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I really like the interior layout and the overall aethetic, but the cover's sigil only being partially visible and fading out toward the bottom looks a little strange/off to me.
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Jul 6, 2016 03:54
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Thanks for the input! I used smaller margins before, but I thought that it was just too much text and not enough white space, so it didn't feel inviting to read. And I'll keep on tinkering with the cover, and see if I can come up with something better.
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Jul 6, 2016 07:23
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It looks very nice and clean - reminds me of nobilis 2e! The cover I'm less sold on - looks more like a programming textbook than an RPG. I'd suggest making the glyph more dominant and the title box less so. Also, in the interior spreads I'm not a fan of where the ribbon at the bottom stops - it feels like it'd be better if it extended past the far column. This is all minor aesthetic quibbles though- your text, headings (esp. chapter heading) and sidebar design looks great.
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Jul 6, 2016 07:28
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Thanks for the input, I made a revision based on the ideas posted.   I'm also thinking about how much to get into explaining the genre. For example, in one way this is a niche of a niche, as few people (as far as I know) start out miniature wargaming through small indy games rules. However, it would be very nice if a roleplayer with no wargaming experience could pick it up and play, or if someone who is into Vikings but have no hobby experience could enjoy it. Any good ideas of how much you'd like a game to dwelve into the "established genre basics" or what you would call it? Is it worth spending time and, more importantly, space?
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Jul 6, 2016 11:27
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lilljonas posted:Thanks for the input, I made a revision based on the ideas posted. I haven't really done any published work, but I feel it's important to spend some time and space on it, that way the reader knows exactly what you're defining your genre as going in, and knows what to expect. And even if I was someone who was familiar with it, I would want the section there to help explain it if I were getting someone else into it, and they had absolutely no idea what to expect.
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Jul 6, 2016 21:51
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Finished a first draft of a Wraith Squadron-based variant. Feedback welcome. Playtest currently recruiting in the Game Room. https://docs.google.com/document/d/18rDapu3J_arKCCThDqIPKMMCHsn-KH4QSeXrvm3OeEk/edit#heading=h.q847dmvmogfk
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Jul 7, 2016 05:15
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I may have asked this earlier, but anyone got any tricks to get motivated? I try going for a walk everyday for an hour, but that doesn't work. I try regular exercise and baths, but that doesn't work. I try watching new shows, but that doesn't work. I tried setting deadlines, but I'm a king at ignoring deadlines. Anyone got any advice for how to get motivated and do it quick? Also, how important do you guys feel that "feel" is in design?
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Jul 9, 2016 18:37
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Covok posted:I may have asked this earlier, but anyone got any tricks to get motivated? I try going for a walk everyday for an hour, but that doesn't work. I try regular exercise and baths, but that doesn't work. I try watching new shows, but that doesn't work. I tried setting deadlines, but I'm a king at ignoring deadlines. Anyone got any advice for how to get motivated and do it quick? I have had success with telling myself that I can't do [x specific thing that I like] until I do a minimum of [y reasonable subdivisions of thing I'm supposed to be doing]. Then I end up doing it every day. Feel is important. Sometimes you're making games, though, and sometimes you're making products. If you see what I am saying.
