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 To celebrate the currently running Kickstarter for the new sourcebook for Spellbound Kingdoms, Trad Games is having another competition! There’s an illustrious history of Trad Games design contests leading to great things. Another Kickstarter running right now is the second edition of forums poster Flavivirus’s Legacy: Life Amongst The Ruins, which was given life right here in the August design competition a couple of years ago. This year we’re not asking you to write a whole new RPG or come up with detailed mechanics or worldbuilding – this year the scope is smaller, humbler but no less entertaining. The task this time will be to write a magic school or a fighting style for Spellbound Kingdoms.  There’s a Fatal and Friends of it here, but long story short it is a game about swashbuckling, high action, romance and adventure in a renaissance era fantasy setting where both magic and emotion are highly illegal to anyone who is not nobility. It’s fast, furious, fun and has a unique and really freaking awesome combat system based around individual fighting styles, which come with diagrams that look like this:  Each circle on that sheet is a player’s action for the turn – attacking, swinging on chandeliers, chokeslamming somebody through a table, etc. You stick a counter on the sheet and move around it like a gameboard – what maneuver you choose this turn determines what’s available for you to choose from next turn. Characters build up momentum through sequences of moves to bust out the really dangerous poo poo where you cut somebody clean in two or fire off a supercharged necromantic instant-kill spell. That’s right – magic works exactly the same way as regular fighting, with a style diagram and everything. You don’t need to comb through a spellbook to decide what you’re doing this turn because you move through your diagram, channeling power for the big guns or just summoning ghostly wolves and slinging fireballs every turn.  Right, so let’s break down a combat style into the nuts and bolts of it so we all know what we’re working with. Take a look at that diagram up there. As mentioned, each one of those maneuvers is a full round action. The first thing you do when combat breaks out is choose your fighting style, take a counter and put it on one of the maneuvers with a line underneath it. The line indicates that these are balancing maneuvers. This means that they are the starting points for the style: You begin on one of these whenever you switch to that style, you can always return to them from anywhere and when somebody uses an attack to throw you off balance, a balancing maneuver is what you return to. Balancing maneuvers are generally the weakest ones in the style, but are always available. Starting from the balancing maneuver you choose on turn 1, you can move your counter in the same fashion as a rook in chess. You can move as many spaces as you like in a straight line, vertical or horizontal. You do not have to stop on the maneuver directly adjacent to the one you’re on, you can keep going. You cannot cross gaps. Arrows indicate that a maneuver links to another one without being in a line with it: you must be directly adjacent to the arrow to travel down it. Arrows are one way. The number to the right of a circle indicates the defense die for that maneuver – you roll 1 of that die type against every attack against you that turn. There are no penalties for multiple attackers, you roll the full die against every attack. Higher die sizes are obviously better. Multiple dice (eg d8/d6) means you roll all of those dice against every attack, giving you a higher chance of big numbers. Die sizes can also be things like dQck or dStr instead of things like d6 or d10. This means you roll that stat instead of a named die size (Quickness or Strength respectively in that example) The number to the left of a circle indicates the attack die for that maneuver – that’s the die you roll for your to-hit roll. Bigger is obviously better. Multiple dice (eg d6/d6) indicate multiple attacks. These can be against the same opponent or against multiple different opponents with no penalty. You only roll one die per attack: in the d6/d6 example it is two attacks which roll a single d6 to-hit each. Attacks can also be rolled using stats like dQck. The numbers and text below the circle is the damage of the attack and any other effects which the maneuver has. Movement, buffs and debuffs, special rules and so on. If there is a single number, that just means it does X damage with no other effects. There will be a list of examples further down in the post, but it will be by no means exhaustive. Go crazy! Make styles which do unique, interesting things! If a maneuver has an M in the top right of the circle, that indicates it is a mastery maneuver. Mastery maneuvers can only be landed on by characters which have mastered the style. Mastery maneuvers are always