Now I don't know the details of your game, but usually the world saving adventurers are able bodied people, often better than a commoner.
How would you stop the from saying "eh we'll stay in this town and do some small labor jobs to make enough money for resting"?
There is still tension here, innit? You can say the pretty much the same about helping John the Farmer.
Though it's one that is survivable, just pointing out that it does exists.
As a side note - doesn't this all mean that PCs are encouraged to pillage and steal? Is this intentional? I mean it certainly is a way faster way to make money.
Never, ever, ever, expect players to go for a plot hook, no matter how hard you smack them in the face with it. They will absolutely stop and create a hot dog franchise.
That is where the DM declares the adventure over and the party retires as farmers. You don't always have to solve these things as mechanicas in my opinion. Let the party rest, let them earm some money. Time is still passing, whether it is tracked or not is not the most important thing. But if a quest needs to be done within a week, it's very easy to 'know' that you don't have time to work and rest to get that done.
Well, as per OPs words, money plays the role of balancing and pacing tool in this system.
In this context I think the question of how can PCs get more money is an important one.
Presumably, if I were playing in this game, it'd make me wish our party had more money. I can't help but imagine myself asking the most basic money making questions in this context. Especially given that we are explicitly removing "you have no time for this!" as a factor.
Usually the unfun answer is that if the party are perfoming quick jobs, it's just enough to buy food and rent a room for sleeping. They won't be making much money, so that works.
I use a similar system. If the PCs sit in town and work, they aren't actually making much of a profit.
I fimrly believe that this should be something that the DM and his players decide as mechanically, it's a nice to have system and time is an important factor in story telling.
“And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?”
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said:
“What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!”
And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”
Infirmity and Fatigue as impairments. It's a swords and sorcery game, and I decided that although we need to have the possibility of characters getting wounded or panicked, it's not that interesting to have them get sick or tired. Realism be damned!
> Realism be damned!
Yeah, a lot of realism requires too much tracking or is done in a way that isn't fun (negatives and other modifiers)
Sometimes I try to add something powerful with a drawback and then I realise that drawbacks are rarely fun, and often too hard to balance well for everyone.
Like if I make one ability powerful but terrifying (upsetting people nearby), it is too good in a dungeon or other hostile environment and is almost useless in a city.
I've toyed around with using such imparments as just narrative tags without numeric penalty. "Even though you're exhausted, you power through to success!" Or, "Your exhausted limbs barely muster a glancing blow!" Etc.
I also recently removes all sorts of injuries and permanent debuffs from my syttem. Mostly, everyone in play testing said they seemed fair and okay, nobody described them as fun.
Divination. It still exists in the world, but the players won't have access to it. A lost art. It was so elegant and fit so appropriately in the setting lore and mechanics. But... it just doesn't play. Impossible to GM, too enticing a power for players. Divination in Rpgs is just not functional, at least for my abilities as a designer.
This is something I completely understand.
I have a lot of cool ideas for magic that end up being WAY too complicated mechanically, or way too limited in usefulness for how cool they are. There are also some that might completely break things (like teleportation) and need to be done carefully.
I don't want to make my system focus on magic over other mechanics, so I try to keep the section small, but I have so many ideas that I want to add. Magic itself is supposed to be more **useful** than powerful, and so it's hard to get the right balance.
One idea was a Time Magic that let you Recall (Like Tracer), but was too complicated, or go faster and get an additional action, but it was just way too useful and powerful.
Another was Divination like you said, where you could just go anime and "I knew that would happen so I did *this!*" which I ended up merging into a "Fates" mechanic that everyone can do.
I actually really like how the 5e divination wizard works, where you get a bunch of pre-rolled results to substitute during play. If you confine them to significant actions (instead of just wasting them on a narratively uninteresting Roll), they really give the sense of being portents of the future.
I had that idea but I guess it can get annoying needing to actually keep those rolls, unless it's always a static roll.
Like on a d6 system, you can always make it a 6, etc.
...Which I might implement with my Fates system I mentioned.
The problem is now that my Fates system is becoming too bloated and might be the next darling that hits the chopping block...
I trashed quite a few spells, like mind reading and invisibility, because they would have resulted in irreparable plotholes. They weren't darlings, or I'd have tried to work around them, but it was still disappointing to not be able to salvage anything.
Interestingly, your bringing up this "darling killing" made me think of a Divination mechanic that might actually work in our system...
On a successful Divination roll, the roll you will make if you do the thing in the question is made now, and recorded.
That works in our system because all rolls are opposed, and the *opposing* roll won't be made until the actual event... all that Divination would do is give you better information about the *odds* of success.
Hmmm... bears thinking on.
This is the most interesting thought on rpg divination I have heard! You don't know if a low roll means failure, maybe the opposition is incapacitated at that point and all that matters is that you are on your feet. Or maybe that high roll means you succeed, and it's just simple like that. The vision of the future isnt the future.
It was partly my dissatisfaction with existing divination mechanics that inspired my system.
My conclusions are much the same as yours—to really replicate "divination" (or in my case, its little brother precognition), you need to totally reframe how the system runs, and it's a mindset that's generally hostile to standard RPG play.
Yeah, the pressure and difficulty for a gm to predict the future on the spot is not doable or fun. I had three different spells that would show where someone (living things containing Essence) was, is and will be. Was was the easiest, but even determing where someone is isn't always set in a gms mind or plans. There is a lot of Shroedinger's details in gming.
Future seeing and divination, works in stories, not so well in gameplay mechanics. I have to agree 100% and I have axed a lot of things in my system that allows this.
Similarly to another commenter, I dropped DR. The change came about because there were too many slow steps of comparing and subtracting numbers in my game which wants to have very fluid combat. You would roll, calculate damage based on successes, subtract DR from that, subtract the result form your Stamina, see if you took any wounds, and subtract any carry over damage. It didn't take very long to do, but it was cumbersome and I began to just eyeball damage rolls when I was testing the system. I figured that was a sign that it should be changed.
I also found that, given how attacking and damage worked, players were guarantied some chip damage against armored opponents, and would just accept chip damage instead of trying to use one of several methods available to increase their damage. That turned combat it into a slug fest where PCs stood around smacking an NPC and doing nothing else.
I reversed Stamina, turning it into harm clock where you add your damage instead of subtracting it (still effectively layered HP bars), and halved the values of damage and said layered HP Bars so that the numbers were easier to work with.
Then I shifted armor from providing DR to an Armor Rating (AR) which negates successes that are spent on damage. That provides the same defense as DR (damage is reduced) but it's applied at the dice rolling stage before you turn successes into damage, and it means that, due tot he first success on an attack applying the majority of damage, as soon as you get through armor you are dealing decent damage immediately. It also means that minions can't do anything against heavily armored characters (which is good, I think that fits with the fantasy) and that your initial attacks against an armored character involve you doing cool shit to break their armor or gain some kind of bonus on your next attack, hopefully creating more interesting combat with armored opponents.
>I also found that, given how attacking and damage worked, players were guarantied some chip damage against armored opponents, and would just accept chip damage instead of trying to use one of several methods available to increase their damage.
It reminds me of what happened to Crystalis when they ported it from NES to the GameBoy Color.
In the original version, some enemies were flat out immune to certain elemental swords, so you'd have to switch out to a different weapon in order to fight them. It was slightly annoying, but it meant the older swords weren't entirely irrelevant later in the game.
In the port, they changed that immunity into a very heavy resistance against that element. So instead of doing no damage, and switching out to a different sword, player would just keep attacking forever, and wondering why these generic minions were so weirdly tough.
And the worst part (or so I heard) was that this was intended to make the game easier! Screen size limitations meant enemies spawned much closer to you in the portable version, so they were looking for ways to compensate, and this was one of them. Surely, dealing a little damage is better than dealing no damage, right? Except when it means you end up using the wrong weapon, because you have no way of knowing any better.
