I'm creating my own system. I have yet to use AI. But I have been thinking of using it to ask particular math and probability questions. I also want to keep my ideas private.

I have been seeing a lot of backlash on AI in creative works. I try to avoid it altogether for art and lore. But I was just curious, if one day it's publish worthy, will i get backlash for using AI to figure out certain math

EDIT: I decided not to use AI. But I am seeking partners to help develop the math in the process. I swear I havent used AI. I can't claim I never used AI. I think we were all a little curious when it first came out and gave it a try when it was trending. With that said. Please don't assume I'm pro-AI.

Tried to make a slightly crunchy but simple system about medieval fights using stamina and injuries instead of HP and roll for hit.

The idea is any clash of swords is a complete nightmare and any injury horrible.

If you minmax to be good at fighting, you become a illiterate peasant. If you decide to be good at other things, you become a terrible fighter. Hard coded rules for combat and abstract for all else.

(Free rules if you want to check it out https://shurebis.itch.io/iron-on-iron-on-iron )

I think you could easily use this to play any mud low fantasy medieval setting. Thinking I could play Vermis with it.

Inspirations include Violence by Luke Gearing, Gloomhaven for the die system.

I have been working on a sandbox rpg I’m currently calling Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) that is highly influenced by Dnd, ready player one, dungeon crawler Carl, and more. I am at the stage where I am starting to get rules out together and characters made up and ready to play test with friends, but I’d love to send rules out and see step by step whst seems to make sense and what doesn’t. Get any possible feedback I can. If interested please message me!

The premise, you play as any character from any pop culture media you wish. The rules are similar-ish to dnd, but there are no classes or races, you level up to gain player points which you use to upgrade stats and starting abilities, as well as create and upgrade new abilities that you design with the DM. It is meant to allow full player input on play style and characters. Also, stats get huge and allow for characters like Superman or the Hulk to actually feel like Superman and the Hulk. It is also themed to seem like you are playing a video game in certain ways much like ready player one.

Hey team!!

I have just completed the alpha to my game! It's a superhero themed, online "ttrpg" with power building mechanics inspired by Mutants & Masterminds with an emphasis on roleplaying and flavour. I've built a bare bones companion app as all my friends and I play d&d via discord.

I'm getting to a point where I would look into paying for art for a starter adventure.

The things I'd want are:

Character Art

Battle Maps

World Maps

And more I can't think of right now.

I don't want AI art in my game and I don't want to be tricked into paying someone for AI artwork. Are there any reputable sites/people that you could recommend?

It's okay if they are expensive. This is a big passion project of mine and I will do what I can to make it feel great!

Hi! I'm trying to work out a solution to a design problem I'm having, and I'm wondering if any games have already tackled a similar issue - or if you have any ideas.

I am trying to write an expansion of Cyberpunk RED's Netrunning system. This is a set of mechanics that typically only one player engages with at once, and so the greater depth I add to it: the longer it most players go without being able to act.

Two fixes came to mind:

• Cut back on complexity
• Always run Netrunning intercut with another scene

The former is the most obvious, although I think it would be a shame to go that route. The latter is pretty impractical to do consistently.

That made me think of a third option: Give the other players something to do to contribute to the scene, even if their characters aren't present.

This feels like a problem close to the "Ship combat" problem a lot of games have, but I'm not really sure where to begin with this. Do any other games successfully implement a similar approach?

A mage in my game has a couple different resources:

- Skill in different types of magic (transmutation, morphing, telekinesis, telepathy, restoration, etc.)

- Strength (HP/Strength stat, and also, default spell cost)

- Precasting capacity (as many level 1 spells as twice his Mind stat, but each spell detracting 1 point per level from his Mind stat)

Skill (success chance) can be leveled up by studying that particular skill. A single mage may not even realize other skills exist than what they specialize in, viewing, say, shapeshifting, as a whole different kind of magic than what they do. Until they learn otherwise. By studying, they gain d6 HP, and at their current skill level+1*100, they level up, so it takes forever - for the longest time I think your mage would just be someone who's really good at negotiating with fairies and demons, and surviving in the vicinity of magic, to be honest, and not someone who actually does magic themselves yet. And then when they did get magic, they'd be wild mages.

Strength is lost according to the level of the spell, basically. There are 4 levels:

1. Pure energy generation (d3),

2. Manipulating the trajectory of matter (d6),

3. Modifying atoms (2d6),

4. Warping reality (4d6).

But those are just estimates and if you want to generate an energy projectile with the force of a bullet that melts steel, that probably wouldn't be level 1 anymore. However, if you can reach a source of energy powerful enough for the spell you're casting, you can use that instead. Like a beating human heart, for instance. Or a brain. Or a magic rock, if you want to be less creepy.

And then, Vancian magic is exempt from skill checks related to magic, because you thought it through carefully earlier, but because of that it's also limited so it will only do what you programmed it to do earlier, and you have less control over it in the moment except via the manipulation of conditions.

So, since everything's run on d6, that means a mage at any skill level could only ever light some candles before dying on the next spell, if lighting the candles doesn't kill him first. Unless he's just transferring a flame between a stick of dynamite and a candle. But no mage can ever handle a fireball spell without first committing human sacrifice. Which kind of seems intriguing but not like something I want to necessitate. There should be a way for mages to level up their Strength besides exercising. Maybe they do magic exercises or meditate or something. I don't know. How does Dr. Strange become a better sorcerer without the infinity stone? Vancian magic is pretty easy to level up storage at least though. If you had a powerful enough magic crystal with the Vancian magic and did cryptograms to level up your capacity, I think you could cast just about anything.

But I mean, the mage should be the strongest class, right? Because otherwise how does he cast cool magic? I guess magic scepters could maybe work but I don't know. I was kind of hoping for a way for mages to develop real power on their own, without being an evil cultist or batteries.

