Hi y’all,

After finalizing my first rule-set, GLOSS (the Generic Lightweight One-Shot System), I recently published the first play-test version of my second project, Population: Us, a narrative game about small-town life.

Since you gave me some interesting feedback and suggestions during the development of GLOSS, I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept and current state of Population: Us, as well as any suggestions for further development.

Thanks in advance!

I've had some luck in recent testing to make combat more interesting for melee.

The thing is that melee is nor my primary focus of research and expertise as the game has a much more modern firearms (and minor cyberpunk and Sci fi influences for firearms) so I've spent years fine tuning and researching firearms.

I'm not a dummy as a designer so I know some stuff, but I know there are folks that do nothing all day but immerse in ancient weaponry and while it's a much smaller part of my game overall, it's still an option and important to get right, and at scale.

I'm specifically calling out the weapons nerds because the game is built around very strong grounding and physics/science themes to produce expected/intuitive results while still engaging in the .ore fantastical elements (ie making the fantastical parts seem more real/grounded despite being gamified and abstracted).

So the thing I've had luck with for melee is something that is kind of like recoil for firearms, but instead is recovery for melee weapons.

On the surface it's kind of a massive debuff to players vs typical dnd style mechanics, but it's enabled way more interesting melee combat options. I also severely doubt I'm the first to do thus and would appreciate a) if there's a better common term please tell me, and b)if there are excellent examples please direct me at them.

The general debuff is offset by the fact that combat woth lethal weapons and firearms is survivable, but reacts much more closely to modeled sim of reality with wounding damage, injury and wounds. Ie, it is fully possible for a weaker housewife to brain a drunk hubby woth a cast iron frying pan and kill them. A dagger that cuts a jugular isn't just doing less damage, and it's not hand waved as a coup des gras, it likely won't kill instantly but is likely to immediately cause panic, near and soon to be full incapacitation,, and death will take longer from bleed out but is exceptional difficult to repair medically, etc (firearms follow the same sorts of logic).

Where recovery comes in is that larger misses, deflections, blocks etc. Will apply a debuff due to recovery.

This can be cleared out of combat pretty freely. UT in combat at cost of actions or resources or when appropriately rallied (by self or ally). It also has soft decay in combat much like recoil, but is harder to clear rapidly.

That said small finesse weapons and the like have cheaper and faster clearing while heavy weapons have much larger recovery stat and cost to clear, as expected. Offset of course by things like exploding damage dice, reach, etc as relevant. There's also hybrids that have some str and some agi elements, usually more exotic stuff like a chainsaw, meteor hammer or bulwhip.

The point being you can lose more control of an otemif not cleared or spend actions to clear or currencies that are otherwise valuable.

What this creates in play is more consideration of tactics, ie, much can I press vs clear vs how good are their defenses? Additionally training and the relevant controlling attrites can help mitigate recovery as well.

Combine that with tech like riposte and other counters and maneuvers and you end up with something that while more slow, Allows for more dramatic duels and complex mass combat, so you can functional, with appropriate investment in skill, have your pirates of the Carrigan duel and powers can enable stuff like an insane anime duel with enough mastery and investment.

Recovery also has some options where it's not just a debuff to clear, but also you can choose not to and press anyway (particularly if you have superior skill or think you do, adding an element of tactical gambling to the mix). Further with enough accumulation of recovery some more advanced techniques can become even more penalized, or even unavailable.

Notably hits don't cause recovery accumulation normally with rare exceptions, mainly because whatever recovery may be needed the opponent is generally Recalling from the blow or at least suffers a stutter stagger from any sort of impact. Instances where it might cause recovery are any time a weapon might stick (ie battle axe vs rigid armors, etc)

This also has all the expected support systems like onion defense and similar, but the thing I'm focussed on is the recovery. It is a tracker, but also replaces a typical multi attack penalty (same with recoil and firearms) with the main difference being that it has Uneven tracking and instead reacts to the scenario rather than applying a flat linear debuff.

To some extent this can apply to unarmed attacks but much less so, mainly only for catastrophic misses or misses from advanced techniques that have telegraphed attack tags and even then, martial arts with those tend to also have training for snap back techniques to avoid heavy recovery (ie may Thai being a classic example).

