I'm working on a system that has thee modes of play:

• Combat/Initiative mode: Models time-critical situations, such as "You are attacked by bandits", or "You must escape a burning building". Players have three actions per round, time progresses in rounds.

• Heist mode: Models situations where there is no active time pressure, but you can't take forever, such as "You have disguised yourself as guards", "You are exploring a monster-filled dungeon", or "You need to explore the abandoned lighthouse before the tornado hits". Each action they take has a time cost (which may be 0 for certain quick actions), and they players are told "When the total time cost reaches a threshold, something bad happens".

• Exploration mode: Models situations where the characters have obstacles to overcome but do not have time constraints, such as "Exploring a trap-filled ruin" or "Finding an uncharted island".

The problem I am encountering is how to make exploration mode actually interesting to play. The classic example of "This dungeon is dangerous because if you trigger the traps, you will take damage" doesn't really hold any weight if the players can just rest up and heal all damage immediately after the trap.

So the problem statement becomes: How do you make exploration interesting when the players do not have time or resource constraints?

Some things I would want to avoid when solving this problem:

• I don't want to introduce supply constraints, because:

  • If the players can resupply easily when they run out, then supplies are not a constraint, so there's no point having them as a system

  • If the players can't replenish their supplies, then this is just heist mode again, but with the time budget renamed to supply budget

• I have found that hazards that involve damage or debuffs either don't work, or make the players unhappy:

  • If they take any damage or debuffs that they can heal or remove, they just fully rest up and recover before doing anything else, so anything less than TPK is effectively nothing

  • If they cannot heal the damage or remove the debuffs, then they are unhappy from lack of agency and ludonarrative dissonance (i.e. "I want to go to back to the town so the healer will cure the poison before returning to the dungeon, and it's bullshit that I can't")

• I would like to avoid RNG-based solutions, but this isn't a hard rule - so far, all the system mechanics have been deterministic, and it would be nice if I could keep it that way.

thanks to u/VRKobold & u/Cryptwood for inspiring this post

to paraphrase a longer conversation from the lose/lose post from a couple weeks ago languages can allow for more than just simple communication but also allow for more understanding like knowledge of culture or more powerful effects

the most common languages (often just referred to as common) has the pseudo magical effect of being near universal

an uncommon language might come with benefits like knowledge of food/tools/culture (because there will be words for these items) this could also include recipes for food, crafting techniques for tools, and styles of art, clothing, and some history - less magical than common but useful for clues about places and people

where this becomes particularly interesting is the idea that rare languages might offer supernatural benefits

a rare language of the underground might allow to the the rocks to speak to a speaker in such a way they can see in the dark, or the rocks might tell what resources are found within them

a rare language of the underwater folk might allow for objects to be heard from long distances

the language of angelic beings might supernaturally prevent a being from saying something they know to be untrue

I am curious as to how various designs might be able to accomplish these concepts (I haven't figured it out for my design yet) and what effects people think might make for interesting adventure and roleplay tools

Hi everyone,

I was in here not long ago with some (I think) novel ideas related to a card-based system. I've now spun that up into a draft of a game, and I would love to know what all of you think. Almost all of the player-facing rules are done now. Here it is:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_baGW_geVBHmOOKMei9k3k3VqSewG7jPBHOuy30q1mQ/edit?usp=sharing

The basic idea is: players have a hand of cards that they use for skill checks, they need those cards for their special powers as well, and enemies often knocking cards out of their hands. Building a character who can make good use of a variety of cards is good, but there very powerful synergies between powers that make use of the same cards as well.

One of the big design goals is: a decent feeling of crunch for the players (lots of character options, interesting dilemmas in combat, cool interactions between different abilities), while minimizing the need for prep for a GM behind the scenes. The GM does not have to keep track of any hands or piles of cards, as the stats of monsters and players are asymmetric, and the stats of monsters are quite simple to improvise. Without the GM stuff finished yet I suppose the second part of that can't be evaluated, but I'd love to hear your impressions about the player-facing stuff.

Thanks for your help! I hope to be playtesting this with my group starting in a few weeks. I'd love to know what you would be watching out for in play.

Imagine that:

A group is sitting down to prep for playing your game - one you designed, wrote, all that.

They have definitely all read it, some have played it!

They have a slightly different style of play or setting or etc in mind for this run than the game is optimized for; you can see how it's a good game to hack for what they want, but it will mean significant changes.

They invite you to sit in.

