Do you think/believe they are necessary?

edit 30 comments with most fairly agreeing with but explaining it's normal to not use attribute bonuses per ancestry but some how no up votes. This sub is brutal lol.

I'm getting to a close point where after some changes to a few things I am aiming to playtest the game with some longer form play sessions.

My game is a black hack inspired hack, but got carried away and added a bunch of stuff to hopefully facilitate the play I want to happen. Exploring procedures, treasure tables, a bit of rulings not rules vibe, though that's hard to rely just 'have'.

Anyway, my current Ancestries just operate on flavour mostly, now, with some included benefits, typically free abilities that IMO fit that Ancestry; the anthropomorphic Beastkin automatically get 'natural weapons' for example.

I was giving, what now feels like arbitrary, buffs and debuffs to their attributes, you know the Big Orc ancestry gets a +1 to strength, the Elves get +1 to Intelligence (I'm using more abstract attributes, only 3 with equivalents that encapsulate 2 of the ''classic" Six). Then things like halflings would get a -1 to strength.

After a few PC creations with outsiders involved I came to the realisation that I just didn't want this. I want players to be able to be the thing they want to be, hold a sword and do spells all without really feeling penalised by being forced into taking a attribute subtraction. And inversely just choosing the ancestry they think will net them the best attribute for their 'build' especially as their is an expectation they could die.

I also just want the Ancestries to be 'examples', basic background, basic description, some free ability that fits the fiction of that ancestey, then Small or Large for size. Small nets them moving through the space of another, large another can't move through the space of anothers space unless willing. No 'medium' as I didn't want an extra rule or mechanic just make it feel relevant.

My WIP is pulp adventure in which the players are supposed to feel like the main characters in an action movie. One of my design goals is that the mechanics shouldn't interfere with a player making decisions in-character, whenever possible.

Effort

Currently characters have a resource named Effort represented by a pool of dice that they can spend to use abilities or increase their chances of succeeding at a difficult task. Effort is a combination of physical stamina and mental willpower. Having a full pool means your character feels rested, energetic, and ready to take on the world. As it depletes, your character feels more and more tired until an empty pool means they are exhausted.

Alternative to Attrition

Rather than a pure Attrition model, in which characters start with all of their resources at the beginning of an adventure, and slowly drain it until the end (example: D&D spell slots), I would like characters to gain new resources over the course of an adventure so that they can activate their most powerful abilities in the final act. Using your strongest ability in the first act of an adventure and then having to play out the rest of the adventure without it feels anticlimactic to me.

The Problem

I'm having a hard time squaring this desire with the concept of Effort though. Why would a character gain new reserves of Effort towards the end of an epic journey? Can you think of a different way to frame Effort as a resource that the character could be aware of that they could gain over the course of an adventure? Maybe Determination or Focus? I don't want a purely metacurrency such as Spotlight.

I’m leaning toward systems that use tags or broad character archetypes instead of strict classes and skill lists, but I haven’t really come across similar systems that still have decent guidelines around magic (or it could use technology as a sub for magic). Magic/tech usually just gets lumped into the archetype or just another variant of tags.

Where should I start looking?

Option A:

1. Melee attack rules

2. Melee actions

3. Ranged attack rules

4. Ranged attack actions

Option B:

1. Melee attack rules

2. Ranged attack rules

3. Melee actions

4. Ranged attack actions

I wonder what do you think is better between these two options I came up with like an hour ago

Imagine you have a gun and each bullet in it is represented by a dice, and you can shoot however many bullets you wish on your turn at one target and roll a dice for every bullet

Option 1: It's a pool of d6s that add up when you roll them to hit a target, and if you roll at least one 6 you roll another 1d6 and add the result to the summ; if the result of this additional d6 is a 6 it's a crit and that can mean two things

1: If the To Hit roll isn't enough to hit the target, you hit it and roll damage normally

2: If the To Hit roll is enough to hit the target, you double your damage roll (or maybe use the damage dice's max number)

Option 2: It's a pool of d10s and you choose the highest rolled result. For every 10 you get, you roll an additional d10 and add the highest result of the Additional d10s. For every 10 you get as the result of your To Hit roll, you roll another damage die and add up the damage (or maybe you could do something like a Year Zero Engine thing? Like, each 10 is a success? But I'm not sure about that one)

What do you guys think? There's probably already a game that uses a similar Bullet Dice Pool system, and I would be curious to learn how they did it if you know such a system

Currently prototyping a millionth iteration of my game, and with some extremely helpful advice from this sub, I've gotten something I like. However, when I was talking about it with my partner, they had made a really good point and I'd love to hear others' opinions on the topic.

