>>28494871
>following post is in response to:
>>tfw you'll never design a board game
>;-;

Oh fuck that.

You want me to tell you how to become any form of game designer? It takes no special training, it takes a knowledge of probability and mechanics and a fuck ton of testing.

Game design is 10% inspiration, 10% knowing basic statistics and math, and 80% fucking trial and error.

You want to make a board game? Look at some games of chance, and then figure out ways to manipulate them.

Here's the simplest one. 2d6 is one of the simplest and easiest to scale and balance random chance systems.

You have the highest chance of rolling a 7. Next highest chance is 6 and 8, then 5 and 9, and so on and so forth until you reach 2 and 12. It's a perfectly bell curve of probability, and makes it very easy to balance. It's why Settlers of Catan uses it.

Next, figure out a theme, and figure out a way to use your random chance mechanic in a meaningful way. And that's even if you want to use fucking chance at all, all games are a balance of strategy versus random chance, and physical verus mental activity. Board games are almost universally purely mental (but not always, I once made a board game that had little 'valleys' in the board and you had to flick blocks representing mining teams down onto the planet to earn points. It was really cool, I'll post the rules to it sometime.)

Anyway. Board game making is NOT hard. Get some fucking markers. Get a big old sheet of paper or some cardboard, and get to fucking DRAWING.

>cont. next post

>>28494884
And then get some friends, and fucking PLAY IT. Then make adjustments, then play it AGAIN. Do that over and over until the game is fun, and always try to bring in fresh faces to play the game to find out NEW THINGS about what you're doing wrong, because your old play test teams will get used to the rules and will begin subconciously house ruling stuff without telling you, and it won't be until you bring in an entirely new betatest team who isn't used to playing with you for you to figure out that you were house ruling something without putting it into the rules like you should have (proper beta testing involves handing a rulebook to a bunch of people who haven't played the game, then sitting back and not interfering until the game comes to a dead stop or is done)

What makes me even more furious than seeing wasted potential in a fucking game that could have been amazing is seeing PEOPLE go "I will never design a video/board/roleplaying game."

IT IS NOT THAT DIFFICULT! GAME DESIGNERS ARE NOT SOME SET OF GODS WHO HAVE MAGIC GAME MAKING POWERS!

Making a game is mostly being a stubborn asshole who can take constructive criticism and write in such a way that people can understand you.

Are you literate? Are you able to listen to people tear into your creation without getting angry? Do you have a grasp of basic math or at least the ability to sit down and read a bit about probabilities (if you're making a game that involves chance at -all-). Can you draw straight enough lines to make something that is obviously a grid at the second glance? If so? You're ready to be a game designer. And you're already more qualified than almost everyone I went to college with.

So get the fuck out there and make a fucking board game. Because you are that awesome, and you have good ideas, and you CAN fucking make a game.

>>28494902
Now, making a game that SELLS well? One that is commercially viable? I'll be honest, that's mostly just lucking the fuck out. But if you can make a working prototype of a board game that is fun to play even if you aren't a commercial success with it? Chances are good that groups like steve jackson games or wizards of the coast or other board game making companies will hire you.

>In response to:
>Alright, but what about big numbers? Like 100d6? You can't calculate that by hand, so what do you do?

1) That doesn't have the bell curve effect that I know of. but it might. 2d6 is the one I -know- has it.
2) Honestly? Why the hell are you making a system that necessitates using that many dice? It's a bad design decision. Sure, it gives you more options and a wider vareity of probabilities, but why not just use something simpler like a d100.

GAME DESIGNER ANON'S RULES FOR PHYSICAL DICE THROWING (videogames do not need this).
>NUMBER ONE!
You will keep the number of rolls to a bare minimum. Do not force the player to roll more than 3 times for any one events. Try to keep it to a single roll whenever possible.
>Example of how not to do it
-Roll to hit
-roll for bodypart hit
-roll for damage
-roll for if skin is punctured
-roll for blood loss
>Example of how to do it:
-roll to hit
-roll for bodypart hit
-roll for damage
>Perfect example of how to do it:
-roll to hit.

>cont. next post.

>>28494939

>RULE NUMBER TWO:
A player should be able to look at the dice, maybe arrange them a bit, and then immediately be able to tell if he rolled well or not. He should not have to pick and choose what to do with his fucking dice. (There are exceptions to this rule. Legend of the Wulin actually breaks this rule very well, but Cthulhutech breaks it badly. Basically, unless you have mastered designing games using basic dice rolls, don't make the rules more complex).
>Example of how not to do it:
-Roll dice
-Player or GM choose how to count my dice (do I look for pairs? Do I choose the highest? Do I look for flushes of 1-2-3-4-5-6? etc.)
>Example of HOW TO DO IT:
-Roll dice
-I line up my dice with like numbers and immedaitely know how well I rolled.
>Example of how to do it best!:
-Roll dice
-able to read the dice at a glance and do mental arithmetic necessary to figure out my score.

>RULE NUMBER THREE
You won't give the players so many dice that they risk dropping some of them if they try to hold them all in one hand. Needing to hold them in both hands is right out. (I'M LOOKING AT YOU SHADOWRUN!)

>>28494958
>In response to:
>Hah. You would probably despise Mythender. It's fun, but definitely goes against your rules.

>Then you just have BAD examples like FATAL or the DBZ RPG that either give you a thousand different rolls to do (the former) or give you one roll to hit but require literally hundreds of d6 for damage (the latter, though it suggests sensible ways to do it).

oh, I don't HATE games that break these rules. Some of them can break them very well, they suit the setting, and they found a way to break them in such a way that it's not a massive time sink that takes you out of the game just to do number crunching.

Rule Number 2 is broken by Legend of the Wulin for example.

Like any genre, if you KNOW THE BASIC RULES then you can BREAK THEM to make original, and superior, content to the basic stuff. But you have to know the rules first so that you can break them the right way.

To many people are like "AARG! YOU CAN'T PUT RULES ON THIS SHIT! THAT'S DUMB! YOU'RE DUMB!"

Except yeah, we kinda can put a standardized template on, if not what is 'good', then on what is UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTABLE.

There will never be a case where a single roll system is worse than mediocre (though I'm sure someone will now step up to prove me wrong) for example.

You can make BETTER stuff with multiple roll systems, even with things where you're making many rolls in a row. But you have to understand what makes rolling dice a FUN mechanic first, and how to make a SINGLE dice roll fun, then you work your way up from there.

>>28494974

Consider these "starting rules" for anybody getting into game design. Once you can make a game that is fun using those rules, THEN you can start breaking them to make games that are otherwise fun. And hey, if you think you can make a game that's fun without these rules? Then try it. Get people to test it, listen to their feedback and roll with it.

Anyway, if this thread starts to sage, I'll probably open up a new thread on game design tips or something if this interests you guys that much?

>end of copypasta.

And that's when I came and made this thread. So questions? Queries? Your own advice? Why I suck for even posting this thread? Have at it.

I wanna make a game, but I don't have a good idea what - exactly. Any help in that regard?

>>28494987
That's fascinating. What do you think of this system?
>Your stats, skills, bonuses and penalties determine your pool value, which you use to buy dice for each roll. A d4 is worth 1, a d6 is worth 2, and so on. You can allocate your pool value any way you want.
>After rolling, the highest number is your result (whether you succeed) and any other numbers are your effects (what happens if you succeed). If you only rolled one die, you have one effect of 1.
>That means you can always try to do more than one thing, but you'll probably fail unless you expend resources to boost your pool value.

Any advice regarding player 'currency' like willpower, essence points, blood pool?

http://pastebin.com/esQc81vm

Reading through the thread right now, but I figure I should save time by posting this for review

How to keep at it?
Starting is easy, but when the problems just pile up and you can't come up with anything to fix them... How do you get past that with your sanity still intact?

>>28495087
First thing. Pick a theme. Just a general theme, then work from there. This is fluff mostly, but it can REALLY help the process start.

Next, you want to figure out. Is this game going to be one of chance or strategy? and how much of each? Too much player control can lead to games like Pandemic which can play like a 1 player game due to there being no random chance involved at all. Too much and you're basically playing Mario Party on the board without any control at all. That said, you don't need to worry about too much strategy if the game is purely competitive without collaborative elements (such as chess), but you will eventually run into "perfect game" syndrome unless you leave the rules incredibly loose, such as with Go.

The other thing you want to figure out, is how much physical skill is involved, and how much mental skill. Physical skill means anything you're leaving up to physics. Pick up Jacks is a physical skill game, without being a sport, a game where you flick little blocks into bowls to see how many points you get is a physical skill game. Mental skill games are basically every other board game ever.

Once you figure those out, run with it from there.

(answering these 1 post at a time for speed's sake)

>>28495323

>>28495247
The skill pool system is actually interesting. So basically, I have my attribute strength (say at 3 with a d8), my skill is running (skill 2) and my bonus (from my running shoes) is 1?

That means I'm rolling 1d8+1d6+1d4 to figure out my final value? That's actually interesting, and might not be too hard to balance, but I will say that it does mean that higher skill levels just increase your cap, they don't increase the BOTTOM of what you can roll. In d20 systems you do have various types of rolls, but you also have flat bonuses that increase the BOTTOM of what you can roll.

So let's say I'm a strength level 5 or something, the point is I'm rolling 1d20. In theory, someone with strength level 5 is super human, they're not easily going to fall apart. But I can still roll a 1 and for some reason my super strength just isn't working? Either find a way to correct this in your fluff so it makes sense, or be sure to include methods of increasing your LOWEST possible roll (or to autopass certain checks based on what die you're rolling. or example, rolling a d20 means that I automatically pass anything with a dc of 5-10 or something. I'm just throwing numbers out here by the way, don't take them as word of god, you need to test this stuff).

Now, I do like the system of what you're rolling however. It can work with the right fluff backing it to make sense. But I'm not sure it'd make sense for a normal 'adventurers go slay the dragon' type rpg. I know a friend doing something very similar using the dice to simulate parts of a civilization. Each color represents different things, and the others you roll to back up that thing on your turn, giving you bonus effects.

>>28495323
Sorry, accidently put you in the previous post. Sorry about that.

Now, managing currency stuff is a tricky business. The first thing you want to do is figure out EXACTLY how this currency effects the game. For example, in nWoD Hunter: The Vigil, you have will power like everybody else, but your cap is the important thing, and you can GAMBLE it away to do awesome stuff.

Compare and contrast pretty much any other nWoD group's mana currency system. The effects are entirely different.

By and large, you need to figure out these things.
1) How is this currency going to effect the rolls?
Am I using it up on EVERY roll? Am I using it up to boost my rolls? Can I use it multiple times to effect the same roll in different ways?

2)How often am I getting this currency back? When I spend it, am I expecting never to get it back ever ever again? Am I only getting it back when the GM says I do something spectacular? Do I get it back during game play? Or just between sessions or encounters?

3) How much of it do I have? Am I expected to keep track of fuck tons of it?

4) How much am I spending at one time? Is it one bit of currency per event (action or fate points?) or is it variable based on what I'm doing it for (mana and psipoints?)

5) What the hell am I actually USING this currency on. Is this 'save my life' currency? Am I spending it for trivial shit? You need to balance this against the other two. If I can spend it on ALOT of stuff, but none of it is all that big in effect, I should have a pretty big pool of it. If I can spend it on a lot of things, but it's all big stuff, I shouldn't have TOO much of a pool, even if I get it back fairly often (but not too often). If this is something that can potentially turn a TPK into a victory? That shit should be hard to get and hard to store up.

Also things to figure out include "How much does a player start with." and "How do they increase their cap" of how much they can have.

>>28495339
I'll get to you in a bit, the next question is actually faster to answer.

>>28495540
Okay, this is how I do it.
1) Make a goal list. And whenever new problems crop up, put it on the goal list somewhere, and figure out how to fix it.
2) Get other people on the project enthused with it as you are at the start. This helps keep everyone enthused
3) Treat it like a job. Set a time every fucking day to put in SOME work on it. Even if it's just organizational stuff. If you can't do that, once a week, and make it longer.
4) Get your play sessions lined up.

Honestly dude, the rule for game design is the same as any creative endevor. You have to realize right at the start, it is not going to be all fun and roses, that it's not going to be fun every step of the way, that at times, it is going to be boring.

I'll tell you a personal story. See, on a project I'm currently working on, a personal indie project, I met a super cool guy at GDC (the Game Developers Conference) and we hit it off. We began speaking over how to make a truly FUN free to play game, making a crazy fusion of Magic the Gathering, Fire Emblem, and Farmville all smooshed together in a form of digital heroine that got everyone we told about it excited as fuck.

Last august, about 5 months into the project, it became apparent that not only was my partner not doing his job, but he wasn't GOING to do his job of making the fucking concept art. We had to kick him off the project, and he did everything he could to sabotage our work up to that point, the Graybox (the prototype of the game) was deleted, the website torn down, we we went from 3 months a head of schedual to 4 months behind schedual. It was a fucking nightmare, and as problems go, having your former co-lead fuck you over is a biggy.

>>28495556

That's very helpful, thank you!

Do you have any general tips? I have a lot of ideas for 'heavy' games, but I'd like to make something light. A game that my parents could enjoy - but hardcore gamers would like to play as well.

Anything comes to mind?

>>28495902

It took me until NOW to start getting back on forcing that project forward again. It's not fun, it's stressful having to find new programmers and artists and make this work. And frankly, some times I wonder if it wouldn't be healthier to abandon it entirely. But I keep at it because I have a dream of seeing the game completed.

I will see it done, and to hell with the problems that get in the way. You keep going because you know you got something that is amazing, something that drives you to do it even when shit hits the fan.

You keep working at it because you're fucking stubborn and you're honest with yourself right from the start. That you know it won't be sun shine and roses the whole way, and that there will be problems, but that you will overcome them. Even when it's not fun dealing with them.

Getting to >>28495339 next, then >>28495918

I want to make a game similar to/inspired by an existing videogame, using mechanics already existing in boardgame world.

Does that even make sense or will everyone rip me to shreds for 'ripping off' things?

Sorry for the wait. Had to eat dinner with family.

>>28495339
Looks good. Simple to do, quick to pick up. Do some play tests and keep notes of it. I want to hear about it.

>>28495918
Okay. The term you are looking for is "midcore" and in my personal lexicon as a game designer, it is the holygrail of game design. The trick is 'easy to learn, hard to master"
The rule to this is simple. You want several rules and systems that are easy to learn and keep track of. This makes them easy to learn, and easy for players to remember to do over and over again. You can include many such rules if you like, but the important thing is that all of the systems are relatively simple, and that they mesh well, and that they're easy to remember.
Avoid complex systems. If to use a single system in the game you have to do more than 3 things, chances are it's complex. This isn't hard and fast, but it's a good guide line.

You want simple but deep. That means many systems that interact meaningfully, but are each in and of themself easy to remember and keep ordered in your head.

Once you've done this, you then just have to plug in variables, and that creates complex possible interactions of play.