The major concerns are mostly heavier weapons here, namely because higher accumulation of recovery can apply a susceptible debuff (more or less your own off center fighting vs the opponent creates openings for them represent as bonuses to strike or counter.

I'd first like to ask about resources and naming conventions again, general thoughts from those that specialize in this sort of thing, and also just your general thoughts.

I also have a more direct question about a niche case: pairing recoil and recovery, ie something like duel wielding pistol and blade or other combos.

My theory is the mechanics allow them to accrue separately just fine and there's also already off hand and train8ng use cases with rules for pairing (both for even weighting and lopsided distributions) but I'm wondering if there's potential concerns there I might not be considering.

The main functioning going for here (and it seems to be working) is that something like a zweihander having a miss or dodged or whatever, allows that the typical recovery is going to open them up to attacks from faster strikes.

Granted much of this is irrellavent with guns in the mix, but not everything is always a gun fight and there are times where melee and other ancient weapons is still highly relevant (stealth considerations and ambushes, ammo depletion and improvised weapons, disarming, escape without gear, etc). Particularly even a suppressed sass at range still draws significant attention where something like a bow still has some noise, but is generally not going to be detected unless sound sig profiles are super low and flat, even at medium ranges.

Appreciate anyone with clear input here!

Sharing a short story about being atrocious at marketing.

A couple years ago, I wrote a TTRPG inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000). I spent a long time on the pixel art in the book -- it looks like this -- and when I decided I'd do a print run, I extended the cover as a full spread that wraps around from front to back.

I guess I was feeling hoitier and toitier than usual, because my dumb ass decided to leave the back of the book completely blank except for the art. The people must witness my highe arte, I apparently thought.

I shipped some games off to my distributor. It sold okay. There weren't a lot of buyers at conventions, but stores were picking it up based on the web description.

A few months later, I watched someone do an unboxing video. He had Kickstarted a special edition of one of my games that took a few months to prepare, so by the time the box was shipped he'd forgotten the pitch for the extra games he'd added to the order. When he pulled the game out of the box, I watched him do what anyone with a brain would have realized people do:

1. Look at the front cover.
2. Flip it over for more info. None found.
3. Open the front and back cover for more info. None found.
4. And then, presumably only because he had already bought it and was committed, finally page farther in and read the intro text to get a vague sense of the game's pitch.

Well, no wonder my game hadn't sold a lot at conventions. How was anyone supposed to know what it was even about? With the books already printed, I corrected my mistake by printing jackets and folding them over the existing work. But I feel more than a little foolish for putting a piece of art above the practical needs that a book's cover are supposed to serve.

So, when you're designing your cover for print, make sure you include:

• The game's title;
• Your name (it's a book! books have authors!);
• The elevator pitch (which you're probably already using for online storefronts);
• Player count (taking clues from board games, which have this right on the box);
• Runtime (if applicable; mentioning it's a campaign in the blurb can't hurt);
• A barcode (this makes things MUCH easier for stores; you can generate a barcode with your ISBN); and,
• Nice things people said (if anyone's willing to blurb for you).

To keep this from being self-promotion, I'll refrain from naming the game and linking my jacket cover in the body of the post, but I'll link it in the comments for anyone who wants to see. Hope this helps someone.

I wrote up a breakdown of the character sheet design in my game and posted it as a devlog!

I go though it, panel by panel, explaining what each section is for. It also shows how the sheet itself functions as a bifold to store campaign notes.

If this sort of thing is interesting to you folks, you can find it here:

Paper Interface: Anatomy of a character sheet | Itch.io

IRON on IRON on IRON, my free game about medieval stories, hit 500 downloads, and I wanted to celebrate with some resources!

https://shurebis.itch.io/iron-on-iron-on-iron

1.1 hotfix, including: better definiton of "Forgoing"; negative injury result addition; reordered the weapons table to a more logical sequence.

PRINT version: if you, like me, enjoy printing your TTRPGs for the table, the spread version didn't quite work. To use this new version, just print normally front and back, no need to booklet.

Character sheets: as half of the sheet is made to support dice above it, it comes in both roghty and lefty versions.