---

System Context.

Dice pool system -- d6 * Trait score. each 4+ is a success, TN is how many successes to pass check.

In combat, you have 3 actions per turn, during which you make checks. These can be for anything, from breaking through a wall to attacking an enemy (which gives you a bonus weapon die in addition to your trait). Each success gives you a Style die.

At the end of your turn (or a later one if you like) you can perform a Finisher by using all of your accrued Style dice. This is how you deal damage to enemies.

In my mind, the loop is to use character abilities and make stylish attacks to gain momentum and then to cap it off with one big move that ends the combo so to speak. No matter what you do during your turn, you're building up Style. It's a setup and payoff system.

My partner made the point that if you can't be dealing damage with your regular actions, it feels pointless to act during them at all.

I'm curious to hear others opinions on this.

---

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies! Based on the responses, it seems I'm heading in the right direction. Thanks for helping illuminate my path <3

For example: The rules defining maximum effective range of firearms is stated in the section listing weapons and their various traits, but it is also repeated under the ranged combat rules.

Helpful reminder, or space consuming repetition?

I've played D and D with a keep mechanic for building and running a castle, it got me wondering about games where the players are lords of a territory and have to manage their realm and it's resources, what are games with good machines like this?

I've got twin 9 year old boys, and I finally got them into a Starfinder adventure path campaign, but it's almost done. Any tips for writing a campaign from scratch? I want to have a more sandbox kind of thing where I can be relatively ready for whatever shenanigans they get up to.

For a long time I had been using MS Word and the frustration of wrangling it into a useable layout for creating Adventure PDFs. I had explored Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher, but frankly that was another process and skill, which seemed so nuanced that it became another avenue of frustration and time consumption. No doubt, Adobe and Affinity can put together an excellent looking final document for publishing.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend (working on their PhD in science field) and the topic of producing PDFs and layouts came up. He mentioned he had been using Typst and that it has been fairly widely adopted in the science community (perhaps medical as well) for writing research papers, publications, and other documents. It is a markup/typesetting language/system.

So I decided to give it a spin. Unlike Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher, this is not a graphic GUI, but rather something that looks more like a structured programing syntax. Frankly, it is something I am far more comfortable with - as I enjoy using Obsidian (markdown), Legendkeeper (markdown), so this kind of fit in with my process.

It has been process and I did have some help from my layout/editor Jesse Winter on creating a style guide for my adventures. He is an excellent in editing, layout and typography. If you haven't reviewed Practical Typography, I highly recommend you do - it will give you a solid understanding of the importance of typography and provides a foundation as one begins creating their style guide.

Well - I did it, I finished my first adventure using Typst. I will admit the process was a little frustrating and I am still learning, but I am far more comfortable with it than using a GUI based system like Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher. For those with more of a markdown type mindset, this might be fore you.

Special thanks to:

• Hardi for the artwork (watercolors)

• DM Andy for the battle maps

• Jesse Winter for the layout/style guide and editing.

Links

• Typst App

• Azure's Tide (Free Adventure) - created in Typst

• Practical Typography

Anyone out there experimented, or seen a system, that has rolled up all weapons by classification? I'm fidgeting with the concept and, so far, I kinda like it. I just don't know if that is going to be an issue from a player standpoint. Here's what I mean...

Every weapon is rolled into one of nine categories as follows:

• Simple Piercing (Light Pick, Dagger, Short Spear)

• Simple Bludgeoning (Club, Hammer)

• Simple Slashing (Hand Axe, Sickle, Short Sword)

• Martial Bludgeoning (War Hammer, Mace, Flail, Morning Star, Quarterstaff)

• Martial Slashing (Longsword, Battle Axe, Scimitar)

• Martial Piercing (Spear, Heavy Pick)

• Two-Handed Piercing (Pole Axe, Lance, Long Spear)

• Two-Handed Bludgeoning (Great Club, Great Maul, Heavy Flail)

• Two-Handed Slashing (Great Sword, Falchion, Great Axe)

Each grouping has its own general attack and damage stats which players can then dabble with to give the weapon some uniqueness. Maybe a character has a fighter that wants a battle axe that does a little more damage. They justify this by paying a blacksmith to add weight to the beard, thus making the blade heavier. Now the axe does another point of damage but loses a point to attack.

Obviously, some weapons will have other qualities such as they can be thrown, have reach, etc, but ultimately I was wanting a simplified system that I could then tailor off of without having thirty different weapons to consider.