The eternal ideal is that you learn the game only one time, and then how it plays out is different every single time. A good example of this is Munchkin, the mechanics and systems involved are all very simple, but once you know the basics, you can use them no matter which munchkin deck you're using and the game will turn out different every single time you play, even if you're relatively new to the game.

>>28496030
No, absolutely not. No one will rip into you for 'ripping stuff off"

I'll let you in on a secret, all game design is ultimately copy-cat behavior.

You copy what's been done well, and then you improve on what it did badly as best you can. All game design is about improving what people did before you.

We follow a very medieval terminology for an "Author." An Author is someone who takes the works of others and then adds their own ideas to it to create a new work.

There is nothing 'totally original' in the world. That's a sorry truth. The most you can do is deconstruct and reconstruct the stuff of other people, as well as improve upon systems that have already been tried. We are not forgers, we don't create original content all of the time, we are hackers, we take previously made content, then improve it to the point it can do things the people who originally made it never conceived.

As long as you're not blatantly ripping off either system, as long as you are trying to improve upon what the videogame did wrong, and what the boardgame did wrong, both in terms of crunch and fluff, then no one but a true asshole will fault you for it.

Just make sure you test the changes you make to the crunch with betatesters, preferably one group who has never played the game you're basing your mechanics on, and another group who has.

>>28496782
>>28496644

You are incredibly helpful and I wish I was ready for this occasion. If it wasn't 2am here, I would shower you with attention and question. I just wanna sit here and listen to you.

Actually about that, can you recommend some 'essential reading' on boardgame design? Maybe a podcast that dabs into it, or something?

File: 1385427944858.pdf-(1.64 MB, PDF, RPG_Design_Patterns_9_13_09.pdf)

1.64 MB PDF

>>28496892
On the subject of essential reading.

Is pdf related any good or am I just too rube to see the nonsense?

>>28496892
There I can't help you I'm afraid. Well, not outside the realm of videogame design. For those I'd suggest Extra Credits (for general design stuff, not everything they have will be applicable to board games, but chunks of just about everything they say can and should be applied to it) and Jimquisition (which is more political commentary on the current standards of the game industry, but I use is as a barometer of what not to include in my games and how to handle monetization)

>>28497079
Give me five minutes to skim the opening and I'll get back to you.

>>28497079
Looks good.

There's some other books I'd suggest you read, but I can't recall their names right now. I'll see if I can track down the names tomorrow or tonight and post them up. One of them was a great way of generating random cities on the fly using a pallet of markers and a D4. It was pretty awesome. If I can't find the book name I'll post the methods here.

Amateur game dev here... You probably have more experience than me, but I'd like to comment on your answers...


>>28495556
I'd say have an idea or desire, and roll with it. "Aliens in a burger shop", "wresting elves" and roll with. For the latter, you can make a game about managing a wrestling team (management game), having fights like a skirmish game (minis game), or a straight two player ccg. For as much as fluff is superfluous, in a good game, the mechanic complement the fluff as much as the fluff complements the mechanics.
We, as experienced gamers, usually see beyond the fluff, but it's really important for the general public.

And the idea shouldn't be only around concepts and themes. Also mechanics. "a ccg-like dice game" or "a game that uses coin-flips". Just challenge yourself to TRY STUFF! How would you make "Breaking Bad: the Board Game" ?

>>28497205
>I'd say have an idea or desire, and roll with it. "Aliens in a burger shop", "wresting elves" and roll with. For the latter, you can make a game about managing a wrestling team (management game), having fights like a skirmish game (minis game), or a straight two player ccg. For as much as fluff is superfluous, in a good game, the mechanic complement the fluff as much as the fluff complements the mechanics.
Absolutely right.

Your mechanics need to make sense with your fluff, which is why I was wary of the system outlined in >>28495247
due to how it could potentially make it very easy to fail even when it would make no sense for you to do so.

Amateur game dev again

>>28496030
I'm mainly a videogames guy. And a programmer. I'm developing a board game atm. Some hints:

For the computer is easy to keep track of life, experience, mana, stamina, cooldowns, weather, tectonic plates, etc. In a board game, people have to keep track of it. So KEEP STUFF SIMPLE! Nothing is more annoying than spending the start of the turn fiddling bit of cardboard. When thinking about a system or mechanic, think about it's fiddliness, together with all the fiddliness of the other mechanics.

Example: MTG
The fiddliness comes only from untapping at the start of the turn. Not that annoying, right? Good design.
A good idea for reducing fiddliness was "creatures heal up at the end of each turn". Imagine if creatures only healed up at the start of your turn... You probably had to keep track of damage during the two turns. MOre fiddliness... annoying game!

Also, people aren't computer and don't carry calculators around. Abstract the game and keep calculations to a minimum!

>>28497402
more good stuff.

Yeah, fiddliness falls into the category of what I call "upkeep"

If a player is having to keep track of more than his strategy, then there is something wrong. You got some leeway in RPGs, people expect to have a lot of upkeep going on each turn, but ultimately you want to keep your up keep down to the bare minimum. It should either keep track of itself by some mechanic on the board and be handled and resolved immediately (no ongoing effects the players have to keep track of) or just not be there.

And now I want to make a world buildy type free form game involving dice levels like the guy above suggested... I'm terrible.

>>28497402

Oh, I completely understand that. I played RPGs for ages, so I know just how bad the transition from PC to paper can be sometimes.

I dreadfully remember the days when I was playing with people who had weapons such as '5% chance to poison'. The amount of needless dice rolling...

I'd streamline the Videogame idea so it could work well on the board. I was just wondering if it's a faux pas.

Amateur Game Dev... this time I mean business.

Have a look at my game: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G6tH4_wAqL7JgR2nYf1ni72WEfC7w03Bh0Nuo2WWCI4/edit?usp=sharing

Still on a pre-alpha. My design goals is to make a grid based skirmish game with no pre-game setup (no pre-built teams) where your team is chosen pseudo randomly.

Each character has an attack and a passive ability. There are card with attacks. Each player is dealt a hand of 8 attacks. Then the players draft character from a random selection. When they choose a character, they equip one of their card, and discard another. After each player has 4 characters, they fight.

>>28497521
Huh, give me a bit to look through it, but I feel a little guilty considering the game I'm currently working on is almost identical, but for mobile platforms and involves deckbuilding and hex-grid skirmish battles.

Goddamn I need to get a move on getting that graybox made before somebody actually makes what I'm doing before I do.

Also, protip for everyone. When you're a game designer, you will constantly run into shit that makes you go "OMG!? DID SOMEBODY CRIB MY IDEA BEFORE I EVEN RELEASED IT!?!"

The answer is no. No they didn't. They just came up with something scary similar to your idea. Don't believe Genie from ABC's saturday morning cartoons during the 90's and early 2000's. Great Minds do end up thinking alike.

>>28497521

My main challenges right now are:

- Objectives besides fighting to the death. I already have an idea, but need to test if. Fights to the death get really boring in the end.
- I'd like to add level-ups to the game. Maybe the game gets too complex. Need to test it.
- Naming stuff and mechanics wording. This shit is HARD! Mainly because english is not my main language. Wizards is awesome at this. This is why Mtg card are so easy to understand.
- I probably have too many cool shit that I want to add, but it will only add bloat to the game. I have to grab a scythe and start chopping stuff.

I'm aiming for a light game, to be played by not so heavy boardgamers. I' targeting videogamers and 15-up kids.

>>28497610
Dude, be my guest and look.
It's an hobby for now. I still don't know what to with it... I'm just designing the game for fun.

Also, while I have these rules there, boardgames are infinitely "moddable". While I say the game is played one way, people can do whatever they want with the system. I imagine players coming up with new game-modes, setting up dream-teams...

IIf you want to get in touch send me an email. (it's on guerilla mail because I'm no stupid enough to put my mail in 4chan)

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>>28497772
Bumping with stuff:

What do I use to test the game.

- A ton of d6's
- A Battletech anniversary edition board
- Paper minis bought here http://www.rpgnow.com/product/107287/Battle-Studio-Paper-Miniatures-Human-Adventurers-Pack-%5BBUNDLE%5D
- Made and printed the attack and character cards. Used sleeves and magic cards to use them.

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>>28494884

Actually, the 2d6 bell curve is a pretty rough bell curve.

The ideal bell curve would be at lim(n->infinity) ndx, where x is any integer > 1.

>>28498030
"rough" for a given variation of rough. The points on the curve are equal on both sides of it, and that's what matters.

>>28498021
Anybody still here?

I just realised some stuff in my document is in my native language. Gonna translate it fast.

Everybody is welcome to add comments on it.

>>28498021
I use rolld20 personally.

I think most of the guys here were reading your thing.

>>28498095
yeah, I can see people there...

>>28498030
>The ideal bell curve would be at lim(n->infinity) ndx, where x is any integer > 1.
How do I represent that with d6's?

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>>28494871

Obviously, role-playing games are more complex than board games, and I don't know how much you know about role-playing games, but how well would these guidelines work for designing an rpg?

I've never actually designed an rpg or anything, but every so often I'll get bored and start thinking of ideas and I like to think that I've got some fun ideas.

>>28498148
lim(n->infinity) nd6
@d6, where @=infinity

>>28498169
>Obviously, role-playing games are more complex than board games
Are they, really, though?

>>28498169
>role-playing games are more complex than board games

I disagree.

>>28498203
On average, probably. Especially considering how many hilariously complex D&D knockoffs are kicking about.

Off course, lighter RPGs are less complex than really dense board games, and The Campaign for Northern Africa is a thing so board games have the complexity crown locked up on the extreme end, but as a general rule I think it still holds.

>>28498265
Why? What is it about role-playing games that you makes them inherently (in general) more complex than board games?

>>28498307
that you think*

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>>28498148

You uh, you don't. That would require infinite rolling.

But that guy.
>>28498171

>>28498148
By buying a buttload of d6.

>>28498169
Take a look at >>28497079
It has a good guide.

But by and large, RPGs are only more complex in that they have more systems involved. The rules I layed out are easily applied to any form of table top game, from model armies, to board games, to rpgs.

>>28498148
As I said earlier in the thread (and I can show you the proof) the best and easiest to use bellcurve with d6s is the sum of 2d6. 7 is the top of the curve.

>1 possible roll will get you 12 (6+6)
>2 possible rolls will get you 11 (5+6, 6+5)
>3 possible rolls will get you 10 (5+5, 6+4, 4+6)
>4 possible rolls will get you 9 (6+3, 3+6, 5+4, 4+5)
>5 possible rolls will get you 8 (6+2, 2+6, 5+3, 3+5, 4+4)
>6 possible rolls will get you 7 (6+1, 1+6, 2+5, 5+2, 4+3, 3+4)
>5 possible rolls will get you 6
>4 possible rolls will get you 5
>3 possible rolls will get you 4
>2 possible rolls will get you 3
>1 possible roll will get you 2

That's how you best simulate a bell curve with a REASONABLE amount of d6s.

>>28498328
And around here, buttload means 463.

>>28498307
How many board games have you seen with 100+ page instruction manuals? There is simply more material in most RPGs than in most boardgames.

Which isn't necessarily a point in an RPGs favor, mind you. Despite all the available options and the piles of content that players are supposed to familiarize themselves with actually playing some RPGs can still be a fairly shallow experience compared to playing a well-designed board game. I am, however, in even less of a position to judge average role-playing and board game depth and/or quality than I am to judge average complexity.

>>28498452

>100+ pages

You do realise that a LOT of that is fluff, right?

>>28498307
Because, quite simply put, I can go open up my monopoly box and the rule booklet included inside is eight pages long, but I need a 370 page core book to understand how to run Shadowrun 4E, and then another 205 page book for the full tech rules, and then another 192 page book for the full magic rules.

>>28498542
>370 page

No, stop this.

You don't have 250 pages of setting and world-building in Monopoly.

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>>28498307

Now that I think about it, I feel like rpgs have more details filled out, but only because you're free to do more, but the basic spine isn't much more complex.

>>28498452
>How many board games have you seen with 100+ page instruction manuals? There is simply more material in most RPGs than in most boardgames.

Okay, one.
>>28498499
Has a small point, but even when you take only the crunchy bits of a manual, you usually have a good 30-140 pages involved depending on the overall size of the manual itself.

As I said, rpgs tend to be MANY systems involved rather than just a few. Also, an RPG is usually handled with even fewer props than a Boardgame. All those spaces and stuff? The rules about how you move about have to be more specific. Further, as a game gets more simulationist, and character creation options get more complex, you have to add in even more details.

The difference between boardgames and rpgs isn't the AMOUNT of crunch, it's how that crunch is presented and how you can handle it.

For example, 4e's crunch is actually A LOT smaller than 3.5's because it is far more focused on combat and a few other things. Similarly, a dnd boardgame might simulate MANY of the elements in a normal DnD session, but it couldn't simulate EVERYTHING possible in an RPG.

In RPGs, you create more rules and more variables because you are able to do so without spending money and space on building a fuck huge board and tons of rulebooks too.

RPGs are more complex than board games, but that's because a lot of the stuff has to be handled without props. You have a lot more options on what you can do with your imagination than with what you can do on a single game board.

>>28498582
Yep, got it in one. The most basic systems of RPGs and Board games, the core crunch and game play, are always very simple and generally work exactly the same way.

Guess what guys? Monopoly and shadowrun use almost exactly the same core mechanics.

You roll d6 to achieve effects, and then you have mechanisms you can call upon to reach your goals. For shadowrun that's abilities, for Monopoly it's cards and buying hotels.

>>28498556
>250 pages of setting and world building
Haha, if only. I'm holding the book in my hands right now - the fluff talk ends at page 60. Besides intermittent stories between full chapters of rules, its all character creation, stat blocks, rules and item lists from there on down.

The fluff and setting stuff is ANOTHER 199 page book, I'm afraid.

>>28498542
Just because something has more pages doesn't mean it's mechanically more complex.

>>28498499
Fluff is still part of an RPG's complexity. If the RPG comes with its own setting you need some familiarity with that setting to play.

But even if we discount that, and even if we assume something like 80% of an RPG's content is fluff, that's still handily beating a lot of board games. I play a pretty good number of board games, and quite a few of them get away with a max. 10 page rules pamphlet. Big box games with 20+ page rulebooks are not the average.

Again, lighter RPGs will be less complicated than something like BSG. But on average, just going by amount of content, RPGs are more complicated.

>>28498627

Sure, whatever. You're right and I'm wrong.
When am I ever fucking right.

>>28498613
>You roll d6 to achieve effects, and then you have mechanisms you can call upon to reach your goals. For shadowrun that's abilities, for Monopoly it's cards and buying hotels.

Also, just pointing out. That you could totally achieve the same narrative effect of monopoly in Shadowrun. You could work your way up, buy businesses and territory, build up a successful business and trade network, and form a megacorporation.

But in Monopoly, you can only see the upper most parts of that.