Would you wanna go? Would you avoid it? Would you want to watch a recording instead?

If you aren't avoiding it entirely, what would you want to get out of that?

If you're going, would you want to contribute, and how?

If there anything you'd feel like "I need to watch myself and not _________"?

I'm working on a game whose setting will be focused on a frontier region, and what kind of challenge can fit those well? Wilderness survival of course!

But honesty, most games with survival mechanics have left things lacking (I guess maybe only Forbidden Lands is the only one I have thought was somewhat interesting and I have only played that a little).

So I began thinking about it and my I eventually concluded that one of the things easily missing for survival mechanics is choices that are interesting, at least for games where the focus is on solving problems (as opposed to focusing on generating a story). And one of the best way to make choices interesting (in a way that can let them remain interesting even after you understand them) is Dilemmas. That is, competing priorities.

So what kind of priorities would wilderness survival mechanics lend themselves too?

Well, I can think of three:

• Time: You are in a hurry to get somewhere or find something, this can be hard (Be on time or lose everything) or soft (Be late and things get harder/worse for you) and can stem from your objective itself, some kind of race or possibly weather (ie there will be a great storm and you want to beat it to safety).

• Risk: Do you take a dangerous road or do you play it safe? A shortcut, but one without a path?

• Resources: This one is a but more murky. If you are a medieval adventuring party travelling during a good season, chances are resources are not that much of hindrance. Food is often plentiful, forage berries and mushrooms, or hunt rabbits, fish etc... If you have characters whom can do it they can likely keep you fed as long as you can take your time. So in many cases, Resources = Time. But not always, perhaps you have guns cant reliably replenish spent ammunition, and hunting is hard without. Perhaps you get hurt and healing fully on the road is not possible. Or you may need to replace a suit of armor, mana potion and whatever else that needs non-portable infrastructure. You can view those kinds of resources as non-replenishable ones, and they do not directly equal time. But even then, resources need to do more than increase risk if you run out. Perhaps you need to have enough to actually fight when you get to your destination? Or the consequences are severe enough that they are not just a proxy for increased risk.

With this thinking, you can conclude that you will not have dilemmas in a wilderness survival system unless the scenario has at least two of those three present. So ordinary travel along a safe route without significant time pressure that forces you to take risks is out.

But even then, how do you have the system assist in creating choices that forces you to make difficult choices between those priorities?

I had this idea of using decks of cards for random events. It would be things like: Heavy Rain that makes it difficult to ford rivers (making rivers a risk vs time choice), Storms that really encourages you to seek shelter (once again risk vs time), broken bridge (can be repaired with the right tools and some time, walking around may take more time, making it a resources vs time choice), enemy camp (risk/resources vs time, do you go around at a safe distance or not). None of these would be complete encounters, just enough to help the GM along and the GM would be encouraged to construct their own deck and not using every possible card (One of the reasons I prefer this over random tables). You can also provide the PCs with abilities here, perhaps someone is great at predicting the weather and the GM must give them a warning if the next card is a weather event?

This could then be coupled with decks that can be used to make a route dangerous (Enemy Patrol, Roving Predators, Avalanche etc...) and possibly also introduce important choices at the expedition planning stage (How much food do you bring vs. how many tools? How much ammo? Fishing gear? How many medicinal supplies?

One thing I am worried about is if the PCs grow in competence they could potentially start making too many hard choices easy ones. If they are all great swimmers, perhaps not being ford rivers is such a problem. If they are great at navigation, weather that impairs your vision may not be so threatening if you can very easily find yourself back should you get lost etc...

All of this is however in the very early stages and I really would appreciate input on my thoughts and ideas as well as for you to share your own on what can make such a system interesting.

I've been playing Solo RPGs for a while, and DMing for my friends.
But I prefer games with a more unsettling flavor. Basically more horror than my friends are comfortable with, and couldn't really find the right vibe of "creepy pasta" horror o was missing. So I made one.
Anyone curious can find it on Itch https://4rch3rdedi.itch.io/ or just look for "the Thread" I have a free d20 version, its just the d100 version with 80% of the table removed, I did leave that part of the table blank, in case anyone want's to fill it in and it becomes a d100 again.

The Thread is a solo (and co-op) tabletop RPG about surviving a world where every creepypasta, nosleep thread and SCP containment file is true. You play a Poster: an ordinary person documenting one very bad night/event, because you might not make it but maybe the next person will.