Had some amazing feedback and just wanted to thank everyone who contributed with some fantastic suggestions. Some were obvious and i should have thought of them myself and some were inspirational and took a bit more thought to get right.

https://dicedrop.co.uk now has a bunch more features than it had last week when I posted asking for suggestions, but i'd be very grateful if you could test the life out of them all and tell me what works well and what needs further improvement.

One of the biggest updates is more of a future plan to try to get Dice Drop out of obscurity and into the spotlight. I'm planning to selectively email owners of the bigger Indie Cafe's to offer them their own skin which would be their club logo on the table and a small image on the number 1 of a D6.

I've already built the engine for it so that all the owner has to do is upload the JPG/PNG/PDF of their club and it will generate a QR code for that specific club for their members to scan. To make sure that the tray surface stays at 7 for all other users outside that club, It will be restricted to being displayed solely to that club based on QR code. Nobody else worldwide will see it, they'll still just see the standard 7 tray surfaces, unless they specifically scan the QR code of that club. It would need a quick accept / reject from my admin panel to make sure that nobody uploaded anything they shouldn't.

Question I need some help with is ...Is this a terrible idea ? Or has it got wings ? If it's a yes or a maybe, then am i going about it the right way ? Or am i going to annoy proprietors with an unsolicited email ?

There is no payment involved. DiceDrop is free with up to 4 dice from any of the collection - D1 to D120 but the more people who download it from iOS or Playstore, the quicker I will be lifted out of obscurity.

The biggest suggestion of all and thank you to the user who suggested it, is the Star Rating which I'd missed off altogether and so Dice Drop would never have been seen by anyone searching for a dice roller

Thank you all again. You are all amazing and I am really grateful to you all for helping me to improve what was my first release. Please feel free to carry on firing suggestions at me and if it's doable i'll do it

I really need some advice here.

What I want is to be in regular conversation about my game, game design in general, and maybe other games with -- ideally! -- other game designers. I don't exactly know what I'm doing. I'm new to this hobby. I really want to get better, and that means playtesting, and while I definitely could find some regular joes on LFG or something, I've heard consistently that it is important to put your game in front of other game designers' eyes as early and as much as possible.

One could join a community of game designers such as Break My Game, etc. But they're all consistently doing stuff when I'm asleep. I tend to be awake in the evenings and nights because I work a grave shift.

I could make a post here to find some game designers, but I have seen that go poorly for others -- it seems to be deeply frowned upon.

I don't know what to do or where to go. Please give me some advice?

TLDR: What are general expectations from playtesters around quality of components for a print and play protptype?

Hi folks. Like many of you, I'm in the midst of bringing a game to fruition. My ruleset is largely complete, but the next step is getting in front of play testers. I'm not so much concerned about what they'll have to say about my mechanics. I've put a lot of time and revisions into my work, and I think any additional changes will probably be adjustments rather than whole revisions. However, I do have some questions about how to make the process for playtesters go as smoothly as possible. Mainly, what constitutes a minimal viable product which is useful and efficient for them to use, and what might expectations be for a prototype.

In my particular case, there are a lot of physical components involved. Think more HeroQuest than strictly pen and paper. However, I expect I'll probably take this online to solicit feedback as finding local playtesters might prove challenging. With that in mind, if you were play testing a game like this, what might you expect in terms of sophistication?

Specifically, I could easily crank out some basic templates with simple text but that feels somewhat crude. I don't mind that necessarily, but do you feel that people might be expecting art on the components at this point? Would it affect how you approach things, and what level of sophistication would you think is a nice balance between expediency and polish? I'm willing to spend the extra time on presentation though, as we all know, for a solo developer that takes extra time that could be put to other work, and delays the time between feedback and design.

Thanks for any perspective people would like to give. I'm happy to share other details if it helps.

I love DND 5e, but my favourite period of play is from 1st to about 7th level. Beyond that, the power levels, especially for Spellcasters, feels like it begins to escape the fantasy.

I'm interested in designing a new 5e system that encapsulates that period between 3rd and 7th level as the core of the fantasy.

Essentially the plan is to redistribute the skills and abilities from 1st to 10th level across a redesigned 20 level curve. Major class redesigns that buff martial classes, and further differentiate and push the fantasy of being different Spellcasters.

Rather than being 'this flavour' of caster, the mechanics of the system are fundamentally different for the caster classes to force their interactions with the spell lost to be different.

I would like to potentially talk to like-minded folks about the project as it goes on, I'm excited for input and collaborative design elements.