In Shadowrun, you go through the whole nitty gritty of corporate espionage, the megacorps gunning for you, crazed spirits and sprites trying to fuck with you, having to give somebody cement shoes and make it look like he ran away to bono with a massive amount of embezzeled money so that his company collapses and your rising star buys out the bankruptcy and rebuilds it to add to your growing corporate empire.

>>28498673
>Fluff is still part of an RPG's complexity.

Right, just like you couldn't write a big book of fluff on TI3.

RPGs are the pinnacle of complexity, only 10% of the population can understand -1 to roll.

Soo, what do you think f Tactics of Heroes?

It's 2:40 am here, and I have work tomorrow morning, so I won't be here much longer, but I'd like to hear some opinions.

>>28498613
>Has a small point, but even when you take only the crunchy bits of a manual, you usually have a good 30-140 pages involved depending on the overall size of the manual itself.
Simply not true. Most manuals are 80% rules. Easily.
And boardgames clearly have less crunch..
For example you don't have to define "movement" as the definition is already presented on the board as spaces you can move to.

>You roll d6 to achieve effects, and then you have mechanisms you can call upon to reach your goals. For shadowrun that's abilities, for Monopoly it's cards and buying hotels.
That's totally wrong though.
They both use d6 but one is dice pools and mods. The other is straight rolls.

Statements like this make me wonder how many games you've designed. CAuse you're kinda wrong about stuff.

>>28497079
This is interesting
>Skim Index of games analyzed
>No IronClaw
Ehhh shit, I have to ask then.

I've been digesting RPG rulebooks for fun the last few weeks, and IronClaw has my attention because it's out there on fucking Pluto as far as I can tell.

So I have to ask, what systems out there are like IronClaw?

Everyone that's played it raves about it. Specifically everyone seems to love the combat. At least once every 24 hours someone on /tg/ unashamedly admits they've lifted some if not all mechanics out of it wholesale for their own setting. While most rpg systems are closely related, after skimming through the IronClaw rulebook myself... it's way the fuck out there though granted I haven't tried every system under the sun yet myself.

Of particular interest to me are the mixed-dice pools, using d4,6,8,10,12. Generally speaking, all rolls are mixed pool from d4-thru-d12 pitted against another such mixed pool. Most (all I've played) dice pool systems use fixed die types (IE d6 or d10 pools). The resulting curves of the mixed dice pools are really interesting... far more interesting than any flat single dice or "bell curve" homogeneous dice pool. Though you're counting how many of your highest dice beat the other guy and not the totals anyway which I don't even know how to map that to a graph.

>>28499034
Really thought it was neat compared to all that d20+X or XD6 blandness I grew up with.

(Almost?) EVERYTHING is a die for use in a pool for a relevant roll rather than a set flat number bonus. Even the base stats are dice for a pool which I thought was really neat. Taking individual dice from relevant factors IE a check might use a pool consisting of a stat die, relevant race bonus die, relevant background die, relevant skill die, and conditional bonus die. Character creation uses NOT a "point-buy" system as I heard but a "dice-buy" where you assign 1d4,3d6,2d8 one each to stats, race, and background. Even armor is a dice for your pool rather than a set number, IE Leather armor provides a 1d6 die in the pool you'd have to bypass in an attack pool roll. It actually allows layered armor too, though armor and situational encumbrance penalties cap the max-dice size on rolls relevant to encumbrance. For example, you could play as an Armadillo that gets a natural armor bonus die which you spent a d8 at character creation on, then layer a gambeson, chainmail, and platemail for 2d4+2d8+1d10 of armor alone.

>>28499030

Top lel kid. The defensiveness is adorable, but you're overstaying your welcome.

>>28498771
Do you need to know the fluff, or rather should you know the fluff, in order to play the TI board game? Not really.

Should you have some familiarity with that same fluff in order to play a TI RPG? Probably.

And again, complexity is not a measure of quality. I'd much rather read some concise rules and get to playing than pore over the character creation rules and combat system of someone's fantasy heartbreaker.

And, also again, an average measure doesn't tell us anything about the distribution or range, or anything about correlation with whatever other traits you find compelling. It might be the case that the boardgames you play are TI, BSG, and Netrunner in which case you have fine taste and the games you play are all quite complex. More complex certainly than some indie RPGs where some clown printed a skeleton of character traits and resolution mechanics to their bad fanfiction. On average, though, it's my opinion that a random RPG would be more complex, at least in the sense that it will take more time to properly understand, than a random boardgame.

>>28499030
>CAuse you're kinda wrong about stuff.

Interesting. You'd do better to point out the instances where he is actually wrong. To help the point.

>>28499096
Read what I typed.

What are your thoughts on the bell curve of FUDGE dice?

Four six-sided dice, each with two blank faces, two - faces, and two + faces.

Rolling a blank, a blank, a +, and a + means your roll is 2 + whatever your base bonus is.

>>28499202
He's wrong because saying Monopoly and Shadowrun run on the same principles is retarded.
>Hurr you roll d6 in both games!
Fucking really.

Also saying any rpg book isn't mostly rules is plain wrong.

So feel free to keep sucking his cock. But this guy ain't no game dev.
>Taking his word for everything.
>No examples of anything he's ever worked on.
Being gullible and naive are not positive qualities.

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Wow, what timing. It just so happens that I'm in the middle of a third or fourth draft of a board game I've been working on for the better part of a year.

Picture related.

>>28499061
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and Dogs in the Vineyward both do something like this. At least with the dice-based traits, I forget whether you sum or compare high dice in those.

The math is more complicated than anyone probably really wants it to be, but as long as pools and dice are around the same size I imagine it works out in practice.

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>>28499264
the gaps in the board are for modular board pieces that are placed randomly at the start of the game, to make each round feel different enough that it's not the same thing over and over again. Think Settler's tile system, only slightly more simple.

>>28499263

You don't understand what a core mechanic is.

You misinterpret his words, too. Note 'small point', or that you don't know how many pages of fluff were thrown out. You're simply assuming and choosing to be offended.

>keep sucking his cock

I think you're overreacting, hard.

Bunch of assumptions and insults, really?
I really shouldn't have bothered with you, what a waste of time.

>>28499263

>>>/v/

>>28499034
>>28499061
This actually sounds interesting. My first time hearing about it (I think anyway, the name rings a bell, but considering how many villains go by some variation of X-Claw I could be confusing it for something else)

But it sounds a lot like the system up top, I'm curious how they avoid the whole "failing really hard at something when your stats fluff wise state it should be near impossible to do so"

>>28499171
Fudge dice are actually one of my favorite systems if only for their incredible simplicity. That said, without the "plus modifiers" thing, they can also mean that you're likely to fail at something that you shouldn't be able to fail at.

They're useful for games when you want to either build the tension, make them fairly lethal on the players, or just want to keep the crunch to a minimum (I just realized that the varied dice pool system does pretty much the same thing, you're trying to build up a big old pool of resources, not just get the biggest dice. In some cases, having 10 d4s might be a better deal than 4d10s... I'm going to have to run with that now on something).

>>28499263
Your opinion is valid, and if I could prove you wrong I would. But my point was that their ultimate core mechanic, eg: roll dice, shit happens based on modifiers, is essentially the same. I was trying to illustrate a point that board games and rpgs are at their core ultimately the same basic concept, one is merely more freestyle and complex than the other. I'm sorry I caused the confusion.

>>28499294
neat! I've always been a fan of more static boards myself, but that has more to do with bad experiences early on trying to develop games with modular boards (mein gott, at some point I need to put down my very originally named 'Galaxy Wars' rules too if I can dig them out from whatever pit of despair I cast them into. 4 weeks of prototyping, then we threw it all out one night and built the entire thing from scratch from modular board peices to mostly static ones)

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>>28499294
All of the board inserts are named to coincide with a Quest card. Forgive the shitty resolution and terrible handwriting on this; my webcam sucks dick and my handwriting sucks more; this one is the Bridge.

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>>28499336
Thanks! I agree that static board games are way more consistent, which is why it's just 'places of interest' and not the entire damn board. Also, way easier to set up. Have a picture of a fully loaded board half.

>>28499348
Okay, so I take it the quests cards you pull require you to do something in the modular rooms?

What's the theme? Grave robbing adventurers? Spec-ops on some mad lab? Scientists exploring noneculidean ruins in search for weapons against the old ones?

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>>28499370
The general gist of the game is that each player is a powerful wizard who has come to harvest magic runes from the massive underground cavern that the board represents. The runes have magical potential that can be used as is, or fused with another rune to form a more powerful second tier rune. The final goal of the game is to craft sets of runes into spells to complete your spellbook.

Here's the eight different types of tier one runes.

hey there! just about two weeks ago i grabbed a boxcutter, some cardboard, and a sharpie and started trying to put together a proof of concept for my boardgame idea...

anybody have advice about how to move NPCs in a fun way? like, imagine you were playing Talisman, only instead of "haunting this square until he is killed", any monsters you randomly turn up would start roaming around the board, chasing players (or running away), etc. is there a good way to do this that isn't tedious or unfair?

i'm thinking a good start is to give them a basic AI. like "monsters always chase the closest PC" or "rich merchants always try to run to town before they get burgled".

but how about a system where other players move the NPCs while it's your turn? or have the dice randomly decide directions? or...

>>28496644
in regards to Kennon

I've been slowly testing it, aside from the drinking and cheating, and it is really hard to balance since the map changes every game. So there is probably a skill gap between players and newbs since there are definitely strategies. But at the same time, the map changes wildly enough that it's almost impossible to solve before the drop phase is over, and then you just have simple plays that only get complicated when you consider multiple people

And the matches only take a few minutes to finish unless you make the map very large, so you get clear control over how long you want the game to be, each time.

So, those are good things, right?

Also, this was designed to be the kind of game that post apocalyptic occupational soldiers would come up with while sitting through their rounds. Easy to remember, easy to alter, changes every time, easy to improvise.

Mission accomplished?

>>28499463

Sounds fun, I'd give it a go.

>>28499463

>complete your spellbook

I like that idea. I'd play it with you

>>28499463

Actually sounds interesting, would these wizards fight each other?

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>>28499415
The quests are designed to give the players an incentive to move around the board and interact with other players instead of just mastrubating in a corner somewhere crafting runes. Each quest has two modes. One is where the named location is on the board. In that case,you need to travel to the specified area and stand there for a turn to garner a reward. The other is when the named area isn't on the board; they're simple objectives like "trade runes with two other players" or "deal X damage to a player".

>>28499530
>>28499551
Well, I'm glad somebody is interested. That's always a plus. Have a picture of the quest deck.

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So how about one of you tries to tackle something a bit larger?

>>28499463
Have you thought about making a version for roll20 or a digital system like that? I'd love to playtest this.

>>28499464
I'd suggest looking at Arkham Horror. The tiles on the board are specifically set up with white and black arrows. Each monster has a symbol on them (star, moon, square, etc.). Event cards have a pair of spaces in them, one black, one white, that also contains a monster symbol. These are drawn each player's turn (or each round of players' turns, I forget). All the monsters who share a symbol with the one on the black space move in the direction of the black arrows from their space. Same for the monsters with the white spaces and the white arrows.

But I think you're heading in the right direction. With npc behaviors. Just make sure that they're either super clear to the players that they can remember them on the spot (eg: only having a very few types of npcs like monsters and townspeople), or having some kind of clear designation of their behavior either on their card or on the board based on symbols on their card. Always a tricky thing with Talisman like games, given how small the cards need to be.

>>28499516
Keep your maps to a set size. There's a wakfu based board game which is basically a free for all skirmish brawler you might want to look into, forget the name. You want to keep the map size limited though. Always make sure SOME things are standard throughout all play throughs, saves design and testing troubles in the long run. The easiest one to control is map size at the end of the day.

>And the matches only take a few minutes to finish unless you make the map very large, so you get clear control over how long you want the game to be, each time.
That's key. A good game should last between 15minutes and 2 hours in my experience, usually people at the game nights I've been too get antsy when they hear a game might take longer than an hour and a half.

>>28499280
>die rolls are used in poker-style bids
Neat.
>dice pool is assembled based on all the aspects the player (or the Watcher) considers relevant
OK the Marvell one sounds closer.

>>28499336
>This actually sounds interesting. My first time hearing about it
If you do decide to look into IronClaw (iirc current version is JadeClaw but OmniBus Ironclaw is updated to that ruleset), which I highly recommend for the sake of looking into new systems, be aware it contains some deviant-art tier art. Don't let that discourage you from reading it. Everyone raves about the combat being superior to everything they've played.

Critical critical failures iirc were all ones in a roll, which will only really happens with a tiny pool. This would mean you have no relevant character background (species or career) to the action, and little or no skill. Then raising skills actually splits after d12 into two dice as d12+d4, d12+d6, etc onward to split again into 3 dice, etc which begins to drastically lower odds of critical failure as you introduce more dice with more skill.

>>28499566
If the players can win by sticking to their edge of the board and masturbating to create runes, then chances are they will. What advantages do they gain from completing quests? And what penalties do they have for ignoring them?

Remember, you'll always get dicks who will just try to end the game as quickly as possible with them as the winner. You need to design with those guys in mind. Good sportsmanship should be encouraged by the mechanics to a greater or lesser extent. If a mechanic as large as these quests isn't directly helping the player gain more runes, if they can just sit in one space and make them, then you need to change it so that they can't do that, that completing quests is necessary to completing spells.

Just my 2 cents. If in betatest trials it turns out people don't do that, then obviously my 2 cents are wrong.

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>>28499564
Most of the runes, in fact, have the ability to zap other nearby players for damage. It's like that one shitty Avacyn Restored rare, Arcane Melee, says: Debates between wizards are rarely purely academic.

Each player has five HP. Getting zapped has a chance of dropping a rune that the attacker can pick up, and dying gives them the chance to loot your corpse of a rune of their choice before your contingency spells kick in and revive you on your next turn. Some of the quest rewards help you fight, some let you avoid fighting. However, you can also trade with nearby players instead of having a slugfest, so that option is also on the table. Here, have a picture of the second tier runes.

>>28499644
Regarding actually losing a "fair" roll, it gets interesting. I'm actually dicking around in MATLAB trying to figure out how to calculate and represent some kind of representative curve for these competing mixed pools. I THINK the "curve" isn't a static bell curve and begins to pull right bringing it up with bigger dice, and then pulling up the bottom with more dice. However, generally speaking, a character that "should" do really well at something has both many and bigger dice than joe-schmo. Encumbrance caps are interesting too. Say 5 mixed dice suddenly all become d4's worst case scenario, or 2d4+3d6 from Armadillo knight above in case of a d6 cap. Now it gets interesting where you might have many smaller dice vs a few bigger dice. Then there's things like "favorites" for weapons and skill uses, as well as a "lucky" trait, that allow for re-roll of 1's. There's more I can't recall of the top of my head, but yeah.

Thing is, I'm really not sure what to make of it. It's complicated. Hence I ask in the game design thread. Marvel Heroes sounds like the closest, but I think IronClaw is probably more popular/established than it.