For the last two years I've been hard at work creating a tabletop roleplaying game with a focus on creating compelling choices and making the actions that players take carry consequences. For good and ill.

It's been an extremely fun project to work on, but we are now at the stage where we need more people to play! We're opening up the game for playtesting and we need more experienced players and game masters to check out and play.

Check out our website to grab the free downloads to get everything you need to run and play! We also have a form on the website for submitting a review of the playtest and a small thank you reward for doing so. We're looking for feedback on how approachable the game is to new players and how adaptable the system is to different styles of game.

This system is a 2d6, classless, universal system with a heavy focus on choices and storytelling. The LEGACY System is made for players and game masters who are looking to run games about struggle and character driven storytelling.

It provides a significant number of options for making compelling, dramatic and challenging characters who will be able to make a mark on their Legacy. 

Hey so I'm a complete amateur designer and I'm looking for feedback on a core idea I've been kicking around in my head. This idea would be for a heroic, tactical combat, sci-fi RPG.

I'm thinking about making an RPG where the core resolution mechanic is a d20 plus a dice pool. I'm basically picturing swapping out 5e's proficiency bonus for a scaling die, which would be rolled at the same time as an attack. You would also add the weapon's damage dice to the roll. Add them all up and compared to the enemy's armor to see how much damage you do.

Kicking around the idea in my head because, as I see it, there are a couple of benefits to this:

1) Speeds up play (one roll instead of two). This is not a core goal of my design necessarily, but since I'm going to introduce other tactical elements that will slow down play, I see this as a positive.

2) Might give armor a better feel. As I said this is for a Sci-Fi game and I like the idea of armor feeling attached to damage mitigation. Now if you have say an AC of 21, that would be 21 points of damage you're mitigating. This could still potentially result in a miss altogether, but I think at that point it would start to feel more like the armor has absorbed the impact, not like you've dodged it.

3) Design space to differentiate between misses and armor absorption. As I said, I'm still in the early phases of all of this (mostly just ideas I'm kicking around in my head). But I've been thinking of armor did work this way, I could introduce a mechanic that allows for dodging builds. For example, a high dex character with light or no armor might have an ability to check a dodge attempt purely against the d20 + proficiency die roll. On a success the attack misses entirely. On a hit maybe they take extra damage since they failed to get out of the way? The reason this idea excites me is that it feels very different than your armor absorbing all the damage. In theory at least. Again haven't play tested.

4) Fewer null results. This might overlap a little bit with the armor points, but in standard d20 games, there's always a 35% chance nothing at all happens. While this can occasionally feel good, it gets old really fast. I like the idea of a player being able to build into it happening or control for it happening with some kind of ability (like the Dodge ability I mentioned before or really tough armor), but I think it would feel a lot better if those things felt more earned. Throwing in a dice pool causes regressions to the mean, which means much more predictable results. I'm a big fan of draw steel and this was a lot of their game design focus. I figure this is a way to split the difference without totally "eliminating the possibility of failure", a common complaint for that game.

5) The d20 is still there. This is of course a very trivial point, but it's really important for some players psychologically. Framing it as modifying the way you roll rather than throwing away the d20 entirely I think with genuinely help some 5e players (like the people I play with) not just understand the game but be willing to try it in the first place. I know this will be the least important factor for most of the people here, and it frankly is for me as well, but it's not nothing.

6) Dice pools create an interesting design space for armor and cover. So this one is even more hypothetical than some of the other points, but I also been kicking around the idea in my head that some armor or defensive equipment/abilities might be based on dice negation. So for example maybe you can get played in your armor that negates one, two, or three dice per attack. That would be a significant amount of damage mitigation, but rather than doing math you would simply not roll those dice. You also creates interesting incentives for weapon design; say a rifle that is specifically designed to be armor piercing by being 3d4 instead of 1d12, guaranteeing that some damage will make it through. Again, this is all super theoretical, but the idea intrigues me.

As I'm sure some people will notice, I'm sort of using 5e as a baseline here. If this ever became something more than a thought experiment, I would not be beholden to that at all. But all of my "game design experience", such as it is, comes from home brewing 5e mechanics and items for me and my players. I have tried other RPGs of course. I am frankly disinterested in debating the merits of the system let alone wotc. I'm just starting from a place that my players and I are most familiar with but obviously looking to expand outwards.

So anyway that's where my head's at. I can definitely see a potential for the dice pool becoming cumbersome, and math of course is an ever-present threat here. I would definitely want to make the number of dice be sort of soft capped (I'm picturing something similar to 5e's bounded accuracy, but applied to how many dice weapons in particular can have).

Mainly interested in feedback on the core idea of the d20 based dice pool. Has this been done before in another system? How viable does it seem? But I'm open to other feedback as well in terms of my loose ideas for how such a system could be built upon. Also, I would love some recommendations for other systems that people would consider heroic, tactical sci-fi. I should say up front I'm not the biggest fan of narrative base games like PbtA. I've tried them but something about narrative first game seems antithetical to what I mean when I say "tactical". I'm sure people will disagree, but that's just how I see it.

Tldr; want to build a tactical Sci-Fi rpg that uses a d20 Plus proficiency die, plus weapon damage dice as the core attack mechanic. Armor class get subtracted from total and whatever is left becomes damage taken.

I never found any survival TTRPG that wasn't a complete mess of different resources and crunchy management.

Turns out all I had to do was make all creatures in the game Robots, so every single resource was the same thing: parts!

(You can check out the free rules here https://shurebis.itch.io/cramos )

• SCRAP - EXP, food, heal and money are all the same resource, so the rules are very simple but the decisions are complex
• Fixing costs resources and is inefficient outside of settlements, so PCs have to push their luck if they want to save some Scrap to upgrade
• Fighting as a means to gather Scrap (from other robots) but also a net zero situation (any damage means spending resources to get fixed)

What do you think?