the most powerful maneuvers the style can perform, and mean that a newbie and a veteran can often be doing very different things in combat, even if they’re using the same style. A character who knows a style will either be a neophyte, apprentice or master. A master knows every maneuver on the sheet. An apprentice knows every maneuver which does not have an M in the corner. A neophyte only knows the balancing maneuvers and two other maneuvers of their choice which are directly accessible from a rebalance. If a maneuver name has (r) next to it that means that upon executing it, you are required to rebalance. This means that next turn, you must return to one of the style’s balancing maneuvers. This represents the action being momentum-stopping, leaving the character unable to continue their flow and forcing them to reset to neutral. Maneuvers that require you to rebalance are generally very powerful and the culmination of a couple of turns of buildup. For the attack die, it is very important whether it is located to the lower left or the upper left of the circle for its maneuver. If the attack die is in the lower left that means it is a physical attack, like a sword thrust or kick, which is defended against with the opponent’s defence die. If it is in the upper left, that means it is a magical attack and instead of being defended against with the opponent’s maneuver’s defence die, it is defended against with their Magic stat. Magical attacks also ignore armour. If a maneuver has a defence die value in the upper right in addition to the lower right, that means the maneuver provides extra magical defence and that die is rolled in addition to the Magic stat when defending against magic. In the bottom right of every style sheet are the basic maneuvers. These are the same for every sheet and represent the basic things that are always accessible and are the actions that scrubs who don’t have any combat styles have access to. You will almost never use these given the choice but every style has them as a backup. Of special note is the Trick maneuver which is actually good. This represents doing skill rolls to perform special actions in combat and is where most of the swashbuckling comes in. Tricks are awesome. This is the maneuver to choose when you go “I want to steal the Count’s hat, kiss his wife and leap through the window.” In the bottom left of every style sheet are the requirements for the style. These are generally the minimum stat requirements to use the style (which is important, because you can do damage to stats) and any restrictions on weapons and armour. Black Powder Musketeer requires you to have a gun, for example, and Five Seasons kung fu requires you to be unarmed and not wearing any armour. Stat and armour restrictions are one of the core balancing features of a style. Maneuvers What effect your chosen maneuver has depends on what’s written below the circle. This could be literally anything – not every maneuver is even an attack, some are just movement or simple defences. Here is a list of examples of the kinds of things maneuvers can do – this is by no means exhaustive. The maneuvers you write for your style can do pretty much whatever you want them to do, from simple damage right the way up to crazy things like transformation into completely different forms. Damage: Straight damage to an enemy, on its own or in addition to another effect. A normal human has 5 HP. Armour in Spellbound Kingdoms gives additional HP and varies wildly by how expensive the armour is and whether the user is a Warrior or not (Warriors double the effectiveness of armour). Generally armour will provide between 1 and 4 extra HP to a character. As a rule of thumb, basic attacks do 1 damage, bread and butter attacks do 2, really heavy hitting attacks do 3 or 4 and some really nasty ones do 5 – 7 and almost always require the character to rebalance. Written as a simple number – eg: 2. Stat Damage: Damage can also be done directly to stats. This is important because almost every style sheet has minimum stat requirements and if you get dropped below the requirements by stat damage you get knocked out of the style and can no longer use it. Stat damage is generally only 1 or 2 points and very often (but not always) requires the user to rebalance so you can’t keep hammering them. The stats are: Strength, Quickness, Reason, Charisma, Magic, Heart and Reputation. Mood Damage: Mood is one of the most important things a character possesses and is a critical gameplay feature in Spellbound. Most player characters have lots of it, most NPCs don’t. It’s what gives PCs their edge in a world stacked against them. Mood can be used as HP or spent to maximise the result on a die – it’s very powerful. Some maneuvers do damage directly to Mood – you might tell them their cloak looks like a dishrag, or cut their belt so their pants fall down, for example. I swear to god somebody had better make an Ultimate Hustler style