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Mr.Misfit posted:Any of you ever had this moment, when, after a playtest, your players most unanimously say "You know, this would be great as a boardgame, as an rpg, not so much." ? It sucks to hear, but that sounds like good feedback to me? Rework it to be a boardgame, or tighten up the RPG aspects!
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Nov 26, 2020 18:10
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Well since covid restrictions are preventing me from playtesting the game I made, that means I'm free to start ten new projects, right?
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Nov 26, 2020 18:10
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I’ve done playtesting for a few games that ended up being more board game than the intended rpg style. Either the structure was too rigid, or the mechanics too “mechanical(deterministic?)” to really encourage roleplay. One of my favorites was an unreleased game called Messiah, where Jesus Christ had been reincarnated into the modern age. Each player represented a faction (and named agents) that wanted to sway the Messiah’s views and end up controlling the narrative after the Messiah’s inevitable death or ascension. In one game we had Fox News, the CIA, the Vatican, Walmart and doomsday preppers/miltias all putting their own spin on randomly determined actions of the Messiah. Players would take turns describing the miracles and other events; How, say, a teen mall goth Jesus performed the Miracle of the Bread and Fishes at a rock concert. Then each faction spent resources and sent agents and narrated their actions and the spin they were trying to accomplish and how. The problem here is that the game worked fine and was mildly enjoyable, but there was no reason to do the roleplay/description half of the game. The events were scripted and each player was just spending influence and human lives to try and end up with the puck (New Jesus) and hinder their opponents’ agents. It was all reactionary resource management and the narration/goals/and spin were all just non-functional set dressing. The author didn’t know how to make it more of an rpg like he wanted, so after workshopping it for a dozen or so sessions with the group, just shelved it and wrote Mecha, instead. It still has a rigid structure (anime episode format) but was more open to player agency, focused on a group of individuals rather than large entities with dozens of staff and media empires, and had mechanics related to, y’know, roleplaying. A fair bit of the dna of Messiah ended up in Mecha, so it’s not like it was wasted effort. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/82258 E: a review from around the time of release https://stargazersworld.com/2010/09/07/review-mecha/ Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Nov 26, 2020 |
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Nov 26, 2020 20:47
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Quick question for y'all, I'm working on a game that is players vs board, and was thinking of replacing dice rolling with a different mechanic. Basically players put a number of white stones into a bag, the board puts a number of black stones into a bag. Shake it up, draw one. If its black, you lose, if its white you win. Does this sound like something that would get tiresome having to do it multiple times a turn? I'm slightly worried that instead of doing a few dice rolls every now and then that are very quick and easy, going for this "unique" mechanic might slow stuff down too much to be worth it. Edit for more detail: as it currently works each player would make 2-3 rolls a round, with at least a dozen rounds a game. Some of the rolls would be merged, as instead of each player making a roll, they'd instead each draw a stone from the same bag. Fashionable Jorts fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 20:26
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The Quacks of Quedlinburg seems popular
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Dec 10, 2020 20:35
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Didn't SA used to have some sort of rpg artists board somewhere? Can't for the life of me find it....  Was looking for someone to help out with a few cool scifi pixelarts on a shoestring-budget 
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Dec 19, 2020 04:52