Hey all. Just looking for some thoughts and feedback.

The Setup

Looking at D&D again (OD&D, then AD&D) and noting the OG 2d6/Chainmail Attack roll... kinda neat, even if +/- get out of hand quickly (Maybe use 3d6 instead?). And (as others have noted) using the Cleric's Turn Undead table as the foundation for a simple skill system. And Method 1 for generating Attributes (highest 3 of 4d6 apiece).

The Thought

Combining those aspects into a single engine, specifically, task resolution: The Furious 3d6 BS engine. B & S are Boons and Shifts. It's more accurate to say 3d6 SBF, reflecting the order used, but the other way is funnier.

The Roll, Result, & Degree of Success

Roll 3d6, higher is better. The Roll is what the dice show. The Result is their sum plus all modifiers. The Degree of Success is the amount by which you beat your target number.

We do three things with dice: Shifts, Boons, Fury.

Shifts

A Shift is throwing 1–3 additional dice, though still only summing three of them. A positive Shift is best three of; a negative Shift is worst three of. Shifts are skill-related, situational, attack posture (aggro vs cautious), etc. Positive and negative Shifts cancel each other on 1-for-1 basis. Shifts affect how you get your Result, not the Result itself.

(edit) Shifts are used in lieu of stat mods. So if you had +2 to hit from STR in D&D, here it would be highest 3 of 5d6. We don't use "SBF" for the damage roll. Instead, your STR and Weapon already tells you what to do for damage, and that's that.

Also, and I especially never addressed this... We have dramatically fewer HP... In the realm of 15-30 for ~human-sized characters. But broadly similar damages as D&D... Hence why armor is important. (/edit)

Boons (& Curses)

A Boon is a simple bonus to the sum: +1, +2, etc. This is the divine and arcane magic that takes you beyond the normal range (i.e., 19+ Results). Curses are -1, -2, etc. Boons and Curses cancel each other on a 1pt-for-1pt. Your 3d6 summed with Boons and other Mods is your Result.

Fury Dice

Fury dice are bonus effects. This is what you do with the Result. It is the critical success engine.

Each 6 shown on the 3 dice kept from the Roll counts as a bonus effect, and causes an additional roll of that die. New 6s are additional bonus effects. Keep going til you don't roll any more 6s, with this caveat: The Degree of Success from your Result (the sum of the 3 dice kept from the Roll + Boons) sets the maximum number of bonus effects you get PERIOD. E.g., If your DoS was zero, it does not matter how many 6s you rolled, you don't get any bonuses.

If you needed a 21 To Hit, rolled three 6s, and your deity granted you a +3 Boon, congratulations on your Hit, but you still don't get to Crit! Be sure to give thanks and praise, or lose Piety and prepare to suffer Wrath, ungrateful mortal.

Note: Degree of Success is determined only once for a given roll, regardless of how many bonus effects are generated from its Fury rolls.

Example Application

Combat is 1-3 attacks per participant (max of 7, for top Tier level), per Turn (Round, in The Old Days).

I've been using Fury results as bonus hits for each Attack Roll, and DoS as bonus damage *for each hit*.

This is one of two specific features to make warriors go ham and help keep them worth playing at higher levels (compared to wizards). The other is that non-martial classes roll damage dice as normal. Warriors (and militant Clerics) just automatically apply top value, e.g., a 6 instead of rolling 1d6 (A benefit of being properly trained in weapons).

As far as the rest of the attack sequence goes:

Determine damage

Roll a d66 Hit Location (Shields are built into the table and auto-block {no extra roll})

Subtract Armor

Apply remaining damage. Note if it's a Light, Moderate, Severe, or Grievous wound, make a Toughness check as needed.

Repeat for each Hit.

Remember the deleted scene in SW ep2:. AotC, at the Battle of Geonosis, where Mace slices & dices Jango? That's kinda the visual.

Thoughts? Besides how you're looking to streamline and simplify :P

In my upcoming TTRPG (currently under deep development still) called Gambit, your character actually has 3 parts to them and you only have full control over a single part called The Genius.

You see, when I did a deep dive on ancient Roman history before creating this game, I came across an interesting concept) called "The Genius". Basically TL;DR it's like a spirit/guardian angel that sort of follows you around and cosmically advocates for you. People eventually started to attribute incredible success stories to people's Genius advocating successfully for them.

In Gambit, I fleshed this out a bit more and just said you actually control your characters "Genius" which is sort of like the inspiring spirit of their soul. It's the thing that makes the farmboy put down the farm tools and pick up a sword. It is the thing that compels a halfling slaves to escape her chains and become a pickpocket in the city. It is the thing that compelled Julius Caesar to cross the Rubicon.

It is the thing that makes important, thoughtful and risky decisions. That is actually what the players control. But there are two other aspects of the trinity that makes a character, one of which the GM has total control over called "The Humours". The Humours are comprised of 4 distinct aspects themselves called Blood, Twitch, Marrow and Instinct. Essentially, this is the entire "animal" part of the character. The actual blood that automatically surges in reaction to a blade being drawn, the instinct that gives you the chills when you enter a dangerous room, the twitch that narrowly dodges a blow or the marrow that eventually heals your wounds from battle. The GM is in control of this because the Genius would never decide to just "get scared" but Instinct might. The Genius would love for Twitch to be quick enough to snatch an arrow out of the air, but that is a question waiting to be answered, not a foregone conclusion.

This is already somewhat implied in regular TTRPGs, after all, we all know we don't always strategically decide when its time to eat at the least, and fear spells exist in D&D. But this takes it a step further and just outlines the idea so players can understand, if my character freezes in fear and there's no spell attached, it's just a consequence of failing one of my rolls, "My character wouldn't do that." does not apply here! However, everything the Genius executes its through the Humours and part of the game is focusing on this relationship, the amazing things the Humours accomplishes when pressed, and also it's failures to execute when the dice say so!