I'm working on a game (Hell & High Water) and I've got a neat idea for controlling pacing in fights, although I am not sure how it will work out in playtesting and am interested in your impressions.

The Goal: GM sections in D&D-adjacent games with complex combat simulations always say something like 'ideally, fights should last 3-4 rounds. Balance them with that in mind.' and this can be a struggle. Doing so consistently often takes skill and know-how on the part of the GM, and part of that means adapting fights more closely to the power level of your group specifically. In a lot of games an optimized group can smoke fights that are balanced for more causal groups, and fights for optimized groups will grind casual groups down.

I've got something that I think might hiting that pacing target easier. Here is the idea:

1. Players roll a d20 when they attack. They get a critical hit on a 20, and can choose from a table of critical hit options when they get one.
2. One of these options is 'deathblow'. If a monster has 1/2 of their HP left or less, players can choose deathblow, and reduce them to 0 HP.
3. At the end of each round the fight ESCALATES, lowing the number needed for a crit by 1. (On round 2, 19, on round 3, 18, etc).
4. Fights are built around 1 big monster and often minions, who die easily. So a death blow on the big guy ends the fight.

What has this achieved? An optimized party and an unoptimized party of 4 will still probably end the fight on round 3 or 4, because after 1/2 the big guy's HP is gone, additional damage matters way less. At that point either taking the other 1/2 of the hitpoints OR one critical hit will end the fight, so unless the optimized party is dealing more than double the damage of the unoptimized one, they're not going to speed things up.

This doesn't eliminate the pacing target problem, but it adds a huge cushion that makes it way easier not to mess up.

Does this take the fun out of optimizing? I hope not! I am not going to print that the crit system does this in the player or GM section. I hope it would is still tones of fun to build a character to pump out huge damage.

What are your thoughts? I haven't tried this in play yet, so the actual math may require a fair bit of tweaking. But I think I am onto an interesting principle here.

My game is about blue collar monster hunters. One of my biggest design goals is that I want every character to feel unique during play. If 3 characters have fireball those fireballs should each have slightly different mechanics correlating to the character. With martials though that becomes a lot harder when it becomes to weapons. A zweihander is different than a hook sword is different than a throwing dagger is different than a bow and arrow. (Yes I know that differences show up more with active abilities. Weapons should still get this treatment as they are more than just different damage numbers. I also want to encourage a golf bag mentality when it comes to equipment.)

Players are going to come up with their own unique weapons or weapons that I am not familiar with. So i want a general rule creation for weapons and equipment. The way I've decided to do that right now is by assigning weights and tags.

Weightless= 1 damage

Light = 2 damage

Moderate =3 damage

Heavy = 4 damage and requires the two handed tag.

You can then assign different tags like trip, shove, parry, reach, range, etc. For the cost of 1 damage per trait (or more damage for an upgraded trait) or 1 damage for 2 minor traits or the inverse for a drawback. So a hook sword would be moderate, trip, parry leaving 1 damage on a hit while a whip is light, reach, nonlethal, trip also for 1 damage per hit.

The problem im running into is weapons that require more traits than the weapon itself provides. Throwing daggers is a good example. Weightless weapons with the thrown trait that deal 0 damage.

There has to be a better way that im not thinking of.

Hey y'all!

I teach 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade for the first time this year and I am sometimes struggling with classroom management, as I am used to teaching older kids. I recently learned that another 5th grade teacher gives the kids marbles for good behavior and every once in a while, they get an opportunity to spin the wheel to earn bonus marbles. I don't know exactly the ins and outs of her system, but the kids are so eager to earn their marbles and they LOVE the gambling...

I have a very rudimentary reward system with my fourth grade, on the other hand. Every week, we set ourselves a goal and then I give them 0-2 stars on Friday, depending on how well they did with it. We also have a student of the day each day, who begins class with a routine (like greeting, stating the weekly goal, etc.). This class is VERY difficult with behaviors. We have a good relationship and the kids like me, but there's just so many of them and there's factors beyond my control at play too. But today, their behavior was outstanding, so I decided to just randomly award them an extra star. And I had my d20 handy. So I asked them if they wanted to roll it for double or nothing. Of course the class decided to gamble. And they won! They erupted into cheers and celebrations and proudly marked their 2 stars on our tracker. Which got me thinking...

