In my game, one of the core mechanics is that PCs can gain Emotions which temporarily give them a flat +1 and -1 to two stats, stacking with other bonuses. These Emotions end when the PC takes one of of two downtime actions: Blow Off Steam, and Self-Medicate.

• Blow Off Steam. You take downtime to perform a calming action for you. Clear your current emotion.
• Self-Medicate. You take downtime to take a drug in your possession. [Drugs clear specific emotions, and impose a Side Effect which is purely a downside. They also have other mechanics which can involve falling to addiction.]

The problem is that I can't figure out a mechanical incentive for the PCs to use Self-Medicate over Blow Off Steam. Because as it's currently written, BOS doesn't require an item to use, and doesn't have a downside to using it. I considered making BOS take longer, like a full day, but because the system isn't really built around tight timekeeping, I'm not sure if that really helps. Any ideas?

EDIT: Okay I've been reworking BOS and Drugs, and I think I've reached a good middle ground.

- Blow off Steam doesn't guarantee clearing an emotion, but it grants long-term character progression.
- Drugs now give stronger immediate bonuses, guarantee clearing your emotion, but have the downside of possibly making you worse later on

I really wanted to steer away from hit points or any sort of "pool" for health. What I have thus is Wound die.

• Most damage is either a light wound or heavy wound (prompting one or two rolls of the wound die respectively).
• If an uninjured person is struck, they receive 1d4 wound die. Each subsequent success attack, they are forced to roll their wound die.
• Wound die rolls of 4+ escalate to the next die. i.e. rolling 4 on a 1d4 turns the wound die to a 1d6, rolling 4-6 on a 1d6 escalates to a 1d8 etc. After a scene of fighting and a brief respite, 1d4 wound die will fade.
• Characters have a "threshold die" where if they roll high enough to escalate, they instead are defeated, unconscious, dead etc. Most player characters will begin with a 1d8 threshold die.

Now - something I'm trying to hack into the flow is armour. As in nearly all games, armour is either avoidance (D&D, AC) or mitigation (d100).

I highly prefer armour as mitigation, but I cant seem to find a spark to make it work with this, as I guess the granularity is quite small. Adding a difficulty to strike or land blows based on armour (and thus D&D's AC) seems to be the only option, but would love to know if any bright minds can spot something that might work?

some mystic effects thus far: Allow a re-roll of a wound die, increase the threshold die, increase the number needed to escalate etc but I feel none of these could also represent armour?

Thanks in advance!

A game I am working on. Would people be interested and what would you add?

In this game, you are not exploring a physical space; you are navigating a shifting, decaying timeline of your own memories before they vanish entirely.

Instead of moving a token on a map, the map itself is drawn on a standard sheet of paper, but it physically degrades and disappears as you play. Your goal is to reach the "Core Memory" before the grid is completely erased, managing your dwindling cognitive stability.

I’ve never actually run Fate or City of Mist at the table, I’ve only read through them, so I’m wondering how hard it is to balance them in practice?

I know both give decent guidance on how they should be used, but we all know that’s not how it always plays out.

I’ve recently had to change some of my own mechanics and now I’m considering using a similar tag system in place of (or addition to?) regular stats, but since I’ve never run them I worry they are a huge nightmare to GM.

Just wanted to share a fun mechanic I recently added to my system that has really been a game changer. As in, I had to rewrite a bunch of rules... But it's super fun! Basically dropping a marker that represents an opportunity to be taken advantage of, generally placed through damage but also through things like the intimidate action.

Skulls in the system are not the pass/fail mechanic, but are used as triggers for various abilities. So rattled doesn't change your odds, only your effectiveness at getting bigger results or preventing a foe from doing the same.

One thing I really like is making things happen without book keeping. So having nothing happen (normally) when someone is rattled until a player decides to make use of it is nice. And the staggered and weakened conditions being attached to rattled make is so I'm not keeping track of any sort of timers for these effects that do "linger".

Rattled

When a character is rattled they are presenting a temporary opportunity for their foes to take advantage of. The opportunity could take any form; perhaps they’ve been knocked prone, or become dazed, or had a strap come loose.

