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.
A combat system is good when the lowest, dumbest consumer imaginable is able to understand and use it. This will keep the game marketable to the largest group.
Michael Johnson
>What makes a combat system good? meaningful choices/"tactical resource management"
Aiden Wilson
Cont. The system should have a very clear list of what you can do in combat. A characters abilities should be very clear and not up to interpretation. People love choosing from lists every turn because it's easy and natural and you should never be too general with actions.
Grayson Ortiz
Important note I forgot. Do not make the actions have too many words even for clarity. You'll lead to arguments and confusion because the entry is too long.
James Moore
An imagined example might be Melee Attack Ranged attack Throw something Smite Smite lvl 2 Group Smite Use item Move Take Cover Talk
Jason Davis
>the lowest, dumbest consumer imaginable is able to understand and use it although this sounds dangerously close to "roll a die to see if you punch something", i must nontetheless agree that a combat system should be as intuitive as possible.
However: >This will keep the game marketable to the largest group. It's already a niche market. The largest group is already marketed to. By a certain game that worst case boils down to "roll a die to see if you punch something". It may be a better idea to look for niche appeal. Granted though, that's a gamble, and even then your system will probably benefit from being streamlined and intuitive.
Hunter Turner
It depends on whether you're making an RPG or a wargame first, since a two-player "versus" and "players versus the gamemaster" are two different dynamics.
For me, I consider a bad system to be one where the "turn order" is too random, there is too much downtime between players getting to take actions, or there is relatively little interaction/everyone else is a target dummy while one player acts.
Warstack was made after getting fed up with 40k/Warmachine IGOUGO, finding Infinity's ARO system unscalable, and finding that many Alternating Activation systems (whether "simple AA", "ratio AA" ala Battletech, or "die-bag" AA ala Bolt Action) could be gamed around or would scale poorly to larger games/games where one player took a smaller number of elite units.
So I started writing Warstack as an Alternating Activation Game, and making several design choices: -The game would be a two-action system, ala XCOM. This means that opposed to other games where you could "move and attack," "run", "full attack," etc, you could break actions down into more atomic components. -Any offensive action could be pre-empted as a counter. Rather than there being a separate set of reactions ("Stand and shoot", "countercharge", etc), you could just take a single action. This would cost one of your actions. -The idea for the stack came from wanting a system that could conceptualize one squad providing covering fire for another. Because interrupts only trigger on declaring an attack, this meant I could use numbered counters to keep track of who interrupted who. "4 attacks 3, 3 attacks 2, 2 attacks 1." (cont)
Dylan Sanchez
-And Strategy Points were used to glue the whole system together. A unit normally cannot activate or interrupt if it has already taken 1 action, but you can spend a SP to do so anyway. Strategy points are also used for activating consecutive units in your army, as well as to Interrupt Interrupts; in the latter two cases, the costs are incremental/scaling, as an innate defense against alphastrike scenarios (like what can happen in Bolt Action/BGOA if you take extreme MSU to inflate your chances of a draw, before you activate an Officer to activate everyone else around you). --Since a unit can take one or both actions activated, but only one while interrupting, and activating/interrupting with a unit that has already taken a single action costs a SP in addition to all other costs, this creates an intentional slight efficiency advantage towards active versus reactive play. -The assorted rules for re-targeting and fake-out allow for a tertiary layer of counter-play, as you can activate a "feint" unit to bait an interrupt or few, before switching over to your real unit.
But the tldr is that you want to have both your players engaged with each other, escalating and prioritizing and trying to outwit and outmatch each other, rather than acting solely on the strength of "I brought a better set of +1s" or "I won the roll to go first."
Evan Anderson
While we're in the topic of combat, do you think games benefit more from combat skills along the lines of >Unarmed, Blades, Pistol, Rifles, etc >One Handed, Two Handed, Ranged, etc >Martial Weapons, Simple Weapons >Straight up combat-only innate bonuses with base stats
I can't place where exactly I want my own game because I don't know how much different levels of granularity affect characters, specially since unless there's a good reason to change weapons around they mostly stick to a single "signature" weapon (or type) of choice throughout the whole campaign
Juan Bailey
My attempt at civ/builder/4x game ruleset pastebin.com/3D7gL0gD How much does it suck?
Landon Carter
>What makes combat system good? Simple rules rich outcomes
James Martinez
I wanted to write something much longer and flowery but this is what my points were.
I'm also of the belief that TTRPGs let players do a near infinite number of actions, narratively speaking, when they perform one attack action. This is fine, but having this be the resolution system should mean that battle takes very little time to avoid the inevitable staleness.
A system with HP bloat and narrative-only attack variety is just painful.
