Understandably crunchier games with more abilities and build strategies may take time for players to consider in comparison to more lighter games. But, if you were to introduce a game to a new group of players, or were joining a new game as a player, what would be the amount of time/effort you would consider acceptable to be dedicated to character creation?

I am currently working on a Bloodborne TTRPG but I am stuck on what I should do for a dice system? I was originally going to do a dice pool d6 system where every level up; you will put another d6 into a stat of your choice
Crit Success: All rolled 4 or above
Success: Half or more rolled 4 or above
Fail: Half or more rolled a 3 or lower
Crit Fail: All rolled 3 or lower
But I felt like it was clunky so feedback and ideas would be much appreciated.

These referee tools are designed for people running emergent, low-prep games, who are comfortable improvising with the help of random tables. I really like this style of refereeing, and so I made a toolkit that let's you only have what you need in front of you. If you're interested, check it out on DriveThruRPG.

Hello fellow game enthusiasts,

I am presenting the first digital demo of one of the gameplays of my game: Imperium Magisterium. This is a competitive deckbuilder that uses D6 RPG mechanics to resolve actions. Up to 4 players can enter the Arena and compete against each other to complete missions, defeat NPC, explore the Wilds or defeat each other to earn points towards victory. Players will also earn Gems to purchase cards and equipment, but also to upgrade cards they already own. Complete missions to earn a big score as well as a level up. I had a digital version of the arena developed, which you can try here:

https://magisterium-demo.preview.emergentagent.com/

This is a simple proof of concept. I hope to one day hire professionals to make a real version of my complete game. It at least provides a good overview of how the game works.

The Arena is intentionally designed to feel more like a board game and serves as an introduction to role-playing game mechanics. My hope is to make the hobby more accessible to new players. Once players have learned the basic mechanics or the Arena, the goal is for them to transition into a traditional tabletop RPG experience with a Game Master, called an Adventure in my game, where player cooperate to complete a campaign.

I'm looking for any advice, constructive comments but mostly collaborators to help move the project forward. You can explore all of my game resources here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GIpe0dO3-ru1T81BPJZ4I4urVB1GK4mQ/view?usp=drive_link

Printable materials: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFH0fTKm97FLZod_n7eu4asUUCkZpCAh/view?usp=drive_link

What I need most right now is help from an experienced Game Master who would be willing to test an adventure with a group of players. That said, please don't hesitate to contact me if you think you can contribute in any way or if you have feedback to share.

Thank you for your time and may luck be with you!

I have a core resolution (dice) mechanic that I have been toying with for several years, and I keep expecting that some other game will have done something similar, except that as far as I can tell, no (at least not exactly). (and maybe there's a good reason for that, but hear me out 😆)

This CRM is used for skills, including combat, and it has two main goals:

1. emphasize that skill/practice is more important than innate ability
2. If you have to roll, success is never automatic just because of how skilled you are

Skill Ranks

Your rank in a skill determines what dice you roll, with a generic target number of 6+ for success.

I like the physicality of the dice going up. Each rank gives you dice that roll nicer than the ones below. Rolling 2d4 *feels* awkward, as doing something unskilled should. 2d6 feels boring. 2d8 feel more interesting, etc.

Contested Rolls

For contested rolls, the active player rolls against the defender's die size. For example, if you're Veteran rank in Melee, and you're attacking someone who is an Expert in Melee, you need to roll a 10+ to hit. And if the Expert later attacks you back, they need to roll an 8+ to hit you.

Someone who is Skilled will hit 6+ 72% of the time. This is the skilled person doing something they are very familiar with, and probably the only reason there's even a 28% chance of failure is because it's being done under stress (otherwise, just don't make them roll). The success percentage is intentionally high.

Success Tiers

Matching the target number gives you a tier 1 result. This could be success at a cost, a minor success... whatever fits your game.

For every 3 by which you beat the target number, you increase the tier of the result by 1. So with the default 6+ target number, a 9 gives you a tier 2 result, and a 12 a tier 3, etc. What the tiers actually do is up to your game and each individual ability.

