#rpg design

[mushroomwitchgames]

COMING NOV 22 - CATS KNOW THINGS

CATS KNOW THINGS is a light-hearted game meant to tell a humorous story of intrigue, all while pretending to be a very nosy cat. 

But you are no ordinary cat.

You are a very special feline who, through some magic you cannot explain, can communicate with your human, an individual who wishes to make their mark in society by any means necessary. The two of you decide to start a society page, (a very fancy type of tabloid newspaper dedicated to a particular location) revealing the glitz, glamour, and inner turmoil of the town’s most notable individuals. 

As the cat you will travel across town, using your stealth and wiles to listen in on the most intimate conversations and encounters. At the end of the day you return to your human to relay to them all the town’s salacious gossip for the society page. The goal is to prepare 6-8 items for the newspaper before your human sends them to the presses for the week.

CATS KNOW THINGS will be available on our Itch.io store at 9am PST on November 22!! Please reblog to get the work out! We're really excited to share this game with you!

[che-bur-ashka]

"fuck around with it" as a design goal

one of the things ive been thinking about lately in rpgs is like, games that let you sort of just dick around and chat and figure stuff out and still feel like they (the game) meaningfully contributed to ur experience. like in a recent session of beneath pirate flags we spent maybe an hour and a half making characters and talking about a world and then maybe another hour building one (1) setting element. and thats not because that process cant be done faster, and its not because we kept getting distracted--okay, we did keep getting distracted, but that's sort of my point. even as we went down all these different side conversations and tangents and media references and conversations which weren't meaningfully "productive" in the sense of "generating a story" i never felt like we weren't playing or like we weren't playing beneath pirate flags specifically. and i think that's really neat!

to be totally clear, i can think of lots of games that i love that dont do this, often intentionally limiting the ways you can communicate with your coplayers. i think thats interesting too, but thinking about that as the only way we can design for chitchat and distraction presents a kind of norm/alternative structure where "free conversation" is the zero that we design from by restricting conversation, whereas i think i'm trying to a way of designing positively towards this state (something like dream askew/apart’s idle dreaming). i also don't know why it happens in beneath pirate flags specifically. in my experience picklist-heavy games generate this feeling more often (sasha winters's girlfriend of my girlfriend is my friend is another good example of a game that ends up sitting in this space for me a lot, i think) but i dont know if that's because of the picklists or just correlation. maybe i just like to fantasize about gay ppl.

anyway, yeah. something to design for in the future. neat!

[commander-ben]

Post apocalyptic scamps

[goblincow]

Been thinking about this & putting it into practice when writing The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick for a while: thanks to the ever excellent @babblegumsam (who you are probably already following and if not now is your chance to rectify that) for the final straw that made me write this up today. I truly believe if you have any interest in TTRPGs, play, or design you'll get something out of it, it's a further 5.4 mins read from here on out.

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Play is interaction.

Reading is interaction.

Below I will argue the necessity & usefulness of thinking the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs as (almost) the exact same thing to unlock a wide & deep potential as reader/player/designer.

--------------------

Reading & play don't have to be the same thing. But you can't play without reading (in the sense of reading representations, images, ideas, concepts, interactions, etc, not just written text), because then there could be no interaction.

Reading and play can both accurately describe a given act or process. For instance: I read a table or piece of prose in a TTRPG book.

I say this because this is an idea that people struggle with, and while I encourage debate around the concept, we first have to agree on some basic building blocks that I hope I'm able to communicate here. For instance, there exists a potential reality in which tabletop roleplaying games are called tabletop reading games and nothing else about them changes (except for the consequential ability to think of reading in ttrpgs as play, and the potential this tool unlocks), because the prerequisite role for all other roles being played in a role-playing game is that of the reader.

This is true for much more than TTRPGs, but if we simply focus on acknowledging that reading & play in ttrpgs can and often are the same thing, then we are able to make informed design choices on this basis that we otherwise lack the agency to make – and which are nonetheless choices that are being made while we miss the opportunity to observe, read & ultimately interact and/or change and/or play with them.