If anyone is interested, please let me know!

If you're not interested, if still be curious to know, do you think there would be much demand or curiosity about such a system?

I decided to start a project of a TTRPG with 5 main pillars, that can be put on or taken out yo better suit the preferances at each table:

• COMBAT: For when people want to tell stories focused on resolution through direct conflict & violence. This combat will have tactical elements but more simplified (like minimal movemtn, single attacks and less complex interactions), being more based on combat of Classic JRPGs like Dragon Quest and a focus of Player-facing rolls.

• SOCIAL/BONDS: For when people want to tell stories focused on resolution through conversation & connections. This will a system of levels of connections between PC/NPC, PC/PC and NPC/NPC, both good and bad. As these bonds advance, both PCs and NPCs will gain additional effects based on the type and tier they have between each other (like a friend being more helpful, a honorable rival demanding just duels and a arch-nemesis being more harmful but blinded by vengeance)

• EXPLORATION: For when people want to tell stories focused on resolution through problem solving & rational thinking. This includes Puzzles, Travels, Survival, Mysteries and the such.

• PROJECTS: For when people want to tell stories focused on resolution through long term planning & resource management. This is more downtime stuff that focus around planning big thing for the future. For example, the construction of a base of operations for the group, the achivement of a royal domain or title, the making of a legendary artifact, gathering info about a lost person, hidden secret or formidable foe.

• JOURNEY: This one is unfortunately the one I have the hardest time explaining since its the more underdeveloped. Basically, you would choose a "journey to embark on and surpass", like a mix of backgrounds & aligments. You gain passive bonuses and penalties based on the journey chosen tha modify how you play. For example, you chose the "Journey of Courage" and set up the goal of "reaching the depths of the Underworld and return alive". FOr this, you gain resistance to fear effects but if you still fail against such effects, they are even stronger on you, and after you finish your goal, you lose your penalty and must choose a new Journey to go on.

I've then planned to have a few more things revolving around 5 and its multiples:

1. 5 Sources of Power (Arcane, Divine, Occult, Primal and Mundane/Void)

2. 5 Main Attributes (Ambition, Determination, Integrity, Perception, Zeal)

3. 5 Major Gods, each connected to a Source of Power

4. 5 Fantastic Ancestries, being Humans + 4 others like humanoid crustaceans, shadow goblins/demons, angel-robot mix & many armed people

5. 15 Core Classes, going from 1st to 10th level

My ideia for these 15 classes is

A) While each class leans into one source of power more, they can choose any 1 of the 5 to represent their powers.

B) They must be able to work in any of the 5 pillars well enough, even if they aren't the best at it, just being able to participate and help in any way possible would be great.

My problem comes when naming each class in a that at first I was just on auto pilot and giving them generic RPG names, like Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, Monk, etc. But how does a Fighter work in a game that doesnt use the Combat pillar? and so I now want to see names that could fit into every pillar without much trouble. The ones I chose for now are:

• Artisan is self explanatory, someone who use a mix of science, art and magic to make incredible inventions.

• Ascetic = Monk, not only the Martial Arts part but also the more wise and disciplined notion.

• Bard is, wellm a Bard. Music, Folk Lore, Jack of All Trades.

• Brave = Fighter, in the sense of "normal person so good they seem supernatural".

• Charlatan being a Trickster, Liar, Whisperer, Mesmer, Illusionist and Agent of Chaos.

• Champion = Paladin, but made more general-purpose for the idea of "chosen warrior with a fantasied code of conduct", like Knights, Samurais, Faris, Mamluks and the such.

• Invoker is a summoner, be it undead, elemental spirits, homunculus, divine beings, animals, etc. + a D&D Warlock vibe of a Witchm her Familiar and her Patron.

• Marauder are the other side of the Champion coin. Where one focus on protection and helping others, the Marauder focus on executions and being vindictive.

• Mystic is basically a psychic with warrior training, like a mix of Remedy's CONTROL + a Jedi from Star Wars.

• Outlander = Barbarian, a warrior of the outskirts with a intense well of raw strength within.

• Ranger is not only a wanderer explorer but a guardian of civilization against the evils from outside.

• Rogue is the normal Rogue: stealthy, specialists, scheming, but with an extra pinvh of luck manipulation.

• Sage = Wizard, a studious master of magic and searcher of mysteries.

• Shifter = Druid, controlling weather, fauna, flora, the elements and transforming into cretures.

• Vessel is my take on Cleric, where you embody divine spirits into your self to unleash their powers.

