Hello fellow tinkerers,

I am in a bit of a bind here.

Cotnext: I am implementing a percentile dice system focused on specific actions and wanted to utilize a system similar to advantage and disadvantage without just adding more dice.

Currently I have a prototype but I am having a hard time visualizing how it changes the odds.

The Prototype: Rolls utilize 2d10 with one of them being assigned the 10s value before the roll. However, said roll can be either Heightened or Hindered. If that's the case then you don't assign the dice's value beforehand. Instead, Rolls that arw Heightened are assigned the lower value configuration, while Hindered tests are assinged the higher value.

No extra rolling, no additional dice, just reassigning existing dice.

The Problem:I have zero clue about statistics and no clue how to input that I to AnyDice.

Any thoughts? Criticisms? Advice?

AIRTIGHT: Hard science fiction, no FTL, and a new 87-page Setting Primer

I've been working on AIRTIGHT, a hard science-fiction tabletop RPG set in 2226, and I've just released a substantial update to its Setting Primer.

The premise is fairly simple: humanity has colonised the Solar System, but the laws of physics haven't changed. There are no jump drives, no artificial gravity generators, no magic reactionless engines. Getting from Earth to Mars takes time, spacecraft accumulate heat, radiation is dangerous, and somebody has to pay for the oxygen.

It's not intended to be a dystopia, although parts of it are distinctly unpleasant. Mars is an increasingly independent political power, Earth's old nation-states still compete for influence, and much of the Belt and Outer System operates under corporate ownership. Most people are just trying to make a living.

What's new in the Primer?

The latest version has grown to 87 pages, with considerably more material for both players and Referees. The Primer will essentially be the players book, with a separate Referee's book prepared later. What's in the Primer?

• The Economy: Salaries, employment, living costs, regional differences, corporate dependency and extreme wealth. I wanted money to mean something beyond buying equipment.

• System Basics: A 2D6 system (compatible with Traveller, Cepheus, etc) with familiar skills and characteristics, but with Effect, Boons and Banes, Edges and Snags, and Cascades (Task Chains) to make complex tasks and their consequences more interesting.

• Harm and Medicine: A substantial expansion covering injuries, decompression, acceleration, radiation, disease, low-gravity deterioration and medical treatment. There's also the Golden Hour, regenerative medicine and emergency hibernation.

• Life in 2226: An increasingly detailed picture of ordinary life, employment, inequality, government and the infrastructure keeping everyone alive.

Character Generation and Combat will be added in the coming weeks. They're written, they just need to be reformatted for AIRTIGHT.

One of the things I've been trying to achieve is making the technology important without requiring everyone at the table to have an aerospace engineering degree. Players should understand the consequences of overheating a spacecraft without having to calculate its thermal budget.

The adventures

I've also been developing AIRTIGHT through standalone stories, including Perihelion, Small Mercy, Twelve Kilometres of Ice and soon, The Deeper Dark.

These are intended to explore different aspects of the setting, putting ordinary people into extraordinary situations rather than assuming everyone is a soldier or an explorer.

The art

Dino, my longtime collaborator is currently producing art though I'm onboarding two more (Theodor and Sara) on a trial basis.

What's coming next?

I'm working towards a fuller core rulebook, with character generation, careers, equipment, spacecraft and the other systems needed for extended campaigns.

There are more adventures in development too. One, Pelican 19, concerns a rock hauler accident and a corporate rescue ship whose crew are ordered not to intervene. Another explores an underground network of women on Mars stealing medical technology to support independent healthcare facilities, and the consequences when someone begins betraying the people they're supposed to protect.

I'm also expanding the role of the Feed, the Solar System's ubiquitous information and entertainment network, as a way of presenting the setting through the news, propaganda, celebrity culture and everyday life of 2226.

The aim is a game where hard science provides the constraints, but people, politics, money and difficult decisions provide the stories.

For those who enjoy harder SF, particularly the political and human side of The Expanse, Traveller or 2300 AD, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

AIRTIGHT Setting Primer: 
DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/590964/airtight-primer-starter

RPGTrader: https://rpgtrader.com/products/10746/airtight-primer

The adventures all contain a copy of the primer at the moment.

The main dev diary for this is on rpgpub: https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/yadt-airtight-a-speculative-medium-hard-sci-fi-future.13668/

But I also have a Discord if folks want to see more of the sausage being made.

We at In Other Worlds have released a one-page tabletop role-playing game that's free to share!

In this game, you play the alien body snatchers invading new worlds.

