#TTRPG Game Design

[thecartonizer]

Shouting out into the void for this one but: any tips for someone who legitimately gave up ttrpg game dev because of both stress over not being able to translate my ideas into the dice stuff and the realization i could not logically make a living out of it but now wants to get back at it with risus or a original system?

[bonusexperience]

*taps mic*

Is this thing on? Hello?

We’re back, blowing the dust off this old account since Twitter has become (more) of a trash fire. We’ll be putting all our episodes here, as we work on getting them onto YouTube.

In the meantime, enjoy the first episode of our current season.

Welcome to Season Six! Rai is retiring from permanent co-host duty so you're all stuck with me (Monica) and a rotating door of our friends. Fear not, Rai will still join us from time to time. And don't worry - we remain two queer people speaking with authority about games, and we absolutely will still swear (die mad about it). In today's episode D and Monica sit down to really get into the ins and outs of designing good resource management games. We talk about what you need to consider as a designer and break down how you can avoid common pitfalls. We also cite a handful of excellent games you can try that use their resources extremely well.

 In the Extended Cut:

Starting the work day, weird dreams, and a good sandwich

Behind the scenes of Scion 2e

The mysteries of PEMDAS

More fun rules from The Other Side

[creationcast]

Our 5-year anniversary celebration continues with a release from the Patreon vault: Undying Bonds Episode 1 is out on the public feed right now! In this series, @lordneptune-rb and @gingerreckoning are designing a magical girl/necromancer game based on Spencer Campbell's game, Nova!

If you like what you're hearing here, check out the rest of the episodes currently on our Patreon! Just sign up at the $5 level or higher and you'll unlock the remaining episodes along with a ton of other bonus content!

We still have a ways to go, we're $28 away from reaching our first goal. Can you help us get there and unlock a set of 3 custom C3 dice for all $5 and up patrons? Check out the episode today for more details in the cold open!

[smallredrobin13games]

Horse and Rider is now live!

Fancy a 2-player game about a horse and the person that’s trying to tame it? Well do I have the game for you!

Check it out here: https://crowdfundr.com/Horse-Rider

[hetrosjistin]

This is got me thinking of a more general bit of TTRPG game design advice, not entirely relevant to 'making a dnd clone' (which is honestly almost it's entire own school of game design thought at this point), but it's a bit of advice John Wick gave me when I sat at his table for a houses of the blooded game, and it stuck with me forever.

You need to ask why people should play your game instead of a properly curated GURPS game.

Even if it's an OSR clone.

Ask what narrative your mechanics tell better than GURPS, in it's infinite madness of attempting to create accurate rules for practically any narrative form.

It's often talked about that even if you're designing a Dungeons & Dragons clone, you should be broadly familiar with the indie scene in order to guard against the possibility that you're trying to reinvent the solution to a problem that some random indie RPG about gay catgirls talking about their feelings figured out in 2002.

What's less readily acknowledged but no less true is that even if you're designing an indie RPG about gay catgirls talking about their feelings, you should be broadly familiar with the OSR scene in order to mitigate the possibility that you're trying to reinvent the solution to a problem that some random Dungeons & Dragons clone figured out in 1978.

[legionofmyth]

Palladium Books: Are dated gameplay mechanics holding these games back?

Are Palladium Books' game mechanics stuck in the past? ⏳ In this video, we explore the debate on whether these classic RPG rules need a modern update. Join the conversation and see if it's time for Palladium Books to evolve with the times. Click to watch and weigh in! #PalladiumBooks #RPGDebate #TabletopRPG #TTRPG #RPGCommunity

Beyond the Supernatural 2E – PDF Dead Reign – [PDF]Palladium Fantasy RPG (2e) – [PDF] This video examines the game mechanics in Palladium Books that players argue are dated and in need of modernization. Ready to explore whether it’s time for Palladium Books to evolve? Dive in and watch the video! Palladium Books has been a staple in the tabletop RPG community for decades, but as the gaming world…

[quinnydoll]

being a GM is really fun because sometimes you can make your players go through some really traumatic Evangelion bullshit, but other times you can force them to go bowling for no reason

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

life goals

[hnnngggn]

Just had the idea for a game that’s like the movie Rat Race. I think I’ll probably write out some proper rules for it at some point and stick it on my itch.io because thinking about this it sounds really fun lol! Here’s what I’m thinking for it:

Basically the premise for it is (like the movie) you’ve got a whole bunch of characters all racing to get from point A to point B, first one there wins a big prize! I’m probably going to write it so it can fit into any setting.

It’s designed to be played with a big group in like a forum roleplay or on a discord server or something, just something that allows the different groups of people to roleplay separately.

It’ll probably work best with a group of gms who all act like the rich gamblers from the movie and who watch over the game. They should help gm for each of the groups but they should be non partial and not biased because it’s just more fun that way! I feel like it should be more focused on the players roleplay though and less of the gms telling them what to do. Like for example a player could say that they’re driving a bus down the road and one of the gms pop in to say that the bus has broken down and see where the player takes it from there!