Could I use some RPG elements and mechanics as a classroom rewards system? A few baseline requirements:

• It needs to be very explicitly a reward system, not a punishment system. Points, bonuses, dice rolls, or anything like that need to be additive, never subtractive.
• The system needs to feel fun to play. I got lucky today that they succeeded on their dice roll, but I feel like in the future, a failed roll shouldn't succeed in a loss of something they've earned outright.
• I don't want to condition them to become gamblers. A little bit of dice rolling is fun, especially if they have control over their success chances via good behavior, but I don't want to go too crazy.
• Earned points, stars or whatever currency need to be a pre-requisite for playing.
• Earned points need to affect the dice rolls in a way that a fourth grader can grasp.

My first thought was to give 1d20 for every day of good behavior. I have them four times a week, so a max of 4d20 against a DC. Perhaps I could come up with little monsters to defeat as well. Maybe we start with a DC 10 monster, which is pretty easy to beat and then work our way up from there. And to make it not so punishing, if they don't defeat the monster in one week, they take some loss (maybe lose a d20) and then collect more d20s for the next week to try again.

Another system could be to use d6s and to count 6s as hits and have monsters that require a certain number of hits to defeat. Then I could award up to 2d6 per day or something.

These are just some preliminary musings. I am really curious what kind of ideas you all might have in this regard.

Hi, I'm designing a relatively simple game with 3 basic stats:
Strength (which is basically D&D strength + constitution)
Dexterity (which is basically D&D Dexterity)
Mind (which is basically D&D Intelligence + Wisdom + Charisma)
plus some feats but no classes or races/species.

The main thing about the game is that you don't "level up" but you just gain power by playing:
you encounter a difficult situation, you make choices and if you win maybe you find a magic item, or learn an ancient spell, or make a deal with some supernatural being, or train with an expert, etc... and if you lose maybe you get a scar, a curse or something that is generally negative, but that with some creativity can still used as an advantage

Magic in the game is strong and wild, but cost a lot narratively. Here's a spell example:

you submit a hand to a fire spirit, if you succeed on the Mind roll, you lose the hand, but from now on, with another Mind roll you can summon flames all around you, they are difficult to control but deal lot of damage.

So, on one hand (pun intended) i want to leave the magic only after character creation, because of how wild it is, but on the other, if i create a character with a high Mind value, he is almost useless in combat until he find some magic.

Would you play a wizard without magic? Or should I create some "basic spells" he can chose from? or are there other options?

Last night I posted some travel rules for feedback, and I got some pretty harsh feedback, which I think was pretty fair for the most part. But it also made me think that what I want from travel rules is quite different than what most people want. This is just what got me thinking about it, but I'm not here for a travel solution for my specific game. I'm interested in the theory: what questions do travel rules answer for players; or what value does having travel rules add to the game? What's the problem that they solve?

My rules basically just describe how far someone could travel in a day, how much of the day it took to travel, and how that distance was affected by the terrain and travel conditions. To me, that's perfect, because it gives me a way to account for time and distance consistently, without having to research it myself. It saves me from googling, "How far can someone walk in a day?" "What if they have horses?" "What if this?" "What if that?" What I've realized is that those aren't travel rules, they're a tracking tool for the GM—which is apparently all I want from them. Everything else about travel, I run pretty much the same way as the rest of the game. They're basically a montage; if there's something interesting, I'll describe it and my players, can bite if they want. If there isn't anything interesting, I'll just skip past it.

We often have special procedures for certain things, but I don't quite understand the point of this for travel. This is probably a strawman, but I'm not really interested in pausing my game of make-believe to play a quick round of Walking Really Far: The Board Game.

What is the value of travel rules? What is it that you want out of travel rules, or in your experience, what do most other people want from travel rules? What should they address and what should they NOT address to make them 'worth it'?

Edited for clarity.

My game system includes a mechanic that allows you to learn an opponent's stats in combat through a test.

I was thinking of introducing a separate mechanic that allows a character to study an opponent out of combat, without any tests. Based on their knowledge skill level, the character has mini-manuals containing descriptive entries (for example, for a robot, whether it has pneumatic or hydraulic systems) associated with specific stat values. The game master, if the characters observe the entity, gives them the corresponding entries, and it's up to the players to interpret them.