Kevin Walker
How's this look, formatting wise? I'm almost ready to send everything off to my artist, but I want to make sure it doesn't look like ass first
Adam Diaz
Formatting is great, it's easy to read and very well organized. I'd suggest taking a good look at styling it later down the line because it looks basic and uninteresting, some clean looking charts and a change in font oughta do the trick just fine.
Nicholas Clark
Thanks! Once it's got everything updated, and formatted properly, I'll be experimenting with how different fonts look with the art style. Mostly I just want to make sure the main body works before working out the polish.
Leo Torres
Use header formatting. Your headers are inconsistent and you have too many sub-headings. If you're at a 5th sub-heading, you've gone too deep. That's what happened to Moria.
Also, if you're going to have multiple columns with less than one piece of art per page, please, please, please use justified formatting. I know it's a personal preference, but people (like me) who hate rag-aligned columns will react super-strongly to it, while people who might otherwise prefer rag-aligned probably won't even notice if it's justified.
Finally, you need to do quite a bit of editing.
Random sentence pull: >Characters are encouraged to have unique >Cultures, and it is absolutely alright to make >individual, unique cultures specific to >individual characters.
- Why is cultures capitalized? - Think about your choices of words. Are you really suggesting uniqueness of culture? Or do you mean "varied?" - Use fewer words when possible. "Characters are encouraged to have unique Cultures" loses nothing by being translated to "characters may have unique cultures" or "characters should have unique cultures." - Avoid extraneous adverbs. "it is alright to make individual, unique cultures" gains nothing from the word "absolutely." Take that word out. - Avoid redundancy. "Individual" means the same thing as "unique." So why are you talking about "individual, unique" cultures? And if the cultures are unique (which means one of a kind) or individual (meaning applying to one), do you really need to specify "individual characters?" Something individual or unique cannot apply to more than one thing. So you can just say "characters.
The better sentence is something like: "Characters may have individual cultures." Exactly the same information is conveyed, with fewer words.
Cameron Torres
Thanks for pointing out the header inconsistencies; I'd been messing with them so much I hadn't realized I hadn't made a standard. Will fix that now.
I'd considered using justified formatting, and early on did some comparison tests. Personally(coming from a fiction background), I thought it looked weird, but now I think it might be more like "once you see how bad it is, you can't stop seeing how bad it is". Similar to how whenever people double space after a period, a blood vessel in my forehead pops. Anyway. Fixing that.
Yeah, I've been saving the raw text edit for last just because I know it's going to take so long. There are definitely some sections that need to be rewritten, many of which need to be completely rewritten.
As for that section in particular, "Cultures" is capitalized because it is a game term, and has specific impact. I capitalize all of the game terms throughout the rules in an attempt to make things more straightforward. However, I'm realizing now that that intention is not communicated anywhere in the rules themselves, and that capitalization might not be the way to do that in the first place. I'm curious to know what you think would be a better option. Capitalizing the terms? Underlining? Trusting the players to be able to pick up the pattern? Formatting and editing was never my strong suit; so I'm happy to take what good advice I can find.
Angel Young
This whole game design things pretty tricky.
Luis Long
Use different font. Also, how much are you paying the illustrator?
Jaxson Roberts
Nah, capitalizing makes sense. It really was a random sentence pull, so I guess I didn't notice it was a game term. I think my favorite way of doing it, that I've seen, is to bold the font and then use a lighter color for the text. It makes the game-rule terms kinda leap out if you're scanning for them, but otherwise stay hidden (unlike black and bold). But that has to be matched with a pretty strong art direction, I feel like. Caps is prolly good.
And I feel the same way about the double-space. It's stupid and annoys me to no end.
Jackson Lewis
Any recommendations, font-wise?
Also, they're an old friend giving me an insane discount because it's an easy thing to pad out their portfolio and their resume to help them find work when they graduate in a few months. Like ~$250 altogether.
I'll give it a shot. Thanks!
Michael Watson
how many times has a hero gone in a movie: Nah I can't take this gun, I know only how to use this gun and not that other one...
Jordan Bell
In my game anyone can use any weapon so long as they meet a (fairly low) Str/Agl threshold, they must roll the relevant stat to attack each time otherwise.
You can grow proficient through training for small bonuses at a harder rate to obtain thru yet more training, but they're not the determining factor--just the few more points to push a failure into success territory.
Camden Thompson
I went the route of, "the weapons have skills".
The guns, batons, polearms, and knives are in a way their own character, with strengths and weaknesses. There's a melee skillset and ballistics skillset for the wielder--the real character--but ultimately, they will want to employ different weapons per scenario or to fit a playstyle.
Landon Barnes
Combat systems are good when they each feel different.
Isaiah Moore
*when each fight feels different
Jordan Cox
When it's both evocative and plausible and therefore immersive.