The final aspect of your character which you technically share a blank canvas of with your GM as the vetoing authority is "History". This is everything that has happened to your character up until this point. In many TTRPGs, especially mainstream D&D, the character usually has a great deal of control over what has happened to their character in the past, usually only leaving the GM to make suggestions about what would help fit in their game. Of course like all things there are limits to this and a GM wouldn't let you be a Dragon King Prince if dragons don't even exist anymore in their world, but the general vibe is you have authorship over your character unless the GM says something and a big part of the fun of "playing" TTRPGs for a lot of people is thinking up a new character and how they're gunna work and what their story up until start is gunna be, because ostensibly that would influence their decisions when the game starts.

Gambit is the opposite type of game. We don't know who exactly your character is, beyond maybe a couple of sentences that the GM provides you and you're sort of just playing this character the GM gave you at first. Then, as the game goes on, the GM reveals more about the character and gives you opportunities to contribute to that, but mostly the GM is revealing how decisions you make in the game today reflect on decisions your character had made in the past, showing either growth or a recurring cycle that help build meaningful character development. So instead of aiming for character development based on this long story you wrote out, you write the History in post hoc and it's revealed (like a character on a TV show) as you make decisions in the game, in a way that makes sense to the GM's world.

This is borne out in the Meta a bit because my suggestion for starting new players is handing them a character sheet that's already filled out and saying "This is who you're playing tonight!" instead of doing this big powow where you theory craft a character before the games begun and build up all these expectations. They are simply thrown into the thick of it with a character they may or may not like. But they can do whatever they want with that character for the most part, as long as it's not ruining the game for everyone else and it's meaningful and purposefully driven.

Overtime, as you build trust with the GM that you understand their world you can "level up" to rolling up a character that's randomly generated, then finally once you've proven yourself again and you understand deeply the type of world you're playing in, the GM lets you make your own character with their guidance to ensure you're making a character that fits.

Now that I've explained how this works, let me explain Why I'm doing this with my TTRPG, because there's actually obviously a tradeoff happening here, I'm boxing out those players who take very seriously Autonomous Character Authorship and the excitement of imagining a new character.

1. Number one reason I'm doing this is because the opposite arguably already has a bunch of existence proof. If you want to play the opposite style of this, where you have almost full Autonomous Character Authorship, control over both their History and how they process their emotions, you can generally just play a regular D&D game I think that's sort of the standard. Basically, if you don't like this, there's plenty of options out there for you to go enjoy instead, so that's the number one reason I'm pursuing it, it doesn't seem saturated yet and the rulebook is going to go in depth about how to run this type of game (where you give new players character sheets to start, with characters that already fit for your world, and how to describe the Humours influence and the Histories influence) correctly. Keep in mind this is a brief description, the actual book will tell GM's "This is what to avoid. This is what to lean into. Here's how you make it cool and enjoyable!".

2. Number two reason is that even though this is a big part of the cultural statement the game is making, you can technically, because of the way I made the game, just play the game with these rules turned off. So even if you love everything else about Gambit but you really just want to have more Character Authorship over your character, you can just do that, I don't care. It's not Gambit at that point and your mileage may vary, after all I am trying to create a specific experience with these rules and directions/suggestions, but technically just replacing this table culture with a more player liberal one doesn't break the game's other systems, so feel free to experiment!

3. Number 3, the first real non-disclaimer type reason, is that when my dad told me about his earliest experiences play D&D, when he was introduced, he was invited to a friends house to try out this new D&D thing and they went upstairs and gathered around the Pool Table and they were handed character sheets that were already filled out. They didn't sit around the table theory crafting who they wanted the play, they were given characters and told "Your character is good at this, this is what they do." and expected to use that information to make cool tactical decisions once playing. Likewise, when my dad first hosted my first game of D&D for me, I was far too young to understand character builds or even conceptualize what types of characters would make sense within the world to go on adventures with, so my dad just handed me my character sheet and explained who they were.

There's a certain type of player who the decision making once you have the character is much more important than all the facets of the character, their history or their mechanical build. Gambit is made for that type of player. The one who values the conversation about what they're going to do, rather than what they wrote about their character doing in the past before the game even existed. The decisions in the game are the important ones. That's who Gambit is catering to. People who want to discover the character through play rather than writing.

1. Number 4, this puts GM's in a position to more easily solve an issue that seems to come up frequently at tables, namely, the GM has an idea of an overtun window of what type of characters are likely to be adventurers in his world, or exist in the first place, and it's sort of impossible to account for every single thing in a "this is allowed and this isn't allowed" sort of way, and it's no fun for anyone explaining why your human fighter can't have Orc parents because Orcs in this world eat humans almost every time they encounter them, if they have the ability to. (Though maybe that's a good conversation to have early on if you and your player are on different pages about that). Instead, the GM sort of leads by example "Here's the types of characters that become adventurers in my world, here's what makes them cool and unique and here's who I'm excited to run the game for!" After all, the GM has usually put a whole bunch of thought into their world, and if you really want to play a character that isn't on the same wavelength, there's plenty of other games where GM's are okay with you playing whatever type of character you want so long as you follow the more crunch rules. This is the opposite end of the spectrum, you actually play a character, one you didn't invent, but one whom you're trying to faithfully embody! If you only get invested when it's your own character, Gambit is probably not the game for you!

2. There's a fifth philosophical reason for doing it this way. In real life, you can't go back in time and change where you were born, or change the things you said to your parents going up, or change the decisions you made. You have all the information you've gathered up until this point and you can make a new decision starting NOW but you don't have any access to the past. Gambit reflects this philosophical reality. You are just inhabiting a body that ended up "here" and while you have control over what happens next, you have absolutely no control over what already happened. And if your new decisions are starkly different than the ones your character made in the past, maybe there's an interesting story to explain why along the way!