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So I've had a bit of an idea following me around lately, and It prompted me to spend all day calculating probabilities. If I was better at math - or at using available resources - it may have been easier or faster, I suppose, but I'm not. The big idea is that I want a (mostly) combat resolution system where you do don't do too much maths while rolling, but can still have enough granularity in results that small decisions can matter. So I had the idea of a player's stat representing the largely fixed threshold they have to roll above with a die that has no numerical modifiers, but steps up or down depending on the balance of advantages or disadvantages in play. So let's say you're shooting an alien with a gun. That gun has, say, a base d8 for shooting. Your shooting stat is 5, so you have to roll a 6 or above to succeed. Maybe the alien is behind cover, so your die is stepped down to d6, and now you have to roll that 6 on a d6. Or maybe it's not, and instead you have an advanced scope, which steps your die up to d10. You're still only looking for a 6 or above, but on a d10. And so on. (This means that low stats are good and high rolls are good.) With this concept in place, letting players "upgrade" a die by exploding it seemed like a natural fit. It makes a d4 usable as part of the system (and it also adds the element of being able to sometimes just take that chance on a low-odds attempt and having the miracle happen), which expands the range of possible outcomes from down-stepping the die. So I mapped out the probabilities for that in order to figure out what's a good range for starting and available stat levels.  (I've considered some slightly different variants, like just straight up exploding dice or not having the dice stack, but it didn't work out to a useful stat range.) With these numbers, stat values roughly between 4 and 9 seem playable without trivialising the game. Character development is also roughly linear within that range, increasing a stat by a point tends to offer very similar levels of utility (obviously there's some differences, but since it happens on six axes at the same time, they seem more or less like a wash imo). The problem, however, is that with exploding dice there's a number of ranges where stepping the die up before the roll (which is supposed to be the meat of how the players interact with dice) doesn't give any advantage at all - you're just as likely to roll a 9 starting with a d6 and starting with a d8, for example - and in fact in some cases stepping up the die works against you - it's easier to roll a 6 starting with a d4 than with a d6, for example. That's relatively rare and the differences usually aren't more than a few percent, but it irks me considerably. An alien walking out of cover should not become harder to hit. Is there any way of getting around this? Or should I drop the exploding dice idea? (After an entire day of calculating probabilities for them I like them a lot less, you know.) If I do, I would probably have to remove d4 from the game alongside them, or treat it as a punishment die. Any advice? Tevery Best fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 00:20
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Tevery Best posted:So I've had a bit of an idea following me around lately, and It prompted me to spend all day calculating probabilities. If I was better at math - or at using available resources - it may have been easier or faster, I suppose, but I'm not. You could just have a d4 explode and add another d4 to it (which also explodes). If you want to avoid skipping numbers (it would be impossible to roll just a 4 on a d4 as an example), subtract 1 from any subsequent dice rolled. Obviously this works with all of the dice. Does shifting the roll total down by 1 for each new die make the odds look better? You’d have to roll a 4 followed by a 3 to get a 6. Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 02:32
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Thank you very much for the suggestion! This is what the odds are like (I included the original system and regular exploding dice for comparison): It does, in fact, solve the lateral movement problem very well! However, it does make d4 (and d6, to a lesser extent) far less useful: skill levels of 7, 8, or 9 become very, very unlikely to accomplish anything except on a d20 (d20 is supposed to be kind of a reward die for getting everything right, so it's fine that it wrecks the curve; I will say I wish d16 was more popular) instead of simply unlikely. I made an "explode into better, then -1" table as well:  It does remove repeats and improve target ranges, but, frustratingly, brings back the problem where some upshifts don't actually help (although they never hurt, so there's that). There are, admittedly, ways to work around this. Raising your stats at higher (worse) levels could be cheaper than on the lower (better) ones, perhaps some levels could be gated off behind certain stages of advancement. Giving the players all kinds of dice tricks (like flipping, splitting, rerolling etc.) occludes the percentages, and some of it may even be used specifically to counter the "bad upshift" phenomenon (like maybe having an ability where if you roll a natural 1, you get to flip it to max value). Maybe it's just the matter of layering enough of those on top?
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Feb 24, 2021 15:38
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Hey everybody, I'm making a game! It's a hack of Voidheart Symphony (itself a hack of a hack, etc) that focuses on a specific era of Kamen Rider as its chief inspiration. quote:Masqueraiders - a hack of Voidheart Symphony I've already begun developing Civilian and Superhero half-playbooks for mixing and matching.   