based around doing this. Rebalance: If you hit your opponent with this, they are forced to rebalance and go back to one of the balancing maneuvers of their style. Being forced to rebalance also ends any ongoing buff effects they might have on them. Rebalances are an important tool and extremely useful against styles which start slow but build up to terrifyingly powerful maneuvers a few turns in. If you can stop a Death Lore master getting to his TPK spell, or lock down a Great Weapon user so he can’t knock people through walls, the fight swings in your favour. A variant of rebalance is called recast. Recast is a more limited form of rebalance which only works on spellcasters – it represents you disrupting their magical flow rather than just tripping them up or whatever. All rebalances are also recasts but recasts do nothing to non-mages. Move: A maneuver with this allows the character to move. Movement in Spellbound is abstract: a combat is split up into areas such as ‘by the doorway’, ‘on the balcony’, ‘on the auditorium’s stage’ etc. You are assumed to be moving freely inside of an area within your combat turn. To move into an adjacent area requires you to use a maneuver with move. Unless a maneuver says otherwise (like it’s ranged) you can only attack people inside your area – but when you move, you are a valid target for people both in the area you entered and the area you just left. A variant of move is climb, which is a move which allows you to move vertically to areas like ‘up in the rafters’ or ‘on the rigging of the galleon’. A maneuver can have both move and climb, meaning you can go in whatever direction you want. Environmental Trick: Sometimes a maneuver lets you execute a Trick in addition to whatever else it does. This is a good way of doing one-off awesome poo poo in combat without having to break style. Tricks can be literally whatever cool combat action you want, and you negotiate with the GM as to what the effect is and what you have to roll to achieve it. Buffs: Buffs can be to a variety of different things. Bonus damage, bonus attack or defense die sizes, a numerical bonus to a stat, bonus dStr die on attacks, adding an extra attack or a move to your next maneuver and so on. Buffs are generally either ‘for the next turn’ or ‘until forced to rebalance.’ Bonus damage, importantly, applies to every attack. If there is a maneuver which is three attacks which do 3/2/1 damage respectively and you are under a +1 damage buff, they now do 4/3/2. This is a horrifying amount of damage. You can do a lot of things with buffs, so think creatively and don’t feel restricted by my examples here. Buffs can be for yourself or for other people. Debuffs: Likewise with buffs, these are almost always of 1 turn duration, until you, the user, are forced to rebalance or until the target makes some sort of roll to remove the effect. There are also ongoing damage effects which I’ll lump in with these: the Petrify spell in the Elemental Maelstrom style does a recurring d8 attack for 1 Quickness damage per round until the caster is forced to recast, for example. Of note here are debuffs which give you penalty dice (target takes Magic penalty die on all defences next round, for example). A penalty die means you roll that die in addition to whatever other dice you are rolling and you take the lowest. Forced movement: ‘Move target 1 area’ for example. These do pretty much what they sound like they do and can be extremely powerful effects if the opponent’s style has no easy access to movement or you’re fighting above a pit of lava. If a target is successfully forced to move they are always also rebalanced. Disarm: Pretty much what it sounds like, the target drops their weapon. This will probably knock them out of style. There’s a talent which lets you grab their weapon if you do this. Healing and gaining Mood: Healing damage in combat is very rare (I think there’s one magic style that does it, and it’s quite limited) but Mood gain is much more common. This can either be to yourself (because the thing you did was so awesome you feel good about yourself), to an ally (because you shouted encouragement to them) or to all your allies (because you’re just that awesome.) Grab: Puts the target in the ‘grabbed’ state and often puts the user in the grabbed state as well (if you’re actually grappling with them, it does, if you’re just throwing a bola at them or something then it doesn’t). While grabbed, a character cannot move and can only execute balancing maneuvers and appropriate Tricks. Multiple targets: Exactly what it sounds like – some single attacks hit multiple people or everyone inside an area. You roll once, everyone rolls their defences separately. Subtly different to multiple attacks. Whatever the gently caress else you want: Seriously, some maneuvers do weird poo poo. There’s one that lets you swap bodies with someone, there’s one that just turns somebody into a wolf, one where you have to guess what an enemy will do next round and if you’re correct all your allies gain Mood. The only limit is your imagination and the core fighting styles in Spellbound cover most of the bases of ‘guy using X weapon’ so don’t be afraid to try something off the wall.  