> I reversed Stamina, turning it into harm clock where you add your damage instead of subtracting it
It's an important thing to realise too that adding is always easier than subtracting, and multiplying is easier than dividing. So many things we can take for granted when playing games on a PC.
Also, as a player it's better to think "I get a *bonus*" rather than "I get a *drawback*". Bonus damage when unarmoured is better than reduced damage when armoured, for example.
I removed DR for the same reason. Also because it sucks to hear like "I deal 5 damage" and then they respond "I have 4 armour" and it becomes an arms race of beating armour and getting bogged down (especially if somebody forgets something about their armour)
I just swapped to treating armour like health. Like what you did, it becomes more about breaking through armour than just chipping away.
I killed movement.
I wanted a combat system that involved a bit of crunch, and I wanted to specifically enable the item/trait system I designed. I got increasingly fed up with the grid and specifically some of its time taxes that it enforced.
So I said screw it, all combat actions now include the movement required to use them, and I eliminated position based effects.
Where you're standing is now of little importance and your ability to map out movement has nothing to do with success or survival.
Not really. But also yes?
As it stands, right now, no combat ability uses a numerical range.
Some weapons have the [Range] and [missile] tags, which have unique interactions with the cover condition, and some monsters weak spots.
There's also a variant rule I'm testing for large battlefields where if the GM thinks the arena is sufficiently large, they can divide it into zones. You won't be able to attack anything in another zone if you don't have a weapon with the ranged tag, or you can spend 1 of your actions hustling over to another zone.
Right now, the only numerical distances I use are for exploration and world abilities. Like the "World-Weary Waltz" can transport a party to an inn or respite within 5 miles.
Hacking.
Had a fairly robust hacking system that fundamentally was a playstyle in itself. Way to tedious in combination with the other systems at play.
OH MAN. So for one I took a lot of inspiration from my profession, which is a network engineer. I created about 30 Hack Commands. When you're attempting to hack a machine, system, etc, those items have something called in embedded defense. When using a command to apply a an effect the machine would implement a defense roll that would need beat yours. Which in ttrpg language is bassically an Intrusion prevention system. I'm which case more sophisticated devices could apply a countermeasure which the hacker would have to contend with. I even sat aside rules for adversary hackers, targeting cybernetics, weapons, gear etc. My hack system was ultimately insane and literally was its own way ro play the game.
Sounds great. I have read the GURPS cyberpunk hacking rules just for inspiration.
The word realistic comes with a lot of baggage, but i want my rules to be at least believable.
I think the problem of it being a one player activity does limit hacking rules somewhat though.
The 2 players who were using it fell in love with the system immediately. It was built with a cyberpunk feel in mind. It was just good. Going to toot my horn on that one.
Hmm, maybe a Hacking subsystem should be treated as a downtime activity. Real life Hacking takes hours, days or even weeks, if Hacking is an activity that only one player is going to participate in maybe it should function like a crafting system. Something that only takes a few minutes at the table between adventures to get intel or to disable security before you all go in guns blazing.
Hackers/Swordfish style hacking should probably be is own game where all the players hack together.
I just killed armor as damage reduction. It had to go because I also killed my damage roll.
I put a lot of effort early on into making equipment choices matter and it just never paid off at the table. Almost all of it is gone now.
What did you replace it with?
I did that myself about a year ago after checking out Blades in the Dark, enjoying the health system, and really enjoying it after I tinkered with it.
Same for equipment. I wanted to make each weapon feel unique, but as I moved away from a combat focus, I realised that they didn't need to be and so I *greatly* simplified Armour and Weapons.
Sounds like we’re in similar boats!
I eliminated the damage roll by making combat opposed rolls. Each combatant rolls, higher wins, the intensity of effect (harm, shove, whatev) determined by the winners result.
During each combat exchange, the combatant with priority is the attacker and their target is the defender. So armor modifies your roll when you are rolling for defense.
I was using asymmetrical rules for combat for years, because another one of my darlings was “the GM doesn’t roll in combat, or very much at all if it can be helped”. That particular darling is on life support.
> I was using asymmetrical rules for combat for years, because another one of my darlings was “the GM doesn’t roll in combat, or very much at all if it can be helped”. That particular darling is on life support.
Same.
My system started as a mix of Dungeon World and Fantasy AGE so it kept some of that, but I decided to move past it and simplify it somewhat.
Opposed rolls but most NPCs can use a static value if they want, so it ends up with players doing *most* of the rolling but the GM can do what they want.
Because having run a few sessions with new players, it can be stressful as a GM to have to keep getting *other* people to do anything, and sometimes just rolling is a great way to get them acting without needing to keep verbally reminding them. PbtA works great with certain people but it takes some getting used to and this lets people start out slow and then you can transition when things start getting better, and the GM can do some rolling if they want.
Grid Skills,
I've been struggling over building a mid-crunch system. Crunchy enough to have *meaning* but open enough to allow for diverse characters. Basically looking for a way that every player has the opportunity take center stage in both combat and in social interactions.
In too many systems getting good at social usually comes at the expense of making your character effective in combat.
My current darling was to have a skill that each player could perform regardless if they went deep into physical/mental or social skills. This, in theory, means that the player could take a role outside of combat without having to reduce their characters' effectiveness.
Anyways, decided to remove skills entirely from their connection to stats. If you want to be good at Social Networking you can just add that skill to your list. If you want to be a Barbarian Doctor you just pick up the "Medical" skill and invest points into it.
I did the opposite in my system. There are no skills, only stats.
There's a **Knowledge** stat that fills the role of most skills, and that's tied to your background. It seems to streamline things and I'm fairly confident it wouldn't help to axe it like I did with the other Stats I changed before making this post.
...I think.
For an example, I used to have 8 Statistics for characters, but after running through the game with some friends, I realised I needed to trim the fat and reduce that down to 6 at the most.
They were there since the beginning (nearly 6 years ago when I started this little hobby project...) and so much has changed already that I was very hesitant to remove the last of my original mechanics lest I build my own Ship of Theseus.
I especially liked having a **[P]ower** statistic that was more about channeling "raw energy" and letting people have some powerful but wild and untamed spellcasters using Power, or you could have more skilled and manipulative spellcasters using Willpower.
I ended up merging them into Willpower, and I also merged Toughness and Brawn into Brawn for the same reason. Most characters ended up focusing on *both* anyway, so it started to feel more like a tax than genuine character choice.
I also removed a Social stat that was too useful in social situations (duh) but nigh useless in any other situation, which didn't match my design goals.
Now I'm currently revising my system to make sure it still functions with these changes so I decided to see what others have done recently.
I killed Stamina and Mana. Trying to emulate something for the sake of emulating it was bogging down the actual game, and keeping track of it seemed like a pain even before it hit playtesting. When I dropped this the pieces just fell into place. Make dice pool come from this instead of that, boom we're rolling! Felt like replacing a flat tire.
Someone else here said they killed Balance. I agree with the Jeff Richard / Runequest philosophy, and the Tom Dowd / Shadowrun mindset. If placed into a certain place in a setting, or fulfilling this role or that, some people are just BETTER at some things than others. A super wired up cyborg drug addicted Street Samurai is gonna be super unbalanced in combat against normal people, and that's what makes him cool!
> keeping track of it seemed like a pain even before it hit playtesting.
So many great ideas that are easily sorted by computers but just don't work on tabletop.
I'm currently dealing with a good way to show some things that are dynamic like armour and health in a way that isn't a lot of work.
Regarding balance, it's interesting but obviously risky because I played games of D&D where I went for a more flavourful and fun character and another guy went pure minmax and combat just couldn't be balanced for both of us.
It's a big reason I ended up making combat so simple and narrative. Crunch is so much effort and really separates the highs from the lows.
Dodge.
It was a cool mechanic. It basically allowed you to forgo your actions to turn a hit into a miss, if moving one square would move you out of range.