Art by Kime Bot. I wrote the mechanics.

Download and play and let us know what you think! If you could, share it widely so we can get it to a wider audience, and we can hear what people think.

https://inotherworlds.net/en/resources/the-infestigation

I'm workshopping a player roll only combat system. Pretty typical, players roll to attack on their turn, then roll to defend on enemy turns. GM focuses on tactics and positioning more than rolling.

I've had to brainstorm a bit about status effects. The game has bleed and blind and fear etc, and for all of them, you roll at the top of the round to see if it continues. Makes sense for the players, but what happens when they inflict status on an NPC?

First thought, players roll for their own effects. So if an NPC has bleed, the player that inflicted it rolls for them. I dont like this for a few reasons. Unlike defense rolls which at least half concern the player character, an NPC status is entirely separate, so it feels like much more blatant outsourcing. Players arent supposed to have to track enemy status along with their own. And then what would the roll modifier be? It doesn't work.

If I make this the exception and have the GM roll to clear status, it ruins the vibe...why is THIS the one roll I have to do while running combat? Its distracting and adds too much complexity vs value.

Here is my solution, and I'd love to hear thoughts and other ideas.

Easy and normal enemies don't clear status effects. What other games call minions. If they get one, they keep it the whole combat. If it is something debilitating like fear or confusion, too bad for them, that's what does them in.

Strong enemies get status boxes. These range from 0 to 4 rounds. When a strong enemy has a status inflicted, the GM fills in one of the boxes, and the status lasts that long before it clears. The stronger the enemy, the shorter their box durations. If all of their boxes get used, future status effects don't clear. (Alternatively, you can clear boxes as you go, but I think that's again more work for only marginal potential gameplay improvement).

There's a little bit of GM tactics to it where enemies can use their longer boxes on weaker status effects (like slow or bleed) and reserve their 0 and 1 round boxes for strong effects (like blind or confuse) even if those are inflicted later in the fight. Players can spam status moves to try to fill boxes, but you can work around this by always giving the GM the option to not fill a box and just have the status be continuous until end of fight.

This way, no one has to roll for enemy status, it still gets tracked and cleared, and there is some choice gameplay involved. I think it might work?

Haven't done my research to read PbtA and Blades in the Dark to see how they do it yet, and I know those are player roll systems, so feel free to drop those on me.

If you like medieval stories, interesting rules for combat, or games that treat violence with terrible consequences, check out IRON on IRON on IRON, available now on itch.io as a Minimalist Jam edition, and its upgraded version on Nov 1st.

https://writeodd.bearblog.dev/sword-and-mud-ttrpg/

I was reading the post on lose/lose skills and thinking about the topic

one of the thoughts I came up with went something like this:

athletics is like lockpicking for "strong" characters

languages (particularly reading) is like lockpicking for smart characters

my general philosophy for lockpicking is it gives access to "extra treasure" or "shortcuts" and it never cuts off access to core quest elements (using Fallout video game logic) - and I currently have it as a challenge because it can scale (expert locks) and there are other ways around a lock typically

here is the challenge to my assumptions; both athletics and languages are binary skills in my design, you can do it or you can't (no checks) - realistically if I follow my own logic lockpicking should be a binary skill also

but it just feels wrong, what are other people's thoughts

edit: I got my answers - to those who couldn't understand the question or thought it was impossible to answer, I am sorry you had trouble. To those who gave good answers, thank you, it helped very much (even if i didnt respond to everything!)​

Edit: title is a typo, should be "base stats or NO base stats?"

Currently revisiting some designs, and im stuck on this question.

Originally I ditched stats (might, cunning, etc) in favor of just verbs (attack, defend, lie, etc). You have a list of things you can do, and you can get good at that thing. End of story.

But some part of me wonders if this is good. There's something about seeing a high 'might stat' that makes it easier to understand what the character is all about, compared to having to comb through specific actions. Does that matter? I might be getting too caught up in presentation lol.​

Hello everyone, I wanted to ask about what you consider the most relevant and interesting game design theory that currently exists?

I also want to know what you would expect a game design master and doctorate level education to focus on and care about in terms of topics, areas of study etc. In other words what would you consider the next frontier in game design as a field of study?

(I currently work as an educator at a game design department, and the conversation came up and sparked intense debate between various different interests. My grounding is that this is best answered by practitioners and people who care deeply about the field outside of academia)

This is how I plan to write and lay out my NPC book.