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Jul 9, 2016 19:15
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In my experience, the only way that work gets done is if it needs to get done. Much of the creative work I do comes from an internal need: I have a vision for something and I feel like I need to get it out of my system and onto paper (or more likely, a computer screen). With an internal need to do something, it's often easier to do it than not do it, but you may end up spending long periods of time not working on your project, simply because you haven't gotten any inspiration for the next bit. This is why I take copious notes so I can always come back to a project after a month or so. The other kind of need is an external need: someone (or something) else is demanding that you get this done. It could be because it's your job, or you have a group of people relying on you to get this done, or maybe it's just a prerequisite to something you're actually looking forward to. Sometimes you can artificially construct an external need, like finding a buddy who'll nag you to stay on task (for example, having a gym buddy can help both of you work out on a more-regular basis). In reality, many projects will have a combination of the two: at first, you might just be trying to get your super-cool idea down on paper, but then other people start looking at it and providing feedback, and now you have external motivation from them. Of course, this is easier with an open development model, but if you have interested friends, you can get some motivation from them. For a roleplaying game, you could try to get enough rules down that you can run a game using it, and then work on bits as they come up in your game. Obviously, this requires you to be willing and able to fudge stuff that you haven't gotten the chance to codify yet. I'm not sure exactly what you mean about "feel" in design. Certainly, mechanics and story should complement each other instead of fighting each other, but that doesn't really prescribe a particular design methodology. There's nothing wrong with a bottom-up design where you come up with interesting mechanics and then figure out how that's represented in the story later. Top-down also works, or a mix of the two. For example, if you're familiar with Overwatch, Pharah's design was bottom-up, whereas Winston's and Soldier 76's were top-down. Avenging Dentist fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jul 9, 2016 |
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Jul 9, 2016 19:15
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Covok posted:I may have asked this earlier, but anyone got any tricks to get motivated? I try going for a walk everyday for an hour, but that doesn't work. I try regular exercise and baths, but that doesn't work. I try watching new shows, but that doesn't work. I tried setting deadlines, but I'm a king at ignoring deadlines. Anyone got any advice for how to get motivated and do it quick? For me, "external" deadlines work, such as scheduled playtests. For example, initially me and some friends at our gaming club were just fudging around with the basic rules of Holmgång. Then it worked to just have a bunch of google documents and not bother with covering everything in the rules, as we were still working things out. Then we decided to have a playtest with some guys I don't know, who were not part of the unstructured brainstorm phase. Now, that was a great reason to go back through all the rules, check if our wording made any sense, and try to figure out if there were parts that we didn't cover. And during the playtest if naturally turned out that there were still questions and missing things and so on, and that gave me a bunch of issues to iron out with the other guys. That's all fine and dandy, but since then we've been in a period of less progress again. So now we're planning to organize some more external playtest sessions. These serves both as a way to get more input and find out what we need to polish now that the basics work, and the pressure of getting the rules presentable enough to feel good about showing them to complete strangers. That way it doesn't help that I'm also a master of pushing back my own deadlines, as we make sure that the deadlines involve other people than ourselves. E: I also find that it helps to be a team, especially when doing something for fun that is not work. That way, one person's enthusiasm can carry the project forward during those periods when another person's enthusiasm is vaning, and where the game or whatever would be threatened to be chucked into a drawer otherwise. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jul 9, 2016 |
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Jul 9, 2016 19:17
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I find that telling people about my deadlines makes them harder to miss. There's a thread over in CC called 'The Long Walk' where people toxx to write x-thousand words this month, and while I could easily eat the  to re-up if I failed, it's the public declaration and accountability that really motivate me.(TLW is meant for fiction writing, but it's not very strict; I've been counting words written towards various RPG projects and now I'm using it as motivation for my IFComp entry.)
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Jul 9, 2016 20:45
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I finally took some time today to look over my playtest notes and write the next draft of Friendship, Effort, Victory, my shonen battle manga apocalpyse world hack. You can find it here. There have been a lot of changes:
Any comments and thoughts are appreciated. As for everyone's advice on inspiration, I agree and disagree with some assertions, though, of course, I still appreciate the sentiment. For example, I find deadlines don't work for me since I've never superrespected deadlines my entire life and I generally working in teams never really works out due to creative differences. But, maybe external deadlines work? One of the things that made me do FEV so rapid fire a few months ago was someone randomly finding it and encouraging me to work so he could run a game of it. Not really a deadline, but interested third parties did give me some good incentives. Once again, I appreciate everyone's responses and I think I found an idea that might work for me. lilljonas posted:Thanks for the input, I made a revision based on the ideas posted. I like how it looks, but you might save some money on printing if you use the sides of the page more, possibly. Just saying.