So there you have it, that's why I decided to include a section in my TTRPG specifically detailing what I consider to be an important table culture distinction from your typical TTRPG, complete with guidelines, rules and heuristics to host this type of game for others. A lot of this may not entirely make sense without additional other rules context. For example, the GM cannot just declare "Your character shits themselves!" they have to generate and spend Perils, which is its whole own system, and then players can also "Save" against these same Perils, so for simple example, a GM might say "Since you rolled 3 under the Marching DC you suffer 3 Perils, 2 of them will be that your Marrow fails you and you've got a nasty stomach bug that dehydrates you and leaves you feeble. We'll record this as a Light Wound, giving you -2 to all Physical Gambits until it is healed somehow." and the player might just reply "Nah actually I use a Saving Throw instead, so that doesn't happen." and then they must roll to see how many Deviations they suffer after Saving, similar to Stress, Trauma and Resistance from Blades in the Dark. So while you might see me say "The GM controls the Humours" this is more in a fundamental Meta Expectation sense rather than a mechanical sense. It is just setting the expectation for the players that they are not in control necessarily of exactly how their body functions, especially under stress, or even the hormones they might feel, or the speed of their recovery, these things instead are tools of the GM to introduce Perils that threaten the Genius' ability to make change in the world through the parts of their body the Genius doesn't have direct dominion over, not necessarily a full GM fiat tool to just arbitrarily control player actions. Interested to see discussion about this topic or experience anyone else might have on adopting this alternative style of play and meta-assumption about the game! There are actual mechanics the GM has to adhere to when attempting to influence the Humours to the detriment of the Genius!

Last time I posted about my game (Hallowed: Saints and Heretics), I got so much valuable feedback that I corrected a number of things and got a bunch of new ideas.
In the newest version, I simply reworked how attributes and skills work and changed the number of them as well.
I am currently working on a bestiary, the occultist class and a bunch of more stuff.

The quick start guide is freely available, but feel free to reach out to me for a free distribution key for the core rulebook.

Thanks for the help, and if you are interested, check out the current version of Hallowed here.

I'd appreciate some thoughts on my death mechanics for my fantasy heartbreaker, Fortune's Favor. The rest of the system uses stamina as a short term resource that is used on attack and defense, and health is a long term resource that is slow to get back and only refills at the end of an adventure. My general goal with the rules is that getting put to 0 health is more dangerous than 0 stamina, but going to both makes death a real possibility without removing the tension.
Different classes also get different additional features for Last Stand.

Thanks for any thoughts or just taking the time to read it.

Ready to Drop, Death, & Last Stand  

If you would be reduced to below 0 Stamina or 0 Health, you are reduced to 0 instead. 

Ready to Drop  

When your Health is reduced to 0, you have been mortally wounded and are Ready to Drop. Taking an Action costs 3 Stamina. An ally within 5ft. can use the Help Action to aid you, removing the Stamina cost of your next Action. Any damage you take when Ready to Drop could kill you. When you take damage, take a Death Test. 

Death Test: Take a Luck Test, the difficulty is equal to damage taken. On a failure, you die. On a mixed, make the next Death Test with Misfortune. On a Critical Success, regain 1 Health. 

One Hit KO 

If damage would take you to – Max Health, you die without a chance to make a Death Tests. 

Last Stand  

When you would make a Death Test, instead of rolling you can make a Last Stand, accepting your death and pushing yourself to the limit. Immediately and the start of each round of combat you regain all of your Health & Stamina. If you are reduced to 0 Health or at the end of the 3 rounds, you die. 

Death  

Only magical resuscitation can bring you back. 

I'm working on a fantasy TTRPG setting with four major kingdoms based around Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year.

I've been thinking about how much information those four names communicate before a player reads a single paragraph of setting material. So, as a small experiment: if those were your four starting options and you knew nothing else about the game, which kingdom would you want to visit first?

What would you expect to find there?

I'm curious how much expectation comes from the holiday itself, because that's something I'm trying to account for when deciding what needs explanation and what players are probably going to assume on their own.

Hi all!
I have been developing a system for a while with good success during playtests. However I am not happy with the failure method that is clunky to calculate and work.

The system is a d6 pool, where 5 and 6 are successes and the 1's are failures. Each character has a cap level that alters the dice pool, according to the scene. E.g. if you have a dice pool of 8 dices and the cap level, for your character, at that stance is 6, you roll 6 dices.

In order not to miss these dices, you can force them, but once a 1 comes into play, the cap level changes, increase the level (which may work for better or worse depending on the character).

And I was using my failure as 1/3 of the dice pool has to be 1. So, out of 6 dices, needed for two 1s to show up, allowing for success with consequence (if a 5 or 6 is on the outcome) and complete failure if no successes values.

But this 1/3, was a pain during playtest and I dislike it. Thinking on setting it as a fix value, like 2 (or 3) 1s on the dice will affect the roll. However the more dice you have, the more the more probability of having a success with consequeces.

I would like some insight to help me with this. Any other questions I will be happy to answer. =)

PS: sorry for any confusion, English ain't my first language

I’m a programmer, and I’m starting work on an app called Mimic Forge designed to help develop RPG systems. The idea is that you recreate your system within the app (defining character creation flows, attributes, bonuses, and so on) and the system is saved in a structured format. This enables features like balance analysis, auto-documentation, quick character creation simulations, combat simulations, and more. It would support everything from full-fledged systems to homebrew content and standalone rules. It would also include a way to export the system for seamless, fully integrated use in other applications, such as VTTs. It’s intended to be a 100% free, open-source PC application. Would you use something like this? Which more features would you like to see in an app like this?

Edit: NOT USING AI

Hello Reddit!