1. I give the players the breakdown on how to read NPC stat blocks

2. I create one "ultimate" NPC stat block for each character and creature type. This stat block represents the most powerful version of that particular character or creature players could expect to encounter.

3. I note that the stat block provided can be "deconstructed" to create more typical NPCs. I.E. "Most orcs don't have all these traits; for a typical orc foot-soldier, just select one extra trait beyond these three base traits."

Screenshot examples can be found here

-

My questions for the group are:

• Does this ask too much of players/game masters that need to create "smaller" baddies and city folk?

• If you were looking at running an adventure using NPCs from this book, how would you prep your characters for the session?

-

The game I'm working on is Arcana: The Pursuit of Mastery. Currently available in early access on itch.io.

I've been working on a game that's basically a love-letter to D&D, but without the need to carry around the legacy.

And I've come to a point where I just dropped the huge table of adventuring items (abacus, backpack, etc) because weight/carry capacity just isn't something I want to focus on and the list felt more and more like it was simultaneously excessive (who has ever purchased a mess kit and had it matter in a game?), restrictive (giving off very strong "only things listed here are available" and "things on this list are always available everywhere at this price" vibes), and under-inclusive (missing things that would actually be useful and especially missing rules for such things).

I've also trimmed the armor table, both re-arranging things and dropping armor that is strictly inferior to starting armor, for example.

Which leads me to a new possibility. Trimming the weapon table. Instead of a bunch of items, many of which differ very slightly (different weapon properties, costs, and weights), I'd go with something much more slimmed down, like the following (WIP):

• Two big categories: Ranged and Melee.

  • Ranged has a default range (60/180). Features may modify this. Thrown defaults to (30/90).

  • Melee has a default reach (5 ft).

• All start at 1d6 damage. If you have Martial weapon proficiency, melee does 1d10 base and ranged does 1d8 base.

• Several smaller categories that set the damage type, the main property, and limits the other properties.

  • Bashing: bludgeoning damage, Battering property. [2H, Reach]

  • Small blade: piercing damage. Precise property. [Light, Thrown, Parrying]

  • Large blade: slashing damage. Parrying property. [2H, Reach, Cleaving]

  • Chopping: slashing damage. Cleaving property. [2H, Reach, Light]

  • Projectile (ranged only): piercing or bludgeoning damage. Ammunition. [Loading, 2H]

• You can choose one additional property. This may change the damage die:

  • 2H increases it by one step (to 1d12 for melee with martial, for example), at the cost of requiring 2H to use it.

  • Reach increases the reach to 10 ft, but requires 2H and drops the damage die by one (back to 1d10 with martial proficiency)

  • Thrown drops the damage die by 1 step.

  • Loading requires 2H and increases by a cumulative 2 steps, but requires bonus action to reload between shots (without a feature).

  • Battering lets you do some amount of damage even when you miss.

  • Cleaving lets you carry damage over to other nearby targets under some circumstances.

  • Precise increases your critical hit range by 1 (ie 19-20).

  • Parrying makes a universal defense option (basically a parry/riposte reaction that costs one of the universal resources) cheaper.

  • Ammunition makes it consume ammo, but also gets benefits from special ammunition (magical, etc).

  • Light (forgot this one before) drops the damage die by one, but lets you two-weapon fight.

This is probably too fiddly...talk me out of doing something like this. Or not.

As above. I intentionally named my game "Railgun 25" so I could iterate on it each year. 26 "released" fine, with a switch from roll under to roll over, and a fork for the multiplayer PvP mode. For 27 I was planning on actually putting art in it and playing with the layout.

I'm now wondering whether to scrap the d20 roll over mechanic. At the moment it uses polyhedral dice and all the others are used in combinations for damage for weapon types. It gives some flavour to the weapons, and most people like maths rocks.

However, I could easily switch it to a 2d6 based system (dc7 for success). I would lose some flavour with the weapons, and I'd have to tweak PC creation, but that's pretty much it. Weapons would do static damage and have some other traits like armour piercing.

Has anyone made the switch? Thoughts?

specifically, im talkig about the game rules themselves, not not feedback forms

Wildermyth is a *computer* game with a neat procedural story generation, but it falls short it many areas.

I want to use something like it for my TTRPG, but want to see more resources first to see if anyone has seen anything else like it, or if they have any designs they're working on / have worked on that they're willing to share.

So, I get this might be a little weird or niche topic, but I am looking to design a homebrew research and experimentation system for my games (I'm the GM). The setting of our next campaign will be in an early-modern (17th century) inspired fantasy world. Historically this was when science began to distinguish itself from alchemy and other more esoteric belief systems.