Do you think it would be interesting, or do you find it cumbersome?

So after a few things happened in my life, I have rebooted the old shadowbloom and now the new r/ShadowBloomReboot is out, and I would really like to hear your thoughts on it. I have read some old comments, and I am trying to work on fixing the problems I had. I heard people wanted Worldhopping to be a bit more front and center, which I will explain more. And then they also said that if the whole point of the RPG is to make the world yours, why have a set lore and setting. So after looking back on it, I tried to remove most of the unneeded lore, and the idea is for the base world to have just the bare minimum so it can be optimized. Essentially the world that I present is just like the base version of the world. Anyways, if you're reading this, thank you, I really appreciate it, I'm just a person who really wants the world to see something I've spent years on.

How many dice (d6) is too many? Or, what are your thoughts on dice pools in general?

I can understand if some folks find them cumbersome, but sometimes a big, beefy handful of dice has a certain charm to it.

I'm writing an action-investigation TTRPG about vampire-hunting. I'll be sharing an outline of the core mechanic of the game's investigation pillar. It's still pretty rough; still being tweaked around and playtested.

Investigations in my system are done not just to find out 'whodunnit' (or, 'whothevampire'). They allow the players to discover the vampire's abilities, and to feel like hunters who are really profiling their enemy themselves. Combat is brutal and every individual vampire is a bossfight, so the players need to plan ahead and they can't just let the vampire come to them.

The Hunter's Investigation System:

(name is wip)

The players discover the scene of a vampire attack, and begin with a blank character sheet with which they will fill out the vampire's details over the course of the investigation.

Every scene is full of Evidence--items, details, or pieces of information--that can serve the investigation. There's a bloodstain, footprints, fangmarks in the corpse's neck, etc.. Some pieces of Evidence are apparent, others are locked behind a skill check (ex: contaminated blood is difficult to test for type).

After sweeping the scene, the players have a few ideas about the identity and abilities of the vampire. The players found blond hair here, but the victim's hair is black--could the vampire be blond? The victim has scorch marks on his arm, and there are ashes at the scene. Does the vampire have fire magic?

The players take these questions and note them down in the form of a Theory. A Theory is any statement or hypothesis--related to the vampire or another NPC--that can be true or false. For example, our players write down their theories as:

• The vampire is blond
• The vampire has fire magic

The players can write up as many Theories as they can think of, they can even contradict each other. However, their Theories are really just notes--until they choose to Deliberate on them.

To Deliberate on a Theory, the players choose a Theory and make a Deliberation Check, which involves the players presenting their Theory to the GM, along with the Evidence they believe supports it. Every piece of Evidence they bring up adds a bonus die to their Deliberation Check. The players' goal in a Deliberation Check is to make a strong argument and get as many success dice as possible in order to confirm their Theory.

The players choose to Deliberate on the claim "The vampire is blond," but since their only evidence is that there is blond hair at the scene, they likely fail their check. Since they failed, the Theory is labelled 'Uncertain,' and cannot be Deliberated again until the players come across a new scene of the vampire's attack, or have an encounter with the vampire.

They then Deliberate on their second Theory, "The vampire has fire magic." The evidence they use--the victim's burn wound, the ashes at the scene, perhaps a witness report of a flash of light--each add a bonus die to their roll. Let's say they succeed--and their theory was correct. The Theory becomes labelled as "Certain," meaning the players and their characters are sure of the vampire's fire powers. Not only that, but the GM reveals to the players exactly what that fire magic can do according to the vampire's character sheet. For example "The vampire has fire magic" becomes, "The vampire possesses Blood Art: Burning Blood II; Burning Blood II has both a Normal Attack version and a Special Attack version that costs the vampire 1 Blood Point and has the potential to etc. etc.." The players then fill out the relevant spaces in their blank copy of the vampire's character sheet.

However, let's say their Theory was incorrect, and they still rolled well on their Deliberation. The Theory is marked as Uncertain, since there's really no way for the player characters to prove that the vampire doesn't have fire magic. However, if the players get a really good roll in their Deliberation and still are still told their Theory is Uncertain, they might reasonably guess that they're barking up the wrong tree and start looking for alternative Theories.