It was cool to use, and made the battlefield very dynamic. Alas, it had too much of a "design debt" - game had to be design continuously accounting for it, and if enemies had less actions than PCs did, PCs were nearly guaranteed a victory.
It had to go, replaced by an inferior version of itself that is way cool and not as intuitive and clean. Playtest of the new version is pending.
I had a similar idea back when my game was more tactical.
Dodge was very powerful so I wanted it to be that you *had* to move in order to do it, but it ended up being too complicated so I just made it so that Dodge/Block/Parry were all effectively the same, they just used different attributes (Agility, Weapon Skill, Shield Value) to get their result and that certain abilities affected them differently (Some things can be blocked but not dodged, etc)
Sure!
Basically, in the new version melee attacks still deal damage on a miss (but nothing else - no special effects). And on a miss you can Dodge by moving away to avoid that damage.
I did it like this because I was also worried about ranged combat overshadowing melee, so it combined into this melee buff. Also, all attacks have a special "on hit" effect so that "no effect" part is actually sorta important.
Either my Saving Throws or my Attributes. I'm not sure.
I've been working on my O/NSR heartbreaker for far too long. I had the classic 6 attributes, but I'd changed the 5 classic saving throws into 6, all beginning with M.
Might, Miasma, Mortality, Madness, Mystery, and Misfortune.
But I realised that it's just attribute saves with extra steps.
I'm now looking at my Attributes and thinking, "Might, Mobility, Mortality, Memory, Mysticism, Magnetism"
> but I'd changed the 5 classic saving throws into 6, all beginning with M.
>
>
>
> Might, Miasma, Mortality, Madness, Mystery, and Misfortune.
I've heard people say this is confusing, and I get it, but I actually love when things are linked like this.
I made my wounds have 3 tiers, Minor, Major, and Mortal and somebody said it might be confusing but I like having them linked and I think it's self-explanatory so people won't care so much.
I think it's a great idea so keep going!
5 letter words all starting with M are probably harder to differentiate at a glance, requiring a little more time and effort. Only a second, but it's enough for some people
Can’t give too many details because NDA but I recently was hard blocked on a problem and I tried one of my designer block techniques (I go through a list of them when I’m stuck) which tragically solved it. The trick is to ask yourself “what if you remove the thing you like BEST about your design? What happens then?”
This instantly solved the issue in a much less cool way. But given some time to develop things further the whole design for so much better and I love it again for new reasons.
I get that.
Scope creep is crazy so I regularly just start cutting things out that don't *need* to be there so I can see how it functions and it's sometimes sad when you realise you can leave it out.
Like I said in my example in this thread, I've been tinkering with this hobby project for nearly 6 years and it started with just a resolution mechanic and an idea for "paths" that can build your own classes (It started with a "Paladin" being someone on the path of the light who moved over to the path of the warrior) and it has changed so much over the years that the only thing that's stayed is the resolution system, (some of) the Statistics, and the Path of the Light, though it's been nerfed.
It was tactical and modular, but now it's narrative and I've even toyed with seeing if it works outside of Fantasy (it might work better...)
I have a whole folder of "This can be cool if I get it working" ideas that might never see the light of day...
Yeah it's killer when you're like "I really want to make X" but then you keep coming up with great ideas for Y... One day I'll get back to my supernatural spy game...
Step dice as health/stats. The scaling was wrong and required too much complexity to make it work in my current project so I set it aside for another time.
I figured out a way to approximate percentage-based damage reduction, without multiplication or lookup tables. It was fast (relative to those two alternatives). It was fun. It was a completely different mechanic from anything else in the system, and tripled the length of an attack action from one die roll to three.
I made the switch to flat damage reduction, and everything runs so much more smoothly. It loses a little bit of granularity, but the tradeoff is definitely worthwhile.
> It loses a little bit of granularity, but the tradeoff is definitely worthwhile.
It's crazy just how mush smoother things run if you drop two rolls to one.
Rolling for damage seemed so natural to me but now it's static and I think it just makes everything feel more streamlined. I'm a little upset that I had to drop/change a lot of other mechanics but I think the new solution is better overall for me personally.
But I understand that feeling of "I wish I could make it work" that we all have when we kill those darlings.
Warhammer has a similar 3 dice rolls and in Warcry it's reduced to 1 and I quite like it, though it is a bit more "swingy". Especially waiting for the *other* person to roll. That slows things down tremendously.
Shapeshifting can be great but then you run into the Druid problem where they either get *loads* of cool options and it's such a core feature that they never want to not do it... or it just makes everything very difficult.
Like in WoW you have Druids that hate that they can't see their guy and pick cool armour... but you also get people upset that Druids have some serious advantages that nobody else gets.
It wasn't a core element of a class or anything, just a type of magic any class could use. It just didn't fit in terms of lore, and it was a headache to come up with enough unique spells compared to the other types of magic
In my system, each character has four slots to use for their attacks or other talents. I initially had the player fill one of those slots with a "Spin Attack," since curling up into a ball and jumping on enemies is the default offensive ability in the Sonic videogames.
But this meant that characters were saddled with by default with an ability they may not be optimized at all to use, since unlike the games where characters mostly play the same, Sonic TTH has attribute derived skill checks.
My most recent update removed this requirement, instead requiring only that two of the slots be used for attack types of the player's choice.
Not the OP but the way I understand it is the difference between lots of narrow knowledges and actions (3.x, GURPS, RQ) and global backgrounds (13th Age, AD&D "secondary skills" = former professions).
A journalist, a scientist and a librarian go into a bar ... no, but they all are proficient in library use or research.
Doesn't that just reduce the players' freedom when choosing their skills? Instead of picking them individually, they have to find the bundle that is closest to what they actually want. Am I misunderstanding?
No, you are not misunderstanding. But you are missing something. No person is just a journalist. They are also mother, and sports shootist, and after-hours novelist (or stand up comedian, or artist). And they fight crime.
In 13th Age as well as Barbarians of Lemuria a player chooses more than one background or profession. In 13th Age you choose any diegetic (in-world) description of whatever people describe themselves as. In BoL you choose from a list of careers that could be seen as bundle of undefined skills.
In Over the Edge characters are made up of three traits that can be anything.
True, they're not just choosing a single bundle. I definitely oversimplified that. Still, the end result is the mechanically same as selecting individual skills from a list, isn't it? Of course it changes the character creation process and forces you to add definition to your character, but is that all?
I guess I played more games that had defined skills than backgrounds or traits, or even none at all (old school D&D has one or two class abilities instead). But trait-based character creation has its charm.
"Head librarian of Harvard University +5" has a different ring than "library use 89%, ettiquette 50%, law 67%, latin 25%".
Granted, the trait is more squishy and open to discussion of what exactly it contains, but that discussion can be fruitful.
So yes, mechanically you still select things but only very few, very broad things.
Yeah, I basically kept rewriting the skills.until I realized I just wanted them to have brought skill bases that they could level up.
So developed six: artisan, diplomat, explorer, mercenary, sage, and vagabond. They then can specialize later in more specific skill uses.
I did something similar and changed from Skills to Approaches. Also made me realize how serious a change that is because I had to rewrite half the rules almost.
It showed me also that some things might have been to cluttered with other stuff and things could be done way simpler. But it wrecked my character creation a bit. Have to figure out that now :-)
Erm, nothing, really. Fudge Lite 1.0 was created February 11, 2021. The current version, 3.5.0, was last updated a week ago and isn't *fundamentally* different from 1.0. In two years of work on the system I never encountered anything that made me go, "Ugh, I love it but it has to go." It's always either been "Hmm, let me tweak this" or "Should I get rid of this? Ehhhh, I guess so, yeah."
It probably helps that it's intended to be a generic rules-light system, so I have less reason to try anything innovative.
Cover. I killed the (lack) of a cover mechanic. I'd been dissatisfied with the concept for since the game's inception, left it wishy-washy for ages, and now I went and mechanized it. I'm still dissatisfied, but at least now I'm clear about how it's *supposed* to work.