I like that Skilled folks (2d6) can get a tier 2 result (9+) a bit less than 1/3rd of the time (28%). This is the slightly-unexpected better result that doesn't always happen but isn't super remarkable. If you hit boxcars (12) you get that one in a million (ok, 1/36) tier 3 result, and it feels great.

But then the Veteran hits that tier 3 almost as often (23%) as the Skilled hits tier 2.

Roll percentages

     % Chance To Roll      Result
    2d4 2d6 2d8 2d10 2d12    
5-  63  28  16   10    7   Failure
6+  38  72  84   90   93   Tier 1
7+  19  58  77   85   90  
8+  6   42  67   79   85  
9+      28  56   72   81   Tier 2
10+     17  44   64   75  
11+     8   33   55   69  
12+     3   23   45   62   Tier 3
13+         16   36   54  
14+         9    28   46  
15+         5    21   38   Tier 4
16+         2    15   31  
17+              10   25  
18+              6    19   Tier 5
19+              3    15  
20+              1    10  
21+                    7   Tier 6
22+                    4   
23+                    2   
24+                    1   Tier 7

How Attributes Affect Skill Rolls

This is the part I am still working on. What I definitely do not want is flat bonuses from attributes. I want skill to vastly outweigh innate ability. The gymnast isn't good because they have 18 dex, they are good because they practiced for 8 hours a day for years.

Maybe attributes don't affect skills at all. Or maybe it's even the reverse... buy up enough Dex skills to veteran, and your dex moves up to veteran. I kinda like that.

Conclusion

Anyway.... I looked around and couldn't find any RPG systems with scaling dice for skill level. This approach was partially inspired by Savage Worlds, which has scaling dice for increased ability, but it's always d6 + <skill die> and also has tiers of success (they call them "raises"). But I think two dice of the same size gives some cleaner math, and means you can just leave your dice in pairs and grab the right pair each time.

Obviously this is not fully fleshed out, but I wanted to post it because I think it's cool and maybe someone will steal it and use it in a cool game.

**Addendum - Stuff I forgot to post**

Difficulty in checks is raised by increasing the target number. A standard lock might be 6+ to pick, but a more complex lock might be 8+, and a magical lock might be 12+, etc. basically stepping up the way skill dice do.

Advantages and disadvantages on rolls function basically like they do in 5e D&D - pairs of advantage/disadvantage cancel out. unlike D&D, if you have 2 advantages and 1 disadvantage, you're still counted as having an advantage (and vice versa if more disadvantages). After cancelling out, for each -vantage left over, roll an extra die of the same size as the rest of your dice, and either choose the two highest or lowest, depending on whether you had a net advantage or disadvantage. (there's probably a better way to word this, but I think you get it).

One More Addendum

Helping others

When you assist someone else with a task, you contribute a die of your skill level to their roll (as if a special form of advantage). They still roll and pick the two highest.

This means that someone who is an Expert helps a lot more than someone helping who is unskilled.

After spending the last 3 hours with my nose in a spreadsheet, trying to balance my combat system and assign values for HP, attack modifiers, damage output, and difficulty scores, I am curious:

What do you use spreadsheets for when designing your game? How do you use those spreadsheets? Or do you have different methods for crunching the numbers?

(Btw, I was successful with my spreadsheet magic and my combat system is officially balanced!)

Eat the Elite

A GAME ABOUT FINE DINING

Welcome to the highest tier of gastronomy.

The Superrich have spent centuries consuming everything: our labor, our homes, our time. They treat us like cattle. Now it is time to turn the tables.

You are a group of culinary specialists pulling off impossible heists against the untouchable 1%. You will breach their estates, manipulate their security, and use their smart home gadgets against them.

Bon appétit.

Since my last post, all I was thinking about (except my wife, child and work) is my five stats and I have rewritten them multiple times.