That’s all I can think of for now but this sounds super fun and I’m excited to play with the idea some more!

[alphaori]

Being into indie ttrpgs on Tumblr is a very funny experience because while you're ambiently considering designing a little game about idk, gremlins growing cabbages or whatever there are people who built this hobby from the ground up with 15 award winning published games and three podcasts and a knighthood from a small European monarchy just doing their thing on the same platform. Imagine this was the case for any other hobby. You go to shoot some hoops behind your house and LeBron James is just there

[probablyday]

millennial nerd bertie wooster for some reason

[bonusexperience]

Hello Bonus Babies,

Today Monica invites her friend, Jacqueline Bryk, to join her and discuss something she considers a blank spot in her traditional game literacy: LARP. We discuss what makes a LARP, and general LARP design principles as Jax gives a detailed 101 crash course. We also kick around designing our own together, for a bit. Also discussed in the extended cut (https://www.patreon.com/posts/80223748):

- Jax at MAGFest and Monica's day job

- the implications of torture in games and the meddlesome Victorians

- headcanons for the Scarlet Empress and the Ebon Dragon

 - online RPG discourse

[bogleech]

At the link above is a 45 page condensed PDF sample of the upcoming 300+ page Mortasheen TTRPG Core Rulebook. This condensed sample contains just the following:

-The Biotypes (player races)

-The College of Genetics location and its Dean

-The Runoff, a sample adventure locale in Mortasheen City

-An explanation of the "Green Goo" that Mortasheen runs on

-24 monster pages, some of them still never before seen by anyone but the original Kickstarter backers, from a planned final count of 152 monsters.

No gameplay instructions, but monster pages retain their statblocks for you to look at.

All full color artwork in this sample is by myself or by @revretch, while pixel sprites are by hashtag_underscore, beachboogyman, myself, and Pokemon: Quarantine Crystal's @latenightagain !

Any money from this zine-sized digital preview will go partially into everyday survival and partially into improving the print quality of the final book. Its kickstarter print budget is still with me, but only covers a just-average quality for the book's first run! There are still better paper weights and color options to consider! After that print run finishes and ships out to all 2020 backers, that final book will go up for public purchase, maybe by the end of this year (2024) if everything works out.

Boost and spread this if you can; I've worked on Mortasheen as a personal world building project for over twenty years, and the coming RPG release is a project that took multiple people at least fifteen years.

FIND OUT WHAT KIND OF MONSTER IS CALLED "SHARKITECT"

[fort-of-novelty]

I'm bored of elemental giants. Use environmental giants instead.

Environmental Giants all start out the same, but their bodies take up the features of the place they live in. They become a reflection of their domain.

Giant takes up residence in the cliffs of dover? Not a stone giant. No, that's specifically The Giant of Dover. Its body is made of chalk. It can create dust clouds of chalk with its breath, its shoulders are padded with tufts of short grasses and blackberry bushes.

Giant takes up residence in the ruins of a highway during an apocalypse? That's the I-95 Giant. It has rebar spines along its back, skin of pavement and concrete, and wears wrecked cars as armor.

And to make this idea more dynamic, the giant's form changes as the ecosystem changes. A river gets diverted away from a Giant's domain? Then the Giant dries up along with its land. Now the Giant has an incentive to protect its dominion, and a weakness that its enemies can exploit.

[centwithlove]

No you don't. You don't have to. There is no requirement for ttrpgs that PCs and enemies must use the same rules.* And though I can't speak on Prokopetz's intentions, I wouldn't if I was making a superhero system with this mechanic, as the main draw of it would be PC's wanting to not kill people but have to make moral and tactical choices about doing so or not, and that just wouldn't make sense as something the villains should also do as often as the heroes. *This includes but is not limited to Dnd 5e, where PCs get death saves, while only the most important NPCs do. Other ttrps need not ever make the heroes at risk of their own death.

Sometimes you've gotta take received wisdom in tabletop RPG design and do the exact opposite on purpose, just to see what happens. I've got a vaguely superhero-adjacent RPG I'm working on right now that flips the whole "the player characters' actions should never result in an NPC's death unless that was their explicit intention" thing turnways and makes it literally impossible to engage in physical coercion of any kind toward another person without some non-zero likelihood of accidentally killing the target in the process, and let me tell you, it's resulted in some fun "okay, how are we going to do this" conversations.

[legionofmyth]

Palladium Books: Are Palladium’s rules cumbersome and how do you fix them?

Is your game getting bogged down by complex rules? 🧩 In our latest video, we dive into the Palladium Books mechanics that many players find overly cumbersome. Discover why these rules might be slowing down your gameplay and how to navigate them effectively. Don't miss out on this essential discussion! #PalladiumBooks #TabletopRPG #RPGMechanics #TTRPG #RPGCommunity

After the Bomb Heroes Unlimited 2E Rifts Ultimate Edition This video dives into the rules and mechanics of Palladium Books that many players find overly cumbersome and challenging to navigate. Are you ready to unravel the complexities and discover why some of these rules are slowing down your game? Watch now! In the vast world of tabletop RPGs, Palladium Books has always been known for its…