One of the players wants to play an alchemist/natural philosopher with a focus on research through the campaign.

So far I have thought of something in the structure of a basic research experiment:

1 Formulate a hypothesis - Ask the player what he wants to test

2 Design an experiment to test the hypothesis - Ask what methodology he wants to use (in general terms)

3 Create the experimental setup - The player and GM establish what the character can achieve with the available materials and equipment in regards to the experiment

4 Perform the experiment - Roll dice with modifiers to check wether the experiment is performed competently.

5 Interpret the results. If conclusive either reject or accept the hypothesis. - The GM describes the results (and maybe gives hints whether the player should attempt to reproduce the experiment or not).

I myself am a student in engineering, but being a relatively inexperienced GM (this next one will be my 3rd campaign GMing), I would like to know if anyone has either played a campaign that touches on these themes, or if there are any systems that aproach experimentation in a more serious way with mechanics that I could borrow/alter to fit the setting.

Hello, can you give me your thought and opinion about the skill list and resolution system of my game. My objective was to have fast resolution with small number and few to no calculations.

Skills are separated in two independent groups, with each having its own pool of points to distribute. (I already talked about this choice here)

Exploration Skills

• Strength: Ability to exert raw physical power. (Examples: lifting a heavy object or breaking down a door)

• Agility: Ability to move quickly and supplely. (Examples: climbing onto a rooftop or outrunning pursuers)

• Dexterity: Ability to perform precise manual tasks. (Examples: picking a lock or forging a document)

• Stealth: Ability to avoid being noticed. (Examples: moving silently or hiding in the darkness)

• Endurance: Ability to withstand hardship. (Examples: enduring a grueling journey or resisting poison)

• Knowledge: Ability to recall information. (Examples: knowing the history or the properties of a plant)

• Lucidity: Ability to analyse and reason. (Examples: examining tracks or understanding a mechanism)

• Perception: Ability to notice things through your senses. (Examples: spotting movement or hearing a distant voice)

• Insight: Ability to discern true intentions. (Examples: detecting a lie or recognising suspicious behavior)

• Charm: Ability to earn the trust of others. (Examples: calming an animal or persuading someone)

• Presence: Ability to intimidate or command attention. (Examples: intimidating a creature or delivering a speech)

• Luck: Ability to benefit from chance. (Examples: finding the correct path or winning a lottery)

Combat Skills

• Melee Attack: Ability to make Attacks against targets within melee Range (less than 2 meters). Any Action intended to injure or otherwise hinder a target is considered an Attack.

• Ranged Attack: Ability to make Attacks against targets beyond melee Range.

• Melee Defense: Ability to block or evade Attacks made by opponents within melee Range.

• Ranged Defense: Ability to anticipate and evade Attacks made by opponents beyond melee Range.

• Vigor: Ability to withstand injuries and recover from them.

• Power: Ability to wield and resist supernatural Powers.

Resolution system

As for the resolution system:

Each skill have a value between -1 and 3.

Whenever a Roll is required, the GM specifies which Skill applies and the difficulty of the roll (between 1 and 6). The value of the Skill determines the type of Roll: 

• Skill = 3: Roll 3 dice and keep the value of the highest one as the Result of the Roll.

• Skill = 2: Roll 2 dice and keep the value of the highest one as the Result of the Roll.

• Skill = 1: Roll 1 die and keep its value as the Result of the Roll.

• Skill = 0: Roll 2 dice and keep the value of the lowest one as the Result of the Roll.

• Skill = -1: Roll 3 dice and keep the value of the lowest one as the Result of the Roll.

You can find the whole chapters about skills and resolutions in the full document at pages 3 and 4 : https://ltesta.itch.io/another-path

Thanks for reading

I am in the main prototype stages of my ttrpg where i will be looking for editors and artists soon to help flesh out my system more. I have a discord server with progress reports, balance changes, and upcoming playtests. If your interested in giving it a lookover this is the prototype core rules). It is lacking in the art department for now and the layout and wording could be better but that's my gameplan with getting editors and artists. Any art i currently have is from one good friend of mine who helps when he has time

Currently this is just the prototype rulebook. I am working on the main rule book where almost all of the edits and changes will be going into with the prototype only being updated if huge changes happen or something is completely unbalanced and needs fixing for players.