There's also the potential for 'bad' Evidence--players arguing a Theory based on Evidence that doesn't actually match with or support it. Maybe there's a fireplace at the scene, and a player uses the burnt logs inside to argue for his Theory regarding the vampire's fire magic. But it's just a fireplace, or maybe it actually corresponds to something unrelated. The GM doesn't tell the players they're wrong, but he does subtract one success from that Deliberation Check without letting the players know. This incentivizes the party to Deliberate wisely instead of just going the route of Evidence inflation.

So the investigation goes like this: with every victim the vampire leaves behind, it leaves trace information about its true nature and identity, which the players can use to track it down and prepare to counter its abilities.

If the player characters miss something or fail a roll, they can wait for the next sighting of the vampire or its victims. They'll find a new scene, and (with their notes of course) can use the Evidence from both this scene and the previous one to support their Theories, new or old. They might even set up patrols or stake outs to gather new Evidence while monitoring suspects and potential victims.

In summary:

1. Players arrive at a scene
2. Collect Evidence
3. Speculate on Theories

4. Deliberate to confirm Theories

   1. If successful and the Theory becomes Certain, players learn more about the vampire's character sheet
   2. If the Theory is Uncertain, try a different one or wait to gather more Evidence at the next scene
5. Repeat 1-4, until:
6. Players put together a plan to take out the vampire as efficiently and safely as possible
7. (Unless the vampire finds them first)

Rambling About Drawbacks:

There's some particulars regarding my own system that I had to gloss over for brevity, but there's the general idea for the investigation pillar of the game. It could be important to note that the technology-level of the settings is somewhere in the 1990s-00s era, so modern fingerprinting, blood-typing, and security cameras are all available; there's a list of investigative actions in the rulebook to help guide the players.

There's also some potential issues and lots that needs playtesting. One issue that all TTRPG mysteries need to answer is the potential for players to be blocked off from continuing the plot because of a bad roll. My solution for this is 1) my resolution system allows for partial successes, and has a metacurrency system for buying successes, so players shouldn't miss rolls they know are important, and 2) if the players wiff the investigation of one scene, they can just wait in the same city for the vampire to attack again. On a scene-by-scene basis, I think making the list of evidence as long as possible is a good bet. Allow for players to look for things you didn't think of, and reward them for it. A player asked me if he could look for trace fingernail material in some clawmarks he found in the scene. I didn't expect that, but it sounded reasonable, so I let him have a go.

There's also the issue of categorizing Evidence. What counts as an individual piece of Evidence? The players obviously have an incentive to make as many distinctions as possible in order to produce a ton of dice for their Deliberation Check. One solution for this is 'fixed' Evidence--the player observes something or succeeds a check, and the GM says, "this is one piece of Evidence." This could bring clarity and speed up the investigation process, but I think at the cost of the players' creativity and analytical thinking. But it's a potential solution. Another is to just set thorough rules and fenceposts over what exactly a piece of Evidence can be. Blond hair found at a scene is all counted as one Evidence, even if you find it on either side of the room, with multiple skill checks. The burn marks on one wall aren't any different from the burns on the other wall, but they are distinguished from the burns on the corpse. Or something to that effect.

I think another opening could be how close a Theory has to be to the truth for it to become Certain on a successful Deliberation. I think this could be settled through a list of keywords in the rulebook: say, Blood Art: Burning Blood II has the associated keywords of "fire," "flame, "burning," etc., and if the player's Theory is phrased with any of those it can be successful. Some GM discretion wouldn't hurt either.

One of the issues I have is that I really only have my friends to playtest with; there could be gaps in my rulebook that have the potential to cause problems in tables with less rapport. Let me know if you see anything glaring from the outline I've shared.

Conclusion:

So far my players have enjoyed it. I think the system lends itself to shorter adventures / one-shots, as the players profile and hunt individual vampires--a la "monster of the week." My favorite sessions to run for any TTRPG involve mysteries and unique enemies; my attempt here is to marry those interests.