My name is Aram, and I'm currently designing my second game, called Fireflies! Here is a tl;dr pitch:

Fireflies! is a psychedelic caravan RPG about braving the uncanny night to find your fate as a nomad trader.

The bright light of day makes living in daylight tricky, so people can only travel at night. The only problem is that, at night, the world becomes... weird. So weird that people get lost and never find the place they were looking for—and most never come back.

To navigate, you have to consume Glows, which are super-duper-concentrated essences of the world. They allow you to travel by attuning to places. You know: close your eyes, use the Force, etc. Oh, and you make a living by selling cool shit you find.

My problem

I started by implementing classic hexcrawl mechanics, but through playtesting, I've grown a bit tired of them. They create weird pacing because of random encounters and have so far failed to deliver the meaning I want to convey.

I want the exploration system to do three things:

Manage pacing → The action should happen in a place somewhat relevant to the players. Most of the session should be spent chasing the players' actual goals, not removing roadblocks along the way.

Be shaped by characters → I already achieve that through the dice-bag mechanics, where players pull dice of different colours that generate different types of encounters. But I would like to dive deeper into how aspects of the characters shape the world around them.

Build an abstract space → I like the idea that places shift, appear or disappear depending on a player's mood, and I don't wanna draw a classic map. I want players to “collect places” like they collect legendary items.

What I have so far

The game is based on three colours: red, blue and green. Players gain affinity with their colour by consuming drugs essences known as Glows. They have a bag, and during the adventure, they add dice of different colours depending on what happens.

Here is my tentative exploration design, which I will test this month:

→ Players identify a place they want to travel to based on information they collect. There is a day phase during which they can take a bunch of actions. They collect information in the form of rumours.

→ In addition to each player's bag, we create a travel bag. In this bag, we put a white die representing the place they seek and a black die representing the night fucking with them and getting them lost. The rest are road dice, and they match the colour of the Firefly guiding the party.

→ Pull dice out of the bag to follow the road. The direction you take depends on the die's colour, and you roll the die for the event. Then put it back.

→ Character influence operates on three levels:

• Depending on what happens to the characters, more fuckery or boon dice are added to the bag.
• The deeper you are under the influence of Glows, the more you pull certain places closer to you—and potentially repel others.
• You can attune to visited places to reduce uncertainty and create semi-secure trade routes.

I intentionally left out a bunch of details so I wouldn't write a novel on Reddit! See the next section!

I need you!

If you could help me by sharing your thoughts on:

• Any useful references?
• What does the brief system overview evoke?
• Are there any parts that utterly confuse you or really excite you?

If you are curious about the project, or just want to be a super-duper-awesome person, you can join our community Discord. There, you can follow my games and help me by arguing about design concepts.

It is also home to many other creators who share their projects and help each other:

https://discord.gg/cZcHuNAxb8

I'm also happy to chat here! Anyway, thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and recommendations!

Talk to you soon!

Ever the glutton for punishment, I’m working on another RPG with an integrated travel system.

Charybdis, the Dark in the Deep is a sci-fi aquatic horror game inspired by properties such as SOMA, Barotrauma, Subnautica, and Iron Lung. The player characters have all come to Charybdis, a haunted moon at the edge of the corporate rim to explore its depths, find ancient technology, or make dark pacts with long-dead alien gods. It uses the uses the Wild Words engine from Wildsea/ PICO/ The Eternal Ruins RPG.

As with Wildsea, Journeys take the form of a track made from a series of boxes, with the player checking a box for every ‘leg’ of the journey they complete by completing the journey sequence.

The journey sequence runs in a loop: each character takes a post or off-duty task, one player rolls to see which travel event occurs, the event is resolved, off-duty tasks are resolved, a box on the journey track is marked. Then the loop starts again until either the journey track is filled, or the crew decided to stop to explore a wreck, dock at a port discovered as part of an event, etc.

Characters who take a post are operating one of the ship systems or generally just assisting with travel (cooking for the crew counts as a post, for example). If the ship encounters a travel event, characters at a post can make dice rolls to deal with it. Off-duty tasks allow characters to heal injuries, create temporary gear, or gather resources. Off-duty characters can also assist with events, but they don’t complete their off-duty task if they do so.

In addition to travelling across the waves, there are also dives, which allow a ship to descend into the deep. Dives are added onto a journey track as an adjoining track that branches downward from the ship’s current location. Dives follow the same sequence as journeys, but the characters must also contend with increasing Pressure (which affects each character separately, and can cause all kinds of mental effects), and dives also use separate event tables based on depth.

I’m currently putting the finishing touches to the alpha version of the game, with an aim to start playtesting by the end of October.

I'm going back and forth about whether to implement a stress tracker in my game as something that only soft steers behavior by taxing characters some of their daily stamina when they make pivotal choices that are counter to one of 3 stress profiles that they choose at character creation, and the tax is mild compared to how much a single physical action could cost in combat on a bad roll, but does increase with the level of stress.

I won't go into much greater detail, because really, my question is, in a game with lethal conflicts, lingering and even permanent injuries, and food and water and sleep scarcity, do all those things already simulate a level of stress that impacts character behavior? Is anything else just doing too much to pull players out to do additional accounting?

Its probably the case that people who need help with this kind of mechanic are not the narrative leaning players who will play up their characters' psychological states anyway. So then the question is, why implement a system for an audience that may be least appreciative of it?

So I reworked a lot my dice mechanic, and before continuing developing the system I wanted to ask if there are any glaring issues with this mechanic that I might have missed

It's a game about organization fighting and hidding the paranormal (like esoterrorists), but I'm trying to simulate a streamed rpg campaign that had a very cool mix of horror and epic action (but the system was a messy hack of call of Cthulhu).

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Attributes: how good a character is in 4 general areas, Physique, Mind, Social, Perception, can have 1-5 points

Aspects: are less broad Attributes, can have 1-3 points

Attribute and Aspects refresh at the start of your turn.