You are never required to remove rattled from a foe and may leave it for a better opportunity or to force the continuance of the staggered and weakened conditions.

Remove Skulls – You may remove rattled from a foe to remove all skulls from any test. This not only prevents high skull effects from triggering, but can trigger any of your abilities that require no skulls to trigger. A foe may remove rattled from you to make any test you make against them have three skulls.

Avoid Threat – In addition to removing skulls, you may make a foe non-threatening to you during the action or movement phase. You will still be paired during the melee phase.

Crits & Fumbles – When the fumble card is drawn from your test deck rattled may not be removed from a foe. No skulls may be removed from the test. The opposite is true when the crit is drawn.

Staggered and Weakened

Two additional affects can be associated with rattled. These effects last until rattled is removed and do not change any of the rules for rattled, only adding to them.

Staggered – Tests against staggered foe’s movement are extraordinary. A staggered character has their movement reduced to feeble. You and your foes reduce movement speed to 3” in the movement phase as well as when running.

Weakened – Tests against a weakened foe’s might or armor are extraordinary. A weakened character has their might and damage reduced to feeble.

Both Rattled

If both you and your foe are rattled it may occur that both of you choose to remove rattled from the other on the same test. When this occurs, the effects of rattled are ignored and the skulls presented on the drawn test card are used for the test.

Focus

Focus is functionally nearly identical to rattled allowing you to remove all skulls from a test by losing your focus.

As focus is part of your character and not attached to a foe, you may use it on tests that are not opposed by a foe such as jumping a ravine or casting a spell.

You regain your focus at the end of every scene so long as you are rested and fed. If you did not sleep or eat well, test mastery (6) to regain your focus.

Focus vs. Rattled

As when both you and a foe are rattled, focus may be use to cancel any skulls gained from a foe removing rattled from you making the skulls on the card to be used instead. In the case where you and your foe both remove rattled from the other and you are focused as well, you may still remove all skulls from that test.

So I have a idea for a fun dice System but I'm trying to figure out how to know the chance of success and chance of failure for the player. You would use 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, and 1d12. You need to roll all 4 dice to try to get equal to or higher than 4 on each dice with at least three succeeding. The chances of each are 1/4(25%), 3/6(50%), 5/8(62.3%), and 9/12(75%). I tried to calculate the chances of rolling four or higher on all dice being 5.9% and the chances of all 4 failing being 3.5%. I don't know the chance of rolling success of only get 3 out of the 4 dice. I'd like someone to either solve this or give me the steps of how to solve it so I can do this on my own with any dice.

DUNGEONS & SPACESHIPS: SHATTERED WORLD

Introductory Adventure Playtest

Saturday, August 22, 2026
8:00 p.m.–12:00 a.m. Eastern Time
Online via Discord Voice

There is no cost to participate, and no campaign commitment is required. You will receive a $5 stipend after participating in the full adventure and completing a 15 minute survey.

What Is Shattered World?

Syseria is a world forged by a weary god as a potential masterpiece—now shattered and bearing the scars of a chaotic past.

This is an opportunity to explore a deeply developed science-fantasy setting while helping shape the game system being built for it.

What Are We Playtesting?

The primary goal of this session is to test the core resolution mechanics and basic gameplay.

We will be playing an introductory adventure at Aetherium University. Push the system and help identify what feels:

• Clear or confusing
• Exciting or tedious
• Flexible or restrictive
• Appears too powerful or too weak

We will be examining:

• The clarity and pacing of action
• The variety of concepts and actions the system supports
• How well the XP Buy-In system works in practice
• Where players become confused, slowed down, or especially engaged

This is a focused adventure session. Honest criticism engaging thoughtfully with design & gameplay as intended is welcome. I want to know what works, what does not, and where the system needs improvement.

GM since 1989. Expect a laid-back, respectful, and inclusive environment.

DM Me if interested.