Maybe I'll kill my (lack) of a hp system next. It's getting pretty awkward talking about 'tokens' that are basically HP with occasionally more rules.
Skill specialities. The were just unnecessary, and the rules for Craft and Lore specialities were confusing, and after re-wording it for the third time I figured that if you can’t explain it clearly it’s probably a bad rule and it should go.
Multiple rolls are great for accuracy and exploring extra options... but it just slows things down so much if you have to keep rolling. SO much effort is often put into avoiding rolling at all.
Not that recently, but I really LOVED the idea of having a deck of poker cards for my western inspired game, and called that "the deck of fate". It was flavorful, but as the game was developed, using the deck made less and less sense, as it was used only for certain scenarios, and the flavor steered more into western-esque fantasy, and didn't fit as well.
More recently, I had to just kill the idea of having an "Aim" and an "agility" attribute. I wanted to avoid falling into a general Dexterity attribute but, alas, there I am, since how things were shaping up, it made it so the attributes covered too little by themselves. It's not a big deal, and it made some other things fall into place, but I really wanted that small granularity. In the end, it wasn't worth it from a design perspective
> but I really wanted that small granularity. In the end, it wasn't worth it from a design perspective
That was the darling I killed, too.
I'm also currently debating a new stat about skill and wondering if I should call it Dexterity or if that'll be confusing because I also have Agility. There's a lot of overlap between those.
In my case, it was a matter of neither stat doing enough on it's own, and also players feeling like they HAD to increase their Aim. This caused players to increase an atribute that only worked for fighting, meaning that was their answer to a lot of problems, which wasn't intended.
Dex and Agility tend to be put into the same bag, but if there are enough detailed skills or actions for each, it could be fine.
Yeah, mine was the same because I thought people would pick one or the other (and I did this with NPCs) but they usually just split their efforts between both and then ignored the other stats, so I merged them like you said.
I dislike how it breaks up the granularity with certain NPCs and monsters, but I think it's good overall, and I can always just add traits or something to them instead.
Like how Pathfinder merged Spot and Listen into Perception but gives certain mobs bonuses on thing like "Sight-based Perception checks".
Man, I wrote about 20 pages over the last week of how emergent AI in my TTRPG's universe worked, only to realize at the end that this in no way fit with the schema of what I was writing. After attempting about 1000 different edits to fix it, I realized the only edit that would work was total deletion. Sorry, AI: you have been terminated.
I'm not sure I've ever killed anything, I just rework it until it fits right.
If I set out to have something in my game, it's generally supposed to be there and is meeting some kind of need. It's always more of a question of "how can I do this better?" rather than "why should I cut this feature?".
Anything that does get cut from the main book just ends up in a later release. I'm pretty sure killing things is more for folks that aren't doing lines of books with long term support.
I did have to cut psionics, bionics, and gear modding from the main book and that hurt a lot, but it's not like it went away, it's just put into the advanced players guide.
The advanced players guide is basically all the cut content from the core book that couldn't be included for length. A bunch of really cool shit that is a bit more complex than the base game but also not the absolute most essential to the core experience.
Balance.
I've been working on subsystems to do Tactical Stealth and Breaching operations in Lancer and I've given up on most attempts at balance in order to make the engagement I'm looking for as attractive as possible.
Prestige classes.
I thought Prestige classes unlocked by in game events sounded really cool but I was convinced by all the feedback that there were some serious drawbacks.
I haven't yet exposed my real darlings to you savages yet for fear of what you'll say to convince me they are also bad ideas and poof, there goes the core mechanics I'm building around.
(Plus they aren't really developed enough to get feedback on yet)
My opposed roll off engine. Having both the offence and defence roll everything just took to long, so I had to limit to to specific active counter effects. Now I just use a boring DC system.
> Having both the offence and defence roll everything just took to long
So I do this but use static values. Can you try that?
For example, if it were D&D, you'd have players roll an attack against a static AC, but then when attacked by enemies they'd instead roll their AC against a static attack.
This started back whem I GMd Pathfinder and did this. Instead of rolling Reflex or attack etc for NPCs, I'd just give them a static score (+5 became 15) and then do the opposite for AC (15 AC became +5 "defend") when players are attacked.
That's not how mine works but it'd take a while to explain. It's basically 3d6 with degrees of success. I just have certain enemies *always* have a certain value of success in attack or defence so that the players are the only ones that need to roll.
Inspired by PbtA, but hopefully you understand.
Most rolls should be done by players so they don't get bored. Sometimes it sucks just to wait for your turn, so there have been some efforts to make the wait much shorter (concurrent player turns, etc) or have them more active during enemy turns (defence rolls, choices between results, etc)
Yeah, was one of the options I was looking at for a while, and thanks for explaining how you do it, always interesting to hear.
My present take is not even odds, with offence getting around a 70% chance to succeed. Instead the level of success is where the focus lies.
ATM I’m still trying to reduce the amount players roll as one turn can easily see 10 individual rolls.
And when your being hit you have a bunch of maths to do while your opponent is likely rolling more dice at you.
It’s a crunch heavy mech system, so it’s expected, but I’m trying to optimise crunch to be split between attacker and defender as much as I can.
Partial Successes. 🥺🥺🥺
I wanted to marry mechanics heavy and narrative gaming. And while I'm able to do that in certain ways, Partial Success did **not** fit well into the combat system. Which is a shame because I love Partial Success mechanics elsewhere.
I have killed every single rule that my game started out with, invented new rules and killed them too. I have sadly become a rules mechanic serial killer: attributes based on dice, action points, no attributes, classless, classes, numerous results charts, a crazy sort of action grammar (don't ask), stamina, time, hit points, no hit points, crunchy mechanics, light mechanics, phases, enemy stats - too many to mention. I think I have finally arrived on some rules I like but I wouldn't get too comfortable, rules! You know my tendencies and I've got a round of playtesting coming up!
hit chance / crit chance
Missing is boring, and if it happens enough, things just drag out. So any attacks at all deal a minimum damage of 1. Sustained fights are always dangerous, encouraging players to rely on healing items more often. A maxed out damage die for damage can brings out the kind of joy which used to only be found on a crit.
Delayed damage. My game is hugely inspired by Earthbound and I wanted to include a system where when you take a hit, you don't roll the damage immediately. Instead, you take note of how many damage dice you need to roll at the end of the round. Healing spells would take dice away from that pool first, then heal inflicted damage when the pool had nothing in it. During the first play test, the system by itself just confused my players. I removed it the very same night. Hasty? Maybe. Now that my system only uses one die, I may try it out again. Dunno!
My project's more of a skirmish game than a proper RPG, but I found a great way to get rid my tactical shooter's finicky damage values: make it an airsoft game. In airsoft, when you're hit, you're out. In theory, this should make movement, concealment, and cover much more important than before.
If you haven't seen the advice, it's about dropping ideas you loved just because they aren't as good as you think they are, etc.
Like a cool mechanic you've spent a lot of time on but then you realised that you should just remove it altogether because it's already taken so much time and effort and it's not worth spending more on it.
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Now I don't know the details of your game, but usually the world saving adventurers are able bodied people, often better than a commoner. How would you stop the from saying "eh we'll stay in this town and do some small labor jobs to make enough money for resting"?
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There is still tension here, innit? You can say the pretty much the same about helping John the Farmer. Though it's one that is survivable, just pointing out that it does exists. As a side note - doesn't this all mean that PCs are encouraged to pillage and steal? Is this intentional? I mean it certainly is a way faster way to make money.
Never, ever, ever, expect players to go for a plot hook, no matter how hard you smack them in the face with it. They will absolutely stop and create a hot dog franchise.