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Jul 10, 2016 00:16
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Quick update:
Edit: Quick update:
Covok fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jul 10, 2016 |
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Jul 10, 2016 04:24
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I'm trying to setup a PBP playtest of the revised 8th draft of Friendship, Effort, Victory, my Shonen battle comics pbta hack. If you're interested, any help is appreciated.
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Jul 16, 2016 07:14
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Here is another big, overreaching question that is way too simple and probably has no clear answer: where do you find someone good at writing settings and how do you hire them? And how much do you pay them? I'm beginning to think I do rules not-entirely-poo poo-but-still-poo poo-but-not-so-poo poo, but I don't think I can do settings and considering other people for that job.
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Jul 24, 2016 17:12
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Covok posted:Here is another big, overreaching question that is way too simple and probably has no clear answer: where do you find someone good at writing settings and how do you hire them? And how much do you pay them? Plan your book first so you know how many pages are about dwarves (and how many cities you want in that section) so you can give some guidelines. Find somebody who's already writing setting stuff online (or on DTRPG). Provide the book plan (this many pages on this, that many pages on that) and pay them by the word.
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Jul 24, 2016 17:39
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homullus posted:Plan your book first so you know how many pages are about dwarves (and how many cities you want in that section) so you can give some guidelines. Find somebody who's already writing setting stuff online (or on DTRPG). Provide the book plan (this many pages on this, that many pages on that) and pay them by the word. This is the industry standard, but personally I have something of a moral inclination towards asking people how many hours will be spent on the project, and then offering them the greater of [estimated time*decent wage] and [word count*decent rate for words], calculated on delivery. But that's just a suggestion for if you're feeling rich. (Where, by definition, "decent wage" is equal to or higher than the greater of the minimum wage where you live and the minimum wage where the writer lives.)
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Jul 24, 2016 20:04
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Covok posted:Here is another big, overreaching question that is way too simple and probably has no clear answer: where do you find someone good at writing settings and how do you hire them? And how much do you pay them? You'd have to either trawl RPG professional FB groups or something, or directly contact people. If you make an open call of any sort, A: get samples of previous work B: ask them if they've done previous published work of any kind. First one tells you what they are capable of, second one hopefully tells you if they're capable of working with deadlines.
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Jul 24, 2016 21:11
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homullus posted:Plan your book first so you know how many pages are about dwarves (and how many cities you want in that section) so you can give some guidelines. Find somebody who's already writing setting stuff online (or on DTRPG). Provide the book plan (this many pages on this, that many pages on that) and pay them by the word. LatwPIAT posted:This is the industry standard, but personally I have something of a moral inclination towards asking people how many hours will be spent on the project, and then offering them the greater of [estimated time*decent wage] and [word count*decent rate for words], calculated on delivery. But that's just a suggestion for if you're feeling rich. Kemper Boyd posted:You'd have to either trawl RPG professional FB groups or something, or directly contact people. If you make an open call of any sort, A: get samples of previous work B: ask them if they've done previous published work of any kind. First one tells you what they are capable of, second one hopefully tells you if they're capable of working with deadlines. Alright, all very good advice. And, yeah, knowing if people work well with deadlines is almost as important of how well people do the job at all. If I ever go forward with that whim, it's good knowing this procedure. I'm sorry to bother people with another question, but I just found out about Hillfolk by Robin D. Laws and found out about series pitches. It reminded me how much I'm looking for easy, quick things I can produce for low-to-no cost while still retaining quality so I can generate funds to spend on the production quality of bigger products. Series pitches look easy, but probably won't sell well and I don't think I know Pathfinder well enough (and the market is full enough) to try my other thought. What do you guys do as easy, quick, next-to-no-cost, high quality products to generate profits that can be spend on bigger products? Or is that just a bad way of looking at things?
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Aug 1, 2016 03:59
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Covok posted:Alright, all very good advice. And, yeah, knowing if people work well with deadlines is almost as important of how well people do the job at all. If I ever go forward with that whim, it's good knowing this procedure. You are best off not looking for profit snowballs at all in gaming ("You know the best way to make $1 million in gaming? Start with $2 million"). At best, it is a way to make some money in your spare time doing something you like.