To not think of the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs in this way is to limit your agency as a designer, reader, player, and ultimately to cause yourself to be unable to synthesise these roles which are deeply inter-related, perhaps more so than they are disparate.

However you define it, Good Design necessitates the application of the right tool for the job. This requires making, maintaining & improving the tools that you have access to. The reader/player relationship is not only one of these, but an integral one that precedes a great many (if not all) of the other tools that you can & do employ as designer/player/reader.

If you allow this tool to remain blunt and imprecise (and especially if you don't acknowledge that it exists and that you use it in every choice you make), what you are doing is making a choice to blunt all of your other tools, even if you aren't aware of it.

This is poor design, poor play, and poor reading,* and I believe that this is true regardless of how you define each of those terms.

*though of course we could - and I think should - argue over the semantics & limitations of my imprecise use of the word "poor" there and the further ideas it smuggles in unacknowledged, but I trust that you will be able to infer what I'm trying to communicate in my use of it and I further hope that by leaving this imprecise application of a tool here in the way that I have used it, it might serve as a good example of the consequences, limitations & potential dangers of applying tools/terms/ideas that might be best described as "too blunt for the job", which is the very thing I'm attempting to highlight & address here.

It would not seem very sensible to choose to limit yourself in this way unless it allowed you access to new tools, which is a choice that you could only make once you are familiar with the central idea I'm presenting here – in other words, if you break the rules without understanding them you are very unlikely to be taking a step forward and much more likely to just be shuffling in place or even stepping backwards.

I hope that this short interaction has unlocked or reinforced your access to a useful tool that will allow you to sharpen your understanding of the play/reading relationship in TTRPGs and in turn refine & maintain your existing tools and your ability to synthesise new ones.

I look forward to discovering with you what new agencies this allows us to unlock, and I hope you take what you have read here and play with it to design new realities that you & I have yet to imagine.

[abandonhopegame]

The Town of Hope Welcomes You with Open Arms

On the surface, Hope is a quaint seaside town filled with kind, welcoming people who choose to live a simple life by the sea. But those who live in Hope know all to well the dangers that lurk within their deceptive home. Founded by a secretive cult who worship a sinister god, the town is a hotbed of paranormal activity and monstrosities that are difficult to comprehend. As the infamous line says, “abandon all hope all ye who enter here”. 

As a member of the Gakuen Mystery Club, it’s up to you and your fellow members to make sense of the horrors that plague your small town. Consisting mainly of high schoolers and university students who have more courage than the adults of the town, members must contend with their dwindling sanity while solving the various mysteries that plague the town. The one thing that ties all the members together is the Mystery Club website, which amalgamates all the various strange happenings that occur within hope.

Are you willing to stare down the unspeakable? If you’re courageous enough, maybe hope won’t be abandoned after all…

[ayers-l]

@ 𝓐 ، 𝚢𝚎𝚛𝚜 特 ·

[vintagerpg]

School is in session! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast we welcome back friend of the show Mark Sable, who is about to start teaching a class called Writing Adventures for Tabletop RPGs. Seems like something y'all might be interested in. We talk a bit about game design, about teaching games and the nebulous ways we've approached how-to in RPGs. Marks class is eight sessions starting February 6 and is part of the School of Visual Arts' continuing education program, meaning anyone can sign up! 

[blackmagickboi]

IVE MADE MY FIRST NEW TTRPG SINCE 2019!!! I'm really honestly super proud of this and hope yall enjoy it, please even just reblogging helps!

[alpaca-clouds]

Designing a Solarpunk TTRPG - Part 1

I recently am getting really back into TTRPGs, after the pandemic kinda kicked me out of it. Like, sure, I played some online games, but it was just not the same.

And while I honestly do not make a lot of progress on my idea of developing a computer based game with Solarpunk themes (mostly because I have realized that I as a single person just cannot do it - I need more people for that), I thought to myself: Well, I have developed a TTRPG before. I could do a Solarpunk one as well, right?

So, I am thinking a bit of how to do it.