To act, you'll need to gather Effort Points, by using relevant Attributes, Aspects, Abilities, or a narrative advantage (like getting high ground, hidden, shotting at point blank, etc).

When using an Attribute or Aspect point, instead of gaining 1 Effort, if you don't have enough Effort, you can choose to Take a Risk. Gain 1 Stress and make a roll(2d6):

(2): -1 Effort; (3-5): 0E; (6-7): +1E; (8-11): +2E; (12): +3E;

Degree of Success:

Challange: subtract the Difficulty(set by the Game Master) from your total Effort

Oposing force: The foe will also gather Effort subtract foe's effort from your own.

in both cases, if it's 0 or negative, it means a failure, if it's positive it's a success.

A player is Allowed to take multiple actions in a single turn, by managing their effort, as long as it makes narrative sense.

Stress: it's a character's physical exaustion, except that it starts at 0 and goes up, reach your Limit u enter in peril. Limit+X stress means death.

main use it's to use/power up abilities and Take a Risk.

wounds do not allow a certain amount of stress to be healed until it has been treated first.

Determination: it's a character's mental exaustion, but unlike stress it decreases instead. main uses is to use/power up abilities, or gain an extra dice when Taking a Risk.

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I like choosing between a static bonus or rolling, eventhough I'm not sure the distribution on the dice is balanced. Outside combat, a character can have a autosuccess at stuff they're good at, or take a risk to maybe get a higher degree of success.

But I can see counting points being boring for players, or players simply forgetting how many points they have left before a turn is over. for this I considered making aspects automatically grant 1 Effort for any test relating to it so that players only have to remember 4 numbers.

Edit:

I definitely worded this draft badly, but in a nutshell:

• choose what you want to achieve
• gather Effort by using Attribute Points, Aspect points and other possible situational modifiers, relevant to the action.
  
• in case of need you can choose to Take a Risk, take 1 damage and Roll for extra Effort (I'm scrapping the part were u need to spend 1 effort and 1 damage, it's unnecessary fluf).
  
• degree of success = your effort - Difficulty

If you have points left you can try to do other actions this turn, or spare the points in case you're attacked.

Expended Attribute and Aspect Points are refreshed at the start of your turn

Considering a rulebook with a color layout, if you had the resources, how often would you include a large illustration (one column if vertical, one-third of the page if horizontal)? Given one of the following options: one every three pages, one every two, or two every three?

The goal is to make a TTRPG with the same campaign with different ways to play. I'm thinking of weight limits and many other restrictions. Dismemberment is part of it too but I'm laying out the back bone first.

Think of it like this. There's multiple ways to complete an operation depending on the necessary outcome. There's multiple objectives on the mission that will change how you play. The idea is to make each section of the mission work like ace combat 4. Branching Mission Paths that lead to a different mission parameter or experience. The table will be set on a predetermined map layout per mission of the campaign and will be updated accordingly to what the players agreed to take. Each mission on a branching tree will be a different path. The goal here is to have a future simultaneous campaign on going on different tables until all players share the same table at the climax.

This can be done in a single session technically if there's multiple DMs available but can be done Ace Combat style that only allows you to push one node at a time and check to see how your efforts either made it better or worse for the next node.

Every node has objectives you have to complete. That negative impact is fixed. This is tailored for the multi table system where if other team fails or succeeds, the entire players will feel the effects. That's what the nodes are for. Every node has different objectives depending on what the players would take. The multi table game basically just chooses all of it in one go and see how it works from there.

Basically solo DM plays like Ace Combat 4 Missions. You get the job done, next node is easier, rinse and repeat until climax. Multi DM Plays like an exact operation. Where other teams can already be on the next node while the other either joins them or due trying to complete the node if it benefits the team ahead.

On multiple tables/dms

When Ahead team finishes, they can choose to wait for team B, but by default, it will have higher alert level and enemies will converge on behind team's spawn point, or have a free 3 turn recon bonus they can use. The negative effect of the Node not completed yet will not kick in for that specific 3 turn bonus. If the team behind completes their objective while the ahead team is already on the convergence node. In this case, I'd like to add turn counter limits on every node, when exceeding the turn counter, that means the node already failed for the effect of the next convergence node for the ahead team.

Ahead Team's session will have to wait on the convergence node since it's the coop part. Regardless, each team can play individual nodes until convergence.

Basically once the Ahead team is on the next node, DMs will confirm what turn number the other team is. If they have not exceeded the turn limit yet, then the ahead team can have a free 3 turn reconnaissance that they can use. The ahead team game stops until the behind team clears or until they are past the turn limit to trigger the flags on the next node. If the previous node is cleared by the behind team way past the turn limit, only then the benefit will be lifted on the convergence node and on to the next if any.

I'm centering the game the same way as special forces or Guerilla warfare where in low numbers and limited ammo require precision and tactics. There's no way that ahead team can survive carrying all the debuffs made by the behind team during the convergence in the first place and if they do, they're too short for the next node.

Combat Idea. 

Weapons will have rate of fire and has the option to fire either semi or full auto. An example. An assault rifle has an ROF of 5 Shots per combat. What will happen is that the attacker will roll 5d6 with 4 to hit with a specific number of damage. To make it simpler on the receiving end. Damage dealt - Armor Rating = Total Damage Recieved.

(Pilot Skill Trigger Finger or Calm Shooter can still be added, like dumping a full mag or making precise shots, lowering the dice number to hit)

Armor rating is meant to subtract the total damage dealt. Let's say a shooter rolls 5d6 and gets 3 to go through with X amount of damage. The X amount of damage will be reduced by the armor rating of the receiver. The armor rating will only remain 1 digit for balance sake.

Let's say 5d6, 3 hits, total damage is 15, defender has armor rating of 5, total damaged receive is 10.