One, you’re telling me you’ve never wanted to write “I tie swords to my feet, put clown shoes on my hands, do a handstand and murder people exclusively by doing spins: The Combat Style”? Two, fabulous prizes! Three, this competition is a little different to the normal ‘design a game’ competition. You’re being asked to write a relatively small amount of content within a tight brief. Mechanics and aesthetics are already decided upon and what you need to do is come up with a new concept within that framework and then make it work within those limitations. There’s a wealth of research out there which shows that limitations make us more creative and working within a tight framework is both an important life skill and something that any aspiring game designer should be doing to themselves. Furthermore, with a tightly controlled amount of content and a very definite ‘you have to do these things and then you are finished’, this contest should hopefully maximise the amount of people who sign up and actually complete an entry. We all lead busy lives and imo writing a full game from scratch in your spare time for an internet competition is a big ask. Creating and finishing things feels awesome and writing new fighting styles or magic schools should be a fun exercise for anyone interested in design.  I’ve backed the Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana Kickstarter to the $95 Trader level and I’m giving away those rewards to you goons as prizes. What does this mean? The prizes will be as follows: RUNNERS UP There will be four runners up who will win: 1 PDF copy of the Spellbound Kingdoms core rulebook 1 PDF copy of the Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana sourcebook 1 DrivethruRPG code for an at-cost full colour hardback copy of Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana WINNER There will be one winner who will win: 1 PDF copy of the Spellbound Kingdoms core rulebook 1 PDF copy of the Special Edition Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana sourcebook. The Special Edition comes with an extra chapter and an appendix with the author’s design notes on the game. 1 DrivethruRPG code for an at-cost full colour hardback copy of Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana The source files for Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana. This includes artwork, text and combat styles so you can go forth and keep making kick-rear end content. I apologise that the codes for the hard copies are going to cost you some of your own money (about $13 plus shipping). I’m a broke-rear end masters student and while I can just about scoop for $95 on prizes for internet competitions I can’t really stretch that to four more sets of printing and international shipping for books. If you can’t afford or don’t want the code, you may nominate someone else to receive it in your place with my apologies and thanks. Also, these prizes are Kickstarter backer rewards so they may vanish into the aether. The Kickstarter is already funded but in the event that the author is hit by an asteroid or something I will come up with some alternate prizes, probably cash.  The competition will begin right the gently caress now and finish  23:59 September 1st 2017. That is one full month. Late entrants will be disqualified from winning prizes but I will still critique entrants submitted up to 23:59 September 2nd 2017.Entries must be submitted into this thread using the following banner so I can actually see them:  And should also be emailed to doodmons at gmail dot com to make doubly sure that I know you’ve submitted an entry. Entrants must submit one style as their entry, in their post with the above banner. Feel free to post other poo poo, talk about design, critique each other’s’ work and post half-finished copies but your final entry must be one style sheet. It may either be a combat style, a magic style or a monster style. What you must submit: A single-page style sheet in the image format of your choice or as a readable PDF. You do not have to use the blank style sheet included below (by all means make it prettier if you have photoshop skills) but it must follow recognisably the same format. An accompanying gloss to explain your style sheet. This includes a short (<100 words) descriptive paragraph on the style and, most importantly, rules text which describes exactly what the more unusual effects of your maneuvers do and clarifying or explaining anything that you did not have space on the style sheet to do. You do not have to dedicate space to explaining anything that is self-evident (a maneuver which simply does 2 damage for example) but you should definitely take the time to explain any