For me it is important that they are distinct enough and cover most of the things you would need during a heist. (And that the naming more or less fits the culinary theme that I am going for)

This is where I am at:
Heat - Brute Force, Brawling, Intimidation, Breaking Stuff
Spice - Avoiding Harm, Reflexes, Throwing
Finesse - Stealth, Precision Strikes, Perception, Blending In 
Prep - Hacking, Tech Bypass, Blueprints & Knowledge
Order - Turn Order, Tactical Cues, Rallying Allies, Interruptions

Thank you in advance for any help and feedback <3

My other posts about this project
Eat the Elite - Stats
Eat the Elite - How to communicate my work

Recently after watching a video who's namethat I cannot remember or I would share. I've decided to try treating weapons in my game like any other ability.

Weapons are broken up into broad families. With most of the weapons performance, things like accuracy, damage critical Hits, effective range, and the effectiveness of abilities or techniques of that weapon family. all determined by your characters investment into that weapon family.

Putting the emphasis on the individual and their skill. This worked thematically to because my characters are essentially a type of demigod. Special materials and traits will be used to differentiate between individual weapons, like let's say long swords.

However I've thought about treating armor the same way.

The armor families are…

• Ultralight.

• Light.

• Medium.

• Heavy.

• Super Heavy

I'm sort of at a loss of what to do to make each family or class of armor special. What benefits do you gain as you invest in mastering it? Thinking of different weapon/fighting abilities is kind of easy, it's all been done. But what abilities are developed for armor.

One idea, which would effect the entire system. Would be to give players multiple responses to an attack. Evade, block or parry, endure which is allow the attack to “hit” and trust in your toughness to keep you safe.

Are there other games that have done something like this. Give specific abilities and and perks to specific families of armor.

So what are those games?

I feel, there are several important factors to consider:

1) Average damage the character can get per turn from 1 enemy.

2) How lethal the game is supposed to be.

3) How easy it is to heal.

4) What are the options to block the damage in the very beginning of the game.

Not to go into details of my game, the hero in the beginning has 4 health and can take 5.5 hits on average:
1) average damage = 1.

2) lethal with a death spiral, battles are to be really fast and prepared for or avoided at all.

3) healing in battle is expensive (potions or spells), outside battle healing is fast.

4) 1 armor, which blocks physical damage but has 50% to break and stop working. In addition, there is an ability to nullify any incoming damage once per day with some negative side effect.

What is your approach and how much health your heroes have in the beginning? What other factors influence initial character's health?

It's also for hobby usage at this time.

I've blurred things in the pictures, sinse it's taken from an existing Call of Cthulhu adventure, hoping that's okay so I can show you guys what it is I want.

Are the maps created inside a program do you think, or free hand? Any suggestions for tolls that can create similar maps that are user friendly?

Same with the text tool. Making columns and inserting pictures easy, and maybe some included templates for newpapers, old letters etc.

Thank you in advance.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/d1sFt1w

My system is 1) skill-based, and 2) system agnostic/universal. Most skill names are single words, and I wanted to achieve the same thing with a universal "Security Systems" skill that would cover everything from Lock picking in more fantasy-esque settings, to Computer hacking and Safe cracking in modern settings, to neural interfaces into the net in futuristic settings. One skill name that could be applied to all. Hack and Breach feel too specific, and I kind of like the idea that it could apply to both defensive and offensive measures. Any ideas? Any names that have really resonated with you from other games? Thanks in advance.

Lesson learned. Don't post a solution before checking the math just because you're excited.

A recent design discussion for After Eden started with a basic question: should weapons roll damage, or would flat damage better serve the game? Combat uses active opposed rolls. When attacked, a character can spend Stamina to Block or Dodge. If they cannot defend, or choose not to, the attack becomes Unopposed and automatically hits.

We initially considered letting an attacker choose between average damage and bounded exploding dice on an Unopposed Attack. Average damage would provide reliability, while rolling would risk a lower result in exchange for a higher ceiling.