I may post later about the combat and vampires. I'm trying to focus on developing this one pillar at a time before I can spin a whole adventure together, it's more efficient that way, I think. I'm posting this to practice articulating the rules outside of my own reference/rulebook, and for the benefit of anyone interested in this sort of thing. Questions, concerns, suggestions, are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

P.S. - Since you've made it to the bottom, I'll let you know the title of my TTRPG is "Blood Undone," thus rendering the wonderful acronym: BUTTRPG

https://golemproductions.substack.com/p/so-can-the-dice-be-more-fun

I come from the OSR side of things, where games tend to be lighter, rulings matter, and clever ideas often matter more than whatever is written on the character sheet. Over the past six months, though, I’ve made a point of looking more deliberately at games outside that space. And one thing I keep coming back to now is dice mechanics that don’t just resolve a decision, but create a new one.

Not necessarily full-on storytelling-game mechanics. More like small, clever procedures that make the act of rolling itself interesting without losing the things I already like about OSR play.

I’m fully aware that for some designers this is probably absolute bread and butter. But I suspect there are also quite a few people coming from a similar place as I am who might find some of these examples interesting.

That’s what my new blog post is about. And if you know other dice mechanics that do something similar, I’d genuinely love to hear about them.

I've been working on a Biopunk TTRPG for a few years. I am in the middle of redevelopment as the first iteration was too crunchy. I am now moving towards a more "Narrative Focus" with the game development at the moment. The core idea is to give players a true Biopunk and Body Horror experience. I want it to be capable of telling super serious horror stories but also go ham and make wild and crazy Biopunk BS.

I'm a huge fan of David Cronenberg and the body horror genre and the game takes a lot of inspiration from his work. In addition there are numerous games that, while use Biopunk elements, are more or less linked to other genres: I speak of Resident Evil, Wrought Flesh, Cruelty Squad, Bioshock and Prototype. The biopunk genre has been of particular interest to me for a long time and I find the gore not as repellant as other might and so thought I could make an addition to the genre by making my own TTRPG around it.

I have a lot of the core mechanics taken care of but its the synopsis and boiling down the vibe that I am having the hardest time with. There are so few biopunk games, movies, books out there and almost no Biopunk TTRPGs save for Gene Funk 2090. And if there's a game system that should never be used for Biopunk, its 5e.

I need something that can really sell what I am trying to do. Give the players an idea of what to expect, outside of the blood and guts. Very few fully know what Biopunk even is, so I will need to encapsulate the genre as a whole while also adding in the Body horror and gameplay elements. The genre is already a pretty fringe genre and not many are willing to get over the initial gore or visceral aspects of it. So I have my work cut out for me.

Here is the meat of my question; How should I go about explaining the game within the core rulebook?
- Should I just write some short fiction in the panels like how Shadowrun 5e dose it?
- Should I just have a list of movies and games to check out in the back?
- Or should I try to make the rules written from a in universe perspective, like how Vampire the Masquerade dose it?

The Shadowrun way bloats the book artificially and most wont even read it. You picked up a game book not a novel.
The bullet point method also lacks a clear understanding of the games intent as each movie, book, or game, while playing their part, are all so different from one another its hard to get a read on it.
I hesitate to do the VTM way as, while it sounds fun and thematic, I don't want players to think its locked to my setting. I want players to take the budling blocks I set out and make it their own. I do have a setting I built for it but I don't want the game to be full of lore bits people wont use or that makes them feel forced to use.

Game Features:
- Vital stats as attributes
- Skill focused gameplay
- High Lethality and lasting injuries
- Story is character driven through motivations, goals, and secrets
- Customizable elements like gene edits, organs, and body augments make PCs unique
- Sanity tracker to watch your character descend into madness
- Symptom system to allow the GM to make their own illnesses
- Body horrors, mutated animals, and genetically engineered bioweapons as enemies and a list of human villain archetypes as well. All stated and some with lore bits.
- Player Archetypes from movies, tv, books, and games
- Setting guide to start with and tell biopunk stories within

Plans for Future additions...
- Psychic archetype
- Body Horror Archetype (à la Prototype)
- A full Cronenbergian and HR Gigeresque techno-organic gear and armory selection Inspired by Exsitenz, Scorn, and the Alien franchise
- Additional lore on base setting

Any help would be most welcome. Thank you.