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Apr 7, 2021 19:43
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Mr.Misfit posted:Any of you ever had this moment, when, after a playtest, your players most unanimously say "You know, this would be great as a boardgame, as an rpg, not so much." ? I've had this experience a bunch, especially at cons and with playtest focused groups! So far, going from those groups to general groups has lead to the second groups having no problems engaging with the RPG elements; sometimes a playtest focus puts blinkers on people. Are you free to say what the subject matter of your game is?
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Apr 7, 2021 21:17
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I took a long, hard look at my design and have since divorced them, but sure. I was trying to recreate a card-focused soft scifi strategy game where players invest as leaders of factions ressources into missions, and afterwards play out the mission most players focused into, with options of strategic betrayal and a sort of dramatic reversal towards the end. Think "Band of Blades" but more freeform, less playbooky and much much more interfaction rivalries and players vying for ressources and developing their "shared nation" while fighting tooth and nail for reclaiming the lost stellar empire. During missions, players would either take on the identity of the special characters they sent into the missions, or generic helper minions who could even be exploited as their death could tighten the campaign game clock towards a darker end. It was...rather complicated, truth be told, and in retrospect fraught with far too many choices for an rpg, but an interesting exercise at least in seeing what mechanics can be used and which seemingly don't survive player contact. Oh, also almost everything was basically card-based, from the player sheets, to ressources, characters to sectors, enemies etc. I still want to make something like that at a later point in times, but I know now that it'll have to be much focused than what I did in my early playtest drafts.
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Apr 7, 2021 22:06
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What software do you all use for planning and organizing design documents? Scrivner? I'm just plugging away in a google doc right now.
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Apr 7, 2021 22:19
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DoctorWhat posted:What software do you all use for planning and organizing design documents? Scrivner? I'm just plugging away in a google doc right now. About two hundred poorly formatted openoffice documents.
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Apr 7, 2021 23:08
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Fashionable Jorts posted:About two hundred poorly formatted openoffice documents. This is also my method. It's not great.
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Apr 8, 2021 15:59
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Seconding the "not great". I used Cherrytree for a while but the lack of cloud sync made taking notes from my phone painful (and with my fried memory, can't trust to just remember it). Onenote got some usage too but lack of deep enough nesting didn't work with my approach. Not sure what I'll use next time I get back to it. Assuming a next time exists.
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Apr 8, 2021 16:02
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I started using Scrivener early last year and I haven't looked back. I don't use any of the more complex features, but just being able to format my project as a series of pages I can individually edit or move around has done wonders for my process.
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Apr 9, 2021 07:22
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Two LIFTS zines in the can, so it's time for something fresh. https://twitter.com/ThronesBeware/status/1381327291939164160?s=19 It's going to be a short zine that serves as a testbed for later work. Style of play is in the same vein as XCrawl, if you're familiar with it, but with a lot of emphasis on between-match shenanigans. This will be a game for four players and a - wait for it - General Manager. Your group starts in the garage league, with the goal of making it all the way up through the system to the prestigious international league. Each season of play consists of four games and a championship, with a trade day after game three. Games themselves are divided between:
Your non-fighting resolutions are done using a genericized THDC0 system against fixed-difficulty targets. Fighting is done using an asymmetric dealio with zones of control (no grids this time, folks). An athlete using a melee weapon rolls a d4 and kills enemies in immediate adjacency on a 1-3. An athlete using a submachine gun rolls 4d6, killing enemies in the same zone on rolls of 1-2, and exploding on 1s. Enemies, on the other hand, behave differently based on their type - for example, Mooks don't roll dice, but if they get to immediate distance, they'll do one point of damage automatically. Skirmishers hit on a 12, but roll a d6 and add+1 to the roll for every other enemy in the zone. slap me and kiss me fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 20:35
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A excerpt I think is pretty fun - building your team “In 2010, we earned the unofficial title of Best Bitches in the World” — Aliya Mustafina Creating a Team Your team is the heart and soul of the game. Your athletes will rise and fall separately, but your team is the cohesive unit that will progress through the world, from total unknowns to international superstars. There are five simple steps to creating your team. Name Your Team This should (but doesn’t have to) be a combination of locale + name Design Your Logo Every team needs a logo. It doesn’t have to be great, but it does need to be recognizable! Set Your Hype Meter The Hype Meter tracks how popular your team is with fans, and how well known it is to the outside world. A newly formed team with a hype meter of zero is basically only known by the other teams in the league, and honestly, probably only during game time. Conversely, a team with a hype meter of nine or more has a significant following.