unique features of the style. If you write a monster style, please describe the monster and its behaviour – this is not a competition about the most creative monster design, but knowing the kind of creature that will be fighting in the style is important to understanding the style. This gloss must be submitted as a google doc or a PDF. Optional: If you are writing a magic style, you may also write a spell list. These are the spells which the mage can use out of combat. They are divided into close spells (the low-powered primary spells of the style), high spells (very powerful, dangerous, once per day super-spells) and freeform spells (a one paragraph description of the types of magical effects a master of the style can improvise on the fly). The spell lists in the corebook tend to be about 10 close spells and 5 high spells. The spell list should be included as an addendum to the style’s gloss in google doc or PDF format. Judging: I will be judging this competition and deciding on the winners and runners up. I will post detailed critiques of the submitted entries in this thread and if I can con some designers I know into helping out then there will be comments from them as well. I will not be doing a formal points system because, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not qualified to be that rigorous. Winner and runners up will be decided thusly: First, after critiquing every entry I will decide the top 5 based on the criteria below. Second, from that pool of 5 I will determine the winner – the rest will be the runners up. Judging Criteria: Creativity: Whether you write a fighting style, a magic style or a monster style, uniqueness and creativity will be an important factor in determining the winner. Don’t be afraid to write a style based around sword and shield – but put an interesting spin on it. Tell us what unique way of using those weapons the style uses, and tell us why this is its own unique style and not a variant of another. Balance: Game balance will be critical to the style you write. If it is a fighting or magic style, it must be balanced with the others in the game. This does not mean it cannot be very strong against certain styles or very weak against others, but it should not be a clearly superior or inferior version of another style. If you are writing a monster style, it must be a good fight. Styles such as Dragon are obviously much more powerful than styles available to players, but they are still balanced within themselves and in the context of the game. Dragon’s can still be fought and killed. Fun: Using a style should be fun for the player. Players should read a style and get excited about the idea of making a character who fights like that in combat. You may write a unique magic style based around writing runes in blood which is balanced numerically against other styles, but if all it has is different ways to do damage then using it in combat is going to be a bit of a drag. Make sure players always have to think when using your style. Make sure they have meaningful decisions to make and awesome things to build up to. Coherence: A style should be just that – a style. Its maneuvers should fit into an overall theme and while no style should be truly a one trick pony a good style has mechanical coherence. A sword and shield style which is a highly defensive, battle-of-endurance style should play very different to one which is about aggression and explosive power. Jack of all trades is certainly a completely valid concept for a style (look at Free Sword), but when writing maneuvers consider whether they fit in, or if they’re just a neat trick. If you cannot summarise what your style does in a single sentence, consider revising it.  Blank Style Sheets Corebook Fighting Styles Corebook Magic Styles Corebook Monster Styles Advice from corebook about writing new styles Examples of spell lists and glosses Some styles I wrote (disclaimer: these might be rubbish) In conclusion, good luck and have fun. I look forward to seeing the crazy poo poo that people come up with. Disclaimer: I have no connection, financial or otherwise to the people who wrote Spellbound Kingdoms, I am literally just some goon. I have never done this before so if this goes to poo poo then woops I guess. Ettin did give permission for me to post this thread. Doodmons fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 17:28
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 19:43 |
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Just to duck my head in and say how cool this is of Doodmons to do. I encourage everyone to get stuck in and give it a go, and of course I'd strongly recommend Spellbound to anyone who's not tried it yet. As you can tell from the (as is traditional, unfinished) F&F, I rather like it. I might well throw my hat in the ring for fun on this one, but I won't stand for a prize (kickstarter goodies are no good to one who already gives money to the Brunner).