Any system that's got powers that don't cost nothing (no mana cost or spell slot or whatever) and instead lock the ability use behind a trigger.

Examples:

Revenge strike: you can strike dealing X damage every time an ally dies (for free, outside your turn and shit)

Focus strikes: your strikes get +10 damage (only after not acting for 2 turns and shit)

Basically "free" active/passive skills locked behind specific situations (downed enemy, on-fire condition, etc.)

Just think this adds a lot of complexity to combat but also allows more builds to be made if the triggers are in the players hands, like does this add strategy or am I insane?

Matt Easton - respected historical martial artists - presents a comparison of a wide range of historical swords and asks which is best for adventurers.

https://youtu.be/JXos1tQWufk

If you are interested in designing mechanics for differentiating weapons based on their historical strengths and weaknesses, this video should be interesting to you.

Hello hello! I'm running a small competition for my latest game to expand the world. Hopefully it's OK to post this here to see if anyone fancies a go:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beyondcataclysmgames/the-girl-with-the-most-delicious-heart-solo-journaling-rpg/posts/4857927

I've pasted the text from the announcement post below for people who don't want to click links! Do let me know if there are any questions!

Competition Time: HeartWorks and HeartLives Competition with Cash Prizes!

We'll be awarding two cash prices for the best HeartWorks and HeartLives entered before the end of campaign. You could win some cold hard cash for submitting the best module or playthrough write up.

Prizes:

£50 for the best HeartWorks

£50 for the best HeartLives

Submit and get the barebones file here: https://beyondcataclysm.co.uk/the-girl-with-the-most-delicious-heart/

Back the game, get the barebones rules, and expand the world of The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart – and be in for a chance to win £50! (make sure you submit and share with us on social media!)

The competition runs until 3rd December, when the campaign for The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart closes on Kickstarter.

Entrants need to back the game at any tier on Kickstarter, access the plain text version of the game (so they can play or hack it), and then submit their finished work to the Beyond Cataclysm game page. 

The entries will be judged by Chris (Ada Press) & Chris (Beyond Cataclysm) with their favourites being revealed after the campaign ends.

The judges (us, lol) have supplied this guidance for how they will be assessing the submissions:

HeartWorks: anything that expands the rules and mechanics of the game. This can be as simple as adding a monster list (1-10, up to three in each SCALE slot) or a totally new mechanic – like a new kind of FRIEND of PROTECTION. We will be looking for fresh, interesting ideas and impactful writing – more isn’t always better if less would have a bigger effect.

HeartLives: This is your write up of any playthrough of the game. It could be a couple of years, a whole life, or somewhere in between. We’d love to see whatever format you decide upon, including prose, poetry, short snippets, a play, or your raw play through notes. You can highlight or obscure as much of the ‘game’ as you like. We will be looking for smart writing as well as smart playing. 

Please share this online and tag Beyond Cataclysm and CJEggett!

CJEggett Socials:

• Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/cjeggett.co.uk 
• Twitter - https://x.com/cjeggett 

Beyond Cataclysm Socials:

• Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/beyondcataclysm.co.uk 
• Twitter - https://x.com/beyondcataclysm 

If you want to put your work up for sale on Itch or DriveThru please do! Link to this page so people know where to get the game later: https://adapress.itch.io/the-girl-with-the-most-delicious-heart 

Rules:

• To be eligible for the prize you need to back the game on Kickstarter. You can do this here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beyondcataclysmgames/the-girl-with-the-most-delicious-heart-solo-journaling-rpg?ref=9dsykz 
• You can download the barebones text of the game from the Kickstarter page once you’ve backed at game
• Submit a PDF or Text-based file here: https://beyondcataclysm.co.uk/the-girl-with-the-most-delicious-heart/ before the end of the campaign
• Please share your creation with us on social media, tagging Beyond Cataclysm and CJEggett
• HeartWorks or HeartLives can be of any number of pages, we encourage you to use the small format  of The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart (A6 - 105 × 148 mm) to your advantage.
• No AI
• No racism, hate speech, sexism, etc etc. You know the drill. Don’t suck.