Isaac Miller
Apparently someone reviewed a (particularly bad) version of Guns 'n Grenades in 2016. So I emailed him and asked if he'd like to try the new version and he said yes. Waiting to see the review in the next few days. armymenwargaming.wordpress.com link related is the blog that reviewed it.
Ryan Torres
Are you a fan of bigger or smaller numbers when it comes to the crunchy side of things? Like would you prefer a character having 125 points of health, or something like 10, but with different degrees of damage?
Ryder Hernandez
I usually prefer smaller, as long it doesn't interfere with the math.
Asher Clark
Hey folks, I've got a question. In the case of opposed rolls, is there any real difference between: >+1 to your roll >-1 to opponent's roll If so, please elaborate.
Michael Miller
>TT It's ability to convey the tone of the game simply.
Caleb Taylor
if the modifiers cap out at any point, then yes. If I can only get up to +3 on any roll, +1 to my roll doesn't help me at all, but -1 to theirs would be great
But usually no, not really.
Parker Brooks
If there's a fixed number threshold that triggers certain game rules, maybe. If the opposed rolls can be other than one-on-one, maybe.
Robert Wilson
I need a few peoples's takes on what you'd name these things:
1 - Your character is now allowed to take feats related to leadership, having an army, owning a castle, mass-raising undead, etc. 2 - Your character is now allowed to take feats that grant flight or long-range teleportation. 3 - Your character is now allowed to take feats that let them easily travel to other planes of existence. 4 - The category that contains the above three things.
>What makes a combat system good? Combat is interesting proportionate to the number of player-facing rules and the results are predictable proportionate to the number of GM-facing rules. Systems don't have to be simple, but they should be as simple as possible for what they achieve.
Ian Gutierrez
There's the obvious thematic difference, no mathematical difference (unless some other mechanic cares about your number), and a practical difference in that people add faster than they subtract.
Michael Rogers
I prefer small, very small, like Paper Mario small.
But I understand the appeal of throwing a fistful of dice, too. I think going larger in service of that is fine.
Oliver Collins
So how do you figure out what stuff in your setting you should allow your players to play?
James Walker
Like, building a class/archetype?
I just built skills for what I thought would come up in the setting
Logan Torres
Does it have to be set? Just go with what sparks your interest plus whatever is mandatory for the genre. Everything else can be added later?
David Wright
The facing rules are so vague... you need to specify exactly how far to the left and right of the front a figure can attack. You can't just say "if they need to attack outside of the arrows, they need to pivot" and provide a rough looking image. Either give figures 360 degree line of sight and don't worry about facing, or specify exactly what they facing is.
In this example I would go with "45 degrees either side of the front (although the front would need to be defined as some figures don't have a clear front).
Blake Ortiz
So I've been thinking about a combat mechanic lately and wanted some feedback on if it's interesting and if the mechanic seems too complex or hard to understand.
To shed some light into how it would work in my system: Combat is broken into two alternating phases; Offense phase and defense phase. Combat in most cases start off with the players offense round. After they have declared what to do the opponents defense phase begin and they declare how they respond to the players actions. This is then followed by the opponents offense phase in which they declare what they do against the players followed by the players defense phase where they respond to the opponents action and so on.
During the offense phase there is a action you can take called "Prepare." Prepare means that you choose one of your other availble actions and give that action a bonus if you use it the next time you get the chance. So far this is pretty standard, but if you prepare the same action again in your next offense phase you get the abillity to use that action to intercept your opponent. Intercept would mean that you go out of order, using your offense round during the opponents offense round, canceling the targets declared action and forcing him to respond with a defense action. This will consume your next offense round.
I'll post an example below.
Robert Rodriguez
>John and his friend Peter is facing a thug in battle. >Since the players go first John use his action in the offense phase to prepare an attack. >After Peter has declared his action the thugs defense phase begin. Since neither John or Peter attacked the thug he has nothing to declare and the game moves on to the thugs offense phase. >The thug declare to attack Peter and the game moves on to the players defense phase where Peter declare his defensive action, in this case he choose to evade. >Peter rolled badly and took a hard hit, the game moves on to the players offense phase. >John declares he will prepare attack again, giving him the ability to use it to intercept an opponent. >After Peter declared his action the game moves on to opponent defense phase where the thug once again have nothing to declare since no attacks were made against him. >It's now the thugs offense phase and he declares to attack Peter again. >John declares that he will use his prepared attack to intercept thugs attack against Peter. This cancels out the thugs attack against Peter and John gets to attack as if it were his offense phase. >This is immedietly followed by the thug declaring a defensive action as if it was his defense phase. >Since there is no other opponent but the single thug there is nothing else to declare on the opponents offense round and it moves on to the players defense round. >Since the thugs offensive action got cancelled the players have nothing to declare on their defensive phase. The game moves on to the players offense phase. >Peter declare his offensive action. Since John chose to intercept during his opponents offensive phase he is not allowed to declare any actions in this offense phase and combat moves on to the thugs defense phase.