>>28499658
Sounds like what you want to do is make the board small enough (or players move fast enough on the average turn) so that no one part of the board is actually ISOLATED from the other players, that way you avoid the whole "dick off in my corner of the board ignoring the other players" problem. If you look like you're winning, and all you've done is craft runes and you got nothing to back you up, then chances are the other players are going to destroy you munchkin style.

>>28499616
I think the map size is self limiting, because the more complex it is, the longer it takes to set up, and the harder it is to play. So new players will always tend to a simple map like a star when they start, which only takes like two minutes to finish. Which should be enough for players to figure out how the game works on larger maps, and should let them mod it to their tastes?

And if I were to regulate the map, then it would be quickly solved, which I don't want. Especially because I'm a mathematician and I play with other mathematicians. We all count cards, we all solve games, it's like legal cheating to us, so I want to inhibit that. And changing the map every time is a simple way of doing that.

>>28499696
>So new players will always tend to a simple map like a star when they start
never assume tha-
>which only takes like two minutes to finish.
Never mind, if the matches run that fast in your tests on the smallest possible board size? You're good.

Gameplay issues because of corners?

Still waiting for a globe made of hex tiles. Tiny magnets or pegs in each hex for holding pieces.

Ha. Wait, no, a torus.

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>>28499651
The first draft was as I described, and it was pretty anti-fun. The next draft worked out better because it allowed you to gain an advantage by completing quests or to stall your opponent out by blocking him from his quest via combat or clever utility rune usage.

Attatched picture is a sample spell; it summons a golem minion that you can control. It has some nasty combat stats but is actually kind of slow. This is an older version, actually; current spells take three second tier runes to complete, movement no involves dice, and I removed the mana mechanic as superfluous.

>>28499736
I'd play on that

Might be easier to make a large icosahedron though, so every side is uniform

global Catan or something

>>28499736
>>28499786
That's a lot of injection molded plastic... expensive.

But fuck yeah, a Catan "Globe" would be kick-ass.

>>28499819
I could probably make one out of a shaven foam sphere and use tacks?

It would need replacing every once in a while, but worth it?

>>28499747
How many spells do you need to complete to fill up your spell book?

Also, I assume that you have, well, probably not 64 second tier runes, since that would assume that A+B isn't the same as B+A if I recall correctly... so 36 second teir runes?

Does which set of 36 you pick matter at all? If so, you need a little card binder shaped like a spell book for this game, slide out each combo.

>>28499736
Need you to be a little more specific?

Now, for those of you who don't know, hex grids actually get you a more accurate simulation of movement than square grids do.

In a square grid, diagonal movement is much faster if moving diagonally costs the same amount of movement as moving vertically or horizontally, but if you make moving diagonally cost 2 moves, then it actually goes far slower than it should. It's not equal movement.

Hexgrids solve this problem. All hexes on the map are equidistant from one another regardless of how you move to them, where as on a square grid you actually have squares further away than they should be, or nearer than they should be (in terms of movement).

I assume you're talking about something related to this? As it's the only thing I can think of having to do with squares and hexes?

>>28499786
>>28499819
That said, I'd pay good money for a magnetic Catan globe.

>>28499844
>Need you to be a little more specific?
It's a joke. It's completely impractical over a flat board.

Though yes, I'm aware of the advantage of hex, and I know it's more capable of a sphere than squares.

>>28499616

thanks! Arkham Horror sounds awesome, will definitely check that out...though it also sounds more complex than i probably want.

>>28499894
Simplicity and Arkham Horror are only tangentially related, so yeah, crib the systems you need from it, don't rip off the system whole sale obviously.

>>28499884
OH! You mean corners on a hexgrid board?
Yeah, I can understand why they're impractical. I tend to use them as dead space for putting in reminders on rules or phases or such. Sometimes for other details like Catan does with the trade things on the board edges.

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>>28499844
Only the twelve, actually. It's still a grand total of twenty different runes the players would need to know what they do, so I decided to keep the pool small but diverse; each tier one rune has three separate pairings. Also, none of the runes are unique; there can be more than one copy of a given rune. For tier two runes, it's unlimited, but for tier one runes, the pool is finite; you draw from the rune deck on your turn. This encourages players to interact. Maybe they need a fire rune to finish their forge rune and Jim is being a dick and has all of them and refuses to trade, or maybe Joe got the two remaining copies of the water rune but needs a shadow rune to finish his gate rune so he goes looking for a willing trade partner.

Here's a close-up of a rune. All runes can either be tapped or burned for effect; you re-ready one tapped rune a turn to prevent players from acquiring huge magical powerbases and nuking everybody else repeatedly, but you can also burn a rune for a bigger effect if your'e willing to discard it.

>>28499596
no one is going to crack at this?

How about the other thing he was working on? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K0sKcgLWmO-CwHy3-RYUHpEUZjgyFu6k806exl_BKiE/edit?usp=sharing

A Co-Op dungeon crawl with tables to take the place of the DM

>>28499944
Huh, cool. And forces players to think strategically. Can you tap multiple runes in a turn? Eg: Save up all your runes for a big bang emergency and then have to slowly re-ready them afterwards?

>>28499980
Sorry, got distracted, I'll see what I can offer advice on it, but if it's not the actual guy offering it up, I feel kinda out of place talking about it without him here. I'll see what I can find that's glaring though.

>>28499995
Hi

>>28499995
You can! However, the game runs on an action economy: You get three actions; a move action, a craft action, and a combat action. Runes are ususally used as a combat action, however, you can use certain runes in place of different actions. The air rune gives yo ua larger movement in place of your move action for the turn, for example.

>>28500012
Oh okay then! Give me a while to read through the crunch sections real quick, but the core mechanic onward seem to work.

The game is very GM power heavy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and you seem to put it together well.

Only place I can see improvement being made (without play testing it myself) is the character sheet, increase the size of the boxes next to stats, and the font size on the skills (not necessary but would be helpful just a bit, and you can afford to cut down on the number of technique, spell, etc. blanks at the bottom).

To tell more I'd have to actually play test it. Games that are heavily GM dependent for the production of content tend to need way more play testing and even then it's not always as accurate as it might be because who you have as GM radically alters game play. Not that any of it is a bad thing, but it does make it hard for me to give you a simple answer on any of this.

Also, my one thing is (and I might be missing something). Is that the system for dice pools only increases your ability NOT to critically fail (eg: not having all 'failures' on your dice rolls), and to increase the average number of successes you'll roll, making it so you have the potential to complete higher checks (a 5 roll check for example would be impossible for someone with only a total dice pool of 3d6), but you still, mostly, only have the same probability of completing any given check unless you start getting into the absurdly amounts of dice? If that's the intention then you got it spot on, but personally I like to give players a tiny bit more control over their 'lowest possible roll' as you might have been able to tell if you've been reading my previous posts.

>>28500131
So on any one turn, I could potentially activate as many as three runes?

>>28494884
>Game design is 10% inspiration, 10% knowing basic statistics and math, and 80% fucking trial and error.
I'm gonna dispute this. I know people that, given 100 years of playtesting, would still end up with a mediocre game at best. Why? They don't understand what makes a good game. They don't even understand why they like a game they like. They fixate on unimportant things, and are unable to distinguish their own success in playing a game from how good a game is. You have to have perspective to be a good game designer. You have to know when something goes well (or poorly) and why.

>>28500141
We kind of went into it knowing that it would be GM heavy because that's just the nature of Zelda, also, as you grow in power you go from rolling about three dice on a check, to rolling ten to thirteen. That goes from at best 3 successes, to on average 5, you do get quite a bit more powerful, but we also wanted to throttle that power to force people to diversify. Success?

and yeah, it does need more playtesting, but I did everything I could with my people. I'm just twiddling my thumbs and hoping that maybe someone will use the system and get back in touch with me about it

Also, there a couple minor things in that .pdf that have been corrected in the wiki

>>28500158
ehn, I see your point, but I think that it kinda fails the whole point of betatesting if you're not listening to a broad spectrum of people, then you can't get proper results back.

But you are right that knowing how to interpret the data is just as important as actually gathering the data. Not sure how that enters into the break down, but it is a vital component of the entire process.

>>28499894
>thanks! Arkham Horror sounds awesome
Nooooo. No. No, no, no. Nope. Terrible, overly-complicated game with too little choice on the part of the players. I'm convinced that the only reason people like it is because of the Lovecraftian theme. I mean, I can't argue with what Game Designer Anon was saying about the design things Arkham Horror did right, but as a final product, the game sucks.

>>28500218
I'll see about runing a game of it when I can. But right now I'm primarily focused on making a conversion of cthulhutech's crunch to The Void's crunch (the systems are similar enough that the conversion should be easy, and the methods of conflict resolution in the Void are fudge dice pools rather than dice poker style.)

>>28500239
I personally disagree with you on whether the game is awesome or not. but I will agree with you that it is NOT a very well designed game when taken on the whole (this is a matter of personal opinion versus critical opinion. Personally? I love that overcomplicated cthulhu game to bits. Critically? The sucker takes too long to play, if you have more than 3 players people start to get fucking bored waiting for their turn, and fighting the old one that breaks out if you are unlucky and can't seal all the portals before the sucker awakens is the most boring fucking thing in the world).

That said, I do like how they handle character customization and monster movement. I just wish that they'd found ways to make the damn thing RUN more smoothly.

>>28500276
>But right now I'm primarily focused on making a conversion of cthulhutech's crunch to The Void's crunch
clarification: I'm doing that with my hobby time. work time is split between two commercial vidyagame projects. Which I should get back to now actually. I'll be back in a little while and will try to pop in occasionally while working on stuff.

>>28500276
would be cool. I'm pretty easily reachable and if it's encouraging for you, everyone has pretty much agreed so far that it's functional and fun. Most people just aren't terribly interested in yet another generic fantasy RPG

>>28494939
>You will keep the number of rolls to a bare minimum.
Generally speaking, coolness / complexity of play = how good a game is. The trick is that coolness tends to be arithmetic, while complexity tends to be geometric. So all those cool rules and details that work great on their own can completely crash a system once they are combined. So the bar for anything that isn't absolutely essential is relatively high. This is, coincidentally, why rules-light games are generally better than rules-heavy ones.

Got a chance to check back.
>>28500301
Sorry to hear that dude, it's a solid system, I don't know what else to tell you than that. Maybe spruce up the pages with art and get a nifty pdf out that uses it? Put in some more fluff for whatever period of Hyrulian history the game is set up for? That's all I can suggest.

>>28500309
Good summary there. Go for simple rules with complex interactions is what in my experience produces the best results.

>>28500612
I'm not much of a .pdf smith myself

Plenty of people on /tg/ know about it though, eventually someone will play it, eventually they'll come back to /tg/ and either tell me how to fix it, or tell /tg/ how awesome it is

I know this is kind of late and the thread is already dropping off, but I want to get peoples' opinions on an RPG I'm working on.

The core mechanic is that the number of ranks one has in a skill plus a VERY select number of other things determine the base number of dice one rolls, and then natural aptitudes, circumstances, equipment, and various other (less common) factors grant additional dice (all in d6s) with the caveat that that many of the rolls must then be dropped (with good aptitudes/etc letting you drop the lowest rolls and bad ones forcing you to drop the highest). The idea being that skill is what determines your best possible result, but most of the time you're going to be shooting for a higher average roll.

Now, the thing I'm worried about is that the highest-level characters with crazy good gear will theoretically be able to roll something like 11d6 plus up to that many of the 'roll then drop' dice, or 22d6. That seems kind of excessive and I want to tone it down a bit, but about how far should I (theoretically) reduce it to?

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>take a break a few weeks back from tabletop because life a shit
>spend the hours working on card/board game design
>mfw this thread

>>28502747
Glad to help! I wish it was a little more organized for your enjoyment, make sure to read through all the way. There's some pointless bickering towards the middle (I was imprecise with a comparison, and should have known it would have percipitated an argument). But beyond that you should have plenty of things to learn from, make sure to read more than just my posts for this thread, there's Amateur Game Dev and a good few anons who gave good advice and clarifications as well! Good luck with your work, and make sure to post it up when you've got something presentable!

>>28502453
So let me get this straight.

You first figure out how many dice you NEED to roll total. Then you have other factors that necessitate you drop these dice? And the ones you drop are based upon what your best apptitudes are?

I'm a little confused. What stops me from dropping the worst rolls -anyway- even if I don't have any relevant apptitudes?

I'm a little confused on how the system works, so can you give us an example?

Let's say I'm a big strong dude with an apptitude for lifting shit, and I got a pulley and rope to help me lift a REALLY big rock.

What am I rolling and why?

>>28502984
I have yet to come up with names that I like for this stuff yet, so I apologize for the roundabout wording I'll have to use. So we have a big strong guy trying to lift a rock with a pulley. Lets say he has enough ranks in the relevant skill to get 6d6.

Then, furthermore, he is very strong so he gets another '4d6 and drop the 4 lowest rolls,' and his pulley gives another, say, '2d6 and drop the lowest 2 rolls' for a total of 12d6 and drop the lowest 6 rolls. He has a maximum roll of 36 regardless of strength and circumstances, but he is going to tend to roll much higher than a weaker man with no pulley (but the same level of skill).

And btw the rolls are added together and compared to a target number, in this case based on the size of the rock.

>>28503268
Kinda reminds me of l5r's "roll and keep" system, where if you're really good at something there's a certain number of dice that you roll, and a certain amount that you keep - So you can be good at something but not terribly strong, so you roll a bunch of dice and take the few that are highest.

>>28503297
Never really looked into L5R beyond the 'back of the book jacket' level, but I'll have to go look at it now. Thanks for mentioning it.

>>28503268
No offense, man, but that sounds terrible. It would take like 10 times as long as "roll a die and add a static number". Actually, I'm guessing it would take more than 10 times as long, as you have to tally together different things to determine how many dice you get, and how many you drop, then roll a bunch of dice, then figure out which ones are lowest and drop them, then add the remaining dice together.

>>28503458
The point behind it is that many dice will tend to, as a group, roll closer to the average for that combination of dice (whereas on a single die you have equal chances of rolling any given number, which I'm not hugely fond of).

And 10 times as long sounds excessive, since those combinations will be static, with temporary conditions and circumstances modifying them slightly, like how in D&D you have a fairly static set of modifiers (and you can just have the total written on your sheet) to any given skill that is sometimes altered by circumstances, buffs, etc.

Unless of course I'm completely off my rocker.

>>28503268
>>28503458
>>28503560

If I might suggest, it does sound a little onerous, and further, the whole having to roll into the massive number of digits thing kinda drags.

That said, I think you have something going on here, but I'd suggest having caps for how many dice any one thing can contribute. A lot of games have it so that the most dice to your pool any one thing can give you is 5. So maybe you want to handle it that way?

I'm unsure, I've not seen a system like this before really (well, Legend of the Wulin has something sorta similar what with the whole lake/river/flood system going on for itself in some ways).