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Aug 1, 2016 17:26
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Is there pre-existing and/or simple jargon that is used for "Roll twice when you would normally roll once, and combine (i.e. add) the results"? Currently in my designs, I'm using Advantage/Disadvantage as per the 5e D&D definition, as well as "Trade-off" (which is "roll twice; treat the higher result as a bonus and the lower result as a penalty") so I'm looking for a way to consolidate/unify all those mechanics, and I just need some inspiration for a word that fits.
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Aug 4, 2016 06:58
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P.d0t posted:Is there pre-existing and/or simple jargon that is used for "Roll twice when you would normally roll once, and combine (i.e. add) the results"? "Combination Roll"? Edit: "California Roll"? 
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Aug 4, 2016 15:15
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You could use the word sum or summation.
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Aug 4, 2016 18:05
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P.d0t posted:Is there pre-existing and/or simple jargon that is used for "Roll twice when you would normally roll once, and combine (i.e. add) the results"? If you're looking for a short but semi-intuitive name for a unified group of mechanics involving rolling twice, maybe "Double Roll" will work?
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Aug 4, 2016 19:49
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P.d0t posted:Is there pre-existing and/or simple jargon that is used for "Roll twice when you would normally roll once, and combine (i.e. add) the results"?
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Aug 5, 2016 13:05
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So, it's been a while since I last posted in the thread about my dwarf-focused dungeon crawler, but I figured that I would give an update since I was able to do 2 playtests in the last month! The first playtest was with a group I'd never actually met before, which probably helped them quickly learn the rules and how I run games better than my usual group. Character creation, when you removed the parts where I explained unique system jargon, went just as quickly as I hoped. The players rolled up a group made of a Miner (an occupation with high personal defenses and extremely good exploration powers), a Ghostspeaker (a dwarf cleric-ghostbuster), and a Housecarl (a brick shithouse 4E D&D defender). The exploration mechanics went excellently– players had fun with their items, skill checks, and occupation powers. It may be necessary to make it more clear when Scene (encounter) powers recharge, since the players often found that they trouble remembering when one scene ended (switching from combat to exploration or vice versa). I don't know whether to give Exploration powers unique forms of recharging that don't require a scene/encounter to end, or to just to be more on the ball as a GM and remind them when they can use powers again. Combat was surprisingly not as lethal as I thought, since 2/3 of the party were wearing 1 Armor, making the vast majority of goblin attacks deal no damage (this is a system that deals in Paper Mario scales of damage). Likewise, player defenses were too high for the goblins to reliably hit more than 20% of the time. Overall, I found that my last-minute adjustments to item stats and monster stats had skewed things far too heavily in the favor of the players, and while the fact they had two tanks was probably the reason for them just, well, tanking the two encounters, it wasn't as harrowing in encounters as I wanted it to be. So, with that in mind for my second playtest I focused on 1) giving monsters and players more ways to get around Armor points, 2) reducing starting weapon and armor stats for PCs, 3) completely revising monster stats, and 4) Making the playtest dungeon much more dangerous. The second playtest was done with my BFFs, who are also my main gaming group. They played as the other three occupations left out of playtest #1: the Loremaster, the Berserker (high damage, berserker rage status effects), and the Bandit (skirmisher that can jump in and out of fights). Character generation also went very quickly and exploration went well (even though they fell for the new traps I added and went right over the secret door). However, things went up poo poo creek very quickly when they ran right into a group of goblins with no attempt at stealth, walked away without engaging, those goblins alerted two other groups of goblins, and then the entire dungeon was aggroed on them as they kept moving into worse and worse positions within the dungeon in an escape plan that involved scaling a tower (?) that was clearly inhabited by the dungeon boss (???). I still don't know why my friends thought any of that made sense. Either way it ended with the Berserker decapitating 2 warriors while the Loremaster ran into the wilderness, the Bandit hiding in a storage room before being knocked out by a troll when he stopped hiding and tried to set the room on fire, and the Berserker nearly soloing the dungeon boss outside the entrance before they decided to call it a draw and walk away, each at 1HP. I think my main failure in the second playtest was forgetting to emphasize that stealth, enemy detection, and hiding are critical aspects to the game. I did mention it to the first playtest, but the issue of stealth came up so rarely I forgot about the warning on the second go-around. That, and forgetting to mention the loud noises coming from the second layer of the dungeon. The combat math now seems much more reasonable in the small amount of combat I saw– very swingy, but within target ranges that threaten both fighters. In any case, that second playtest makes me seriously consider whether my insanity and dwarfen tantrum spiral rules are even necessary.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:14