I talked about it before, that really, the core issue with developing a Solarpunk TTRPG comes with the challenge of finding a good central game mechanic.

If we look at most big TTRPGs, their central mechanic tends to be combat. Sure, each and every one of them you can play without a single fight. At times the systems actually urge the DM to encourage the players to avoid fights. But we all know how this goes on most tables.

So, the easiest way to go about it would be to make a game focusing on combat in some way or form. Because for a lot of players this would be the familiar way to do it.

On the other hand, though, I kinda would love a game that actually does not focus on combat. But what else could it focus on, that would actually make for a game best played in groups? And how to turn whatever into an engaging mechanic?

Because ideally I would design the world for the game around that mechanic. After all, we have established before: Solarpunk can be a lot of things. It can be futuristic SciFi, but it also can have more fantasy aspects, but with Solarpunk theming. After all, Studio Ghibli tends to be considered very Solarpunk - and most of it has some fantastical aspects.

I don't know. What are you guys thinking?

[roving-mauler]

Alternatives to Stats

What are some creative or cool alternatives to stats you've seen in character creation. like instead of just just just increasing a number in a category what is you favorite way you've seen in a name you wish more people would use.

[maxkirin]

i thought designing a RPG would be fun until i realized i had to make a whole economy and i got half a dozen pages trying to figure out how much a ball of slime should be worth 🌀🌀🌀

[transplanarrpg]

if you wanna explore monstrosity, divinity, and mortality, but more importantly, kill god, then you should check out GODKILLER.

GODKILLER is a holypunk duet game for one player, the Godkiller, and one game master, god. the Godkiller is the only mortal in the realm blessed (cursed) with the power to slay a god; the game’s all about wrestling between your divine abilities and your fallible human heart.

it plays queerly, viscerally, and forces you to make hard choices! the question isn’t, “are you strong enough to kill god?” it’s, “is killing this god the right thing to do?; what will it cost you?; how will it change you?”

the digital-only ashcan is currently out on itch.io and includes all the core rules for you to pick up and play. if you wanna see it in action, there’s an official podcast miniseries called GODKILLER: First Blood that’s 16 episodes, 60-90 minutes each, with full sound design & truly insane table dynamics between myself and my producer / editor / partner sea thomas!

[undefeatednils]

So yesterday I made a post detailing some TTRPGs I wanna play but haven't been able to thus far.

One of these is Cloud Empress, the Nausicaä of the Valley of the WInd-inspired game by watt.

One of its key mechanics is Stress. Every character can take up to ten Stress without suffering much of a consequence, or at least having the chance to not suffer a consequence. Instead Stress makes panic attacks more likely.

You gain Stress through a variety of ways, mostly involving failure or combat, and panic attacks can even cause you to lose your character and have them turn into an NPC, namely when you suffer a panic attack while you have 10 Stress, the maximum, and then roll a 10 on a d10 roll.

Now how do you get rid of Stress, since it can have such disastrous consequences and thus shouldn't be accumulated that much?

Take a look at this:

I really love the ways Cloud Empress handles losing Stress. In good conditions, you can lose all your Stress, even when you are really screwed at maybe just one panic attack away from becoming the worst version of yourself.

I also love that it includes sex as an option, and that the game stresses that of course that's something you need to discuss with your table before implementing. But yeah, it makes sense to include! If I were to GM Cloud Empress, I'd also allow other ways to reduce Stress that tie well into the character created and that 1) qualify intuitively as "self-care" and 2) involve the usage of a resource.

And that's the hallmark of a well-designed TTRPG! Though maybe I'd alter the Wound and Panic tables somewhat to include more options (with Wound using a 2d10 table and Panic having one or two alternate tables to give variety), but still.

I love Cloud Empress and can't wait to get to play it some day.

[whereserpentswalk]

The problem with how people run dnd and pathfinder isn't a problem of people running a combat game as a story game, it's the problem of people running game systems that make the core assumptions of Conan as if they made the core assumptions of Lord of the Rings.