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Aug 2, 2017 10:00
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This is my first time looking at, let alone designing anything for Spellbound Kingdoms, but the combat system is very cool and I'd love to run a game of it some time. http://i.imgur.com/0fguttj.png -The second effect of each maneuver occurs at the same time that you select its seeded maneuver, at which point the seed disappears. For example, you use Sweet Scent, your allies gain 1 mood, and you seed Root Armor. The next time you execute Root Armor, you also trigger Rafflesia. -A tile may not have more than one seed at a time. Seeds persist if you are forced to rebalance, but disappear if you change styles. -Triggered effects are resolved immediately after the initial effect of the seeded tile, and any relevant marks are removed. If a mark for an effect like pollinate is removed because the caster is forced to rebalance, the seed is also removed. -Black and green tiles are meant to help you and your allies turtle in an area. Red and blue are focused more on disrupting the enemy's own formation. -I tried to give the total sum of each maneuver about 1.5 the strength of a normal maneuver in other styles. This is balanced by needing time to start seeding as well as telegraphing your maneuvers ahead of time. The stat damage might be too strong. Red Tide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tide Rafflesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafflesia Dragonblood Tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_cinnabari Sap Seep/Spark: http://wildfiretoday.com/2014/03/03/eucalyptus-and-fire/ Angel's Call/Devil's Breath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brugmansia GrudgeOnion fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Aug 20, 2017 |
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Aug 19, 2017 10:35
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Hiya, That looks like a really interesting style love the seeding stuff  Here's my entry, It's called the Sun Dancer Fighting Style. The idea was like a song sword and harnessing the power of music and dance for a fighting style so it makes you spellbound while using it. Links below! Generally the style is a mix of offensive and defensive with good maneuverability and mood regain powers but you count as Spellbound but can be knocked out of style by being muted and if they get rebalanced they are back on a lot of relatively poor lower movies https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByBu5GBUfVQKOHkwRHVnWFlJMzA/view?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zz7eBVkjltk7kYWfND5JpJZltwISS8obKVj14a8mgrU/edit?usp=sharing
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Aug 19, 2017 13:26
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Wow, that's really unique, I'm impressed. It's amazing what you can do with this combat system if you're willing to add a little complexity. I'm not quite sure I understand how the seeding of tiles works, though. So I think it's Turn 1: Touch The Earth Turn 2: Algae Bloom. Mark the area for bonus defense dice and seed Sap Seep. Turn 3: Touch The Earth Turn 4: Sap Seep for the movement stopping and seed Algae Bloom. Also procs Red Tide for stat damage. Turn 5: Touch The Earth Turn 6: Algae Bloom. Also procs Spark for stat damage. Is that right?
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Aug 20, 2017 03:32
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Just about, but instead of returning to Touch the Earth you can move either over or down to a Red or Blue tile. So it's more like: Turn 1: Touch the Earth Turn 2: Algae Bloom. Mark the area you're in, allies get bonus to defense dice this turn, seed Sap Seep. Turn 3: Move down to Choking Vines, seed Briar Patch. Turn 4: Sap Seep gives you big magic defense this turn, but you're prevented from moving for a while. Red Tide triggers in the marked area. Algae Bloom is seeded. Turn 5: Move up to Briar Patch, Leeching Vines triggers. Seed a Red Tile. etc Like I said, it very well may be too strong, and the fastest way to tone it down would be to remove all seeds on a forced rebalance. Regardless, I'm leaving it as-is for the contest. Glad you like it!
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Aug 20, 2017 23:28
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I am definitely interested, but the thing is, I just pledged for the Arcana kickstarter. I really wanted that extra chapter that comes with the 65$ pledge. Would it be alright, in case I won anything, to sell it later at a discounted price, to recoup some of the expenses? I'm not familiar with these things and I'm not sure if that would be rude or something. :I
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Aug 23, 2017 15:40
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 19:43 |
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Yeah, that's not a problem to me. If you end up with extra copies because you've already backed the Kickstarter then it's not really any of my business what you do with them
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Aug 23, 2017 18:22
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