clawedandcorebound

[clawedandcorebound]

^ player species section for Goblings from my ttrpg, tumbletables

Goblings. they're kinda the mascot of corebound for me, given they're the first species i'd designed for it and their close tie-ins to the main lore (hence why this blog's profile picture is a poorly drawn one)

As creations of the core, their original purpose was to ascend the earth and reach the surface, filled with fantasies of the stars. Unlike many, many other corespawn, they succeeded (albeit hundreds of generations later) (corebound adventurers are likely to find gobling encampments, both populated and abandoned, most commonly in the mid-levels of the earth).

Goblings didn't find much solace on the surface though. surface civilizations (especially upon their initial arrival) weren't too welcoming of corespawn, and the goblings themselves certainly weren't adapted to life under the gaze of the sun. many goblings returned underground, while others fought for lives on the surface in the name of their ancestors.

Gobling culture varies from the surface to different depths. Surface Goblings are encouraged to give birth under starlight (but preferably not that of the sun). The core is a controversial topic on most depths above the mantle. Goblings journeying to the core are ostracized by many members of their communities (more common higher up), but celebrated by nearly as many (more common deeper down). A similar inverse effect applies to Goblings ascending the earth.

All in all, they have a lot of complexities which i'll probably dive into in a follow up post later down the line, as well as a better description and some art of what they might look like

[clawedandcorebound]

decidedly yeag im renaming corebount ttrpg to tumbletables

gonna have to change some terminology alongside this which means combing through my doc but its for the better because it was needed either way for more clarity

speaking of which i should really start docposting

as well as coreboundposting. about like. the actual corebound setting. tumbletables may still draw some inspiration from it but anything coming from corebound (eg. the Gobling species) will probably somehow be tagged as such? idk ill work that part out or else remove anything corebound based and first release the ttrpg as a blank slate with only generic / common fantasy species and stuff

man i really need to find a name for corebound ttrpg that isnt corebound i need to separate this shit from the setting name-wise they have nothing to do with each other they're completely separate things

tumbletables or something oughh...

[clawedandcorebound]

man i really need to find a name for corebound ttrpg that isnt corebound i need to separate this shit from the setting name-wise they have nothing to do with each other they're completely separate things

tumbletables or something oughh...

[clawedandcorebound]

Not All Dice Systems Are Created Equal

I built a dice system for a game and then took like a month fiddling with it to realize I'd built something that's literally too consistent for the game I'm trying to make. When so many dice systems can just be replaced with a coin flip or two, this is, at least, an impressive feat. An absolute car crash of game design.

The dice system is, essentially, "Dicey Dungeons TTRPG" - everything is in rounds, and each round each PC has some dice, pre-rolled, which they spend by-value on various abilities. There's different phases, like combat and travel, and each has its own procedures and special rules - you can't use overland travel abilities in a fight, for instance - and characters can have phase-locked dice as well, so maybe one has 4 dice when traveling but 2 in combat, or vice-versa. I even wrote a system for ad-hoc challenges which divides them into 'spend time on it' and 'take a risk', which I'm pleased with and will keep in mind for future endeavors.

Buuuut because each round has all the rolling at the outset, each individual action is perfectly consistent when selected. Assign dice, execute effect. For a game about experts doing their thing, this is great! It's also fun at a basic level - there's a puzzle to making the best use of the dice each round. There's a lot of openings for crunch and asymmetry in the Dicey Dungeons idea, which I do want to play with!

But this game, the one I invented it in, is about mutants in an ever-shifting world who get dismembered on the regular and often can/have to get new parts. The parts, functioning like Dicey Dungeons's cards, is why I got into the idea of mimicking Dicey Dungeons in the first place - but I've gotta use a different core, because the consistency just does not fit. I'm gonna return to an earlier idea with new eyes, see if that one works - I burned out for technical, not design, reasons on that one, so I wanna see if I can make it work.

Wish me luck! One day I'll be happy enough with something to reach alpha and publish it!

[clawedandcorebound]

Corebound (ttrpg) : Combat Dice & Movelists <- CONSIDER THIS OUTDATED,

corebound ttrpg has since been renamed to tumbletables and this post is outdated in its wording, but feel free to read ahead if you still wish...

/ the core concept / the basics / an introduction

Corebound is a combat-focused system i've been drafting up for a while which revolves around the idea of what i'm calling dice-building. Like deck building but. Y'know. With dice. Specifically what each face allows you to do.

Basically you know roll tables? us ttrpg fans love roll tables right??? this is a customize-your-tables-for-combat system. build-a-table if you will.

So to start us off, this is a turn based combat system. The only reason I mention this is that at the start of each of your turns, you roll your combat dice, which determine the moves you can make that turn.

So what are combat dice?

First off, they're d6's. Now to explain them I'll need to explain Movelists alongside them:

Every combat die has its own movelist. A movelist, simply put, is a list of 6 slots (representing the six faces of the d6 die) which store moves (potential combat related actions). When it's combat die rolls a number, that means the move stored in the corresponding slot (if there is one) is available for use.

Moves also have a weight (higher weight moves tend to be more powerful), and each movelist has a maximum for the total amount of weight the moves it's storing can have.

This all being said, here's a visualization of what two empty movelists might look like (note: use noticeably different dice for your combat dice so you know which one corresponds to which movelist!!):

and then here's an example of what a really basic move could look like. slot is a common term used in moves to utilize the number of the slot it's in, and w1 stands for the move's weight!:

so then say we put this move into slot 4 of movelist A. It'd deal 5 damage (slot+1 becomes 4+1) and would be accessible whenever you roll a 4 on combat die A. Note that its weight has also increased to 1 out of it's max of 9 due to it now storing the move's weight:

but yeah!! that covers the core mechanic that makes corebound. almost everything else is built around this!

I do worry that it's a little too complicated or unwieldy though, so i've been working on learning Godot to program a little character sheet maker and manager! like d&dbeyond and whatnot but for corebound!