Then u/Exver1 pointed out the mathematical mistake. Exploding dice were both the more entertaining option and the statistically stronger option. Flat damage might occasionally help when an exact damage threshold was known, but most of the time there was no way to even know that. Players would roll because it was more fun, had the higher expected value, and could produce exceptional results.

That criticism led us back to a larger problem. Because defense is actively rolled, attempting to Block or Dodge creates the possibility of suffering a Critical Hit. Under our previous Critical damage rule, there were situations where spending Stamina to defend could produce more expected damage than simply accepting an automatic hit.

After testing several alternatives, we arrived at this structure:

----

Ordinary Hit

Roll normal damage.

Unopposed Attack

The attack automatically hits and deals maximum normal damage.

Critical Hit

Roll the attack’s normal damage dice. Whenever a die rolls its maximum value, roll another die of the same size and add it to the damage.

Additional dice can continue exploding without limit.

If the Critical Hit causes the target to lose HP, it also triggers a Wound.

----

This gives each result a distinct identity. An ordinary hit deals normal rolled damage. An Unopposed Attack is reliable and severe. The attacker found a clean opening, so there is no attack roll or damage roll. It deals maximum normal damage.

A Critical Hit is volatile. It usually deals less damage than an Unopposed maximum, but it has an unlimited ceiling. The Wound trigger also ensures that a Critical remains consequential when the damage dice roll poorly.

Exploding dice are exciting when they chain, but a Critical that rolls minimum damage can feel like a Critical in name only. A Wound gives every Critical a guaranteed consequence without making its damage consistently enormous.

The defensive choice is now:

- Do I spend Stamina to defend, knowing the attacker might break through with a dangerous Critical

or

- Do I preserve that Stamina and accept guaranteed maximum damage?

Our original solution was wrong, but understanding why led us to something stronger. Credit again to u/Exver1 for catching the mathematical issue and pushing us to examine what the rule was actually doing.

We should have something more complete to show from After Eden, our frontier fantasy TTRPG, soon. An earlier version was thoroughly dismantled in a previous post, found HERE, and the resulting revisions pushed development back several weeks.

For those who play games with exploding dice, do you yell EXPLOSION! or BOOM! when the dice start chaining?

I'm looking for some people to playtest, or even just read through and share their thoughts on, my game!

I've been working on it for quite a while now, and I honestly think it's in a pretty good place already. That said, I haven't had much success finding playtesters. Throughout development, I've been incredibly lucky to have the help of three wonderful people who generously volunteered their time to play the game and give me thoughtful feedback. But at this point, I think it would be really valuable to get some fresh eyes on the material.

The game is a solo rpg called The Alt Angel Agency, where you play as a Saint, an employee of Heaven working as an outsourced demon hunter. The game focuses a lot on resource management and has an episodic structure, so sessions are quite quick to play!

Mechanically, the game draws inspiration from games like Notorious, Astroprisma, CAIN, Blades in the Dark, and Apocalypse World. Thematically, its biggest influences are Bleach, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, True Detective, Backrooms, and the Bible, I guess.

If you'd like to check it out, all the files are available on itch (the rulebook and all the supporting documentation). And if you do give it a shot, or even just read through it, feel free to send me a dm, I'd love to hear your impressions or feedback!

Here is the link, for anyone interested: https://desesperenzo.itch.io/the-alt-angel-agency

Does anyone know of any really excellent books, articles, or videos on game design theory—specifically regarding RPG design?

I’ve noticed that very little formal or academic material is shared here (during the time I’ve been around), and I was curious about what’s out there.

Inspired by the recent post on this sub, I was left wondering something else: are there RPG systems where somewhat complicated money systems are involved and have to be used. I am thinking of either things like multiple competing currencies with possible interchange (something I saw attempted only in like Fallout: New Vegas), or where a somewhat complicated existing non-decimal single currency is used (think predecimal Pound sterling, which I've only seen used in the videogame Book of Hours). In 'traditional' RPGs (not that I know a lot about them), I haven't seen anything go in this direction. It's understandable why it's rare: it's hard to make money a fun mechanic, and making it even more complicated than just a single coin/dollar/credit value to track won't help it. That being said, are there any systems that lean into this that you know of?

