge he activates to move, then he activates to fire. May allow smaller, faster units to try to flee from the giant line of sight after he moves, since a sure shot from him may vanquish the weaker unit.
This also "fixes" a player waiting too long to act since his opponent chose to build a swarm and he chose elite units.

Concept is solid, implementation will define if it works or not.

I'm personally no fan of laying armor because it's a mechanic that often can be gamed by ruthless players. But if you're really careful I suppose it could be done.

The particulars of AA are a very interesting discussion. Asymmetrical unit balance functions well with certain forms of alternating activation such alternating until only one player has units left and then the remainder all activating together. For example if I have a horde of goblin dudes and you have a few overpowered brutal elite units, we go back and forth for a moment and you gain the advantage of moving all at once early on, I gain the advantage of having disposable units to bait out your actions each turn, and I still get to activate all my remaining dudes together once you're out of units, which is similar in practice to your own elite advantage once the turns start rolling over. Essentially a super unit is created at the end of each turn by the remaining models of whatever horde army still has unactivated units. Since both extremes present both strategic advantage and disadvantage, armies then naturally metagame towards a more even spread.

I want to say thank you to the people making these threads, you're part of the reason I believe Veeky Forums to be the consistently best board on Veeky Forums. So many people here are helpful and creative, and actually able to discuss differing opinions without shitposting.
Now for my actual contribution to the thread, I've been wanting to create/adapt a system for an Animorphs campaign, as I think the Animorphs setting could be adapted into a really fun game, especially if the tone of the books is correctly exhibited. I'd like to keep number crunching to a minimum if possible. Both to keep the interest of my players, and for my own sake. I dont have much experience as a GM, and maybe I should get more before doing this, but I just love the Animorphs setting, and I think it could make a great RPG if done correctly. The creation of an Animorphs adaptation will most likely be a long, ongoing project for me, so hopefully I'll be able to rack up some more GM experience before actually putting it to the test, and these threads seem like a great place to start.

The first question is: does it need to be its own game or can it be a campaign setting for an established system instead?
The second question is: is the goal homebrew or commercial product? If it's the latter, you need to spend a few months researching all existing systems. No kidding. There is no way you can shortcut this without running the risk of eventually somebody else telling you
>So it's basically like game X?
invalidating your work. If that's too much for you or anyone else, don't aim at a commercial product.

Hope this doesn't sound discouraging, it's just trying to avert later heartbreak. For homebrew, feel free to fool around to your heart's content. For a new commercial system, try to be professional.

Ideally I'd like it to be its own game, but I'm not against having it be a campaign setting, as that would at least be a good starting point.
This would definitely be a homebrew, I hadn't really thought about making a commercial system, though the idea is appealing. I dont have nearly enough experience/knowledge to attempt anything like that at the moment though.

Look at all the different ways time is spent playing tabletop. I guarantee you rolling 5dx or anything 2+ is not where you're wasting time.

I think it's mostly a way of rationalizing
>I like this dice mechanic best
Which is fair enough, there's no accounting for taste.

Sure, but there's a world of difference between emotional facts and objective facts.

My view is that if a single supertank/supermech costs at least 20-30 percent of your army, subdividing it will help keep the amount of activations per player more even, as opposed to one player getting 20 activations, the other getting 4.

Malifaux has one character, Hamelin. Hamelin's shtick is that whenever units near him die, they turn into plague rats. The plague rats suck in a fight, but each rat uses up its own activation. Thus, Hamelin gets taken mainly for bunch of "filler" activations to dick around and waste your opponent's time. And that's the type of mechanic that annoys when dealing with "all activations are equal."

Yeah. Consolidation of like models into units to prevent individual hordes like that is sort of mandatory for good aa. Not knowing the specifics it sounds like the quick fix house rule would be to make all rats consolidate into one unit on creation. AA systems need to be strict with hordes and fodder. A few throwaway models is fine if you pay points for them and have checks and balances, but free throwaway individual speed bump models fuck everything up and you need to be veeeeery self aware writing rules like that. A special character is a fine place for such a fodder mechanic, but entirely new units need to be tightly managed.

The point isn't that adding three numbers is hard, it's that adding two is silky smooth by comparison. There's no need to stick to an old way of doing things just because other games have used it.