Ratings: 0-2 - unknown Normal person: “Who?” Fan: “I think they’re new, but I don’t know anything about them.” 3-5 - small following Normal person: “I can pick their logo out of a crowd” Fan: “I caught a game once, it wasn’t bad” 6-8 - medium following Normal person: “I’ll try to watch their game on TV, if it’s convenient” Fan: “I only missed one game last season, and that’s because the power went out” 9+- big time Normal person: “My kid has posters up on their wall and I’d love to see a few more games this year” Fan: “I have season tickets and an encyclopedic knowledge of this team’s history” Set Your Momentum Meter It’s difficult to build lasting hype, but momentum is a different story. Your actions on and off the field can attract attention (either good or bad), or drive the crowds away. When your momentum meter hits maximum (a tricky thing to achieve), your hype meter increases by one.
Build Your Roster Teams need athletes and human players need characters to control. Get ready to start the game by creating three athletes per person as per the rules on the next page. When a player is replaced (through injury, retirement, or trade day, for example), the GM can keep the old player for use in fleshing out the world (e.g. as a sports caster, media darling, etc.).
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Apr 20, 2021 16:44
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Crossposting from the publishing thread:UnCO3 posted:So I've been spending more time this year releasing fonts than I've been releasing games, but if you make games or supplements then you might find these useful:
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Apr 24, 2021 17:18
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UnCO3 posted:Crossposting from the publishing thread: Oh, this is fantastic! Thanks a lot.
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Apr 24, 2021 20:00
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Alright, first draft of my time travel to kill nazis game is done - Kill Them Faster. In this draft: - Creating your league - Creating your team - Creating first-level athletes - Sampling of personality quirks: Bro, Player Rivalry, Can't Turn Left - Everything you need to do to have a game - League championships and leveling up
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Apr 30, 2021 19:19
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To date, I have only written games using other systems, or homebrew mechanics or mini games. I have an idea for a core mechanic I want to explore, and I'm writing a completely new game to support it. And I have no idea where to start. I have a few Word pages of write-up, and I've got Genesis of Legend's RPG design worksheets. I still feel lost.
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May 4, 2021 20:50
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Is the problem figuring out the design, or how to structure the text, or...? (from reading the worksheets it looks like they focus on forming and understanding your ideas more than getting them down on the page and organising them once they're there, so that might be an issue if you're writing a new game without a framework you're hacking)
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May 4, 2021 23:02
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UnCO3 posted:Is the problem figuring out the design, or how to structure the text, or...? Structure, I suppose? I'm used to playing games like Cortex or PbtA, where there are some edge cases but you could write down the core mechanic and some moves/SFX/whatever and you're off to the races. Now I've got an idea that I think has juice for a tactical game. And it's a lot to come up with. Not even things like abilities or whatever, but all those rules like cover and initiative and turn structure and stuff. It's daunting from a structural standpoint. I'll probably just crib a good table of contents and with from there.
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May 7, 2021 05:02
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Yeah I was gonna suggest that—it's often a good idea to check out how other people do the thing you want to do, if you think they've done it well.