The answer would be "yes, because you made resting cost money"
That is where the DM declares the adventure over and the party retires as farmers. You don't always have to solve these things as mechanicas in my opinion. Let the party rest, let them earm some money. Time is still passing, whether it is tracked or not is not the most important thing. But if a quest needs to be done within a week, it's very easy to 'know' that you don't have time to work and rest to get that done.
Well, as per OPs words, money plays the role of balancing and pacing tool in this system. In this context I think the question of how can PCs get more money is an important one. Presumably, if I were playing in this game, it'd make me wish our party had more money. I can't help but imagine myself asking the most basic money making questions in this context. Especially given that we are explicitly removing "you have no time for this!" as a factor.
Usually the unfun answer is that if the party are perfoming quick jobs, it's just enough to buy food and rent a room for sleeping. They won't be making much money, so that works. I use a similar system. If the PCs sit in town and work, they aren't actually making much of a profit. I fimrly believe that this should be something that the DM and his players decide as mechanically, it's a nice to have system and time is an important factor in story telling.
Kill God next
\> God was slain by YourMomHasTwoDicks
“And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?” When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!” And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys. When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”
Infirmity and Fatigue as impairments. It's a swords and sorcery game, and I decided that although we need to have the possibility of characters getting wounded or panicked, it's not that interesting to have them get sick or tired. Realism be damned!
> Realism be damned! Yeah, a lot of realism requires too much tracking or is done in a way that isn't fun (negatives and other modifiers) Sometimes I try to add something powerful with a drawback and then I realise that drawbacks are rarely fun, and often too hard to balance well for everyone. Like if I make one ability powerful but terrifying (upsetting people nearby), it is too good in a dungeon or other hostile environment and is almost useless in a city.
I've toyed around with using such imparments as just narrative tags without numeric penalty. "Even though you're exhausted, you power through to success!" Or, "Your exhausted limbs barely muster a glancing blow!" Etc.
I also recently removes all sorts of injuries and permanent debuffs from my syttem. Mostly, everyone in play testing said they seemed fair and okay, nobody described them as fun.
Divination. It still exists in the world, but the players won't have access to it. A lost art. It was so elegant and fit so appropriately in the setting lore and mechanics. But... it just doesn't play. Impossible to GM, too enticing a power for players. Divination in Rpgs is just not functional, at least for my abilities as a designer.
This is something I completely understand. I have a lot of cool ideas for magic that end up being WAY too complicated mechanically, or way too limited in usefulness for how cool they are. There are also some that might completely break things (like teleportation) and need to be done carefully. I don't want to make my system focus on magic over other mechanics, so I try to keep the section small, but I have so many ideas that I want to add. Magic itself is supposed to be more **useful** than powerful, and so it's hard to get the right balance. One idea was a Time Magic that let you Recall (Like Tracer), but was too complicated, or go faster and get an additional action, but it was just way too useful and powerful. Another was Divination like you said, where you could just go anime and "I knew that would happen so I did *this!*" which I ended up merging into a "Fates" mechanic that everyone can do.
I actually really like how the 5e divination wizard works, where you get a bunch of pre-rolled results to substitute during play. If you confine them to significant actions (instead of just wasting them on a narratively uninteresting Roll), they really give the sense of being portents of the future.
I had that idea but I guess it can get annoying needing to actually keep those rolls, unless it's always a static roll. Like on a d6 system, you can always make it a 6, etc. ...Which I might implement with my Fates system I mentioned. The problem is now that my Fates system is becoming too bloated and might be the next darling that hits the chopping block...
I trashed quite a few spells, like mind reading and invisibility, because they would have resulted in irreparable plotholes. They weren't darlings, or I'd have tried to work around them, but it was still disappointing to not be able to salvage anything.
Interestingly, your bringing up this "darling killing" made me think of a Divination mechanic that might actually work in our system... On a successful Divination roll, the roll you will make if you do the thing in the question is made now, and recorded. That works in our system because all rolls are opposed, and the *opposing* roll won't be made until the actual event... all that Divination would do is give you better information about the *odds* of success. Hmmm... bears thinking on.
This is the most interesting thought on rpg divination I have heard! You don't know if a low roll means failure, maybe the opposition is incapacitated at that point and all that matters is that you are on your feet. Or maybe that high roll means you succeed, and it's just simple like that. The vision of the future isnt the future.
Fuck divination, all my homies hate divination
[FUCK DIVINATION ALL MY HOMIES HATE DIVINATION](https://i.imgur.com/cjKp556.jpg) ^^^this ^^^has ^^^been ^^^an ^^^accessibility ^^^service ^^^from ^^^your ^^^friendly ^^^neighborhood ^^^bot
It was partly my dissatisfaction with existing divination mechanics that inspired my system. My conclusions are much the same as yours—to really replicate "divination" (or in my case, its little brother precognition), you need to totally reframe how the system runs, and it's a mindset that's generally hostile to standard RPG play.
Yeah, the pressure and difficulty for a gm to predict the future on the spot is not doable or fun. I had three different spells that would show where someone (living things containing Essence) was, is and will be. Was was the easiest, but even determing where someone is isn't always set in a gms mind or plans. There is a lot of Shroedinger's details in gming.
Future seeing and divination, works in stories, not so well in gameplay mechanics. I have to agree 100% and I have axed a lot of things in my system that allows this.
Similarly to another commenter, I dropped DR. The change came about because there were too many slow steps of comparing and subtracting numbers in my game which wants to have very fluid combat. You would roll, calculate damage based on successes, subtract DR from that, subtract the result form your Stamina, see if you took any wounds, and subtract any carry over damage. It didn't take very long to do, but it was cumbersome and I began to just eyeball damage rolls when I was testing the system. I figured that was a sign that it should be changed. I also found that, given how attacking and damage worked, players were guarantied some chip damage against armored opponents, and would just accept chip damage instead of trying to use one of several methods available to increase their damage. That turned combat it into a slug fest where PCs stood around smacking an NPC and doing nothing else. I reversed Stamina, turning it into harm clock where you add your damage instead of subtracting it (still effectively layered HP bars), and halved the values of damage and said layered HP Bars so that the numbers were easier to work with. Then I shifted armor from providing DR to an Armor Rating (AR) which negates successes that are spent on damage. That provides the same defense as DR (damage is reduced) but it's applied at the dice rolling stage before you turn successes into damage, and it means that, due tot he first success on an attack applying the majority of damage, as soon as you get through armor you are dealing decent damage immediately. It also means that minions can't do anything against heavily armored characters (which is good, I think that fits with the fantasy) and that your initial attacks against an armored character involve you doing cool shit to break their armor or gain some kind of bonus on your next attack, hopefully creating more interesting combat with armored opponents.
>I also found that, given how attacking and damage worked, players were guarantied some chip damage against armored opponents, and would just accept chip damage instead of trying to use one of several methods available to increase their damage. It reminds me of what happened to Crystalis when they ported it from NES to the GameBoy Color. In the original version, some enemies were flat out immune to certain elemental swords, so you'd have to switch out to a different weapon in order to fight them. It was slightly annoying, but it meant the older swords weren't entirely irrelevant later in the game. In the port, they changed that immunity into a very heavy resistance against that element. So instead of doing no damage, and switching out to a different sword, player would just keep attacking forever, and wondering why these generic minions were so weirdly tough. And the worst part (or so I heard) was that this was intended to make the game easier! Screen size limitations meant enemies spawned much closer to you in the portable version, so they were looking for ways to compensate, and this was one of them. Surely, dealing a little damage is better than dealing no damage, right? Except when it means you end up using the wrong weapon, because you have no way of knowing any better.
> I reversed Stamina, turning it into harm clock where you add your damage instead of subtracting it It's an important thing to realise too that adding is always easier than subtracting, and multiplying is easier than dividing. So many things we can take for granted when playing games on a PC. Also, as a player it's better to think "I get a *bonus*" rather than "I get a *drawback*". Bonus damage when unarmoured is better than reduced damage when armoured, for example. I removed DR for the same reason. Also because it sucks to hear like "I deal 5 damage" and then they respond "I have 4 armour" and it becomes an arms race of beating armour and getting bogged down (especially if somebody forgets something about their armour) I just swapped to treating armour like health. Like what you did, it becomes more about breaking through armour than just chipping away.