I'd suggest looking into the crunch for Legend of the 5 Rings and Legend of the Wulin, and figure it out from there. But I think the system has some promise. But I'd argue try to keep the absurd amount of dice creep out of the system.

>>28499061
>layer a gambeson, chainmail, and platemail for 2d4+2d8+1d10 of armor
Holy shit. There's an rpg that does this? If I read that correctly, it's a marks/successes count and not totals? I guess it would be too much for total values.

Oh man, I want to steal the armor layer dice pool idea and run with it.

Material types could split into three general classes:
X*dY
where
X>>Y, X~=Y, X<<Y
This offers a naturally balanced spectrum between reliability and protection.

For more craziness, materials for armor layers have different protective values vs different things IE
>Warded Gambeson
>1 Encumbrance
>2d4 blunt
>1d4 sharp
>1d8 magic
>1d6 elemental
That's probably too complex, though you'd only tally and record your total armor dice pools for each case only once when you upgrade/change it.

Granted this only sounds cool in theory, probably because I grew up with:
>Gambeson
>+5 AC

>>28503704
>Holy shit. There's an rpg that does this?
Most RPG rules either assume underlying armor is already there, or have funky rules for layering extra armor.

>>28503458

It actually works fairly well as a mechanic, provided - and this is the big limitation - you keep the total number of dice rolled/kept very basic and easily calculated.

Frex, this is basically the cornerstone of the RPG systems AEG uses. It works because you immediately know how many dice you're rolling (stat + skill) plus how man you're keeping (stat) and all that changes is what total you're hoping to roll.

But it does become a clusterfuck if the dice pool is unreliable.

>>28503704
What I've been bouncing around in my head is something like a civilization builder RPG where you play as a civilization in the board and roll dice pools for point gains into various pools, which you then spend to either downgrade your opponents dice or upgrade your own.

>>28503725
>Most RPG rules assume underlying armor is already there
Yeah I knew that.

Just kinda fun to think what you could do if "custom" armor layering was allowed, or any expansion of a damage-type system.

>You KNOW you're going to fight an ice-mage
>Ditch high-encumbrance plate with low resistance
>Equip some appropriate high-insulation materials

>Can't afford plate
>Fuck encumbrance penalties
>I don't need to run
>Two layers of leather armor
>Come at me

>Fighting war-boss
>Has plate
>High cutting weapon resistance
>Low blunt resistance
>Stand back, hammer-bro's got this shit

There's a bit of roleplay value to be had here, maybe.

>>28503677
I get what you mean about too many dice, which is why I dropped it as far as it currently is.

Currently the caps are a base of up to 4, plus up to another 7 from ranks in whichever skill is relevant (5 from proper ranks and 2 from specializing in some aspect of the skill) plus a cap of "no more 'roll then drop that many of the lowest/highest' dice than you have 'regular' dice", so the cap is 22d6 and drop the 11 highest (or lowest, in excessively unfavorable circumstances).

Anyway, my original question was how low should I theoretically bring that maximum? The main ones I was considering were dropping the base to 'up to 3,' dropping the maximum specialization ranks to 1, and/or dropping the maximum number of 'roll then drop' dice to some lower fraction of the 'regular' ones (probably about half). If I did all 3 that would bring it to a maximum of 13d6 and drop the 4 lowest (or 14 and drop 5, depending on how I round it).

>>28503560
Gathering and counting dice, rolling them all, figuring out which ones to drop, and adding the rest all take time. But there's a way to put this to the test. Make a half dozen checks with a d20 + static numbers vs. various targets, and a half dozen checks under your system (be sure to vary target numbers, the number of dice you're rolling, and the number of dice you're dropping). Time yourself and see how long it takes you to go through each set of 6.

For instance:
d20 + 4 vs. 18
d20 + 16 vs. 22
d20 + 7 vs.15
d20 +12 vs. 25
d20 + 9 vs. 23
d20 + 5 vs. 13

And now I'll roll...

Took me a little over 2 seconds per check to determine if I succeeded or failed. Probably would've taken me a little longer (maybe 3 seconds per check) if I had to come up with an exact number in each case AND check if it passed (instead of just knowing whether it was high enough to pass).

The results of my checks, by the way:
yes
no
yes
yes
no
yes

>>28503799
>Anyway, my original question was how low should I theoretically bring that maximum? The main ones I was considering were dropping the base to 'up to 3,' dropping the maximum specialization ranks to 1, and/or dropping the maximum number of 'roll then drop' dice to some lower fraction of the 'regular' ones (probably about half). If I did all 3 that would bring it to a maximum of 13d6 and drop the 4 lowest (or 14 and drop 5, depending on how I round it).

Honestly, I think you're going to have to betatest this to get these numbers right. For all I know you got the right numbers already, but you need to run a couple of sessions at various power levels (prebuild characters for people to play) and see how they do it with you GMing.

>>28503839
A good way to time how fast you can check stuff, and important, but some games can have it take longer and still be meaningful (see Legends of the Wulin). I'd honestly suggest testing this with a play group.

Also have the specializations be rerolls rather than full new dice maybe? Perhaps that's what extraneous factors are? Rather than dropping dice you reroll the lowest ones? Might cut down on your dice numbers

>>28503839
I've cast Fireball and similar spells in D&D often enough and rolled stats for it (of the 4d6 drop the lowest variety) that I think I have a handle on around how fast that sort of thing would be, but it could still be interesting to time myself doing it.

Thanks for the idea.

>>28503839
But then you're talking to a person who hates rolling 3d6 in place of a d20 because of the extra time it takes to add three numbers.

>>28503799

Honestly, people like to have nice consistent round numbers to play with. 4, 7 and 22 are not consistent, nor do they fall on the usual lines that base-10 counters instinctively go for.

You'd get as much smoothness from using more consistent caps as you will from just cutting the caps down.

Is it acceptable to design a tg with the assumption the players have easy access to electronic dice? Would it be acceptable to design a tg with the assumption the players have access to a simple official companion program that's practically required to run the game?

Granted, some existing games don't and get pretty ridiculous anyways with some gigantor dice pools.

>>28503926
I personally find it in bad taste to design a pnp game without consideration for rolling physical dice as one of the things you'd do. If you were designing a game purely to be played through /tg/ in a post-to-play style, or on roll20 that might be one thing, but then you need to take those environments into account. (That said, there might be a place for oRPG makers... I'd call it eRPG makers, but erp is already a term, so oRPG can be for online RPG I guess?)

>>28503909
>Thanks for the idea.
Okay. I certainly don't mean to heckle you or anything. I'm just curious though (and you can just ignore this post if you want to move on), but how long do you figure it takes you to make an average roll using your system. (I wouldn't doubt that you'd be significantly faster at that sort of thing than I would.)

>>28503908
>but some games can have it take longer and still be meaningful (see Legends of the Wulin).
I've not played LoW, so I can't comment on it specifically, but if a single roll accomplishes more, then it's okay for it to take a bit longer. If it just takes longer to do the same thing, it's just inefficient.

>>28503978
At least one person in ANY group will have a smartphone. Hopefully Android. Free app download from the creators.

Is this really bad taste when the portable hardware is as ubiquitous as the physical dice? Easier than the physical dice? Faster? More convenient?

It's falling more into a grey area I think that will become more accepted some-odd decades from now.

>>28503926

Well, it's not wrong but your missing out because ROLLING DICE IS FUN! It's really fun. Rolling a lot of dice is fun (although it's a shore to see the result).
People like to roll dice, like the anticipation of seeing the result, like feeling lucky and having weird results.

It's one of the little things that add to a game.
Actually rolling dice is FUN (vs using a deck of dice)
Having fluff is FUN (vs having the "attacks that deal 4 damage")
Having minis is FUN (vs playing warhammer with wodden disks with stickers)

BTW, I'm going to work now. Keep up the good work. If anyne has read a bit of the Tactics of Heroes document, let me know your opinion.

>>28503908
Actually, that gives me an idea for how I want the Luck stat to work, since I wanted it to be something special (and granting rerolls works better for that than just giving more dice of the 'roll then drop' variety).

>>28503921
Normally I'd be with you there, but these numbers are small enough that I'm not sure how far I'm willing to tweak them just to get them to multiples of 5 or 10.

>>28503994
I don't want to toss out an exact number of seconds before I get around to trying it (since this is a bit more complex than Fireballs and stats), so I guess it's time to clear off some of this clutter and give it a try.

>>28504106
>Well, it's not wrong but your missing out because ROLLING DICE IS FUN!
This is the reason I only own jumbo-sized dice.

No regrets.
One spilled drink. Oops.

>>28503926
If you throw in a relatively easy work-around for physical dice, I think you're fine. For instance, for odd-numbered dice (d3, d5, d7, d9, d11), roll an even numbered die one number larger, but halve the result if you roll maximum.

Thus, for a d5 you'd roll a d6 and take the face value unless you rolled a 6, in which case it would equal 3. Thus, your range of results would be: 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, with an average of 3 (like it should be for a d5).

For dice over d12 (but below d20), simply roll a d20. If your number exceeds the size of the die (you're rolling a d15 and get a 17), simply reduce the tens digit by 1 (turning the aforementioned roll of 17 into a 7).

Thus, for a d15 your range of results would be: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, with an average of 8 (like it should be for a d15).

d3,d5,d7 exist. GameScience makes these.

The d5 and d7 look unfair, but are actually fair die. Blows my mind.

So just of curiosity:
Where do you draw the line between a board game and a tabletop wargame? What core design philosophies differentiate the two?

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>>28504222
Helps if you provide an image.

Technically you could make fair dice of ANY size using barrel-dice.

>>28504257
500$ in unpainted miniatures from a wide catalog of options with the rulebooks sold separately.
A board-game is considerably more self-contained and ready-to-rumble.

>>28504222
>d3,d5,d7 exist. GameScience makes these.
This is true, but A) most people don't have 'em, B) GameScience dice are apparently not in production right now, and C) if you do have 'em, that's a lot of dice clutter on the table to have to pick through.

Mind you, I'm not saying I wouldn't be okay with C), but I know people who have a hard time differentiating dice as it is (usually d8s and d10s).

>>28504282
The d14 looks like the d10, and the d24 looks kinda like the d20.

Otherwise the d3,5,7 are very distinct looking. They're not hard to pick out of the usual lineup of d4,6,8,10,12,20.

>>28504302
And the d16 looks like the d14, looks like the d10. But I was more thinking about how long it would take some people to pick through almost twice as many dice to find the right one.

>>28504174
But that would skew the odds, since you no longer have exactly the same chance to roll any given number.

>>28503994
>>28504122
Now that I've actually tried it I was way off, somewhere in the low 20 second range for 22d6 and drop the 11 lowest (with roughly 2/3 - 3/4 of that for picking out the lowest) plus up to 5 full seconds to pick up the gigantic pile of dice (longer if I wasn't using these mini d6s).

Though it occurs to me that rerolling results would take even longer, for a given number of dice. I'm going to have to go look more closely at how much people can do in a turn and how long that will all take.

>>28504222

Just roll a bigger dice and ignore anything above whatever size dice you want. d5? Just roll a d6 and reroll on 6. Want a d7 and only have a d10? Just reroll on 8 9 0!

I often find the hardest thing with game design is finishing the damn thing. I can have a good initial idea and do most of the work, but I get distracted or bored or stuck and never manage to tie it all together.

>>28504347
>But that would skew the odds, since you no longer have exactly the same chance to roll any given number.
Yes. It would. It wouldn't be interchangeable, but in most cases in would be a close enough approximation. Basically, you wouldn't have one guy using an electronic roller and one person using physical dice. You'd settle on one way of doing it and stick with it for everybody.

>>28504257
If you're talking miniature wargaming, then aside from the business model described in >>28504275 there's also often the sense that the miniature itself matters, along with the real dimensions of stuff on the board like terrain.

GW games for the most part use "true" line of sight, where LOS is determined literally by drawing a straight line from the miniature's eyes to the target. This means that the minis cannot be represented by a proxy piece properly or in some abstract way.

If you're talking hex-and-counter wargames, the main difference is that they focus less on player balance and instead focus on simulation. Some abstraction is always necessary, but hex-and-counter games are often focused around the quality of simulation - the outcomes of certain hypothetical situations should mirror what is expected in reality.

>>28504374
Depending on the exact die size needed I either roll a die with twice as many sides and divide by 2 (ie: d6/2 for d3) or just do this.

>>28504347
>mini d6s
Those are god awful. I recall a study that found, I think it was GamesWorkshop's d6 actually, due to poor design (small, very rounded, cheaply cast) they rolled a 1 nearly 30% of the time.

Que GameScience are superior designed dice rant blah blah
Pretty fucking hilarious though.

>>28504374
Then you're wasting more time with re-rolls. I thought good tg design involved minimizing time wasted on actually using the dice.

>>28504347
That's actually quicker than I figured, considering that 22d6 is an obscene high number.

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>>28494871
here is something you should add to your little "guide":

>keep things players have to remember to a minimum

you dont want to design a game that has you using 30 minis for example, and then some have 7hp, some have 5hp, and some have 3hp, and then you have to remember how much hp each one has at all times, and those are constantly changing numbers

>keep things that have special rules that require further math to a minimum

you dont want to design a game that has you figure out your strength, but then it has a modifier from your weapon, then a modifier from your magic, then there is another modifier from condition, and another modifier for terrain, and another modifier for abilities, and another modifier for something another player did, and by the end of this you have to add/substract 20 numbers before you get to your first dice roll. and then you still have to roll the dice, and if one is a 6 then there is a special rule, and then if two are 3 there is another special rule, and then you have to re-roll if you have doubles, and then the previous rules apply to this rule, and then by the end you rolled 50 dice for a single attack.

So since this is a general game design topic, I figure I'll ask a question that's been bothering me with my own design project:

Implementing continuity/legacy into a board game.

This concept came up from my group being too busy to play dedicated PNP games but still dedicated enough to play a lot of board games (once or twice a month, schedule depending). What I'd like to do is incorporate some form of legacy into the game without inherently tipping the scales towards anyone. I want us to be able to come back and play the game again with some kind of advancement, ideally without making it too easy.

I've tried letting people keep a single weapon, but that proved a bit too powerful (we're playing Runebound, but any kind of simple strategy/RPG type of thing is about the same).

My ideal game would be some kind of board game that worked like a simplified PNP game, but let you carry characters through each game while the challenges naturally got stronger. But that's pretty complicated.

Really, any ideas about legacy would be helpful.

>>28499264
>>28499294
>>28499348
>>28499370
>>28499463
>>28499566
>>28499658
>>28499747
>>28499944
Hey anon, this board game looks really fucking cool and i wish i had had such a board game as a kid, but here is some advice on making prototypes: write your cards in some text editor like MSWord and print them out. It is better for readibility and will make your life easier in the long run. Just pick a clear font and get to printing!

