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mellonbread posted:Eclipse Phase had a thing where you could get bonus actions in a turn by upgrading your "speed", but that was meant to represent improving your reflexes rather than actually making your body's movement speed higher. So if you did any movement during a turn, you had to pro-rate it across each speed phase your guy was acting in. IE if you had speed 3, you got three actions, but you could only move a third of your movement on each one. That would have worked so much better if all speeds were then given as multiples of 12, rather than as multiples of 4.
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Dec 8, 2022 07:54
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Leperflesh posted:I think if the interrogation of the damage roll is intended to get people thinking about alternatives and a bigger design space and stop just assuming everything has to be that way because it was ever thus, that's good. Oddly enough I think rolling damage works best as a bit of realism spice. It makes some amount of sense that a knife is less dangerous than a big sword and causes proportionally more "flesh wounds" than life-threatening injuries. But this then requires a game where HP represents at least some amount of actual physical health, and that has implications on recovery, and I'm not sure if anyone outside the Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green scene has patience for that these days.
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Dec 8, 2022 08:01
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Dice-for-damage makes battles chaotic and turn on a dime, even if you're the biggest badasses around. I always think of movie scenes with swords clashing and people swinging with abandon and everyone is exhausted two minutes in, and end when someone puts an arrow through the eyehole of the king's helmet. These kinds of systems also tend to abstract HP as something like "avoidance skill/tiredness," such that it's only the last handful that actually involve doing physical harm. This is also how you can get a good night's sleep and pop back up fresh as a daisy. Whether that's narratively satisfying is kind of a different point.
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Dec 8, 2022 08:29
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Siivola posted:Oddly enough I think rolling damage works best as a bit of realism spice. It makes some amount of sense that a knife is less dangerous than a big sword and causes proportionally more "flesh wounds" than life-threatening injuries. But this then requires a game where HP represents at least some amount of actual physical health, and that has implications on recovery, and I'm not sure if anyone outside the Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green scene has patience for that these days. Keep in mind that the knife deals less life-threatening injuries compared to a sword which is functionally a really big knife. In the real world, you can tell the winner of a knife fight because he's the one that bleeds out in the ambulance, not at the scene.
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Dec 8, 2022 08:39
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Your mileage may vary, but I find abstract HP kinda pulls the rug out from under hit rolls. No matter whether the attack succeeds or not, you "twist away at the last moment" or whatever and are never actually hit in the fiction.mllaneza posted:Keep in mind that the knife deals less life-threatening injuries compared to a sword which is functionally a really big knife. In the real world, you can tell the winner of a knife fight because he's the one that bleeds out in the ambulance, not at the scene. Edit: That meme is such bogus because people have been getting into knife fights and surviving for the entirety of recorded history. It's how people did war back in the day! It's how we have fencing! Siivola fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Dec 8, 2022 08:43
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mellonbread posted:I strongly suspect most game designers are not interested in designing systems. They want to do as little work as possible on the mechanical side to get something that supports the setting and content they are much more interested in creating. That means grabbing the game system that's closest to what they want and modifying it to fit their premise. Game design is a little like programming in that it can be cool to think up of a snippet of something that addresses one specific issue, but developing the entire infrastructure around that snippet can be tedious. And to stretch this analogy, "modding" a program is a little like hacking the rules of a TRPG in that it allows you practice a little bit of programming/game design, without having to develop the entire rest of the application/write the entire rest of the rulebook. So you end up with a lot of people that don't really go the whole nine yards as far as game design goes, because it's a lot of work.
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Dec 8, 2022 09:01
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Siivola posted:Edit: That meme is such bogus because people have been getting into knife fights and surviving for the entirety of recorded history. It's how people did war back in the day! It's how we have fencing! in fairness, people have also been getting into knife fights and not surviving for about the same amount of time. no doubt someone out there has statistics on how deadly knife fights actually are, but that someone is not me
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Dec 8, 2022 10:14
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redleader posted:in fairness, people have also been getting into knife fights and not surviving for about the same amount of time. no doubt someone out there has statistics on how deadly knife fights actually are, but that someone is not me
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Dec 8, 2022 10:22
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Siivola posted:Oddly enough I think rolling damage works best as a bit of realism spice. Siivola posted:And that's why I will just make some numbers up if I ever have to decide on player character hit points and dagger damage.
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Dec 8, 2022 10:28
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Look, you gotta hire LatwPIAT if you want a game based on rigorous statistical work, I just go by "ehh sounds about right". "Verisimilitude" is not a real word and you can't convince me otherwise.
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Dec 8, 2022 10:39
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Inside of you are two wolves...
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Dec 8, 2022 10:40
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Siivola posted:And that's why I will just make some numbers up if I ever have to decide on player character hit points and dagger damage.
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Dec 8, 2022 10:50
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90s Cringe Rock posted:d6, and d6.
