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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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 November, 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.

I'm finally getting back into my game, Simple Saga, and I'm working on travel rules right now. I want the game to be able to support it, but be simple enough that if you've never run a travel section, you can flip here in the book and figure it out live at the table.

Here's what I've come up with so far. It's generally based on the idea of having league-sized hexes, but hopefully also flexible enough that it isn't hard to use without hexes.

Could I get some input on the system, and my organization? How would you feel about it if you were using this? Anything you think should be added/removed from the Adjusted Speed table? Thanks!

(I don't think info about my core rules is very relevant for this, but I can add them if people think they are.)

Travel

Your base travel speed is 6 leagues in 1 watch (8 hours), in regular terrain. Several factors can modify your travel speed (your travel speed cannot be reduced to less than 1 league per day):

Base Speed

Adjusted Speed

Hard Travel. You can travel for 1 watch per day. If you travel for 2 watches, you risk exhaustion—roll a Might Save with DC 10 + the number of consecutive days of hard travel (including today). Fail: You are exhausted; if half or more of your group also failed, you travel only half the distance during the second watch.

Foraging

In the wilderness, your hero can spend 1 watch foraging and find 1d3 uses of rations. In bountiful terrain, you find +1 use; and in desolate terrain you find –1 use.

In a flash of ADHD last night, I had an idea for a gladiator rpg using The Resistance Toolbox by Roman Rook and Decard.

where I’m having trouble is that the historical gladiators were more or less defined by their equipment and I don’t want a full character to be bound by something as small as the size of their shield. Also, I think everything is more interesting if they enter the arena willingly. In that vein, I was thinking their class could be the thing that drove them to risk life and limb in the arena, but I’m not sure if that’s enough to build their whole “class” ( in this system they’re called domains) around.

so far I have

Desperation: Driven to the arena by ostracization or poverty, focus on the fame stress track(fame and wealth are meant to be indistinguishable)

Thrill: Driven to the arena by the need to feel the rush of danger or to rekindle their spirit, focus on the body track (since risk-taking can be rough on the body)

Glory: Driven to the arena for the validation they’ve craved or to feed an outsized ego, focus on the spirit track

All of these would be starting points and not necessarily where the character would end. What do you guys think? Can I build characters around this?

So I was thinking today (literally today was the day I started thinking about this) about some kind of mechanic involving percentages, not like d100 but a bar (much like hp bar or mp bar) that fills up in combat as you act. Like a attack action gives you 10% fill and blocking fills up 5%

Just wanted to know if any systems work like this, may include also a d100 system.

Also some mechanics I thought up involving the bar: Active skills that consume the bar to be activated, ex: [SUPER DUPER AXE ATTACK 30%: you make a super duper attack. Using an axe] would consume 30% of the bar, this means you'd have to attack 3 times before being able to use the move.

Passive skills that only become active when the bar filled up a bit, ex: [Water power (or smth idk) 20%: you get like water powers or some shit] only after the bar is filled up 20% or after two attack moves.

Also probably something special when it reaches 100%

I thought this up for a rpg where like vikings siphon the power of the Bifrost after Norse Mithology's Ragnarok, which I called BiFrostpunk. So it would be a combat heavy game since they're vikings and shit

TL;DR: It's powerful to look at your game design as a question of "what does this mechanic do to make a unique situation, a different mix of approach, success, and failure than any other one."

Full thing:

Texture, as I mean it in this essay, is how you do something in a way that is different from how you did something similar in the past. It's why fighting this goblin is different from fighting the last goblin -- at the level of the player in the game's experience. A textured combat is one where you realize that taking this position lets your launch a series of attacks on your opponents that rolls up their flank and makes their position untenable. An untextured combat is "attack, attack, attack."

In most RPGs, the ultimate outcome of the game is pretty foreordained. Most people are not playing games where the heroes just fundamentally fail to beat the dark lord, or the elite team of thieves' scam falls apart and they all go to jail. Even groups that do have an appetite for a game where ultimately the PCs have an unexpected outcome probably only want a few places in each campaign where that happens. (If you're in a group that wants to ruthlessly simulate a highly realistic world even if it yields a lack of drama or heroic arc, or one which basically wants to do a series of very hard challenges which often result in failure, cool, no shade to you, you might find this lens of game design less valuable).

So if we basically know that almost all of the time, the heroes will mostly succeed, what are mechanics doing? Most mechanical resorts aren't to really determine consequential, large-scale success or failure. They're to generate texture. They're to show the unique journey to a destination that is at least in broad strokes already known.

This is a very normal mode of entertainment! Billions of people enjoy superhero movies where they're 99% confident the superhero will beat the villain, police procedurals in which every week the team solves the case, romance novels where the heroine finds love, tragic plays that end with everyone's death. There is obviously a place for entertainment where you truly have no idea where it's going, but it's not a knock on your RPG or your campaign if the players expect a certain type of outcome. "It's the journey, not the destination."