It's also advisable to color code things on the board based on what they do rather than actually draw them out. The best thing to do is to create markers that you print out and overlay on your board, maybe use some removable duct tape to keep them in place. Again it makes things clearer and will save you time in the long run.

>>28504415
I think I saw that same study, but I haven't noticed anything from these (they're Chessex, I don't remember how that theoretically affects it).

>>28504425
Now that I think about it, I have seen people playing D&D take longer on one attack roll or whatever, so it's not all bad (though in their defense most of them were people with slight mental disorders playing characters with a billion situational modifiers).

A mitigating factor on this is that I was already going to be giving non-boss enemies static values for their skills that assume typical rolls (so the only ones rolling actual dice in combat are players and bosses, which are the ones players tend not to mind watching, in my experience).

Anyway, might as well grab a name since it turns out I'm doing a fair bit of talking here.

>>28504569
have a look at risk: legacy for a static board game that has a legacy which still keeps the game fairly balanced

you could try and make more powerful items have a limited amount of uses to keep players from simply overpowered, whilst still keeping the awesome factor of the items

you could try and make items balanced so that each item has both good and bad sides, and no item is straight out better than another. this way players simply have more options as the games progress

you could also go for the lazy route and just have things scale with level/skill/whatever

>>28504591
>I don't remember how that theoretically affects it
Basically you want dice that don't like to roll. This means sharper edges, and if need be bigger dice. Case in point big-ass casino d6 that are discarded if the edges are even slightly worn. Shaving the edges so they'll roll is actually an old cheating method.

The more readily the dice can roll, the more likely they will land on some favored side from manufacturing imperfections. Case in point CnC'd Casino dice that are perfectly balanced as opposed to injection molded. In GW's case their mold is imprecise and it favors rolling a 1.

Your chessex are probably fine for gaming, but they probably favor one side enough that you could statistically prove it beyond a doubt.

>>28504649
oh, and you could also limit the amount of items a player can carry over from game to game

>>28504652
If anything I think these favor the 6, rather than 1, so I'm not hugely concerned. I considered getting some casino dice or similar, but ended up getting these since they were 36 for around $10.

>>28494987
What about a system when you first choose how many dice you roll, then roll them and the rest provide bonuses?

>system is based on number of successes
>each stat is a dice pool with maximum of 5 d6
>before rolling you choose how many dice will you roll (to a maximum of three), the rest are used to lower the target number or used up (they don't return until the end of a session) to automatically add a success.
>roll difficulty is two parts- target number and number of successes needed to accomplish a task perfectly (usually 1-3)
>if player only partially succeeds, GM can introduce complication to situatio or player could use his character's trait or item to add one more success.

>>28499034
>IronClaw
>Specifically everyone seems to love the combat
I skimmed the rulebook by recommendation.

It's fucking brutal.

No Hit-Points. Physical states of well being. Stage 5 is dead.
>Stage 0: uninjured
>Stage 1: Hurt and +1 to future damage. Hurt can be healed mid-fight with magic
>Stage 2: Hurt and "Afraid" status and +1 to future damage. Afraid can't attack but can still Dodge, Parry, or Counter.
>Stage 3: Hurt, Afraid, +2 to future damage, AND Injured. Injured status is cured outside of combat with real medical care.
>Stage 4: Hurt, Afraid, +2 to future damage, Injured, AND dying. Dying can't do anything and roll at the end of every round to see if they die. Dying status cured with first Aid.
>Stage 5: Dead instantly.
>Stage 6: Overkill. Nearby friendlies gain "Afraid" status. GM gives hilarious description of how you are split in two.

Weapons don't have damage dice. A weapon TYPE has a small flat +damage modifier and some special modifiers like "Piercing", "Awkward", "Critical", "Slaying", "Impaling" etc which are their own mini-rules for damage and special conditions. Ignore armor, bonus to parry, etc

Example: an Estoc does a flat +3 damage after counting hit-successes if you hit and by "Impaling" forces the target to retreat back one tile or suffer double hit-success damage. I think that means without damage reduction, one impalement by Estoc with a single hit-success drops you to the ground "dying", and if you can't fall backwards off it you are KIA instantly. Of course there IS damage reduction by armor and body, where each dice for the armor roll showing 4 and up reduces damage received by one.

Things that look fucking brilliant from what I skimmed:
>Guns generally incapacitate or kill you dead, but are unreliable POS flintlocks that can suffer hangfires
>No magical "+1" weapons. No individual mace that does +1 more damage than another mace.

Assuming you play in IronClaw's setting, it looks like you're only fighting NPCs, not monsters.

>>28505171
>Healthy
>Stage 1 ... +1 to future damage
>Stage 3 ... +2 to future damage
>Stage 6 ... Overkilled
Read that and saw merely 1 point of damage each hit you would die in 3 hits and die as overkill. I'm not sure if that's reasonable or a meatgrinder?

Are higher level characters even safe in that? There's not much leeway for a DM to overestimate a party's combat capability.

This made me wish I had started working on my RPG idea so I have something to show, but I have no idea what I'm doing past the "basic" gimmick concepts so I procrastinated.

I should really be working, but what the hell, BUMP!

>>28505147
I have a system like that in my game. I like the "concept" of dice, but don't like most of the ways they are used. One thing I learned from the game Ares Project is that when using dice roll them a lot so that the probabilities "get even".

(btw, that is a great game that shows how to abstract a videogame into a board game. It's practically starcraft in a boardgame, without the lightning-fast micro)

In my game I have 3 stats: Strength, Armor and Magic. (wich range from 2 to 6).
When you attack a guy, you roll Xd6's, with X being the value of the attack stat. The defender then defends rolling Xd6's, with X being the defense stat.

Y = attack successes (rolling 4, 5 or 6)
Z = defense successes (rolling 5 or 6)

Physical attcks use Strength and are defended with Armor.
Magical attacks are attacked and defended with Magic.

I believe this makes the system simple enough, while having some degree of flexibility. Magic users may be weak against melee, and fighters weak against magic. But I can also have the defender with lots of armor but low Strength and the Barbarian with a lot of Strength but low Armor. And even a pure DPS guy with lots of magic and strength, but low armor.

And still, lots of rolling. I prefer dice pools to single rolls (d20). I believe it evens the odds better (but I may be wrong)

>>28506139
In my example, is anything outright wrong, the thing that shouldn't be done? I can elaborate if you want.

>>28506704
I don't really get it.

I have 5 d6's. The DC is 3. I can roll only 3 dice and the DC goes to 1?

Why not try a "push your luck" mechanic? My attack deals 1 damage. I have to beat an AC of 3. For each dice I don't roll, my attac deals +1 damage. So I can can roll 4 dice to beat AC of 3 and deal 2 damage.

I like the idea of spending one dice to succeed on the action. Maybe add something that allows you to get it back (it will always go back to 5 in the end of the session). t's something like FATE points.

I'm not that experienced to say what is best but, in the end, oyu just have to playtest it to see if it works.

Thanks for the thread OP. I'm still in the process of reading it, but I love it so far.
I actually am working on two games right now: one PnP RPG that I do on my own for training, and a video game we're doing as a team (I work as game designer), for more serious stuff.
I'd like you to review the PnP one. If you have the time, I put my email in the email field. Thanks!

>>28506785

well, first DC needs to be beaten at least by 1.
then, i forgot to tell, it only affects one DC. so, if we have 2 successes needed, you'll have to roll 2 and 4. Or 3 and 3, if you like to distribute it that way.

>>28507042
Still confused. Please explain with a step by step example

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>>28494871
http://anydice.com/

this is a good tool to calculate and visualize dice probabilities of different kinds, compare them, aggregate, etc.

its simple to use for basic stuff, and you can look into making custom functions for more complicated stuff

here is an example you can copy/paste to see how this works, enjoy:

output 1d2 named "coin toss"
output 2d6 named "two 1d6 dice"
output 2d6>=7 named "chance of 7+ when rolling 2d6"

>>28507055
okay.
Bob tries to jump from the roof of one building to another.
GM rules it as dex check with difficulty 4/2
Bob has dex of 4 and, not wanting to take any chances, rolls 2 dice and uses other 2 to reduce difficulty of one success to 2.
now he needs to roll 3 and 5 to fully succeed.
he rolls 3 and 4, succeeding on one part of the check, but fails on another.
GM uses complication: Bob almost falls, but manages to grab the opposite ledge. Now he will need another check to pull himself up, but using his strength stat.
A less physical complication would be "he makes it, but fumbled slightly and attracts attention from the street".
Or he could use "acrobatic" trait or grappling hook to bump successes to 2.

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>>28499667
> dicking around in MATLAB

POW
HA HA

Pictured is 2d4+2d8+1d10 Armadillo Knight
Where all values above 3 absorb 1 damage point
As from the rulebook
X represents damage points absorbed here
Y represents probability of this occuring

Cyan is the resulting curve.
The others are weighted binomial distributions.

You're welcome. Please don't insult my rusty programming.

For each set of similar dice they collapse into a weighted binomial distribution
>IE 4d4 vs target of 3 is four independent rolls of success or fail where success only has a #of-faces-above-target*chance*of*one*face chance of occurring which in this case is 4d(p=0.25)
I combined these into a single distribution using polynomials between a matrix of coefficients for a0+a1x+a2x^2+... where the resulting binomial distribution of combining the curves can be calculated with a shortcut simply multiplying the polynomials representing each binomial distribution together. Had to flip it between matrix and symbolic notation in MATLAB, but it's just:
[polynomial for binomial distro for all dX dice]*["" for all dY dice]*["" for all dZ dice]*[etc]

Unless someone knows I have no idea what I'm doing, which you should always assume I don't, then you should be able to visualize whatever distribution curves you like for mixed-dice pools like this.

>>28507253

oh; 4/2 means "need to roll 4 twice", not "need to roll 4 and 2"

...but probably i need to make it simple, if your confusion is an indication.

>>28507253
this is the thing i never got about PnP games with a DM and whatnot: the guy can just come up with anything he wants, he can make things harder/easier as he pleases, he can favor single players, and completely destroy other ones... wtf

>>28507266
>Anon delivers small MATLAB simulation for problem
Damn man. Every time I start thinking chan can't surprise me anymore...

>>28507291

this kind of stuff is very prevalent in fate and dungeon world. GM is not a player, he is director whose job is to make things more interesting, not dick over someone. Narrativist systems are especially heavy on this.

>>28507279
Yeah, you really need to eplain everything clearly. A good designer must be good at talking and explaining stuff. I know everything makes sense for you, and it's pretty obvious in your mind, but writing rules is hard!

> now he needs to roll 3 and 5 to fully succeed.
and what does this mean? He need to roll 3 successes and then 5 successes?

>>28507266
>Where all values above 3 absorb 1 damage point

I thought pools were rolled against each other with some sort of high dice comparison?

Did I misunderstand something, or does this simulate rolling armor against a very average Xd6 damage roll?

>>28497083
>I'd suggest Extra Credits
Seconding, on youtube about half the 'game design' playlist is still applicable to board games.

Also, i know we rip open stuff like FATAL, with good reason, but bad games are easier to learn from than good ones, and if you want to design, play some bad games. Just try making a FATAL character, and work out everywhere it goes wrong, which is a lot of places, then don't do those things.

But yeah, watch the extra credits game dev playlist for starters.

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>>28506139
>I should really be working
Check out my new office.

>>28507391
Man, I haven't seen that guy in a long, long time.

>>28507381
>Player vs Static Challenge
Given target value
Roll your pool
How much you succeeded is one "success" for every die that rolled above the target

>Player vs Character
Roll both pools
Only highest roll counts from each pools.
Player with highest die won
How much they won is one "success" for every die of theirs that rolled great than the highest die of the loser
damage dealt = 1 pt damage * successes * conditional multiplier + flat weapon type damage bonus

>Armor
Target value 3
Roll your pool
How much you succeeded is one "success" for every die that rolled above the target
Armor absorbs one damage from attack for each success

damage dealt - absorbed = received

>etc
You're always rolling a pool against a single value
Even if you're rolling pool vs pool it becomes pool vs target
Each die that rolled above that target value is a "success"
These do things.

You might have 1-5 die in a pool, depending on how good you are and how many things are modifying it.

>>28507363

no.
the roll has target number (4 in my example)
AND you need to beat it twice.
That's why it's 4/2.

>>28507472
So I have to beat 4 twice (4-4) with 5 dice.

I can give up two dice for the challenge to change to 2-4.
Now I have to beat 2-4, and in both rolls I use 3 dice. Am I correct?

>>28507533
No, you roll these 3 dice only once.

>>28507554
And I need to roll at least one die >= 4, and another >= 2?

>>28507589
>4 and >2

>>28507266
Sorry mate. Tried it and it looks like it works for large batches.

Too lazy for screencaps
>36d4+12d6
>Threshold value of 3
>Distribution centered around ~16 dice most likely number of dice to exceed 3
Looks OK. No idea what the real answer is but it looks OK. Seems to be graphing rows as intended.

>1d4+1d6+1d8
>Threshold value of 3
>WTF am I looking at
Seriously. I think it's graphing columns rather than rows as intended, that's the only way the table fits the graph.

Try a histogram. Or fuck it, I'll debug it. Something is up.

>>28507740
see >>28507167

>>28507740
>>28507266
Yup it's just Linegraph gets wonky
Switch last line to just
>bar([output]')
and note I flipped the table in that

Otherwise it works fine.

>>28507831
I know of anydice. It only does sums by default. Not needing sums.

I'm looking at the functions and I think you might be able to program it for this. Not sure yet.

>>28507881
i have use fairly complicated functions in anydice, and it works very well

>>28507618
protip: always use X >= 1d6, its more intuitive and people know the % based on that

in your case it becomes 5+ (33% chance) and 3+ (66% chance) dice rolls

>>28507938
>i have use fairly complicated functions in anydice
I'm too lazy to crap out working code myself like the other guy that posted the MATLAB bit.

Can you:
Output the probability for each possible number of dice above a threshold from a pool of mixed dice? What are the odds X number of dice rolled above Y.

>>28507618
Ok, I get it. Now I'm going to put a "teacher's hat". Notice the exchange we had. From this you can conclude that either that mechanic is too complex, or that you had trouble explaining it.
I don't believe that the mechanic is too complex. You should probably work on how to explin the mechanic. In game design everything is important, and every detail may be used to get some useful information.

Now for the mechanic itself. Games are made of MEANINGFUL CHOICES. These choices each have advantages and disadvantages and must be EQUAL OR SIMILAR IN VALUE. This means that there should be a real choice, and not a math problem where you can calculate which giives the better reward considering the costs.
Example: I want a PvP DPS in WoW (I know nothing of WoW, and I'll probably say something stupid)
Both Wizard and Rogue have good DPS builds. Which should I chose? (this is a meningful choice, both are good).
I choose Wizard. Now how do I build my character? I read up on all the spells, all stat and traits, all the equipment. Punch it into Excel, spend one night making calculation and discover my perfect build. (This is not a meaningful choice. It's a math problem.)
(this is not as linear as I say, but you get the point)

A min-maxer playing your game, will pull a calculator and see which of "4-4 with 5 dice" and "2-4 with 3 dice" has better odds. It's not a meaningful choice.

