/gdg/ - Game Design General

"Tumbling Down" Edition

A place for full-on game designers and homebrewers alike, as well as general mechanics discussion for published games. Feel free to share your projects, ideas and problems, comment to other designers' ideas and give advice to those that need it.

Try to keep discussion as civilized as possible, and avoid non-constructive criticism. A new thread is posted every friday, as long as there isn’t one still up.

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>Last Thread:
>Thread Topic:
How comfortable are you with open-ended systems or mechanics with aspects that heavily rely on GM fiat, left open to interpretation or require an agreement rather than listing a defined and finite amount of possibilities within them?

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>TotT:
I consider it a viable method of exception handling. Anything a player is likely going to want to do regularly should probably be spelled out in the text but an example or two to show how to resolve more unexpected acts is perfectly fine. Like you shouldn't need DC charts and defined ability rolls for every possible action, just enough that the GM can intuitively throw out a reasonable check on the fly.

>Thread Topic:
I personally use it, but I tell my players that sometimes, because of context, a "minor failure" can be just a failure, or a "major success" can be just a success. But everytime I have a good idea, I use it (i.e. not always).

Question to all: do you guys know of a good combat system that is deterministic ? I'm looking at something without dice roll, ideally not too abstract and where skill in combat/weapon matters, not a FATE thing.

Thanks.

>Question to all: do you guys know of a good combat system that is deterministic ? I'm looking at something without dice roll, ideally not too abstract and where skill in combat/weapon matters, not a FATE thing.

rock-paper-scissors

Okay I'll try again:

Meaningful combat system with tactics and that can make use of character's skills such as training in weapon or combat.

Thanks.

Ah, user, but you see, you have already found what you're looking for. You wish to know if something of your desire exists, but expect it to match your expectations fully. The combat you desire is within you, as is the nature of the design thread. Therefore, you must seek answers not in the general, but within yourself.

Let my first answer resonate in your head and lead you to ponder: rock, paper, scissors.

youtube.com/watch?v=VKMw2it8dQY

Maybe something diceless like the legacy Marvel Universe RPG?

Would replacing a fixed value with a variable be a good trade off for the chance to damage on a failure?

For example, replacing a 9 with D12+2, with the other party being hit if they fail.

Fuck, I worded that crappily. I meant in context of attack vs. defender, the defender changes their stat to a variable for a chance to damage the attacker if the attacker fails.

I don't know if it's good, but the only thing I heard of it Amber Diceless. There are some card based resolution systems out there, though that's just another form of RNG i suppose.

I can only think of:
- resource-management (hopefully not what you consider a "FATE" thing?)
- rocks-paper-scissors (every choice will yield a strength and a weakness)

You're more or less looking for a strategy game, so these are elements I think of when I imagine an RTS's challenges.

I like that, since it seems like a fair simulation of an "active defense", attacking but at risk of not really defending properly

In my own case, I'd like to have situations where one could exchange active defense for a defense rating slightly above the EV of the dice roll--as a type of feat.

I love open-ended systems as long as the few rules they do have are solid, easily applied to most situations, and serve as a decent guideline for what to do when unusual shit happens.

I'm trying to make a system that uses dice pools but doesn't do that thing in Shadowrun where if you are an expert at something you're rolling a fuckton of dice. I'd like to ask what y'all think of the following idea for a system that uses d6 dice pools, with 5 and 6 counting as hits:
>dice pool stops at 12
>for every 2 dice over 12 you can instead count a 4 as a hit
Any number crunchers know how that would mess with high-level skills?

I like active defense, hence playing with opposed rolls in most of my latest projects. But I've been having trouble with it lately, so looking at other ideas without completely abandoning opposed rolls.

Bump

>left open to interpretation
I've never actually seen this successfully pulled off, it eventually always devolves into players playing the logical conclusion game to justify something that obviously wasn't intended by the developers.

It wouldn't work in this context, it'd be superior to always take that variable over the course of hundreds of rolls.

I'm working on a campaign generator that handles tiles, environment, creatures and more. The scope of work necessary to create this is more than I expected, and I have 19 libraries already coded this weekend. The game works by procedurally generating chunks that represent areas like dungeons or towns or woods, generating tiles for them, and then populating them with actors.

It's a bit meta, but creating a virtual environment is necessary for me because if I design anything, it's because I want to seriously play or run it, and that's not going to happen as long as the game isn't 3.5e or 5e. Let's say I have very strong disagreements with common RPG design practices, and if I have to choose between making a system into a mock-fire emblem and playing most RPGs with real people, I'm going to go digital. Fortunately, there are a lot of tactics games for me to tear apart and learn how they work for the movement. Pokemon has also been useful.

I didn't want to kill a thread for unfinished work, but this is relevant to game design in some really counter-intuitive ways. For example, diplomacy and bluff are social skills that can be used around NPC "actors," but what purpose do they serve, and what is the difference between them if we strip away the fluff? Can some NPCs only be bluffed, and others persuaded? Do they offer passage or information? What's an intuitive way for the player to know this distinct difference in behavior? How does the program logically determine that?