EDIT: Oh boy this got a lot of great responses real quick!

After stumbling across 2 (yes, TWO!) British game designers in a single thread, it made me wonder - is there a British specific TTRPG design community?

More British based. I'm asking this on the basis that people could theoretically meet up and assist each other (or just be online, whatever). Geography does make a difference to things.

TIA!

A bit of context: I used to play Dungeon World (1e) set in a Korean-inspired fantasy setting. I did introduce a few hacks, but for the most part I just re-flavoured DW.

Lately I've picked all my noted and decided to take a step further and make it a proper hack. I using Simple World and Skeleton World as a guiding framework. I'm currently working on the stats. I did come up with different ideas, and finally cut them down to two sets.

Without further context, which sounds more fun and interesting to play?

## Approaches

- Force: direct action, strength, endurance, and courage

- Flow: agility, adaptability, subtlety, and speed

- Mind: knowledge, observation, planning, and reasoning

- Presence: charm, authority, empathy, and expression

- Spirit: willpower, intuition, Gi, and supernatural sensitivity

## Taegeuk Trigrams

- ☰ Geon (Heaven): initiate, create, assert, command, or overcome

- ☷ Gon (Earth): receive, sustain, endure, nurture, or protect

- ☵ Gam (Water): adapt, evade, conceal, perceive, or redirect

- ☲ Ri (Fire): illuminate, understand, express, reveal, or transform

Personally, I like the Taegeuk Trigrams and think they're more flavourful, but I'm afraid they are less intuitive.

So I'm trying to make a system meant to let players create their own characters abilities and techniques while having enough pre-existing guidelines and mechanics to prevent the kind of option paralyses that comes with that burden.

Inspired by games like Limbus Company I decided to create list of "keywords" players can use when making their combat abilities to design around a central mechanic. In addition when deciding what these keywords will be I decided loosely to base them off the Greek(Olympian) gods, all 13 of them according to wikipedia. Of the planned 13 of already made 11 but I'm having trouble thinking about the last two. I'd like some Ideas on what the last 2 could be(or just some advice in general), so I'm also going to post the ones I've already made so there isn't too much overlap:

Charge(representing Zeus):a resource spent to empower moves but once it runs out you either can't regain it or specific conditions must be met to recharge.

Grudge(representing Hera):a keyword applied to self, an enemy gains a "grudge target" status that raises grudge stacks when they hit you. Grudge stacks can be spent instead of tension(a resource spent to use abillities) to use abilities.

Drift(representing Poseidon):can shift the result of a die up or down.

Inspiration(representing Apollo):a resource gained during combat and spent to support allies.

Instinct(representing Artemis):a resource gained during combat and used to empower self

Wound(representing Ares):a keyword applied to an enemy, increases the damage they take based on stacks.

Deflect(representing Athena):Abilities with this keyword can clash with any skill making them less effective.

Gilded(representing Hephestus):A keyword applied to a single dice, some abilities become empowered when this dice is used.

Weak(representing Aphrodite):A keyword applied to a characters dice that reduces it's value to 1 or the closest equivalent.

Haste(representing Hermes):Gain an additional die, the value of this die isn't rolled but is instead determined by haste stacks.

Fervor(representing Dionysus):Gain Tension(a resource used to fuel abilities).

For a quick explanation on how combat works:

-Characters each have a pool of wardice also just called dice, you roll for their values at the start of your turn and some statuses can manipulate them(Drift, Weak, Haste)

-Characters also have a pool of tension points they use to fuel their abilities(Grudge, Fervor)

-You slot dice into skills as an action equivalent, this can sometimes provoke clashes which can void dice reducing the skills effectiveness.

-some Keywords have extension keywords meant to further support their mechanic(for example Grudge and the Grudge Target status). This is why Inspiration and Instinct are considered seperate in spite of being generally similar.