>>28508004
what are the odds 3 dice rolls roll 4+?
output (1d6>=4) + (1d6>=4) + (1d6>=4)

then just look at the table, or graph if you prefer. you can use the "at least" and "at most" tabs to see more stats

>>28508088
btw, this is the answer:

chance that 0 dice roll 4+ = 12.5%
chance that 1 dice roll 4+ = 37.5%
chance that 2 dice roll 4+ = 37.5%
chance that 3 dice roll 4+ = 12.5%

>>28508115
and more:

chance that at least 1 dice roll 4+ = 87.5%
chance that at least 2 dice roll 4+ = 50.0%
chance that at least 3 dice roll 4+ = 12.5%

>>28508044
(cont.)

But, in the end, it's your choice. You can't help having "math problems" in your game. Some games are even designed for that, to test the minds of the player. It's just that having a math problem in every roll will slow down the game with a munchkin, while the problem could be in the strategy/tactics or character building. In fact, not considering RPing, character building in RPGs in mainly a math problem (to make teh best char ever).

This is why I enjoyed 4e Essentials. It made it harder to make bad choices in char building and accidentally gimp yourself.

>>28508088
You can't collapse the repeat dice into a single 3x statement?

Also: Transposed. Graph is sums again.

>>28508150
collapsed: output 3d(1d6>=4)

>>28508164
Lastly you should be able collapse the threshold as well if you are using mixed dice such that it's only stated once. But I don't think you can do that in this.

Eh, good enough. It would work more than something which doesn't.

>>28508198
you mean you are rolling a 1d6 a 1d10 and a 1d20 together and you want to know their collective chance of getting 4+ for example?

i think you will have to work on making your own function for that, as i dont have the time to do that right now

as i said, i managed to get fairly complex things going with this, using recursive functions and whatnot, you just have to take your time

Hey GDA, >>28495247 here.
I thought about your "minimum result doesn't change" concern and added a rule. Just wanted to let you know.
>If you are free from pressure and distraction, you can reduce your pool value by up to your skill modifier and add that amount to your result.
It's the equivalent of "taking 10" in d20 systems.

>>28508234
Too late, looks like it already works. Saved me the obligatory 5 minutes of head-to-desk school of learning new syntax.

I can live with copy pasting >=4 a few times.

>>28508313
you can also "combine" the two functions we used here, for example:

what is the chance of rolling 4+ on one d6 and two d10 and four d20?

output 1d(1d6>=4) + 2d(1d10>=4) + 4d(1d20>=4)

now you can simply replace the numbers before the brackets to use different amounts of dice

>>28508147
Yeah, i agree. Funny thing is, this started as completely diceless system built solely on spending resources. Then it became FATE-like because i like dice pools and d6s.

What if i leave basics (failure/partial success/success, spending resources/spicing up the situation in case of partial success), but prune out meaningless choice?

>>28508474
Already got that. Really all I needed was to know you could do d(weightedbinarydistribution) with d(dx>y).

What I meant is good code you should only need to specify the threshold once as it's constant for all instances. "=>4" condition only need be stated once, but anydice isn't exactly an official programming language or anything. Could probably state a variable if it supports it but whatever.

hum... and how do you remove that?

Here's an idea, why not dice working as fate points? You may spend them to get an instant success, +2 in whatever, or something. They only reset at the end of the session.
Maybe you can also have a way to recover those dice. Maybe if someone has a critical failure, they get one dice back.
This makes the game have meaningful choices. "I could spend a dice to win here, but in the future everything will be harder."

It's an RPG, right? I still don't know how to mix it with attributes... Maybe they add modifiers, and the dice pool if the same for each check. Having a different dice pool for each stat/skill is "fiddly" imo (see my post on "fiddliness" above).


RANDOM MECHANICS IDEA OUT OF THE TOP OF MY HEAD!

turn based game, with dice pools.
I have a dice pool of 5. I may chose not to use one die this turn. The following I will have the normal 5 dice plus the one I saved. (6 dice in total).

Even better: Dice is needed for attacking and defending. I have a dice pool of 10 dice. I use 7 to attack. This leaves me only 3 dice to defend during the opponents turn. In "the fluff", this means the more I focus on attacks, the less focused I am in defense.

DISCUSS!

>>28508778

Would the dice refresh each turn? What constitutes a turn anyway? My move + the opponents move? Does territory control somehow factor in, i.e. different provinces have dicepools associated with them, or just a global one?

>>28508593
yes it support variables:

X: 4

output 1d(1d6>=X) + 2d(1d10>=X) + 4d(1d20>=X)

>>28508870
Hum... The dice would refresh at the start of a players turn. It would probably work on a "I go, you go".
Simultaneous turns would also be nice. Each player choses it's "dice allocation" in secret, and the they reveal, roll and do stuff.

> territory
Territory? What territory? This is just a game mechanic brainstorm, I have no idea what kind of game could use this. But that's a nice mental exercise...

>>28509007

I don't think designing a mechanic in vacuum is too productive. You need some context, otherwise any sort of systematic interaction would be a game or game mechanic.

Now broadly speaking, I think this is actually true, but here we are discussing something more specific. Just rolling dice and comparing results is not enough for something to be a meaningful mechanic. You need a goal/win-state, fluff, some assumptions about the number of players, etc.

Now, I'm sure you are aware of this, I'm just pointing out that putting it like "roll dice this way and discuss mechanics" doesn't really motivate discussion.

>>28508778
>Having a different dice pool for each stat/skill is "fiddly" imo

I can't help, i just love dice pools too much ;_;. And there are only three main stats (and a dice pool for game's FATE POINTS analogue, but i'll talk about it later), so it's not that silly.

As for aforementioned fourth pool, you know, i am really thankful about pointing the holes in my concept. Before this pool, which was supposed to be analogous to FATE points in theory, felt unnecessary and tacked on. Now i am considering using it as i used main stat pools before and it's coming neatly.
I'll think about it for a bit and post an updated example.
As for your game idea, why not both? You may allocate dice to attack, defense or preparation. Preparation saves some dice for the next turn, but with cap. Cap depends on how many regions you captured/advantage you generated/else. So you have incentive to play more carefully (saving dice for a big attack) and to play aggressively (capturing regions to have higher dice cap).

>>28509141
Well, yeah! I agree with you... I just find it fun to have these brainstorming exercises. When designing a game I usually start with something more "meaty".

But as I said before anything is good to start designing a game. You can start with "I want a game about flying cars", or "I want a miniature game with no dice".
How's this for an idea: "A game where when I spend resources, they go to my opponent" I thinks it's a pretty good idea. It may bloom into an interesting game.
See the game Catacombs. It probably started with a mechanic: "I want to destroy monsters by flicking disks".

Anything can start a game. You can even try to change an existing game. How different would 40k be if every race were a farm animal? How would that change the mechanics? The fluff?

What's a fun, family-friendly way to include action cards? Alternatively, game mechanics and tweaks to them that work well with a midcore game?

>>28509302

I agree with what you are saying, I'm just pointing out that it's a little hard to brainstorm (at least for me), if I lack some sort of broader context.

>>28509383
I agrre with you... Thats why I'll ask:

>>28509350
More context please. What do you mean by action cards? Are they sorceries and instants? What do you already have in your game?

>>28504043
Except that not everyone wants you interupting the game by pulling out your smart phone and rolling for it. Yes, if you want to design your game around this, then do so, but make sure to fully use the system made available to you. If you're making a game for a digital format, you might as well just program a random number generator to do it for you. When you design a game, either design it for the tools you intend to use, or use the tools you have designed it for. If you're going to have d6s be the primary thing you roll, then make sure that your players can actually USE physical dice and it's not hampering you. If you intend for them to use a smart phone, make a random number generator app and some other features on it for your game and include a link and a download code for the app in your rulebook/pdf. Do not half ass things.

>>28504462
Good advice here. If I ever remake the guide, I'll add this stuff.

>>28504257
Table Top Wargames involve army pieces and are meant to be played on a self made (or semi self made) board. If you're creating terrain for the game that wasn't included in a single boxed set, then you're playing a wargame, not a board game. If it's all included in one or several self contained boxes without fully modular terrain, then it's a wargame. That's just my personal syntax. Also wargames tend to be far more simulationist.

Basically on the scale of narrativist to simulationist

Most Narrativist
>Board Games
>War Games
>Roleplaying Games
Most Simulationist

This is not a hard and fast rule, but in general it tends to hold true.

(Definition: Simulationists means trying to mimic reality, narrativist is more about conveying a general story of what's going on, these are purely mechanical terms, and do not at all mean 'how well can you tell a story with a medium.' It has to do with how well the MECHANICS are geared towards either simulating reality as closely as possible, or just conveying methods to convey a general story.)

>>28504392
I address that here: >>28495902
and here: >>28495941

>>28504569
Wargames include this by doing it via campaigns. Risk: Legacy actually does it too, but it varies in how well it does it from what I've heard, and isn't actually meant to be balanced (I have yet to actually play it, so I'll get back to you guys if I ever get around to it).

In general, when you include legacy in a game, you need to be prepared to toss a certain amount of balance out the window. Half the point of legacy is that your actions in previous games effect your chances in new ones (for good or ill). The only way to really 'balance' such a system is to have advancement in it so that players rank up quickly until about mid teir, then have a hard time ranking up further from there. That way new players quickly reach the 'average' level of the majority of the group, while this way for the early and mid legacy, new players can quickly jump in and not be left behind, but in late game new players are going to have a hard time catching up to those who started the game.

>>28505147
Okay, so.
You want your total rolled dice to equal the DC, and the number of "successes" in the dice, equals how perfectly you do it?

I'd need to see an example, but honestly it sounds too convoluted to be good for quick play honestly. Though I'm interested in how you can use up bits of your dice pool for the entirety of the game just to give yourself short term successes...

>>28505171
Just making me want to look into thise more, it looks neat. So basically, it's very cinematic. if you take too many successes against you in an enemy attack, you're toast. Neat. I'll have to use this at some point.

>>28505247
The way i think it works is that you gain a success based on the attack. I'm assuming armor adds successes to your defense/parry/whatever rolls. After both sides have rolled attack or defense, you find out how much damage has been dealt. If you take 1 hit, you become "hurt" and then you take +1 damage from all future attacks. This continues to stack until you get toasted finally. It's a very cinematic system, and if done right, battles can actually last LONGER than in straight up HP fights. Higher levels mean you have more dice to throw into your defense, etc. Legend of the Wulin does something very similar, and I had to actually start removing the total amount of hits that mooks could take just to speed up gameplay.

>>28506841
Thank you very much! I'll make a google doc and toss it to the email you gave me so that we can contact each other through that. Sorry, I tend not to give out my work email (the only one you could reliably get me on) if I can help it.

>>28507167
THANK YOU! I forgot the name of this thing and have been searching for it forever! Good job anon!

>>28507253
Yeah, too convoluted. Sorry Anon. You need to simplify the hell out of that.

>>28507266
...wow... okay. I think I see what it's saying. So then, your chances of actually absorbing damage go from 100% at 0 damage, to lower and lower until you reach 0% to save against it at 3 damage?

>>28507389
>Also, i know we rip open stuff like FATAL, with good reason, but bad games are easier to learn from than good ones, and if you want to design, play some bad games. Just try making a FATAL character, and work out everywhere it goes wrong, which is a lot of places, then don't do those things.
I hate to say this, but he's right. This isn't trolling you guys. If you EVER want an example of how "not to do it" and want it as graphically as possible (and you can stand to lose a few nights sleep due to the nightmares that fucking book will cause you) then crack open FATAL. But seriously, only do it if you want as graphic a demonstration as possible.

>>28507391
Haha, yeah. I work from home for a company in Singapore at the moment, so I'm at least safe from that effect provided I get my work in on time.

>>28508044
>>28508147
This guy has it down. people want to make choices, choices are fun. Mathematics by itself is rarely fun for the average player.

>>28508302
hmmm.... okay, so basically when you're in a combat situation? You always have a chance of fubaring shit. But if you're just taking a normal check, I can reduce my total dice pool to give myself a flat modifier equal to the point value of what I gave up? (1d4 for a +1, 1d6 for a +2, etc.)

If I might suggest, include a mechanic that allows players to count certain situations are "free from distraction." A hardened combat veteran is not going to treat a raging battlefield as distracting probably.

>>28508565
That could work. But only if you not only make the choices meaningful, but intuative.

>>28508778
>>28509007
>>28509141
>>28509254
>>28509302
Legend of the Wulin does the whole saving up dice for later with the River/Lake system, and flooding dice to activate abilities and such. The goal in it is to line up matching sets of dice. Nothing else. The number of dice you line up is your 10s digit, the number rolled is the 1s digit. So 2 rolls of 6 is 26, while 5 rolls of 1 is 51. Thus, you want to assign long ROWS of matching numbers, but you also want a higher number in case of tie breaker.

All of this is going into my brain churner for that worldbuilding/nationbuilding game I've been contemplating using dice. I'll have something for you guys by the end of today hopefully... if I do this right, it'll even be a legacy style game... MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

>>28509350
I need more context too. I assume you mean like the ones used in 4e?

(okay, all caught up! jesus, I didn't expect this thread to be so popular)

>>28510441
also take a look at this little conversation for some examples of how to use anydice further

>>28508088
>>28508164
>>28508474
>>28508899

>>28510569
>If I might suggest, include a mechanic that allows players to count certain situations are "free from distraction." A hardened combat veteran is not going to treat a raging battlefield as distracting probably.
Yeah, that'll go great with the per-scene resource I'll have. It's used to activate powers, bid for initiative, and turn successful defenses into counter-attacks. I want players and enemies alike to spend it liberally.
I also want to have a per-session resource to activate aspects, only instead of granting a flat +2 like in FATE, each aspect (I won't call them that) has an "importance" number. When creating an aspect with two dice (the first being your result), it has importance equal to your effect and one free use. With three or more dice, one effect is its importance and another is its number of free uses.
Is that different enough from FATE that I won't get sued?

Can I ask a couple of questions as a guy currently developing an SRPG system?

1: If I am to make this as competitive as possible, would it be better to include prebuilt classes for each character, but allow a slight amount of modification per unit, or would it be better to give a certain measure of points they can put into every attribute as they wish, Ala Shadowrun/DnD/etc.?

2: I use 5x5 map tiles stuck together to make larger maps. So relatively large maps will wind up being 15x15 if you make a 3x3 of those 5x5's.

Would it be more appropriate to make specific pieces for things like buildings and make players set them down on these map tiles, or to just make each 5x5 map have hard pointed tiles? For example, the first would have a flat grassland plain, and players can set down things like walls, towns, roads, and whatever else by individual tile. The second example would have a premade town, complete with individual buildings, roads, and trees, but those are all hard-printed into the background and MUST be used as such.