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Spiderfist Island posted:In any case, that second playtest makes me seriously consider whether my insanity and dwarfen tantrum spiral rules are even necessary. Sounds like it went well! On that note, if you wanted to keep insanity and tantrums So if a dwarf goes mad, you could simply assign penalties whenever they acted like they weren't mad.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:35
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 It's been a while since I posted about it here, but What Ho, World!, my Jeeves and Wooster-inspired, Apocalypse-powered, storytelling card game is just about ready to be Kickstartered! We've got a draft page up here, but I'd appreciate any feedback you all have on the project and the game before we pull the trigger and launch the thing. The basic idea for the game is that we take the standard PbtA setup - playbooks, moves, and the conversation - and use card mechanics to shake things up. There's no random elements and no GM, and instead you're flipping over move cards to get tokens to activate other moves with, shifting the spotlight around in a Fiasco-like scene structure, and creating trouble for your character and others in order to get more tokens and move your personal plot ahead. Each character playbook plays pretty differently too: the Servant is most effective when they're guiding their master onto a desired course of action and helping them succeed, while the Pillar of Society is great at levying judgement on others and shaping the rules of acceptable behaviour. In playtesting it's been really fun, though if I learned anything from previous kickstarters it's that backers will find orders of magnitude more things that need tweaking than local playtests. We've also got expansions planned to visit other genres of the time period - particularly the feuding and petty wizards and demons of Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance, and the fog-drenched and squamous New England of H.P. Lovecraft. I'm also thinking about making expansions that add extra playbooks to the base game, but don't have much inspiration for those as yet.
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Aug 6, 2016 22:03
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It says it's your first project created, which means you're maybe using a different account for this one as you were for Legacy? I don't know if that's significant or not.
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Aug 8, 2016 09:44
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potatocubed posted:It says it's your first project created, which means you're maybe using a different account for this one as you were for Legacy? I don't know if that's significant or not. Huh, that's weird - on my normal profile Legacy shows up. Maybe it's because I only have 1 launched project on their system, this is a project, therefore QED this must be my first project?  I'd assume it'll become my 2nd project once it launches. I've cited my prior kickstarter experience in the pitch so it'd be nice if the site isn't erroneously contradicting that.For what it's worth based on feedback I've clarified how shipping works, lowered the goal value based on new estimates of printing costs, and added a few mid-price tiers that allow people to contribute to the game without creating a great deal more costs for us.
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Aug 8, 2016 12:38
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Does anyone here know of a good up to date tutorial of Campaign Cartographer? I know the official product links to a YouTube channel, but that's for the previous version and many people say it's in need of an updated one. I can always hire a professional cartographer, but ideally if I have good tools on hand I already spent money on I'd like to do the job myself and save some cash.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:31
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Spiderfist Island posted:However, things went up poo poo creek very quickly when they ran right into a group of goblins with no attempt at stealth posted:In any case, that second playtest makes me seriously consider whether my insanity and dwarfen tantrum spiral rules are even necessary.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:47
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Another question re: language/jargon How does this sound? (pertaining to skill checks)
Proficiency gives you a higher chance for a critical success. Expertise further increases your odds at both types of successes. edit/update: P.d0t posted:Is there pre-existing and/or simple jargon that is used for "Roll twice when you would normally roll once, and combine (i.e. add) the results"? I think I might end up using "stacking" for this. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 21:11
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Anyone know any good paper background for a comic book game? Free or buyable?