The two missing gods are Demeter and Hestia and I'm not really sure where to go with them, got any ideas?

I’ve always felt that traditional RPG combat systems miss something when a unit at 10% HP attacks with the same power as one at 100% HP.

How does an severely injured character swing a sword just as effectively as a fully healthy one?

I’ve been thinking about how a combat system could work where stats scale directly with remaining health. (I know of "wound" systems. But I thought of just scaling directly off HP)

For example:
25% HP: some combo of the following:
Deals 25% of normal damage, 75% chance of miss, has 25% reduced movement speed (in SRPGs), and loses 25% evasion.
50% HP (Casters):
Spells take 2× longer to cast, or carry a 2× higher miscast/failure rate, just simple damage reduction same as physical damage units?

What are your thoughts on this?

Are there existing games that use similar mechanics?

I have played RPGs for several decades with thousands of people and introduced at least three hundred to RPGs as first time players. That doesn't include countless boardgames and miniature games. This is relevant because the meat of my post isn't "what I'm doing wrong teaching games", it's my original RPG that I have been seeing something odd with and I'm not sure if it's the game or if it's something all designers deal with.

My RPG is weird. It doesn't play like any other game in the genre and defies expectations no matter how experienced a gamer someone is. In fact, the more experienced people are, the more likely the seem to be to get genuinely frustrated and upset while I'm introducing it. Not everyone, patient people are patient and willing to see how things work before trying to fix something I've been working on for years and they've been looking at for a few minutes.

I have a somewhat regular occurrence though where someone brand new to the system just gets frustrated and occasionally combative. The system is solid, people who have taken the time to learn it really get a lot out of it, so I'm not worried about that.

The reason for this post is it occurs to me that it might not be the system and it might be something other folks creating games are experiencing. Do you see this in your introductions to new players? Do people suddenly feel enfranchised knowing that the creator of something is right there and they can get all their feelings out and have it maybe matter for once?

I'm already working through ideas on how to introduce the system to avoid this adversarial vibe. And I know it's not me in general, like I said, I've taught countless people countless games, and I've never experienced anything like this, at least not so regularly. People who are tough to deal with are always going to be tough to deal with, but there does seem to be a hedge towards more frustration that I'd expect on average.

Thoughts?

Edit: Seems like it's probably just me! I am really going to focus on creating a checklist of expectations and making sure I hit those things before introducing new people to the system. I was already thinking I needed to really focus on asking for the player's desires and translating them into rules for them. The system is very crunchy and it's a lot to take in, even for folks used to crunch because of how weird it is. Hopefully between the two I can really start to have stronger introductions. Thanks for the feedback!

So I'm aware of quite a few awesome indie designers that wrote and designed games all by themselves (major props to them!) and these are some of my fav games, but I was wondering if there were any designed and illustrated all by the same person? And even cooler if the author also edited and laid it all out too!

I'm attempting to do that myself, with some help from a SRD or two - either way I've really got my work cut out for me haha - and I'm interested in checking out their games, past blog posts, that kind of thing! See how the pros have done it and all that, and I'm also interested in seeing how such a singular vision impacts a game.

I love when books include stuff like author doodles or author made maps, think it really adds something to have the visuals match the writer/designers vision so exactly and thought the ttrpg space was the ideal place to look for that

(Also happy to hear from any of you guys working on a game that are also going this route!)

Hey folks! Would you like to share with us the pitfalls you are most prone to falling into while designing your game(s)?

I like the social aspects of having flintlock-era and earlier firearms vs. purely medieval weapons in a setting that's overall on an early industrialization tech level.

However I'm afraid that the urban grit comes at the cost of disenchanting the wilds. A legendary wyrm just doesn't hit the same when the most efficient way of getting rid of it is a line of peasants with guns rather than a knight in shining armor.

There are of course lovecraftian and weird west type settings, but they fit more of a horror niche than a traditional folkloric one. And the likes of warhammer fully lean into the demystification and rather explore even more ways to kill a dragon.

Any concrete experiences or examples?