3: If I want to use ranged combat without making it too OP, should I put penalties on it like "no close range attacks (see: Fire Emblem, Advance Wars), or should I just allow it to go as far as it wants, but weaker?

>>28511384

1: There are pros and cons to each, it just depends on where you want to do the work - in both cases you'd have to worry about balancing a range of options - in the first case, you'd have to balance every possible permutation of the preset classes, whereas in a point-buy system you'd have to balance each option individually. One option isn't clearly easier to do than the other; they'll both be a heck of a lot of work and playtesting.

2. These two options aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You could easily allow for both in your games.

Either also adds to the strategy of map creation at the start (assuming the tile itself has an effect as well, and not just the terrain on top of it). The first would make things considerably more complex, since the player needs to consider the interaction between the tile placed and the types of terrain placed on top (for example, a swamp tile that impedes movement might warrant different considerations for terrain placed on top of it).

3. Again, this depends on how prevalent you want ranged combat to be. Do you want it to be mostly a preliminary attack or a completely primary means of attack? You can play with dozens and dozens of permutations - put in range penalties, increase terrain and/or LOS restrictions, decrease damage, etc. etc.

Again, the "should I do X or Y?" depends on you. It's hard to give further advice without specifics on what you want or specific numbers to crunch. If you give specifics, we can crunch some probabilities - things like how frequently something occurs. Then you can check that against what you think the game should be like.

>>28511279
Under most copyright regimes basic rule mechanics cannot be copyrighted. You can copyright a specific expression of the rules, such as is found in a rulebook, but you can copy game mechanics in your own words in any way you want.

So long as you aren't literally reproducing the paragraph in FATE that explains how the mechanic works, you could use the exact same mechanic if you're using your own words. So you're safe from being sued either way.

What you want to think about is whether your players will feel that similarity to FATE is a negative thing.

>>28511279
Game design mechanics cannot be copyrighted.

Only wording, art, and music can be copyrighted.

You can't use the word "Tap" because the word in that context for a card game has been taken by Wizards of the Coast. But they can't stop you from using "turn a card sideways" as a mechanic.

Same deal with magic colors, you can get away with the same colors, but god help you if they're the same symbols. That said, most courts would probably throw you to the dogs if you blatantly copied the MtG color wheel in it's meanings and mechanical effects.

That said, I think you're on the right track for your mechanics.

>>28511384
see >>28511633
Anon here answers it all pretty well.

Personally, I think you should try it each of the ways you've described for most of that and playtest.

For the class system, I might suggest looking at The Void, which has a very nice mix of class and point buy systems, and even options to go entirely point buy. I'd suggest though that unless you are intending this to be more RPG and less S, that you keep the numbers and point buy system relatively low on stuff to keep the math easy and the focus on the playing field.

>>28511633
Alright, well for example let's just focus on the whole combat issue.

When a player reaches his turn, he can move all of his characters as far as their MOV stat goes. Each character has a base MOV stat of 2 spaces, which can be increased by either putting points into the stat (point buy) or choosing a class which has a naturally higher MOV stat. When you are within range (adjacent to a character without range, within 2 spaces with range, within 3 spaces with "long" range), you can attack them, and it becomes basically a stat bash (ATK against DEF, a roll to see if the attack landed, and another roll to verify how hard it hit, with different modifiers for different things, like terrain and abilities).

My problem is that, while fights can go either slowly or fast, depending on selected characters and character abilities, there's always going to be some kind of an issue with characters being naturally superior to others.

I've been thinking about simply making some global rules for checks and balances ("surround" rule auto-negating defensive values, "flight" rule allowing people to completely sidestep traps and navigate over terrain, etc.).

>>28511835
I'll take a look at The Void, and I'll take note of your advice as well. Thank you.

>>28511384
>3: If I want to use ranged combat without making it too OP
Make ranged attacks lose accuracy with each square. You can't really miss with a melee attack unless your opponent actively blocks or dodges it, but ranged attacks take some skill to hit even a defenseless target, especially if you move in the same turn. (I've never held a weapon in my life, I'm just guessing based on fiction.)
In addition, if your system is complex enough to add side-effects to attacks, such as a chance to stun or a chance to attack twice, you'll want to give the best ones to characters you feel are at a disadvantage.

>>28511967
That's actually a very good idea. Thank you very much for this. I might be able to actually work this into the system effectively.

>>28511848
Just my two cents. But I find that it all works neater for board games if your 'baseline' movement, and possibly the movements you can potentially upgrade too, are divisible by the largest possible board edge, but that's just me.

That seems to be 15, so I might suggest making it so that players can move 3 spaces base line, and even as many as 5 in a turn (or more if you want to make them super speedy. I find that taking 3 turns to cross a board for a 'speedy' character is the best option, because it means that speed has actual meaning in the game, and that nothing on the board is going to be way the fuck out of reach).

How are you handling diagonal movement? We addressed it earlier in the thread, but squares create a kind of noneuclidan movement geometry compared to hexes.

See, The relative distance between two square spaces diagonally is shorter than if you go horizontally or vertically.

But if you simply set the necessary movement of diagonal movement to 2 spaces (to the side then up for example), then you actually make diagonal distances more distant relative to one another.

This basically means that either characters are at an advantage for moving diagonally, or that players on the whole will only think in straight lines and not diagonally at all. Just a heads up. There's literally no way to solve this issue in it's entirety I might add except for switching to hexagonal spaces.

I've actually always wanted to make an rpg that invokes the noneuclidian relative distances that are inherent to square grid boards.

As for character customization. Your best bet for that is to limit the fuck out of it and randomize it honestly. Have it so that players first have to spend, say, 5 points on changing their character up. Their base points are based on the class they took. They then get to pick 1 card from those automatically available to their class, and draw 2 cards at random (drawing round robin style) from a communal deck of abilities.

>>28511835
Due to the way copyright law works I have kept most of my game close to the vest. When is the best time to release large portions of the game mechanics so players know what they're buying?

I'm planning to do so a month or two from release.

If I had used a system similar to another that's already out I wouldn't be worried, but some of my game mechanics are unique.

Those I've asked have given valid reasons for both sides of the issue on why I should or shouldn't release information before the game is ready to release.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

>>28512005
>That seems to be 15, so I might suggest making it so that players can move 3 spaces base line, and even as many as 5 in a turn (or more if you want to make them super speedy. I find that taking 3 turns to cross a board for a 'speedy' character is the best option, because it means that speed has actual meaning in the game, and that nothing on the board is going to be way the fuck out of reach).
This could work. Yeah, I think that 3 is better than two. And then again, it's not as if in every scenario they will be able to cross the entire battlefield in 3 turns, because in more congested maps or maps with more specific turns, they'll need to navigate, but much quicker than most.
>How are you handling diagonal movement?
It's as you said, I'm having it be a necessary two-space movement. It's worked relatively well how I've had things pulled together, and while I WANTED to do hexagonal spaces, there were a lot of strategic issues that cropped up, and this style just made it a lot less troublesome to work with.

On the note of the customization, I think I'll do as you say. Keep a small deck of +1/+2/+Ability cards handy, and players draw from the deck as they level, place a card under the character they are giving the additional point to, so on, so forth. So a knight with 12 ATK 12 DEF levels and gets a sudden "Mounted" ability. So now he's 12 ATK, 12 DEF, and "Mounted", all of which help him in gameplay terms.

>>28512078
It depends, for board games you have to keep things closer to the chest most of the time, especially ones where the information is purely text and it is easy to switch things out.

I find that as long as you word things right, you get people interested. I've found that this is where narrative and fluff are best served in a board game.

Imagine you are making a game purely as a game? Like Sorry! or Trouble! You suddenly have a NIGHTMARE of a time publicizing why the game is awesome without revealing EXACTLY how the game is played.

You reveal the narrative, and you reveal enough about gameplay to get people interested, especially in elements that have already been done. the 1-2 month mark is the best time because that's about how long it takes for a crowd funding proposal on Kickstarter or Indiegogo to get done.

Now.

That all said. I've learned some very sobering things in my time as a game designer about 'original mechanics" etc.etc.

You have maybe one in a quintillion chance of having actually created original mechanics. This is a hard truth all game designers need to learn. The reasoning is simple. As a culture, we are programmed to think very similarly. When you get enough people in a room all viewing the same information and having the same general background culture, you tend to draw similar conclusions. You tend to have stuff cropping up. The mobile game I'm making right now is actually constantly running into these issues, the only difference is in how I've assembled the pieces. I know it's only a matter of time until somebody does EXACTLY what I'm designing with a different skin, because already I'm seeing games being released with an element of it here, an element of it there, and all the time more and more of those elements are being drawn together into a single game.

This is why you have to keep a lid on things for the most part, just in case you inspire somebody to make it faster than you.
>cont.

>>28512211
That said, once you have a working prototype, you are generally in the clear. You have a proof of concept as it were, you tend to be in the clear. You have the assembled bits, you can start expanding on them, and the vast majority of the preliminary work is done to the point (and if you've been doing your documentation and proof of dating right, your copyright is secure against blatant ripoffs) you tend to have an advantage over other people.

The only reason I'm not telling you guys about the mobile game I'm making is that the greybox got deleted because of shenanigans in the former team members. If I had that, then I would have enough of a solid base not to have to worry about copyright infringement, since I could keep ahead of the game enough to avoid any out and out copycats.

That's my take on the situation anyway, I hope it answered your question.

>>28512155
Sounds good. if I might suggest, have 1 'general' deck, and 1 "class" deck for each class.

So character creation goes like this.
>Stage one: Pick Class and take your class card (maybe only one person to a class?)
>Stage two: assign 5 points to your attributes (picking cards from your class deck or use counters, either or).
>Stage Three: pick 1 ability card from your class deck, nonrandom choice.
>Stage 4: round robin style, all players draw two cards from the general class deck.

When you level up, you draw cards from either your class deck or the general deck.

That way your players have a solid base that is semi-randomized, and further advancement is randomized to the point where their strategy needs to evolve on the fly. Your general strategy will be influenced by the cards you're likely to draw from your class deck, but you also have some real curve balls being thrown your way that force you to alter your strategy. There'll never be a true "perfect" build, and if there is, you'd have to be incredibly lucky to draw it.
>cont.

I wanna make a game with a large audience. Something 'easy to learn, hard to master', if you will.

The idea is a coop game, fighting against the game, rather than other players. Different powers, rolling dice. I'm vague on purpose, I don't have the details finished yet.

My question is - which games are essential to play? Simple, but still 'deep' and fun coop games that a typical family can enjoy, but so will /tg/. Something like Ghost Stories comes to mind.

>>28512320

Finally, this option gives you a chance for future expansions if you go on to sell this.

and I really should explain this to you guys, monetization and marketing are important if you ever want to make money from your games. Actually learn about them, do not despise figuring out how to make money. It'll make you feel like a corporate shill, but if you want to survive in this industry, if you want to make a living at it, you need to figure this shit out and learn to design it in such a way that it both makes you money and it doesn't infringe upon the player experience. You want to know why monetization and microtransactions suck today? It's not because they're inherently WRONG as a system, some kind of plague or blight. They're an elegant medicine that's being used as a fucking cure all rather than in the applied dosage it's supposed to be given in. Because so many game designers refuse to treat it as anything except corporate ass hatery, because they refuse to change their business model from the 'sell a game at $60 bucks and say good bye to it forever more" from the 90s and before, the fucking suits are the ones who make the decisions on microtransactions and monetization. You want to be a good game designer? Know your business and know how to make money from it without hurting the play experience for the players. because if you don't, the people who don't give two shits about the player's experience will ham-fist in the monetization for you.

That is one of the bitterest pills a former gamer turned game designer has to swallow. If you want to be a professional game designer, not someone who designs games as a hobby while working behind a desk or a counter somewhere, you have to figure out how to get them to make money, or you have to sign up with somebody who won't give a shit about how the money is made, so long as it is made.

>>28512390
Okay, ghost stories is a good one, pandemic is another. There are a couple others I can't for the life of me remember that are also good... They've also got some really neat (if expensive) games coming out of europe (the wakfu guys mostly) and Korea that have that whole co-op thing going for them on a game board. I can't remember the name of it, you're basically raiding a dungeon against a DM with different enemies having different AI. Every time damage is dealt, a spawn counter goes down, and you need to destroy the spawners in order to advance or you'll be swamped.

>>28512320
>>28512397
I think I'll use your card randomization idea, because it will really push players to mix things up.

I'll also try to produce special cards like "item" or "spell" cards which can be used to their own ends.

And I'll note that there are definitely ways I'll have to figure out how to market this. You've been pretty inspirational so far man, and I appreciate it.

>>28509949
Does Parcheesi really have much of a narrative? It seems like it's not so much a progression from narrativism to simulationism, but from gamism to simulationism. And even then, I think the level of detail is mostly responsible for RPGs being more simulationist. Wargames are more likely to take gamist shortcuts because they aren't typically campaigns that stretch over months or years.

>>28512446

Oh pandemic, of course.

I'm thinking something lighter than that game though. Something with a lot of ways to do one thing.
What I mean by that is, in Ghost Stories there's a LOT to do, but ultimately one way to win the game. In something like, say, Shadow over Camelot - you can win in multiple ways (if I recall correctly, been a while).

No traitor element though.

>>28512447
Sounds good. I'd suggest having a "loot deck" seperate from the general level up deck (or potentially part of it depending on how you want to handle items. If items are different than abilities, they might have limited uses or be able to be stolen by other abilities, but if they're only gained through level ups they had better be pretty impressive compared to normal abilities, or perhaps just not using resources while being only able to "equip" so many. Not sure. ANYWAY! Good luck with your game Anon, I look forward to seeing it in the future!

>>28512466
DAMN! I can't believe I forgot that term. Thank you. You're absolutely right. Gamist is a better way to put it than Narativist.

Though I still think that for the most part, board games are better at conveying very general information, where as rpgs and wargames tend to go for a more simulationist approach.

I guess the way it could be seen is:
gamist+narrativist+simulationist = rpg
gamist+simulationist = wargame?
gamist+narrativist = board game?
narrativist+simulationist = ???

That's as best as I can figure it.

>>28512510
Hmmm... the problem is that the other games I can think of that are even remotely like what you're talking about are all either heavy as an elephant (Kingdom Death) or are traitor elements involve (Battlestar Galactica the Boardgame).

There's also Arkham Horror, wonderful character generation and advancement system, wonderful method of controlling monster movement. Utterly shit at putting all the various bits of itself together. And don't even get me started on the victory condition.

>>28512562

The victory condition kills me.I really want to like, heck - love this game, but I can't really.

I really like a lot in it, but the game itself. I can't even figure out how to play it properly, I have Dunwich expansion and the other city is either completely overrun by monsters... or vacant.

Galactica is great, but not quite what I'm thinking. Although the Crysis deck is something I want to use, as a 'we gotta work together now' kind of thing.

What about LotR? Knizia's. That's coop, but maybe it'll give me an idea or two.