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Dec 8, 2022 10:52
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You can just build the damage into the "did I hit" roll. So you have a static damage number, but if you hit well, you double it, on a normal hit you don't change it, and on a bad hit you halve it. Gives you that variation without needing to roll twice (or many times) the number of dice.
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Dec 8, 2022 10:59
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LatwPIAT posted:That would have worked so much better if all speeds were then given as multiples of 12, rather than as multiples of 4. When we played a lengthy eclipse phase campaign we replaced the system with the sci Fi flavor of rolemaster and it worked brilliantly, the EP setting is great but the system is horrific.
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Dec 8, 2022 11:04
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gently caress it lets go the opposite direction and you roll to hit, then on a hit location table, then roll a damage to that location. Or gently caress it even harder, introduce a competitive auction system. Each time attack is resolved by all the players entering into an auction from among a selection of available damages/consequences.
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Dec 8, 2022 11:06
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Tulip posted:gently caress it lets go the opposite direction and you roll to hit, then on a hit location table, then roll a damage to that location. throw a die onto the Operation game board - if it lands on a body part, that's a hit, on that location, with the die face indicating the damage
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Dec 8, 2022 11:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:throw a die onto the Operation game board - if it lands on a body part, that's a hit, on that location, with the die face indicating the damage I dunno, what if the die is cocked? Obviously the better move is to fill the operation board with hundreds of those tiny 5mm dice that came in the Pirates of the Spanish Main boosters.
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Dec 8, 2022 11:45
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Tulip posted:Inside of you are two wolves...
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Dec 8, 2022 13:18
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Gort posted:You can just build the damage into the "did I hit" roll. So you have a static damage number, but if you hit well, you double it, on a normal hit you don't change it, and on a bad hit you halve it. Gives you that variation without needing to roll twice (or many times) the number of dice. These are not necessarily problems but they are important considerations.
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Dec 8, 2022 13:26
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Pathfinder 2e kind of did that with criticals being margin-of-success based instead of raw number based. But the result was that damage focused characters became almost worthless compared to accuracy focused ones.
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Dec 8, 2022 14:31
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Re: Unusual mechanics, the horror game Ten Candles has you play in a space lit only by 10 tealights which are extinguished one-by-one as the game progresses. I think there's also a mechanic where your character traits are written on index cards... which you can literally burn for effect. Very cool game, wish I could try it IRL.
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Dec 8, 2022 15:11
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Tulip posted:gently caress it lets go the opposite direction and you roll to hit, then on a hit location table, then roll a damage to that location. Gort posted:You can just build the damage into the "did I hit" roll. So you have a static damage number, but if you hit well, you double it, on a normal hit you don't change it, and on a bad hit you halve it. Gives you that variation without needing to roll twice (or many times) the number of dice. I know of one easy way to do it: in a percentile system, the tens digit adds to your damage, so you want to roll as high as you can without rolling over your % and failing. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Dec 8, 2022 16:42
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Best Left Buried has you rolling 3d6 for combat. Two of them you use to hit with, and the remaining one is the damage.
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Dec 8, 2022 18:38
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Tulip posted:Inside of you are two wolves... 90s Cringe Rock posted:d6, and d6.
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Dec 8, 2022 18:54
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BinaryDoubts posted:Re: Unusual mechanics, the horror game Ten Candles has you play in a space lit only by 10 tealights which are extinguished one-by-one as the game progresses. I think there's also a mechanic where your character traits are written on index cards... which you can literally burn for effect. Very cool game, wish I could try it IRL. Ten Candles is a really incredibly effective game if you can manage it. I've got a guy who ran it for Halloween for the past two years and it truly is something special, it just takes a lot of work to get your physical space as dark as it needs to be. You write traits on cards - IIRC they're something along the lines of: a positive trait, a negative trait, your biggest hope right now, and your greatest fear. You hand them out to other players, and make up your character. If you need to reroll something you can burn your top card, and if you succeed at your hope you get a permanent die to roll that can't gently caress you over. It's really cool and I suggest it to anyone that can blackout a space for a few hours.
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Dec 8, 2022 19:01
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Cross-posting from CC...Something Else posted:My game Doom Crop is out in the world, people are playing it and they're sending me nice messages on social media. It feels really good!
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Dec 8, 2022 21:26
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Halloween Jack posted:The issue is that making a single roll, and then doing multiple calculations off that roll, is not necessarily better than just rolling two dice. Roll a d100, result is m m is the is accuracy as a percentage, and if it is over the target number you hit All characters have a damage stat n ranging from 4 to 12. Damage is determined by m mod n BinaryDoubts posted:Re: Unusual mechanics, the horror game Ten Candles has you play in a space lit only by 10 tealights which are extinguished one-by-one as the game progresses. I think there's also a mechanic where your character traits are written on index cards... which you can literally burn for effect. Very cool game, wish I could try it IRL. this sounds rad as gently caress
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Dec 8, 2022 21:51
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FirstAidKite posted:What's the most... idk if nontraditional would be the best word for it, but nontraditional or unique pen & paper rpg game mechanic you can think of? As in, something very unique, not just roll for hit/damage. Not asking for something that's necessarily good, mind you, just something odd, different, esoteric even. With Fire Thy Affections Hold A Wing is a two-player game where you physically tie yourself to the other player with string. I have no idea what it's like as a game, but if you want weird-rear end mechanics there you go.