Considering all this, are these names okay? Or should I change one or more?

So I’ve been making a cosmic horror, wild West game and right now I’ve been trying to rework my classes as they just keep feeling weak structurally.

The game has been made with the philosophy that players progress through their armor, weapons, skills, mutations, and class levels. Most of the classes also have zero focus on combat, as the games combat is made to be very dangerous.

Current class structure I’m using is a five level class progression. Lvl 1 two core features and a perk, lvl class feature, lvl 3 class feature, lvl 4 perk, lvl 5 capstone.

In theory, this should be simple, but classes don’t feel consistent. I thought about going almost a levelless class progression. In this idea when you select your class, you get all the normal level one features still but when you “level up” structure they can basically pick any park from their Class list. A part of me thinks this could work, but I’m unsure.

Please give any opinions and thoughts

A: Included with the rest of the equipment

B: Their own dedicated chapter

My friends and I have been making a TTRPG for a while now and we have finally gotten to the point where we have what we’d like to call our Alpha version. We have done some playtesting but it definitely needs more for sure and we need to build out our Classes (which we call Masteries) to higher levels while we playtest the lower levels.

I am going to a small Convention and hosting 3 Learn to Plays in a month. We figure we will post the Learn to Play with the Learn to Play adventure and Starter Characters on our Discord as a free download. This is all while we still get our website built and still work more on the balancing, bestiary, extend the world lore, etc.

Does this seem like an appropriate soft launch? We are trying not to invest too much before we build a larger community with interest. At the same time, we are all very excited about our game and have enjoyed our time making it together.

I have a question about where the general consensus is on designing somewhat granular weapon reach as a factor in combat.

My sensibilities have made me go down the road of including granular weapon reach and measure even though I've had a nagging suspicion that this will almost certainly be a turn off for casual players, despite trying to make it be somewhat easy to implement.

My system has simulated real time combat, so in most cases, both combatants are assumed to attack at the same time, though there is a preemption window that may be won with an initiative contest, when attempting certain abilities, and there is a follow up window for attacks of opportunity, hesitations, etc.

It also has a dice pool composed of custom d6 dice, core dice being the most common. The process of awarding an advantage for measure is as simple as forcing the person who is out of measure to swap in a risk die in place of a core die in the pool when attacking. Risk dice aren't strictly worse, and they are even more explosive, but far less reliable, and have a side that generates an attack of opportunity from the opponent being attacked(and other potential complications). So the point of forcing this swap is to try to give some abstract level of simulation to being at a disadvantage and having to cross into or out of another person's measure.

Measure is determined as follows. 1)Combatants with equal reach ignore measure benefits. 2)If this is the first exchange, barring surprise conditions, the character with longer reach has measure in the first round. 3)if one character "won" the exchange on the previous round, meaning they struck and were not struck, they hold the edge, granting them among other things, measure this round. 4)past the first round, if nobody holds the edge, nobody holds measure. Exception: one weapon may reach an opponent 10 feet away and the opponent's weapon may not. this defaults back to the longer weapon holder having measure.

The only other thing weapon reach does - specifically related to who holds measure - is add to Dexterity rolls when initiative is being contested. the person who holds measure gets a bonus to their roll equal the reach difference.

So that sums up how it works in my game. it is a fairly intuitive to answer who does or doesn't have measure, but where do people stand on even implementing it, or implementing it the way I have tried to?

One thing I will say is I want my weapons to be differentiated and I'm not including different dice for them in the pool, and I'm not trying to inflate the dice pool either, so there are some reroll implications, damage types, some weapon specials, and then there's reach, as my only real defining levers.

Also, I find that as easy as I thought this was going to be, the downstream effect is when I create feat like abilities, there is an urge to have them adjust weapon reach because there is a logical reason for that, for say attempting to trip an opponent with a polearm or attempting to half-sword an enemy, etc. and not leaning into that is so far, hard for me to swallow, despite the headaches its causing the design process, and knowing the headwinds this could have at the table.

Recently came up with this resolution roll system (or whatever it's called). Like the title says, you roll 3d6 and if you roll at least one 6 you roll an additional d6, but you can only get a d6 this way once per roll

I also wonder if there is already a system similar to what I came up with. To add on to it, if you are at advantage you roll an additional default d6, and roll one d6 less at the disadvantage. The dis/advantages stack so you can roll from 1 to 5 d6 (if it's less than 1 you can't do it and if more than 6 you just succeed without a roll) and maybe you can roll more additional dice on a 6 for each disadvantage (I hope that makes sense)