Isaiah Clark
You're supposed to go back and answer other people's questions if you want feedback.
Kevin Gonzalez
uh oh it's the feedback fuhrer, the anonymous Veeky Forums user who dictates how people post in the thread watch out!
P1 Prepare, P2 Defend. P2 Attack, P1 Defend. If P1 attacks prepared, gets bonus. Else, bonus is lost. (Makes sense).
It's the double-prepare scenario that confuses me:
P1 Prepare, P2 Defend. P2 Attack, P1 Defend. P1 Prepare, P2 Defend. If I'm understanding this correctly, this now means that if my opponent wishes to do P2 attack and the action I prepared is allowed to intercept, I can skip straight to P1 attack/P2 defend...this seems a bit convoluted for what is fundamentally an attack cooldown mechanic.
Elijah Watson
Anyway, I need to flesh out the Strategic and Resolution Phase parts for this reference sheet. Normally the first turn is a roll-off to see who gets to activate a unit first, but I am experimenting with allowing players to bid Strategy Points in order to steal the initiative back. The winner has to spend the full cost of Strategy Points in order to get the first activation, but the loser retains half the SP bid back.
As for the resolution phase, this is where objectives will be tallied. I imagine the game is a "control-points" game (similar to 40k) but scoring is turn-to-turn and requires a full turn of controlling the objective (as opposed to being able to 'rocket tag' them). I imagine there ideally would be extra points for objectives that are further away from your deployment zone, and for objectives maintaining a "chain"/graph to your table edge, to represent the actual battlefield being secured rather than isolated pockets, but that is probably more overengineered.
How is this page summary looking so far? I imagine the next sheet will be unit statistics and die rolls, perhaps the 3rd will be missions/scoring and special rule cheatsheets.
Aaron Morgan
wrong, the key to getting feedback is providing information regarding your problem(s) in a brief and concise and, ideally, interesting manner.
also, this is an anonymous imageboard, in case you hadn't noticed.
Aiden Lopez
How are modifiers handled?
Oliver Kelly
Stats from -3 up to +3, both ends are rare though. I might have to consider a 'you succeed, but...' result if you roll below 13.
Hunter Brooks
Priest's have a separate stat for faith. It starts at 10 at character creation. Priests can heal other characters as much as they please, as long as they roll under their faith stat. If they roll over, they have to either expend a point of faith or be unable to heal others for the rest of the day, so it gets harder, riskier, tenser every time you roll to heal someone. You can increase you faith by doing good and great achievements.
Camden Gray
Only issue I can see with that scoring sysyem is camping set ups, where you build units to specifically sit there and abuse the reaction system.
I'm assuming +0 is the neutral state, in which case its a 25%, but bell-curves always favor the middle. If +1 is common, with higher rarer, 13 is an okay TN, but I might consider adding 11 and 12 as the 'you succeed, but...' buffer zone.
Isaac Phillips
>His system has a "phase through walls/objects/living matter/etc." spell or power >It says how much you can phase through and how often >But there's no indication for what happens if you unphase in the middle of solid matter, WHY
Adam Perez
So I was look at the idea of adding special weapons to small squads, and I was wondering if it was better to make them an upgrade to an exiting model in the unit, such as how 40k handles it; or make it an additional model to the unit, like how Warmahordes handles it?
Essentially, the difference is do I start with a larger unit and have players have to pay for the extra guys, even if they don't take the weapon, or smaller units with the ability to expand, but have to change some of the math to accommodate the unit size difference?
Jonathan Anderson
Bump
Jackson Nguyen
back in my day, noclip was a cheat and not a spell
Dominic King
Cheats are an interesting source of spell ideas.
Curse of big head.
Jeremiah Rodriguez
The main thing is the fact that only *attacks* trigger the reaction system; you can still dash to and from cover (or even interrupt to interpose a unit in the attack path of another) and that won't cause a reaction. Using reactions is also somewhat less efficient than normal activations in terms of action/SP economy, the tradeoff of course being the ability to counter your opponent.
I prefer the old 40k (or Mordheim) approach myself; make the units customizable with a relatively flexible armory selection. Fixed options are just...ehhhh.
Kayden Wood
I think the action/SP economy having an effect would help counter that. The lack of reaction to certain actions, not so much, because that still leaves them open to making attack actions themselves while camping.
I'm still playing with army composition. I'm also looking at the weight of shooting versus melee in my ruleset, because I also have a sci-fantasy setting I've been working on. If range ends up being more fluid and better focused, I can move towards that setting, in which I'd also look at how to include weapons in squads.