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May 10, 2021 15:07
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Yeah there’s times when it pays to start from scratch and make original poo poo but this ain’t one. Just steal a good layout/structure from a book you like. I didn’t play it much but I recall Fragged Empires having good layout and presentation. Rules presented in the order you’ll need them and most sections started with a very simple info graphic that gave you the crash course in that mechanic. My personal rule of thumb is to start small and expand, so that each successive chapter contains less vital info. Vince Baker uses that principle a lot - that you can play the game if you only remember the first page of rules, and everything else just builds on it. My peeve is when games start with how to make a guy but don’t give context on the guy I’m making. My Deva gets a bonus to Intellect but what is that used for? What are Proficiency Tests and what does advantage do? Eclipse phase did that a lot where you’re making a man out of pieces you don’t understand. Sixto Lezcano fucked around with this message at 02:14 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 02:10
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On May 1st, with my work SOMEWHAT dying down, I got the idea: to finally make the Digimon tabletop game that I always wanted to make. I looked to some strange sources, such as Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting engine, for inspiration. This isn't even the first time I had that idea. I had actually started an abandoned a direct Chuubo's hack for Digimon shortly after Chuubo's launched. Thus, over the next fourteen days, when I had the chance, I fiddled with the idea and made this: My Pet Monster. Yes, I know there was a failed 80s cartoon with this name, but no one remembers that so who cares? My Pet Monster's first draft is now complete. 84 pages detailing:
quote:The Monster World is deeply affected by Human emotion. Not only can emotion empower a Pet Monster, but the Power Of A Wish can affect reality itself. The Power Of A Wish cannot be used lightly, as the Wish must be one that is truly believed with every fiber of the Chosen Child. The game has issues.
That's why I plan to do a playtest next saturday for those interested. If you are, take a look at the game here. Then DM me on discord at Covok#8950.
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May 16, 2021 02:53
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I've had a beta version of my monster manual for hodgepocalypse for ages now. I'm putting up a share so I can get people to try it out, test the critters (they are 5e compatible), and give feedback while I work on my module. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rxYmnoMDAkxBvb0jmnsYCpIj3bUgfd1A/view?fbclid=IwAR0iXymxAl8qGo-OZmDgxWLBkL0q7m-6dl7p1QgLbajLz2FNM-cLy70xDvc
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Oct 25, 2021 11:41
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Oh hey, this might be a perfect thread for this. I've been working on an idea and just got my prototype in and wanted to solicit feedback here for the general concept. I've gotten a lot of interest so far but wanted to see what you folks think of the idea. Basically I took traditional random generator tables and put them into a deck of cards form factor with story cube style icons and modifier phrases relevant to the card type. There are 6 categories: world/location, characters, enemies, quests, dungeons, misc (magic items, crits, etc). The idea is that GMs can use it to plan out campaigns and sessions or use it for on the fly generation. I've been able to make some pretty fun scenarios in 2-3 minutes with it and not having to flip through a bunch of pages in a book is so much easier. Here's what it looks like (first pass at design and print)  
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Oct 25, 2021 21:00
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Bottom Liner posted:Oh hey, this might be a perfect thread for this. The general idea is solid, and I can see it being pretty damned popular if it's offered at a decent price point.
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Oct 26, 2021 07:25
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shades of eternity posted:I've had a beta version of my monster manual for hodgepocalypse for ages now. I'm putting up a share so I can get people to try it out, test the critters (they are 5e compatible), and give feedback while I work on my module. I don't know the Hodgepocalypse setting - or frankly the 5e system - well enough to mechanically comment, but posting to confirm your stuff has been seen. Having the intro for each category of creatures is good, but could probably be expanded out a little more. The couple of paragraphs detaiing what the Corpsemen are would be useful if I wanted to use them in a game, but with the number of creatures you've listed it seems a little sparse. Throwing in a little more detail on organisiation, history, and goals, as well as a couple of pre-made plot hooks allowing a GM to tie it into their campaign would make the book far more valuable. There's a fair number of spelling and grammatical errors, but I'm assuming that you're not up to the getting an editor to look at it stage. Looking good though - crazy amount of work, and I'm vaguely jealous of that :P
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Oct 26, 2021 07:31
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Thanks for the feedback.  I will definately be adding more plot hooks and general text for the Corpseman, but is there any other group of monsters that needs a similar expansion? Also feel free to point out critters that have typos. Even a general point would help considerably (and make the eventual editor life less painful). :p
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Nov 1, 2021 18:33
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I think any collective group of monsters probably deserves a page of hooks and notes. It makes it easier to build a session/storyline/campaign around that collective, and thus increases the books value for propsective GM buyers.