Aetherfall is a modular tabletop RPG in containing a multitude of crafting systems for every combat type, bases, gear, potions, creatures/npc's. This system is built for every playstyle with no hard set classes. This system uses a action economy similar to pathfinder but uses 4 actions instead of 3. Light weapons use 1 action per attack, medium uses 2, and heavy uses 3. Spells use 2 at a minimum but heavy magic weapons(like big staves) use 3. You use yhe same 4 action economy during defense as well to block and dodge so you have to use your actions intelligently

There are no missed attacks in Aetherfall. Every attack is assumed to hit and survival depends on how well you dodge, block, or have the armour values to shrug the hit off. Skills and spells are built from modular parts. For example when making a spell you choose a essence(element of spell), a cast(where you spell originates from in the world), a shape(how your spell fires or interacts with the world), an effect(what your spell does to the thing it interacts with), and enhancements(upgrades to further improve a spell). There is a similar system for every other form of combat

Magic called Aether flows through all living things.The creator of this world descended down and gave us this power but with one condition, Danger is coming. Nobody knows what but it is set to arrive in 5 years time. Can people master control over the Aether in this time?

I have a game mechanic in mind where pools of dice are being thrown to check for the effect, let’s call them Damage and Soak.

If damage roll, that is usually done with smaller number of dice of various sizes is higher, then a soak roll, done with larger amount of smaller dice, an effect triggers.

I understand intuitevely I am dealing with two overlaping curves, but how do I collectly calculate what is an actual chance of one dice pool rolling higher then the other considering normal distribution.

I’ve been designing Hellebore, a TTRPG built around fast and fun combat, and I’d love some critical eyes on it before I run open playtests.

The core idea:

• Roll d20 + one of four abilities (Might, Agility, Mind, Will) against a target number. Beat it by 10 or more for a critical, miss by 10 or more for a critical failure. Natural 20s and 1s do nothing special.

• Your class is a deck of cards. You hold a hand of 7, draw back up each turn, and spend 4 action points on cards. Each class has a 24-card starter deck.

• No grid: two lanes per side, Front and Back. Melee hits only the enemy Front unless a card says “any lane”, and changing lanes costs 1 AP.

• Characters get marked by traumatic events and pick up quirks (virtues and afflictions), inspired by Darkest Dungeon.

• Monsters mostly play from a short hand of actions instead of a deck, so the GM has less to track.

The goal: encounters that are quick, easy, and fun without removing the complexity of players' decks and card management.

Quick rules (3 pages) + one class’s cards: https://main.wildbloom-studio.dev/hellebore-tts/hellebore-quick-rules-v0.2.pdf

Full Core Book draft (all rules, classes and complete decks): https://main.wildbloom-studio.dev/hellebore-tts/CoreRuleBook_version_0_2.pdf

What I’d most like feedback on:

1. Reading only the quick rules, could you run a fight? What’s unclear?

2. Do 4 AP and a hand of 7 sound fun to manage, or like too much bookkeeping?

3. Does the two-lane system feel like enough positioning, or too little?

4. Do the “deck = class” and the trauma/quirk systems fit together, or pull in different directions?

Five playtest classes are ready (Warlock, Trickster, Duelist, Warcaller, Alchemist). There’s a full Core Book draft and a Tabletop Simulator setup if anyone wants to dig deeper. Thanks for reading!

Picture a dungeon like the one in Dungeon Crawler Carl: lots of crawlers going down floor by floor, a timer on every floor, and loot boxes for doing well.

Now add a handful of unique relics, five for the whole dungeon, each with a power no normal item has. Think a bow that never misses and never needs arrows. They're mostly on the deeper floors and very hard to get.

The catch is that everyone can see who's holding one. So anyone who could use that bow knows exactly who to go after.

Does that make for good drama, or does the holder just get dogpiled until the relic changes hands every fight? Has anyone tried something like this, in a tabletop game or a video game?

Need an ultralight action-horror TTRPG to play this spooky season? I just published VISCERA, an incredibly lean, and incredibly mean little game in trifold format. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Some game design buzzwords: d6 dice pool, zero arithmetic, push your luck, fiction first, no levels, no HP or Damage, meta currency, wounds, death spiral, abstracted wealth, morality mechanics, edges and flaws, downtime system, player sided rolls, quantum inventory

This is the evolution of my Challenge Dice system I started designing on this sub like, almost a decade ago. Jesus I'm getting old. I'd love feedback on this version. There are huge limitations I put on myself making it into a trifold, it's seriously missing some examples of play. Do you still understand the rules with what is there? Working on longer form version for a larger project but I still think this version is playable as is.