[thehomelybrewster]

Ability Scores in 5e & Other RPGs

This little rant is inspired by a post by a blog named The Angry GM, titled "Your Ability Scores Suck" as well as a post titled "8 Abilities - 6, 3, or 4 Ability scores?" by DIY & dragons, because those two articles and my past few months of looking at various TTPRGs have led me to some insights into my own philosophy in how I like TTRPGs and how I feel about 5e's Ability Scores.

So let's look at how a couple of RPGs handle ability scores or their equivalents. Namely I'll look at D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, The Dark Eye (4th Edition Revised), CAIRN, and Pokémon. Yes, Pokémon is relevant to this. And it'll actually be the second game we'll discuss, but the first obviously has to be...

D&D 5th Edition

D&D famously has six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. In most situations the exact ability score no longer is that important, however, since from 3e onwards d20-based checks have become the near-universal input you play D&D with. This means that instead the ability score modifier is key, which ranges from -4 to +5 for most player characters.

Now while these six scores might seem pretty equal, players have quickly figured out that certain ability scores are more desirable than others, unless you play specific classes.

Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom are for example the three most common saving throws. 109 out of the 361 spells in the Player's Handbook force a saving throw using one of these three ability scores, while Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma only have 24 spells. Thankfully every D&D class gives proficiency with two saving throws, one of the three major ones, and one of the lesser ones (and certain subclasses as well as the monk get more saving throw proficiencies, but that's besides the point).

Additionally, when it comes to skills, and thus out-of-combat usefulness, Strength only has one skill tied to it by default (Athletics), while Constitution has none. Charisma has four skills to its name, Dexterity three, and both Intelligence and Wisdom have five.

Now the DIY & dragons article mentions that there are effectively three axes you have to cover with your ability scores: physical vs mental, force vs grace, and attack vs defense. That leads to eight abilities total. In 5e, using what we know about the game, we can make some great deductions.

For one, Strength is almost exclusively concerned with physical force attack, while Constitution nearly exclusively covers physical force defense. Dexterity meanwhile fully covers physical grace attack, as well as physical grace defense, since it affects AC and is used for Stealth, as well covering evasion-type saving throws. Dexterity is incredibly powerful in 5e, arguably the most powerful ability score.

On the mental stat side, the lines are less clear. All three ability scores can be used for offence, though Intelligence, being the casting ability score of only wizards and the generally utility-based artificers is the least offensive of the three. Still, its association with wizards means it probably is best associated with force, because fireball. Charisma easily can be sorted into grace and is mostly offensive, and Wisdom straddles the line between force and grace, but is also both clearly offensive and defensive.

As you can see, Intelligence & Wisdom & Charisma are rather ill-defined, a point also made by the The Angry GM article, but mechanically Wisdom is universally useful, while Charisma is either super important (because you're playing either a Charisma caster or a face-type non-caster, such as a rogue), or can easily be sidelined/dumped. In fact a lot of tables seem to disregard or minimize Charisma when it comes to roleplay, my tables have definitely done that. Mostly because you don't want to have players not participating in roleplay encounters because they don't have at least a +2 in Charisma and several skill proficiencies in that area.

Speaking of proficiencies, for skills the maximum you can add is +6 or +12 if you have expertise, while with saving throws the maximum proficiency bonus is +6, so with saving throws in particular, a +5 for a saving throw from that relevant abilty score is a massive defensive boon, though it's often less relevant for skill checks.

This knowledge, as well as the known issues with Intelligence-based skill checks often being seen as gate-keeping plot relevant information, leads to the realization that Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma are the three most frequent "dump stats", with the latter two in particular often having implications in out-of-combat situations, while Strength is a "safe" choice for full spellcasters.

Now let's think about how other games handle this... Let's begin, as I threatened in the beginning, with...

Pokémon

Pokémon famously uses six so-called base stats for its collectible creatures: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. Using the system described by DIY & dragons, Attack and Defense clearly map onto the physical, and Sp. Attack and Sp. Defense clearly onto the mental. There is no distinction made between grace and force. HP is a universally defensive stat, and Speed is both offensive and defensive.