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Aug 11, 2016 23:23
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P.d0t posted:I think I might end up using "stacking" for this. If your game only has one dice type for resolution then this is generically called "roll 2, keep 1".
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Aug 19, 2016 00:49
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[crosspost] I've started a blog, so that I can post about design & development for the upcoming draft of my d20/D&D heartbreaker The Next Project: Old thread is here  Blog is here! First post is already up  [/crosspost]
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Aug 20, 2016 02:45
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So I had a bunch of science fiction/modern and alien figures, so I thought I'd do something a little different than my usual fantasy skirmish game, and try making a shooter skirmish-level miniatures game. This is my first draft. The game uses dice with sides that are 0,0,0,1,1,2. I was playing betrayal on the house on the hill, and also I really like the increasing rarity of higher numbers. I know this is not optimally practical in terms of playtesting or publishing, but it's what I'm toying with at least for now. I admit, I don't have a lot of experience with shooting-based miniatures games (played warmachine once or twice, I want to try infinity). I don't know how cliche or same this game is. The game takes inspiration pretty heavily from x-com. I've been also playing a lot of the mobile game Steven Univese: Attack the light, and I've been thinking about how some of the concepts might fit into a tactical game like this. I think I have all the necessary rules to play, but I could use another pair (or pairs) of eyes to look it over, and let me know if I missed anything, or if anything is confusing. I stated a bunch of units based on the figures I have available. I'm still working on stating up more. After I have people look it over I'd like to try to do some playtesting.
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Aug 20, 2016 05:29
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Sticky Beethoven posted:I thought I'd post here to gee myself up a bit. I'm working on a fantasy storygame about the search for extraterrestrial life. The players are apprentice wizards from different worlds, travelling from dimension to dimension in search of other cultures that have developed magic in order to round out their own narrow understanding of it. Each world has its own laws of reality and magic and the people who live there have different ways of life and views of the world as a result. This project is still alive and ticking over so I thought I might post a status update now that I have a bit more to show off. The game is still "in alpha" so to speak but a lot of the features are in place. I've laid out the rules for character creation (imo complete except for rules about starting wealth and gear, which are less important in this game than most) in a playtest document that can be distributed semi-publicly. Feel free to make a character and leave me some feedback about your experience here or on the form I set up for it. My core vision for the game is still much as I've described it here. The biggest change is abandoning the idea I had after initial chargen playtests of a basic/quickplay and advanced version- I'm now concentrating on Basic and have reduced the advanced mechanics to sidebars. Chargen is a bit more "bottom-up" than it was before as even very switched-on, creative people were getting bogged down in it and it was clear that it wouldn't be any good at all for players wanting to skip the grant morrison poo poo and just play some drat elfgames. Big lesson to all of this so far has been structure, structure, structure. Its much easier to make yourself write if you limit yourself to say, an hour a day. Your words come out making more sense if you've already got a bullet-point summary of what you want to say. Laying out text is easier if you're working off a lorem ipsum template. Blank pages kill. The chargen document is here, the feedback page (please, please, tell me about your wizard) is here, the setting bible and draft text (incoherent, largely nonsense) is here
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Aug 23, 2016 13:04
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So I was brainstorming what table-top version of Final Fantasy would really look like (I know I know, stop me if you've heard this before), and I came up with this idea for the general structure:
Anyone else try something like this? SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 21:03
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SirPhoebos posted:So I was brainstorming what table-top version of Final Fantasy would really look like (I know I know, stop me if you've heard this before), and I came up with this idea for the general structure: Mouse Guard has a journey segment (travel in the wilderness, fight, survive environmental hazards, do adventurer poo poo) followed by a town segment (interact with the locals, call in/perform favours for friends and family, rest up and prepare for the next journey) with the assumption being (IIRC) that you fit both into each session. Combat is a much smaller part of the game than what you're describing but I don't see that being a big problem. I really like the idea of story stuff triggering dungeon rewards.
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Aug 25, 2016 00:49
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