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Dec 9, 2022 09:07
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Can't believe Fromsoft is going to make Lancer RPG The Game
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Dec 9, 2022 15:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:Can't believe Fromsoft is going to make Lancer RPG The Game Hell yeah. Reach Heaven through Nine Ball.
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Dec 10, 2022 07:31
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BinaryDoubts posted:Re: Unusual mechanics, the horror game Ten Candles has you play in a space lit only by 10 tealights which are extinguished one-by-one as the game progresses. I think there's also a mechanic where your character traits are written on index cards... which you can literally burn for effect. Very cool game, wish I could try it IRL. Yeah, it's neat. Also at the beginning you record a last message from each character, then play them all back when everyone is dead at the end.
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Dec 10, 2022 22:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:Can't believe Fromsoft is going to make Lancer RPG The Game In both size and capabilities (including warping into the ethereal realm) the closest video game to Lancer is *Titanfall*; except in Titanfall a pilot on foot is a parkour machine that's very difficult to hit, and in Lancer a pilot on foot is about to get splattered by the next weapon that hits them. 'Jockey'ing an enemy mech is a last-ditch effort.
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Dec 10, 2022 23:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:Can't believe Fromsoft is going to make Lancer RPG The Game It only took them negative twenty-six years!
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Dec 10, 2022 23:59
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ive been thinking about a setting where the rules of magic are being continuously updated by the gods to try and prevent mortals from exploiting imbalances in the system to become super powerful (and then inevitably probably break the world). magic is like an irrepressible force so the gods can't just dam it off, they have to direct it in a way that does the least harm. the major powers in the world would be people who discovered prior exploits in the laws of reality and became powerful enough to grandfather themself in to the next revision to the laws of nature. the most powerful mystical artifacts would likely be the same, kinda like in a loot-based game like destiny or something where they patch an item so it can no longer drop with a certain special modifier on it, but let people keep the ones they had beforehand. wizards (i figure anyone trying to find the exploits and loopholes would be considered a wizard regardless of how they go about it) would hoard mystical knowledge the same way that hackers and such hoard knowledge of exploits in security software. they don't want the secret to spread because then the gods will find out and change it. i figure the present day of the setting would have magic pretty refined, so wizards are mostly very intellectual types trying to find holes in equations, but earlier like legacy wizards might just be an unusually cunning bear or something. there could be prior eras with entirely different magic systems that just got scrapped and replaced when the gods or whoever got tired of trying to fix it.
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Dec 12, 2022 16:52
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That’s basically old D&D. Spell slots, it taking years to learn magic, etc, were all put in place by Mystra after magic wars nearly broke the world.
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Dec 12, 2022 17:02
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juggalo baby coffin posted:ive been thinking about a setting where the rules of magic are being continuously updated by the gods to try and prevent mortals from exploiting imbalances in the system to become super powerful (and then inevitably probably break the world). magic is like an irrepressible force so the gods can't just dam it off, they have to direct it in a way that does the least harm. This sounds loving cool
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Dec 12, 2022 17:35
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You might look at Demon: The Descent for inspiration. It's horror/sci-fi with a spy fiction twist but that's exactly how the titular Demons' powers work.
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Dec 12, 2022 17:36
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juggalo baby coffin posted:ive been thinking about a setting where the rules of magic are being continuously updated by the gods to try and prevent mortals from exploiting imbalances in the system to become super powerful (and then inevitably probably break the world). magic is like an irrepressible force so the gods can't just dam it off, they have to direct it in a way that does the least harm. Reality patch notes ver. 1009.62 (season XLVII) - Fireball heat output capped at 2000K (can no longer achieve fusion when stacking metamagic) - increased soul cost on Raise Dead (from 25% of soul to 33% of soul to prevent reaching 0% soul) - nerfed thaum-to-kilojoule conversion rate (Create Food & Water generates 12.5% fewer nutrients per thaum - this is one of the adjustments we are testing in order to buff the value of farming in the current meta) - prayer now generates 999 faith per week of religious observance down from 1100 (maximum divine intervention bundle price has been adjusted from 1000 faith to 999 to compensate) Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Dec 12, 2022 |
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Dec 12, 2022 17:59
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juggalo baby coffin posted:ive been thinking about a setting where the rules of magic are being continuously updated by the gods to try and prevent mortals from exploiting imbalances in the system to become super powerful (and then inevitably probably break the world). magic is like an irrepressible force so the gods can't just dam it off, they have to direct it in a way that does the least harm. https://qntm.org/structure
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Dec 12, 2022 18:19
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