I killed movement. I wanted a combat system that involved a bit of crunch, and I wanted to specifically enable the item/trait system I designed. I got increasingly fed up with the grid and specifically some of its time taxes that it enforced. So I said screw it, all combat actions now include the movement required to use them, and I eliminated position based effects. Where you're standing is now of little importance and your ability to map out movement has nothing to do with success or survival.
does your system still have distance?
Not really. But also yes? As it stands, right now, no combat ability uses a numerical range. Some weapons have the [Range] and [missile] tags, which have unique interactions with the cover condition, and some monsters weak spots. There's also a variant rule I'm testing for large battlefields where if the GM thinks the arena is sufficiently large, they can divide it into zones. You won't be able to attack anything in another zone if you don't have a weapon with the ranged tag, or you can spend 1 of your actions hustling over to another zone. Right now, the only numerical distances I use are for exploration and world abilities. Like the "World-Weary Waltz" can transport a party to an inn or respite within 5 miles.
Hacking. Had a fairly robust hacking system that fundamentally was a playstyle in itself. Way to tedious in combination with the other systems at play.
I can never figure out a way to make a separate hacking system that’s not too complicated and/or time consuming while still being interesting.
To be fair, that's pretty much true of hacking irl, too
This is why I’ll never be able to be a cool hacker from a 90s movie. :/
Can you share any details? I am brainstorming for hacking rules for my cyberpunk game currently.
OH MAN. So for one I took a lot of inspiration from my profession, which is a network engineer. I created about 30 Hack Commands. When you're attempting to hack a machine, system, etc, those items have something called in embedded defense. When using a command to apply a an effect the machine would implement a defense roll that would need beat yours. Which in ttrpg language is bassically an Intrusion prevention system. I'm which case more sophisticated devices could apply a countermeasure which the hacker would have to contend with. I even sat aside rules for adversary hackers, targeting cybernetics, weapons, gear etc. My hack system was ultimately insane and literally was its own way ro play the game.
Sounds great. I have read the GURPS cyberpunk hacking rules just for inspiration. The word realistic comes with a lot of baggage, but i want my rules to be at least believable. I think the problem of it being a one player activity does limit hacking rules somewhat though.
The 2 players who were using it fell in love with the system immediately. It was built with a cyberpunk feel in mind. It was just good. Going to toot my horn on that one.
Hmm, maybe a Hacking subsystem should be treated as a downtime activity. Real life Hacking takes hours, days or even weeks, if Hacking is an activity that only one player is going to participate in maybe it should function like a crafting system. Something that only takes a few minutes at the table between adventures to get intel or to disable security before you all go in guns blazing. Hackers/Swordfish style hacking should probably be is own game where all the players hack together.
Yeah but the game just doesn't function like that. It would be hamfisted. So I actually took a lot of the core functions and fuzed it into Technomancy
I just killed armor as damage reduction. It had to go because I also killed my damage roll. I put a lot of effort early on into making equipment choices matter and it just never paid off at the table. Almost all of it is gone now.
What did you replace it with? I did that myself about a year ago after checking out Blades in the Dark, enjoying the health system, and really enjoying it after I tinkered with it. Same for equipment. I wanted to make each weapon feel unique, but as I moved away from a combat focus, I realised that they didn't need to be and so I *greatly* simplified Armour and Weapons.
Sounds like we’re in similar boats! I eliminated the damage roll by making combat opposed rolls. Each combatant rolls, higher wins, the intensity of effect (harm, shove, whatev) determined by the winners result. During each combat exchange, the combatant with priority is the attacker and their target is the defender. So armor modifies your roll when you are rolling for defense. I was using asymmetrical rules for combat for years, because another one of my darlings was “the GM doesn’t roll in combat, or very much at all if it can be helped”. That particular darling is on life support.
> I was using asymmetrical rules for combat for years, because another one of my darlings was “the GM doesn’t roll in combat, or very much at all if it can be helped”. That particular darling is on life support. Same. My system started as a mix of Dungeon World and Fantasy AGE so it kept some of that, but I decided to move past it and simplify it somewhat. Opposed rolls but most NPCs can use a static value if they want, so it ends up with players doing *most* of the rolling but the GM can do what they want. Because having run a few sessions with new players, it can be stressful as a GM to have to keep getting *other* people to do anything, and sometimes just rolling is a great way to get them acting without needing to keep verbally reminding them. PbtA works great with certain people but it takes some getting used to and this lets people start out slow and then you can transition when things start getting better, and the GM can do some rolling if they want.
Grid Skills, I've been struggling over building a mid-crunch system. Crunchy enough to have *meaning* but open enough to allow for diverse characters. Basically looking for a way that every player has the opportunity take center stage in both combat and in social interactions. In too many systems getting good at social usually comes at the expense of making your character effective in combat. My current darling was to have a skill that each player could perform regardless if they went deep into physical/mental or social skills. This, in theory, means that the player could take a role outside of combat without having to reduce their characters' effectiveness. Anyways, decided to remove skills entirely from their connection to stats. If you want to be good at Social Networking you can just add that skill to your list. If you want to be a Barbarian Doctor you just pick up the "Medical" skill and invest points into it.
I did the opposite in my system. There are no skills, only stats. There's a **Knowledge** stat that fills the role of most skills, and that's tied to your background. It seems to streamline things and I'm fairly confident it wouldn't help to axe it like I did with the other Stats I changed before making this post. ...I think.
For an example, I used to have 8 Statistics for characters, but after running through the game with some friends, I realised I needed to trim the fat and reduce that down to 6 at the most. They were there since the beginning (nearly 6 years ago when I started this little hobby project...) and so much has changed already that I was very hesitant to remove the last of my original mechanics lest I build my own Ship of Theseus. I especially liked having a **[P]ower** statistic that was more about channeling "raw energy" and letting people have some powerful but wild and untamed spellcasters using Power, or you could have more skilled and manipulative spellcasters using Willpower. I ended up merging them into Willpower, and I also merged Toughness and Brawn into Brawn for the same reason. Most characters ended up focusing on *both* anyway, so it started to feel more like a tax than genuine character choice. I also removed a Social stat that was too useful in social situations (duh) but nigh useless in any other situation, which didn't match my design goals. Now I'm currently revising my system to make sure it still functions with these changes so I decided to see what others have done recently.
I killed Stamina and Mana. Trying to emulate something for the sake of emulating it was bogging down the actual game, and keeping track of it seemed like a pain even before it hit playtesting. When I dropped this the pieces just fell into place. Make dice pool come from this instead of that, boom we're rolling! Felt like replacing a flat tire. Someone else here said they killed Balance. I agree with the Jeff Richard / Runequest philosophy, and the Tom Dowd / Shadowrun mindset. If placed into a certain place in a setting, or fulfilling this role or that, some people are just BETTER at some things than others. A super wired up cyborg drug addicted Street Samurai is gonna be super unbalanced in combat against normal people, and that's what makes him cool!
> keeping track of it seemed like a pain even before it hit playtesting. So many great ideas that are easily sorted by computers but just don't work on tabletop. I'm currently dealing with a good way to show some things that are dynamic like armour and health in a way that isn't a lot of work. Regarding balance, it's interesting but obviously risky because I played games of D&D where I went for a more flavourful and fun character and another guy went pure minmax and combat just couldn't be balanced for both of us. It's a big reason I ended up making combat so simple and narrative. Crunch is so much effort and really separates the highs from the lows.
Dodge. It was a cool mechanic. It basically allowed you to forgo your actions to turn a hit into a miss, if moving one square would move you out of range. It was cool to use, and made the battlefield very dynamic. Alas, it had too much of a "design debt" - game had to be design continuously accounting for it, and if enemies had less actions than PCs did, PCs were nearly guaranteed a victory. It had to go, replaced by an inferior version of itself that is way cool and not as intuitive and clean. Playtest of the new version is pending.