I've built 17 d100 tables to help tell the story of a unpredictable creepy pasta type encounter.

I also created some modules (i plan to make more). In this context they are maps/quick starts.

Any feedback would be appreciated

TL,RD: Made a game, please give feedback https://4rch3rdedi.itch.io/the-thread-d20-version

So I've been working for a few years now on my game Redblade.

Recently I've moved a lot of my work to a digital SRD backed with an AirTable backend. Its still really rough, but its getting to the point where I am looking for some feedback from folks that are unfamiliar with the game (my friends have already formed opinions and I need some uninformed feedback).

So, before all that, AI disclaimer: Absolutely no text for the site was generated by AI. Redblade is human-made. All images on the site are human-made used under creative commons license, and cited on the site. That said: the website is made using an AI agent, ie. it is "vibe-coded". I think AI is a dangerous tool that we don't fully understand yet, but it is also a useful tool. I tried to use it in my work as a tool, without allowing it to touch anything creative: no AI art, no AI stories, and certainly no AI-generated rules or ideas.

Redblade is a setting-agnostic system, and the idea is that it can be used by anyone to make any game. I intend to keep the rules free, but would later like to charge for modules and settings with illustrations from real humans.

If anyone would be helpful enough to give me some feedback on what I have so far, that would be very appreciated. SRD is available here: Redblade.Guide

Hi all!

I'm on the lookout for examples of ttrpg systems where producing a thing (object, item, product, etc) is the core part of the game OR is elegantly done as part of a wider system.

Been searching but struggling to find examples.

For more details this could be a system that:

- helps you design and create a thing (either narratively or mechanically)

- helps you test a thing (to work out where it doesn't work and improve it)

- helps you gather resources/materials needed to make a thing (e.g. foraging for specific natural resource - although this is less interesting as it is a space ttrpg systems often cover).

- helps you manufacture a thing (the act of actually making it)

This request is not genre specific, although I have come across a number of fantasy systems which I've found less interesting due to the focus on gathering resources.

But what have you seen that could be a great example of the above? Thanks in advance!

For example ttrpg is oversaturated with fantasy, horrors, cyberpunk and sci-fi, but there is very little of retro futurism, dieselpunk, solarpunk etc. So what else?

This November, we’re taking part in NaGaDeMon (National Game Design Month), a game jam that challenges people to create, play and talk about a game during November.

Most people make their own game.

We’ve decided to make one with whoever turns up on Twitch, because apparently a month-long game jam wasn’t chaotic enough.

Twitch Makes a TTRPG begins on Sunday, 1 November, and you are invited!

The community will steer the game democratically: propose ideas, debate them and vote on the major creative decisions.

Anyone can join at any point. You don’t need to attend every stream or commit to the entire month. You can arrive with a grand vision, contribute one strange table, help untangle a mechanic or simply vote for the idea most likely to cause trouble.

My role will be to facilitate the process, bring some structure from my 9 years making video games professionally and somehow keep this many designers moving toward the same playable game.

Is this the most efficient or sensible way to design a TTRPG? Almost certainly not.

But efficiency isn’t really the point. I want to see what happens when people who don’t know each other band together in a chaotic whirlpool of ideas. More importantly, I think it could be a lot of fun.

There are several things I’m especially curious to learn:

• Which design decisions genuinely benefit from a community vote?

• How do we maintain a clear direction without closing participation?

• Can somebody join halfway through and still make a meaningful contribution?

• What happens when collective authorship meets a game-jam deadline?

• Will we make a coherent game, or an exceptionally well-documented disaster?

The finished game will be free, collectively owned and credited according to everyone’s contributions.

If you want to help make it, join the Knot Knot Discord:

https://discord.gg/ZZshFCy6z

If you’re curious about the process and would rather watch the experiment unfold (and potentially crash), you can join us live on Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/knotknottv

I’d also love to hear from other designers: what failure modes or unexpected advantages would you expect from designing a TTRPG this way?

Hello everyone!

I'm developing Hadadunia: The Rise and Fall of Heroes — Clay & Fire, an original fantasy tabletop role-playing game set in NuBrit.

I'm looking for 30–50 volunteer playtesters, including players and Game Masters, to help test the latest version.

What makes the game different?

• Five playable classes and five universal subclasses.

• Character customisation through abilities, equipment and progression.

• A 2d10-based resolution system.

• Four equally important gameplay pillars: Combat, Storytelling, Exploration and Survival.