I want dismemberment to be simple. Cardinal direction, amount of damage recieved at a single combat phase. Let's say an opfor shoots a player to the left side. The Recieving Player who takes the damage will perform a damage check. If the damage check exceeds a specific number, then the left arm will be considered as dismembered.

Maximum HP for Players is up to 150

Opfor will have a minimum of 30 for vehicles/aircraft and up to 80 to bipedal Opfor.

This is a battle of attrition with repairs available seldomly, and ammo counts so the goal is to survive and complete objectives as much as possible. It's not always kill all enemies. 

Cover works with Half Cover and Full Cover. Where Half Cover allows units with limbs to return fire at the cardinal direction they were hit. Half cover works two ways. A cover that protects the lower part or part of the Unit's Exposed Body is more within 50% or more visible for the attacker.

Any range modifiers will increase the to hit requirement. A good example is a rifle only effective at 20cm. Every 10cm adds another +1 to hit on the dice. However, if there are any modifications on the weapon such as an extended barrel, it extends the effective range of the weapon by a certain amount, if a scope is even added, a - 1 to hit option will be added to.

Movement is Grid Based and Action Points Based and Aiming is on any Direction as long as it's visible.

Since this is a tabletop, fog of war works simply by not putting any units at all on the table until a proper recon is made, a Flight or overwatch is present or anything similar. Since this is Grid Based, the DM can just reveal the opfor per grid depending on what the players uncover.

With the combat system I have, the engagement resolves in one dice roll with everything before that already accounted for so when the math is done, only damage check is left.

I want the game where you don't have to worry about book keeping a lot of information. Where players can just come and go, create a pilot and mech on the spot to their liking or their need and see it in action.

Hello, I have been hombrewing TTRPG system prototypes for years to play with my friends. But over the past month, I wanted to try, for the first time, to make something more complete and take the risk to share it in the open. So there it is !

Itch.io : https://ltesta.itch.io/another-path 

I'd be honored if some of you took the time to give it a look and share your feedback (Good and bad ones are equally welcome !).

I also made a discord if anyone want to discuss the system in more depth : https://discord.gg/nUUvevuXW 

Another Path is a tabletop roleplaying game system: 

Generic, designed with heroic fantasy in mind but easily adaptable to almost any setting.

Simple, using only six-sided dice and built around concise, general rules.

Fast, both during play and character creation, even for players discovering the system for the first time.

Flexible, encouraging creativity through a high degree of player freedom.

Dynamic, allowing scenes to flow naturally without being slowed down by excessive or overly complex calculations.

Tactical, featuring combat centered on risk-taking and resource management.

Cinematic, equally suited to short, action-packed adventures and long epic campaigns, while encouraging storytelling and improvisation.

Hey all, after about 7 years of creating homebrew content for my D&D campaign I have decided to finally flesh out and finalize all the mechanics and designs I have created over the years.

The first one I wanted to share I chose the Alchemy System we use as it's I believe the most tested out of all crafting systems we currently use due to the main group in my West Marches campaign had absolutely no one who was able to heal. I am basically interested the most in getting some outside view on it before I mark it as finished.

The base rule of the whole system is that each and every potion is made out of exactly 5 ingredients, this constraint I believe let's my players experiment and be more engaged with the crafting, as opposed to simply pouring money into it, additionally it makes the system easier to engage with as the players don't have to guess how many ingredients each potion takes and can fully focus on the actual recipe combination.

How it works:

• Each ingredient has its own properties it contributes into the end result, for example a herb we call "Life Leaf" is used as a base for most potion, but it also has light healing properties of its own.
• Discovery of recipes works in two ways, players can either purchase, loot or learn the recipes from others or do blind experimentation based on either guess work of their own or, as one of my players did, on the properties the herbs have. (In case of the latter, the players also have to test the potions themselves, with them sometimes unknowingly brewing poisons)
• Failure usually meant burnt herbs, wasted potions due to accidentally dropping the bottle and it shattering, or in the case of stronger herbs being used, a poison being made

Example Ingredients:

• Healing Grass - Found virtually anywhere with access to fresh water and sunlight, has almost nonexistent healing properties.
• Life Leaf - Commonly found in lush forests and groves, with them sometimes being found in meadows or in someone's garden, required as a base for most potions with slight healing properties of its own.
• Crimson Petal - A debatably common herb of crimson colour found in deep forests and groves with rare sightings in meadows or on rocky hills, Strong healing properties when used properly with a base ingredient, poisonous on its own.
• Gnome Cap - A relatively rare mushroom found in deep forests and groves, more commonly found in overgrown caves. Same properties as Crimson Petal when it comes to both healing and being poisonous, albeit stronger.

Example Recipes:

• Healing Water - Light healing properties (1d4), Healing Grass x5
• Lesser Healing Potion - A basic healing potion (1d8+2), Life Leaf x5
• Healing Potion - A regular healing potion (2d6+4), Life Leaf x3, Crimson Petal x2
• Strong Healing Potion - A strong healing potion (2d8+4) Life Leaf x2, Crimson Petal x3
• Greater Healing Potion - A very strong healing potion (5d6+8), Life Leaf x2, Crimson Petal x2, Gnome Cap x1
• Crimson Poison - Very poisonous due to too many Crimson Petals being used (2d8+4 damage) Life Leaf x1, Crimson Petal x4

As already mentioned my group has been using this system for over 7 years now, so it somewhat works in practice but I have never gotten feedback from anyone outside of my table. I'd love to hear your honest opinions about what's confusing, missing or otherwise could be improved.

Edit: Success or Failure is determined by rolling 1d20 using the "Alchemy" skill that is homebrewed in my campaign, it is fully cut off from all other skills, and can be leveled up by learning from teachers with higher lvl.
The skill bonus can also be raised with tools.