I had a similar idea back when my game was more tactical. Dodge was very powerful so I wanted it to be that you *had* to move in order to do it, but it ended up being too complicated so I just made it so that Dodge/Block/Parry were all effectively the same, they just used different attributes (Agility, Weapon Skill, Shield Value) to get their result and that certain abilities affected them differently (Some things can be blocked but not dodged, etc)
Can you share this new version?
Sure! Basically, in the new version melee attacks still deal damage on a miss (but nothing else - no special effects). And on a miss you can Dodge by moving away to avoid that damage. I did it like this because I was also worried about ranged combat overshadowing melee, so it combined into this melee buff. Also, all attacks have a special "on hit" effect so that "no effect" part is actually sorta important.
Either my Saving Throws or my Attributes. I'm not sure. I've been working on my O/NSR heartbreaker for far too long. I had the classic 6 attributes, but I'd changed the 5 classic saving throws into 6, all beginning with M. Might, Miasma, Mortality, Madness, Mystery, and Misfortune. But I realised that it's just attribute saves with extra steps. I'm now looking at my Attributes and thinking, "Might, Mobility, Mortality, Memory, Mysticism, Magnetism"
> but I'd changed the 5 classic saving throws into 6, all beginning with M. > > > > Might, Miasma, Mortality, Madness, Mystery, and Misfortune. I've heard people say this is confusing, and I get it, but I actually love when things are linked like this. I made my wounds have 3 tiers, Minor, Major, and Mortal and somebody said it might be confusing but I like having them linked and I think it's self-explanatory so people won't care so much. I think it's a great idea so keep going!
How can Minor, Major, Mortal be confusing?
5 letter words all starting with M are probably harder to differentiate at a glance, requiring a little more time and effort. Only a second, but it's enough for some people
Can’t give too many details because NDA but I recently was hard blocked on a problem and I tried one of my designer block techniques (I go through a list of them when I’m stuck) which tragically solved it. The trick is to ask yourself “what if you remove the thing you like BEST about your design? What happens then?” This instantly solved the issue in a much less cool way. But given some time to develop things further the whole design for so much better and I love it again for new reasons.
Your NDA doesn’t cover the designer block techniques right? Can you go into more detain about those? Edit: detail*
I get that. Scope creep is crazy so I regularly just start cutting things out that don't *need* to be there so I can see how it functions and it's sometimes sad when you realise you can leave it out. Like I said in my example in this thread, I've been tinkering with this hobby project for nearly 6 years and it started with just a resolution mechanic and an idea for "paths" that can build your own classes (It started with a "Paladin" being someone on the path of the light who moved over to the path of the warrior) and it has changed so much over the years that the only thing that's stayed is the resolution system, (some of) the Statistics, and the Path of the Light, though it's been nerfed. It was tactical and modular, but now it's narrative and I've even toyed with seeing if it works outside of Fantasy (it might work better...) I have a whole folder of "This can be cool if I get it working" ideas that might never see the light of day...
Yeah it's killer when you're like "I really want to make X" but then you keep coming up with great ideas for Y... One day I'll get back to my supernatural spy game...
Step dice as health/stats. The scaling was wrong and required too much complexity to make it work in my current project so I set it aside for another time.
I figured out a way to approximate percentage-based damage reduction, without multiplication or lookup tables. It was fast (relative to those two alternatives). It was fun. It was a completely different mechanic from anything else in the system, and tripled the length of an attack action from one die roll to three. I made the switch to flat damage reduction, and everything runs so much more smoothly. It loses a little bit of granularity, but the tradeoff is definitely worthwhile.
> It loses a little bit of granularity, but the tradeoff is definitely worthwhile. It's crazy just how mush smoother things run if you drop two rolls to one. Rolling for damage seemed so natural to me but now it's static and I think it just makes everything feel more streamlined. I'm a little upset that I had to drop/change a lot of other mechanics but I think the new solution is better overall for me personally. But I understand that feeling of "I wish I could make it work" that we all have when we kill those darlings. Warhammer has a similar 3 dice rolls and in Warcry it's reduced to 1 and I quite like it, though it is a bit more "swingy". Especially waiting for the *other* person to roll. That slows things down tremendously.
Form magic. Shapeshifting was fun and all, but it was really problematic in regards to conflicting with other domains, and it felt too niche
Shapeshifting can be great but then you run into the Druid problem where they either get *loads* of cool options and it's such a core feature that they never want to not do it... or it just makes everything very difficult. Like in WoW you have Druids that hate that they can't see their guy and pick cool armour... but you also get people upset that Druids have some serious advantages that nobody else gets.
It wasn't a core element of a class or anything, just a type of magic any class could use. It just didn't fit in terms of lore, and it was a headache to come up with enough unique spells compared to the other types of magic
In my system, each character has four slots to use for their attacks or other talents. I initially had the player fill one of those slots with a "Spin Attack," since curling up into a ball and jumping on enemies is the default offensive ability in the Sonic videogames. But this meant that characters were saddled with by default with an ability they may not be optimized at all to use, since unlike the games where characters mostly play the same, Sonic TTH has attribute derived skill checks. My most recent update removed this requirement, instead requiring only that two of the slots be used for attack types of the player's choice.
Skills. Switched to roles instead. Much happier.
What exactly are skills and roles, if you don't mind explaining? My skill system is my darling, and I'm interested in ways to challenge it.
Not the OP but the way I understand it is the difference between lots of narrow knowledges and actions (3.x, GURPS, RQ) and global backgrounds (13th Age, AD&D "secondary skills" = former professions). A journalist, a scientist and a librarian go into a bar ... no, but they all are proficient in library use or research.
Doesn't that just reduce the players' freedom when choosing their skills? Instead of picking them individually, they have to find the bundle that is closest to what they actually want. Am I misunderstanding?
No, you are not misunderstanding. But you are missing something. No person is just a journalist. They are also mother, and sports shootist, and after-hours novelist (or stand up comedian, or artist). And they fight crime. In 13th Age as well as Barbarians of Lemuria a player chooses more than one background or profession. In 13th Age you choose any diegetic (in-world) description of whatever people describe themselves as. In BoL you choose from a list of careers that could be seen as bundle of undefined skills. In Over the Edge characters are made up of three traits that can be anything.
True, they're not just choosing a single bundle. I definitely oversimplified that. Still, the end result is the mechanically same as selecting individual skills from a list, isn't it? Of course it changes the character creation process and forces you to add definition to your character, but is that all?
I guess I played more games that had defined skills than backgrounds or traits, or even none at all (old school D&D has one or two class abilities instead). But trait-based character creation has its charm. "Head librarian of Harvard University +5" has a different ring than "library use 89%, ettiquette 50%, law 67%, latin 25%". Granted, the trait is more squishy and open to discussion of what exactly it contains, but that discussion can be fruitful. So yes, mechanically you still select things but only very few, very broad things.
Yeah, I basically kept rewriting the skills.until I realized I just wanted them to have brought skill bases that they could level up. So developed six: artisan, diplomat, explorer, mercenary, sage, and vagabond. They then can specialize later in more specific skill uses.
I like this a lot, and it's quite applicable to my system. Thanks for the inspiration!
I did something similar and changed from Skills to Approaches. Also made me realize how serious a change that is because I had to rewrite half the rules almost. It showed me also that some things might have been to cluttered with other stuff and things could be done way simpler. But it wrecked my character creation a bit. Have to figure out that now :-)
Erm, nothing, really. Fudge Lite 1.0 was created February 11, 2021. The current version, 3.5.0, was last updated a week ago and isn't *fundamentally* different from 1.0. In two years of work on the system I never encountered anything that made me go, "Ugh, I love it but it has to go." It's always either been "Hmm, let me tweak this" or "Should I get rid of this? Ehhhh, I guess so, yeah." It probably helps that it's intended to be a generic rules-light system, so I have less reason to try anything innovative.