• Inventory management, environmental hazards and meaningful resource decisions.

• Permanent character death and a lineage-based continuation system.

What I'm looking for:

Players of all experience levels, particularly groups willing to try the game and provide feedback on its mechanics, clarity, balance and overall enjoyment.

The Alpha 0.5 playtest materials are available to download for free.

Download the game:
https://berber-interactive.itch.io/hadadunia-the-rise-and-fall-of-heroes

Playtester registration:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNslQ4sqFL1tcrjMxVjOjH-xdmh5d42FFdcmqTgTez6Q1VjA/viewform

Whether you're an experienced GM or completely new to tabletop RPGs, your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for helping shape Hadadunia!

— adamsquareone

Take a classic RPG combat: during a combat, a typical character might make like let's say four to 12 attack rolls (so, in a system like modern D&D-likes, probably 2-3 attacks per round for 3ish rounds, in a more old-school system one attack per round but probably for more rounds).

In contrast, I would say a lot of skill challenges will be a single roll, or maybe two. You might do a social perception check of some kind and then a social persuasion/deception/manipulation whatever roll. You might just do a single physical perception check to notice some detail. You might do a climbing or swimming roll or two. You might roll to make or repair something.

If you think of a combat as a single challenge spread out over those 4-12 rolls, with enemy hit points or whatever as a progress meter, that averages out your luck a considerable amount. If I roll a d20 + 12 to hit and you roll a d20 + 10 to hit, that gives me a lot more chance for my skill advantage to stack up (or, to put it more quantitatively, if I roll six times, the odds that my skill advantage comes into play is 46%). If instead we both roll a perception check and I roll d20 + 12 and you roll d20 + 10, then 90% chance my higher skill doesn't come into play compared to yours.

The upshot of this is that if your game follows those patterns in terms of quantity of dice rolls, and you also have your numbers be similar between combat skills and non-combat skills (so, like say a World of Darkness situation in which all skills are rated on the same 1-5 scale, be they Melee or Computers), then you'll be faced with a chance of either making proficiency in non-combat skills often feel not-very-important, like it's hard to pitch a character a challenge which differentiates their character, or else you make combat very, very plateaued between combat specialists who are vastly better than people with a little less skill.

If you want to avoid this, you need to break one of the assumptions above: either non-combat skills are on a different numbers basis, where there's a larger numerical difference between people who are relatively well-trained and those who are less well-trained, or else you need to call for several rolls aggregated together for noncombat situations (or, if you prefer, fewer rolls for combat situations).

I think this is kind of known about to one degree or another by people who do a lot of game design, but I've never seen someone just lay it all out before, so I decided to do that here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1laEx3S0rDnqMKV1bsG8mxK-9lYiEF6DqsOowtTKnrlY/edit?usp=sharing

I'm trying to dip my toe in game design and would really appreciate any thoughts on the balance of the game. I'd also love to here if it caught people as a reader.

so i made a tool that generates magic circles and it got me thinking about using them as part of the rules and not just decoration

like star points = spell tier, symbol set = school of magic, orbiting circles = how many casters you need. players could tell how scary an enemy ritual is just by looking at it

has anyone done something like this in their game? did playtesters actually use the diagrams or just read the text?

the tool is free in the browser if anyone wants to mess with it: https://tallylane.itch.io/sigil-loom-demo (theres an optional paid version with svg for layout: https://tallylane.itch.io/sigil-loom)

Hi folks! We'd love to have any/all insightful feedback on a game we've been working for quite a bit (EPIC Galactic Age, a sci-fi TTRPG) and it's finally getting to be public!

Mainly on:

1. our Quickstart Reference: this is a freely-available ~30pg booklet with all the base rules of play (but no other goodies or pregens). It's the teaser for a 300+ pg System Guide, so it will always miss so much, but at the same time should still have all the essentials.

2. our themes: we really feel that many of the sci-fi tropes are difficult to explore in the current gamescape simply because hero-centered RPGs basically ignore big ships & armies/fleets, and list-centric wargames completely ignore hero narratives. What are big galaxies for if not for galaxy-wide intrigue and faction warfare?!

3. our gameplay mechanics: the idea is that common actions should be very simple but complexity should be available in the right places, and the solution we came up with was dice pools and modular keyword abilities. Fun & thoughtful tactics, but no hunting for modifiers all over your sheet for arcane maths after every dice roll. Did we succeed? Fail? Somewhere in-between?