There aren't a lot of games with skill use elements, and the bethseda approach isn't useful for me here because I'm generating the environment and actors.

>How comfortable are you with open-ended systems or mechanics with aspects that heavily rely on GM fiat, left open to interpretation or require an agreement rather than listing a defined and finite amount of possibilities within them?

>What are social encounters (assuming the game even has mechanics for those)
>What is clairvoyance (case in point: Stars Without Number's psionics)
>What are wishes (assuming you have genies or other such things)

Page 10

Thread seems awfully quiet lately

The context is basic. I need to play with it, maybe drop the attack back roll, so its not as carbon copy. The concept at the core is just variable over fixed as an option of risk vs. reward. I'd also have to address the feel of the flow, since that idea slows the game down compared to how the rest of the game would be set up.

How many special rules is too many to track per piece, do you think?

Cards are easy, because you print them on it, and RPGs have you only worrying about a few pieces. But even then, how many do you feel is too many? Should things other players control be taken into account, or should there be more flex room for players since that other stuff is handled by another player?

Give me some inspiration, I just reopened my old scifi RPG I got started on a year or so ago. I wanted to capture the feeling of vintage pulp scifi covers art. Sci fi isn't my strong suit and I have no defined setting.

Hey folks, working on a small team skirmish tactics game, and an important part of it is facing. We want to use 28 mm models and triangular bases. I don't think they make triangular bases normally, so we're going to just use our 3d printing gear to custom make them. How wide to a side should an equiliateral triangle be to fit a 28mm model on it?

(the reason why we're using triangular bases is that facing is very important in our game and we want to make sure it can't be fucked up, so we're designing the models with facing made clearly in mind)

Actual 28mm or 28mm heroic?

would that change up the size overly much? Was thinking about the size of kingdom death minatures, which are just slightly bigger than games workshop ones I think?

Square bases would be just as easy to "not fuck up" why not just go square?

If you really need triangles, use balsa wood: easy to cut out with a craft knife, just bevel the top edges off with sandpaper, and voila, bases.

Pic related bases are all balsa wood.

We thought about square bases and we might still go with those (especially if we can find them cut for a 'diamond' shape rather than a square one). But the issue I'm asking about has to do with the sides of the base, and how big the actual base should be.

Heroic is bigger, due to the proportions. KDM is 35mm, I believe, so I'd say 32mm per side of the triangle would give you a base with enough room for any figures you'd end up using. When it come down to it, its about the sculpt that has to go on the base. A good rule of thumb is the base should be a little bigger than the model if it was standing wide spread, or in the case of creatures or other non-two-legged things, so that only the exteme extremities are hanging off the area the base covers. A triangle, I'd say the sides should be longer than if it was square, to give area for the model to stand on.

thanks!

Also, do you have a sample of the facing rules?

not just yet, we're going to be doing some play tests, but the basics of facing is for the determination of line of sight more than anything else. We're using a momentum system.

The way the game works is that turns are very fluid. Momentum (or the turn) shifts when you either A) have a unit come into LoS of an enemy unit, or B) have all of your units move.

When you move a unit into LoS of an enemy unit, a fire fight breaks out. You and your opponent declare all units participating in the fire fight (and they must be able to participate through coming into the combat). And then you both take turns declaring what each of them do
>"Open Fire" Change Facing by up to 90degrees, Move up to 2" then choose a target and attack.
>"Dive for Cover" Change Facing by up to 180degrees, Move up to 2" and then enhance the type of cover that's provided by the terrain you're covering behind.
>"Make a break for it" Change Facing by up to 180degrees, get a full movement action but you may not open fire.

Then you roll attacks, total up the damage inflicted, and knock over the models killed. The player who was 'interrupting' now has momentum, and can move their units as they like. If units are still in a fire fight, then if he activates a unit that is in LoS it begins a new Fire Fight (shifting momentum back). Thus, the game places a great deal of importance on facing, positioning, and the order you move your units in.

LoS is the front 180 of the character by the way, which is why we wanted the triangle, makes it very easy to determine what is front and what is back.

How many dice mechanics are too many for a system? I was thinking of something that uses increasing steps of dice for half the mechanics (d4 to d6 to d8, etc) and then fudge dice for another part of it. Does it depend on the execution or is that already enough to sound over complicated?

Your conflict resolution system should be, at it's core, the same no matter what else is going on in your system.

at most, I'd say 2 dice mechanics like d20 systems. You got the d20 for the primary conflict resolution, and other sized dice for various other types of events, usually effecting potency (How much damage/healing, how many fireballs, how many people effected by an ability, etc.)

Anything more than that, and you're running into players being REALLY CONFUSED by things.

You can do more with a board game where you use the board design to help remember stuff, but other than that? Bad idea.