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Nov 2, 2021 05:48
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Bottom Liner posted:Oh hey, this might be a perfect thread for this. I've been tinkering with a thing! I don't know if I'll every finish it because my track record on finishing things is not that great but here's for trying! It's a RPG based on Fate rules with a bunch of stuff ripped out (aspects, the create advantage action etc.) and other stuff pushed in (classes, maneuver actions etc). Oh and it all takes place in an alternative dimension in the year of 1991. All humans die in a bloody fashion and are fused into a bunch of shoggoth-like things. Then the earth implodes. The player party are the only earth-humans left. The prologue/learning scenario is on earth and then it all takes place 3 years later in space and you're trying to figure out who made the earth go to hell while collecting boar butts for gold or whatever. It's in swedish right now because it makes things easier to explain to my stupid friends. Think that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and, uh maybe the Expanse(?) had a swedish baby with Fate, DnD and you're kind of close I guess? Here's some first drafts. It's all very wip and all over the place but kind of works to play with (just threw in some old drawings to get a sense of stuff).  And here's the whole character and class concept idea thingie:  
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Nov 2, 2021 21:57
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Imaginary Friend posted:Really liking the design on those. Cool stuff! IshmaelZarkov posted:The general idea is solid, and I can see it being pretty damned popular if it's offered at a decent price point. Thanks folks. I'm putting together my KS launch page now and other than the video it's mostly done. If you want to see more or have any suggestions for how I can present the idea better I'm all ears. The video will show some examples of it in use similar to the listed recipes. I'm offering it at $20 for the deck and $5 shipping (domestic), which if the campaign goes well will include ~110 cards. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollthedicegames/the-dungeon-master-deck?ref=4hrilr&token=a86e2ff7 I've gotten 50 people following the project on KS so far, and I'm pushing hard to get the "Projects We Love" badge from KS staff which would really help it take off.
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Nov 5, 2021 19:04
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Imaginary Friend posted:I've been tinkering with a thing! I don't know if I'll every finish it because my track record on finishing things is not that great but here's for trying! Just keep posting. I - a stranger from the internet - believe in you. You got this one. I'd comment on the rules, but my swedish is rusty/non existent.
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Nov 9, 2021 02:33
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Bottom Liner posted:Thanks folks. I'm putting together my KS launch page now and other than the video it's mostly done. If you want to see more or have any suggestions for how I can present the idea better I'm all ears. The video will show some examples of it in use similar to the listed recipes. I'm offering it at $20 for the deck and $5 shipping (domestic), which if the campaign goes well will include ~110 cards. Followed, looking forwards to sharing it to people once it goes live. The layout of the KS looks good. The audio on the video could be touched up, but it's still clear enough that you get the point across. Great job!
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Nov 9, 2021 02:35
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IshmaelZarkov posted:Followed, looking forwards to sharing it to people once it goes live. Thanks for the kind words! Audio is my nightmare. I tried 3 mics, hung up blankets to dampen echo, and every post trick I could find. I’m suspecting the input jack on the camera is actually faulty because the mics all sound great straight into the laptop but terrible through the camera. I’m a photographer by day but stay away from video when possible haha I’m probably going to re-record and dub the video if I can make it work better that way.
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Nov 9, 2021 08:17
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Figured this might be a decent place to ask; I'm looking for decent vector image elements (specifically for making sci-fi HUD-esque images for my mecha game), and was wondering what sources for vector images people like to use. I already use game-icons.net a lot, which has the benefit of being Free, but it's not exactly the right tool for these needs.
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Nov 9, 2021 18:49
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