Naturally, Pokémon doesn't involve dice rolls. These stats are used for formulas and comparisons. But you can already see that Pokémon, at least since Special got split into Sp. Attack and Sp. Defense starting in Gold & Silver, has a clear division of these stats, with it being clear what they do.

Now due to the mechanics and the goals of Pokémon, an individual character (read: the actual Pokémon) doesn't need to have balanced stats. Largely also because these stats only affect combat, the main mechanic of these games. Any out-of-combat activity present in Pokémon games in fact uses distinct stats, completely distinct from the base stats of the Pokémon. These can then be discarded/put into the background when that out-of-combat activity, such as Pokémon Contests, is removed from subsequent releases.

Now let's look at a D&D-related game that has a different approach to ability scores, because it provides a stepping stone to look at different RPGs...

Pathfinder 2nd Edition (Pre-2023 Revision)

Pathfinder, being a game spun out off the 3rd Edition of D&D, also uses the six ability scores that D&D uses: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

Just like with 5e, Pathfinder associates certain skills with certain ability scores, and just like 5e, Strength and Constitution are connected to only one and no skills respectively.

Still, that's just part of the bigger picture. Pathfinder 2e, just like D&D 3e, doesn't use ability scores as saving throws. Rather it uses three distinct saving throws that are tied to ability scores. Those saving throws are Fortitude (Constitution), Reflex (Dexterity), and Will (Wisdom). These are, for the keen-eyed, the same ability scores that are the primary saving throws in 5e. This means that defenses are covered exclusively by these three ability scores, and of these Constitution remains purely defensive, while Dexterity and Wisdom also have offensive capabilities. Still, the offensive power of Dexterity is lowered because in general it cannot be used to increase your weapon damage, contrary to how 5e does it.

It should also be noted that both when it comes to skills and saving throws, the calculations for rolls are very different than in 5e! If you are proficient with a skill or saving throw, you add both a bonus equal to your degree of proficiency (from +2 to +8), as well as your character's level, to the roll, in addition to your ability score modifier. This leads to massive bonuses, especially since magical effects can be added to that, too. Of course Pathfinder uses a sliding scale to determine difficulty classes and has a degrees of success system, but with that knowledge, the -4 to +5 you add to your rolls will matter less than 5e's ability score modifiers do. In general, as long as the modifier is at least a +1, it's fine.

This has actually led to Wisdom being considered a dump stat for many Pathfinder players, and that especially applies when playing with one alternate rule that I want to highlight.

In the Gamemastery Guide, the Alternative Scores variant rule splits Dexterity into Dexterity and Agility, merges Strength and Constitution, and makes Charisma rather than Wisdom the relevant ability for Will saving throws. That variant rule acknowledges the power of Dexterity and the relative weaknesses of Strength and Constitution, but somehow strengthens Charisma further. I don't have any numbers or insight on how popular this alternate rule is, but given what I know about Pathfinder 2e character optimizers, I wouldn't adopt the change to Will saves if I were to run this variant rule myself.

Still, the knowledge of these three saving throws puts us nicely into the realm of indie RPGs, which have really run with this. So let's look at one as an example.

Cairn

This lovely little game written by Yochai Gal has been a well-supported indie darling and is currently in a playtest for a 2nd edition.

Cairn uses three ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower. It also uses a d20 roll under system, contrary to 5e and Pathfinder. This means that you aim to roll below your ability score, rather than adding a number to a d20 roll and seeing if you can meet the difficulty class threshold.

They are also, in combat, mostly defensive. Strength in combat mostly concerns surviving blows. Dexterity is used to determine if you move before the enemies and for escaping combat. Both Strength and Dexterity can be used for saving throws against certain spells. In combat Willpower is necessary to cast spells without suffering penalties.

Offensively none of the three ability scores are that important. They don't add to damage, they aren't important for making attacks, or anything of the sorts. Spellcasting outside of dangerous situations usually doesn't involve die rolls either.