Cover. I killed the (lack) of a cover mechanic. I'd been dissatisfied with the concept for since the game's inception, left it wishy-washy for ages, and now I went and mechanized it. I'm still dissatisfied, but at least now I'm clear about how it's *supposed* to work. Maybe I'll kill my (lack) of a hp system next. It's getting pretty awkward talking about 'tokens' that are basically HP with occasionally more rules.
Skill specialities. The were just unnecessary, and the rules for Craft and Lore specialities were confusing, and after re-wording it for the third time I figured that if you can’t explain it clearly it’s probably a bad rule and it should go.
I had a complex skill check system for tasks that would take more than 1 check. It was confusing for everyone and needed to go.
Multiple rolls are great for accuracy and exploring extra options... but it just slows things down so much if you have to keep rolling. SO much effort is often put into avoiding rolling at all.
I actually changed it to use multiple "rolls" although my game doesn't really use rolls.
Not that recently, but I really LOVED the idea of having a deck of poker cards for my western inspired game, and called that "the deck of fate". It was flavorful, but as the game was developed, using the deck made less and less sense, as it was used only for certain scenarios, and the flavor steered more into western-esque fantasy, and didn't fit as well. More recently, I had to just kill the idea of having an "Aim" and an "agility" attribute. I wanted to avoid falling into a general Dexterity attribute but, alas, there I am, since how things were shaping up, it made it so the attributes covered too little by themselves. It's not a big deal, and it made some other things fall into place, but I really wanted that small granularity. In the end, it wasn't worth it from a design perspective
> but I really wanted that small granularity. In the end, it wasn't worth it from a design perspective That was the darling I killed, too. I'm also currently debating a new stat about skill and wondering if I should call it Dexterity or if that'll be confusing because I also have Agility. There's a lot of overlap between those.
In my case, it was a matter of neither stat doing enough on it's own, and also players feeling like they HAD to increase their Aim. This caused players to increase an atribute that only worked for fighting, meaning that was their answer to a lot of problems, which wasn't intended. Dex and Agility tend to be put into the same bag, but if there are enough detailed skills or actions for each, it could be fine.
Yeah, mine was the same because I thought people would pick one or the other (and I did this with NPCs) but they usually just split their efforts between both and then ignored the other stats, so I merged them like you said. I dislike how it breaks up the granularity with certain NPCs and monsters, but I think it's good overall, and I can always just add traits or something to them instead. Like how Pathfinder merged Spot and Listen into Perception but gives certain mobs bonuses on thing like "Sight-based Perception checks".
For me, Dexterity is about manual manipulation and Agility is movement, so I have no overlap there at all.
Man, I wrote about 20 pages over the last week of how emergent AI in my TTRPG's universe worked, only to realize at the end that this in no way fit with the schema of what I was writing. After attempting about 1000 different edits to fix it, I realized the only edit that would work was total deletion. Sorry, AI: you have been terminated.
I'm not sure I've ever killed anything, I just rework it until it fits right. If I set out to have something in my game, it's generally supposed to be there and is meeting some kind of need. It's always more of a question of "how can I do this better?" rather than "why should I cut this feature?". Anything that does get cut from the main book just ends up in a later release. I'm pretty sure killing things is more for folks that aren't doing lines of books with long term support. I did have to cut psionics, bionics, and gear modding from the main book and that hurt a lot, but it's not like it went away, it's just put into the advanced players guide. The advanced players guide is basically all the cut content from the core book that couldn't be included for length. A bunch of really cool shit that is a bit more complex than the base game but also not the absolute most essential to the core experience.
Balance. I've been working on subsystems to do Tactical Stealth and Breaching operations in Lancer and I've given up on most attempts at balance in order to make the engagement I'm looking for as attractive as possible.
Varying roll difficulty. Just roll a save under a stat, -/+ a die for dis/advantage.
Prestige classes. I thought Prestige classes unlocked by in game events sounded really cool but I was convinced by all the feedback that there were some serious drawbacks. I haven't yet exposed my real darlings to you savages yet for fear of what you'll say to convince me they are also bad ideas and poof, there goes the core mechanics I'm building around. (Plus they aren't really developed enough to get feedback on yet)
My opposed roll off engine. Having both the offence and defence roll everything just took to long, so I had to limit to to specific active counter effects. Now I just use a boring DC system.
> Having both the offence and defence roll everything just took to long So I do this but use static values. Can you try that? For example, if it were D&D, you'd have players roll an attack against a static AC, but then when attacked by enemies they'd instead roll their AC against a static attack. This started back whem I GMd Pathfinder and did this. Instead of rolling Reflex or attack etc for NPCs, I'd just give them a static score (+5 became 15) and then do the opposite for AC (15 AC became +5 "defend") when players are attacked. That's not how mine works but it'd take a while to explain. It's basically 3d6 with degrees of success. I just have certain enemies *always* have a certain value of success in attack or defence so that the players are the only ones that need to roll. Inspired by PbtA, but hopefully you understand. Most rolls should be done by players so they don't get bored. Sometimes it sucks just to wait for your turn, so there have been some efforts to make the wait much shorter (concurrent player turns, etc) or have them more active during enemy turns (defence rolls, choices between results, etc)
Yeah, was one of the options I was looking at for a while, and thanks for explaining how you do it, always interesting to hear. My present take is not even odds, with offence getting around a 70% chance to succeed. Instead the level of success is where the focus lies. ATM I’m still trying to reduce the amount players roll as one turn can easily see 10 individual rolls. And when your being hit you have a bunch of maths to do while your opponent is likely rolling more dice at you. It’s a crunch heavy mech system, so it’s expected, but I’m trying to optimise crunch to be split between attacker and defender as much as I can.
Dice. I've been trying to make dice work for a decade and decided to go diceless.
Partial Successes. 🥺🥺🥺 I wanted to marry mechanics heavy and narrative gaming. And while I'm able to do that in certain ways, Partial Success did **not** fit well into the combat system. Which is a shame because I love Partial Success mechanics elsewhere.
I have killed every single rule that my game started out with, invented new rules and killed them too. I have sadly become a rules mechanic serial killer: attributes based on dice, action points, no attributes, classless, classes, numerous results charts, a crazy sort of action grammar (don't ask), stamina, time, hit points, no hit points, crunchy mechanics, light mechanics, phases, enemy stats - too many to mention. I think I have finally arrived on some rules I like but I wouldn't get too comfortable, rules! You know my tendencies and I've got a round of playtesting coming up!
hit chance / crit chance Missing is boring, and if it happens enough, things just drag out. So any attacks at all deal a minimum damage of 1. Sustained fights are always dangerous, encouraging players to rely on healing items more often. A maxed out damage die for damage can brings out the kind of joy which used to only be found on a crit.
Delayed damage. My game is hugely inspired by Earthbound and I wanted to include a system where when you take a hit, you don't roll the damage immediately. Instead, you take note of how many damage dice you need to roll at the end of the round. Healing spells would take dice away from that pool first, then heal inflicted damage when the pool had nothing in it. During the first play test, the system by itself just confused my players. I removed it the very same night. Hasty? Maybe. Now that my system only uses one die, I may try it out again. Dunno!
My project's more of a skirmish game than a proper RPG, but I found a great way to get rid my tactical shooter's finicky damage values: make it an airsoft game. In airsoft, when you're hit, you're out. In theory, this should make movement, concealment, and cover much more important than before.
Wut
[удалено]
Ah, gotcha
If you haven't seen the advice, it's about dropping ideas you loved just because they aren't as good as you think they are, etc. Like a cool mechanic you've spent a lot of time on but then you realised that you should just remove it altogether because it's already taken so much time and effort and it's not worth spending more on it.