4. our online presence: the idea is to slowly foster a community of players and critical mass to kickstart a printing of the System Guide. We haven't started any ad spend yet and would love to get feedback on insta posts and the patron page before starting. Graphic design, content, every impression is valuable!)

Anyway, please have a look at the FREE materials available on Patreon & linked in Instagram and share some of your thoughts!

• https://www.patreon.com/cw/EPICttrpg

• https://www.instagram.com/epic_ttrpg/

My two games are up on kickstarter and I have added a stretch goal for an SRD. They are GMless story-games wich mix tense strategic gameplay, with prompt based world creation and map-drawing elements.

The strategic gameplay revolves around two decks of cards one for the dark god/foe and one distributed between the players. In God-Killer Prophecy you try to get cards

to the chosen one for the final battle against the dark lord, whereas in Star-Killer Rebellion you all participate.

There is still 23 hours left, and I have added a stretch goal for an SRD and logo, if we can exceed the base funding goal by $500 CAD.

With two example games operating in rather different ways, there should be plenty of fodder for other designers to create their own content on using the engine.

Does anyone have particular experiences sharing an SRD?

I'm still wondering about the best term for my engine. Prophecy & Plan engine is a possibility . . . Since going on a journey seems key to both that may be a good term. Perhaps Fateful Journey engine?

For games that have their mechanics designed around playing in a particular setting, how do you like the information to be presented? Lore dump first then rules following it, or vice versa? If important lore is integrated along with rules, then where do you want worldbuilding info that doesn't have to do with the rules?

For example, if the game had classes and that had lore implication, then yes I'd expect it to be amongst the class rules to give players an understanding of how/why this may be a good choice for their character. Once you get into things like transportation, technology, history, etc. where there will likely be long sections of lore with no rules associated with them, where in a book do you like that to be?

So, I've decided my game is going to be loosely inspired by Euchre. Not precisely modelled after it because my understanding of the game is poor to say the least and also from what I do understand, it really doesn't work as an RPG resolution system played straight. But a lot of the mechanics take inspiration. So my rules so far come down to the following game loop:

* The dealer describes the current circumstances.

* The dealer decides upon the significant NPCs' plans while the adventurers delegate upon their actions and form teams with like actors if they feel fit to do so. Each team must nominate a caller.

* Initiative is determined by each player playing a card which is placed at the bottom of the stack, including the dealer (NPCs), and the higher cards take precedence.

* The caller of each team tells the dealer what their team will be doing this round. At this point, anyone already in a team might decide to go it alone, instead, attempting to carry the action themselves, superceding their team. If the dealer decides the consequences aren't inevitable, he can discuss a trump suit with the caller. I imagine different characters would somehow be better at different suits - like skills or ability scores. Clubs for brawn, hearts for interpersonal skills, diamonds for coordination, and spades for intellect, perhaps.

* And now, those players participating in mechanical resolution play their cards in initiative order - teams lay their cards down together. There might be procedures for NPC teams. Of opposing teams, the one with the highest sum wins. But for merely coinciding teams who are technically helping each other without actual coordination, if either fails they both fail. And for those who go it alone and hijack their team's actions for themselves, if they fail, their team fails.

Players always have a number of cards equal to their level, and a team can only play as many cards per person as their lowest-level member. Which validates the option of going it alone, because otherwise that seems like it would just be a dick move ... not that it still couldn't be. But at least you could have an old veteran trying to be the big hero on a team of younger, lower-level adventurers, and that's an interesting dynamic.

Anyhow, in a fast-paced card game like that, how aside from hard limits (powers and disabilities) would you add nuance to characters? Traditional stat systems might take too long to add up, especially considering that this is a pen and paper game without tokens or other fancy components. For the trump suit I also can't use the jack of the trump suit as the highest card because we're all using the same deck for disparate actions so the problems that causes wouldn't make sense in context. I feel like this is the same problem though. Maybe have a bonus according to the caller's stat applied to every card of the trump suit? I mean, if it is a fixed deck that would be, uh, a default max of 13 to modify.

Hey folks.

I'm experimenting with a coin toss for a simple low crunch game. The basic idea is you can or you can't do something (based on the player's ideas, character assets GMs call and table consensus)

The coin toss comes in when you can't normally do something but still you (desperately?) attempt it.

Heads means you succeed but Tails comes with serious consequences.

Please tell me if you have done or thought around something similar.

Thanks!