This makes the three ability scores very balanced, but it also gives them comparatively little meaning. They are your protection from harm. Including out of combat. But Cairn doesn't know skill checks whose failure state isn't "nothing happens". If player characters have no pressure, they succeed. Especially if they have useful equipment for it.

Using the DIY & dragons blog post as reference, Strength only represents physical force defense, Dexterity only represents physical grace defense, and Willpower represents mental grace and force defense.

So, let's look at a different roll-under system, one that might provide additional inspiration for game designers...

The Dark Eye (4th Edition, revised)

The German TTRPG The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge) is old, almost as old as D&D, and in its design its often as an antithesis for D&D. It's incredibly math-y, has a generally less heroic (but also categorically "good") playstyle, and is a class-less (kinda), level-less system. To ensure I know what I'm talking about, I'll focus on the 4th edition, which has by now been superceded by its own 5th edition, because that's the one edition of it I actually played.

DSA (its German acronym which I will use for brevity's sake) uses eight attribute (!) scores:

Courage, Cleverness, Intuition, Charisma, Dexterity, Agility, Constitution, and Strength.

Each of these eight attribute scores affects the character directly. Heroes have base values (melee attack, ranged attack, parry, initiative) that are calculated by adding together set combinations of attribute scores and dividing the sum, most often by 5, to determine those base values. For brevity's sake, let's look at two of these base values: attack and parry. Attack is calculated with Courage + Agility + Strength, while parry is calculated using Intuition + Dexterity + Strength. Both use two "physical" attributes and one "mental" attribute.

Similar rules also apply to calculating how much your character can withstand, be it through their general vitality (which is equivalent to hit points), their endurance (mostly used as a resource for athletic feats), and their wound limit, all of which can be used to defeat characters. Even the amount of astral points, the spellcasting resource, is calculated using your attribute scores. Every attribute is used at least once when calculating these eight values, with only Cleverness, Charisma, and Dexterity being used only for one of these eight fundamental character traits, with Charisma being the least important, because it is only used to calculate astral energy points, which are irrelevant for characters that don't know spells.

Furthermore skill checks in DSA are made by rolling three attribute checks in a row and then using skill points to modify the results if necessary. Skills use either three distinct attribute scores (e.g. Cooking, which requires Cleverness & Intuition & Dexterity), or two attribute scores (with one being used twice, e.g. Perception requires one Cleverness check and two Intuition checks). Simple attribute checks where you use only one attribute are rare, with heavy lifting often being the key example for it. There are also loads of skills in DSA, with the character sheet per default having twenty four skills, with more being common on most characters.

As you can hopefully see, all eight ability scores are used very often and impact your character greatly. They are furthermore more clearly delineated than the D&D standard, however they also don't map onto the DIY & dragons parameters for ability scores, despite having eight of them!

Conclusion

What can we learn from this? Well, honestly, draw your own conclusions. The six ability scores of D&D and Pathfinder are not the "be-all and end-all", that's for sure. You really need to think about what your game wants to do.

Is it just combat-focused? Then all ability scores should matter in combat and to (roughly) the same degree!

Does your game consist of multiple gameplay elements? If yes, then they should all be accessible and fun for players even if their base stats are "bad" in one aspect, while still allowing for specialization of player characters.

Generally, there is no "one size fits all" solution, and this rant hasn't even gone into ambiguity between different terms, the implications of specific terms and associated thresholds, or the exact history of ability scores in D&D before 3rd Edition!

Anyway, I hope this was legible, fun and informative.

[abandonhopegame]

-Abandon Hope- is looking for beta readers and testers

The initial draft for the game has been completed and we are now ready to gain feedback with regard to the game and its mechanics. The game uses the Four Points Game System by Penflower Ink, which gives players two options to perform an action - use points from a particular stat pool or roll the die!

If you are interested in being a beta reader or possibly beta testing the game, please email us at gakuenmysteryclub@gmail.com with the follow information:

Your Name

Best way to contact you (Email, Tumblr DM, etc)

A small introduction and why you'd like to help out!

Responses will go out next week by Tuesday, October 17th! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to send an Ask!