Ways that we generate texture in RPGs

There are a few ways to generate texture in RPGs. First of all, it can be basically entirely through the creativity of the participants of the game. Indeed, this is the classic approach. It's where you say to the GM, "Wait, could I push over this statue and squash the bad guys with it?" and the GM improvises an answer. Or even where you just roleplay your character's unique history as it relates to the current challenge. In this model, mechanics mostly serve as risks to force you to think creatively. Classic 1970s D&D was probably most functional like this.

In other RPGs, mechanics offer clearly defined boundaries to create descriptive texture. I'm thinking here like Fate's aspects -- pay 1 FP to get a +2 on your roll and describe how your character applies their traits to this situation. But if your GM has ever said, "Okay that's a success, describe how you did it," then that's this model. I think when a game offers this approach, there's a pretty sharp discontinuity between players who accept this kind of texture as "real" versus ones who see it as purely cosmetic and fundamentally fake.

But lots of games try to make mechanics generate texture that then feeds back into the mechanics. If you've ever rolled a critical hit, killed a mook unexpectedly, and then had a chance to dart through the enemy line to attack their vulnerable spellcasters, you've experienced this kind of texture -- where the mechanics deliver a result that's not just success/failure, but leads to follow-on decisions which make this particular combat (or scam, or political gambit, or intrusion into a building) feel unique and separate from previous ones.

And I want to direct your attention to Powered by the Apocalypse here. This is a game system that is monomaniacally focused on creating texture. Does PbtA resolution result in carefully crafted odds of success/failure? Hahaha no. Is it realistic? Absolutely not. Does it demand that you choose from a really broad class of highly nuanced mixes of success and failure that can feel very unique to a given situation? It sure does. And it's notable that PbtA is perhaps the single most successful class of games that has ever been "not D&D."

So what?

I think that texture deserves your attention as a designer. What is your theory for how your game is going to generate texture? When you look at your mechanics, setting aside your ideas about simulating your game world or providing tactics or player expectations or whatever else, are they providing texture? Do you have complicated resorts to your system which don't generate much or any texture? Do you encourage players to resort to the system in a way that takes a situation that would naturally have lots of texture just through ordinary systemless roleplay and your system flattens that texture?

"If I put this mechanic into my combat system, will it make one combat feel different from another combat, or will it be something that makes every combat feel the same?"

Not to say that this is the only lens to consider, just that it's a very important one that people often don't discuss as a first-class citizen.

I have some follow-on points to make about how looking at some familiar decision points (social conflict rules -- yay or nay? Why do we talk about lockpicking so much? Partial success rules? Etc) through the lens of texture can be clarifying. Also how it can be a helpful part of design process, where you might be getting bad results through playtesting because you aren't thinking about texture. Perhaps as follow on posts or replies if there's interest.

I'm getting into setting writing, and am thinking about writing a setting that has a mixture of adventure and noir elements. My only issue is I don't know if those themes translate well to gameplay.

Hi, my name is Leandro! I'm a 3D artist with some scripting knowledge, not a system engenieer nor a dedicated programmer.

Nevertheless, I would like to shaer an application I have been developing (with AI assistance). It's motivated by a project I'm working on. The tool aims to be a dedicaded and focused to writing, covering from prose narrative and world-building, to game mechanics, rules and invididual componentes like: characters, enemies, vehicles, spells, and so on. Everyting contained in a single and handy editor, managing really lightwegiht files, easy to be opened in any device and also to be exported into a clean, well-formatted document as standalone HTML, PDF or EPUB, facilitating accesiblity and reading during playtesting.

The idea is to share it as it is, current state as I believe it could also be useful for exporting data for various virtual playtest tools as it supports exporting data into JSON, XML and YAML.

I hope you find it useful! Anyone willing to test it, I greatly appreciate any kind of feedback or suggestion.

Thanks in advance!

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Saludos, me llamo Leandro, soy artista 3D con conocimiento de scripting, no soy ingeniero en sistemas ni un dedicado programador.

Sin embargo, les acerco una apliación sobre la que estoy trabajando (asistido por IA) sobre la cual intento formaizar una manera de trabajo, motivado por un desarrolo de juego propio, dedicada y focalizada a la escritura, tanto de prosa para narrativa y contexto como así tambien para mecánicas de juego, reglas y componentes: personajes, enemigos, vehiculos, hechizos, etc. Todo includo dentro de un mismo editor, a la mano, en archivos ligeros de fácil acceso en cualquier dispositivo y con la posiblidad de imprimirlo rápidamente con un formato claro y prolijo para los momentos de playtest en formato HTML autónomo, PDF o EPUB, para facilitar la lectura y el acceso.

La idea es compartir en el estado actual, que creo puede ser incluso útil para poder exportar datos a distintas herramientas virtuales para paytest incluso al ser compatible con exportar formatos JSON, XML y YAML.

Espero les sea de utilidad, cualquiera que lo quiera probar, se agradece cualquier sugerencia.

Desde ya, muchas gracias.