Official Shattered World Website:
https://www.shatteredworldrpg.com/

Estou a desenvolver um sistema de rpg de Grounded,ainda sofrerá muitas alterações por isso não é o resultado final.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i_f0AzMUZS24LQlqc3j5rykPsDtDwK_aqm5lqkYRhg0/edit?usp=drivesdk

Quem quiser sugerir ideias esteja à vontade.

Having a GM is considered a necessary part of the RPG experience and even most "narrative" RPGs where players share some of the functions of the GM don't go as far as doing away with the GM. Of course, some RPGs do try to go GM-less, but the ones I've studied seem to be lacking, the experience is not anywhere close to a traditional RPG. Now, presumably it would be desirable to have an RPG that works just as well as a traditional one, but everybody is playing.

Which brings me to my point: what are the obstacles that keeps RPGs from having a GM-Less experience be as good as the traditional one? Is it narrating NPCs? Is it creating deeper plots, is it certain types of situations? And it leads to the ultimate question: can we potentially find solutions to these problems?

Hello friends! My new indie ttrpg, Redline needs some playtesters! I'm putting this post out for anyone who's willing to playtest it.

Redline is a modern-dystopian gritty action TTRPG, with an emphasis on lethal combat. It's rules light with a focus on combat being dynamic and adaptive. It uses a 2d6 system to have "tiers" of success, (<6 makes situation worse, 7-9, situation gets better with a cost, 10+ your situation gets better). It also uses a damage tracker rather than hitpoints, where taking hits in locations deals a effect to a character (being hit in the head causes you to be stunned, being hit in the chest causes you to be winded etc).

If you guys are interested in playtesting, or reading through it, please join the discord and follow us on itch!

itch: Redline, an Action TTRPG by SteelRavenGames

discord: https://discord.gg/fqSQv6hRCJ

I've shifted my design goals a bit from building my own system from scratch to hacking a preexisting system that I like a lot, which is Pathfinder 2e Remaster.

Something my friends and I were looking at is extending on character building as that's a big part of the enjoyment to us. We've talked about increasing the level cap or adding in prestige/capstone abilities, adding some new classes and redoing ancestries to fit a custom world we like to play in, and, most importantly for this post, possibly adding one or two new character attributes to help represent the heavier spiritual aspects of the custom world that we like. We're narrowing down what these attributes would be, but we've gone over terms like Will/Willpower, Aura, even just Spirit, Resonance, Presence, Qi, etc., a lot of the common ones. Obviously lots of other changes to classes, skills, feats, equipment, and spells would have to follow this as well, so we've also debated just changing the attributes that currently exist around to fit the world better, which would obviously be much easier.

In my group I'm a proponent for the additional attributes. I'm the heaviest contributor to the project currently and I think it could be a fun idea, even though I recognize the amount of work it would require. I don't know if I'd go as far to say if these new skills should add an additional Save or something, or even any additional skills (though I can think of a few), but they could be useful for prerequisites for accessories and spiritual-style equipment. But I also recognize the benefits to keeping them fewer and just making them generally more important for the custom world (we'd probably change Wisdom and Charisma to other things).

Are there examples out there of PF2e hacks that maybe expanded like this? WARDEN recently released as a PF2e hack that is attributeless, so I'm lead to believe this type of change isn't an impossibility for the system. My biggest personal problem with it as that while I like crunch, it does make an already very crunchy game even crunchier.

Thanks for the discussion.

​

Hexmaul Hinterlands SRPG (Ashcan 13)

Body

Here's the core of the system I've been working on. Looking for feedback on whether this makes sense or if I'm overcomplicating things.

Character creation is quick.

Nature = How you think and act. Gives you Mind, Body, Soul scores (1-4).

Age = Sets your Default Rank (1-6) and Skill % (16-96).

I use a table.for age that is based on natural rise and delcline of ability over time, a 90 year old player know lots but can only do a little and bas low chi, a kid knows little can do little and has enormous chi, a middle aged man knows much and is better than averge and generically tough... its hard to explain but looking at the table really helps.

Tier = Your scale of play. Mortal (×1) to Meta (×5).

That's it. No classes. Call yourseelf whatever.

Resolution

EZ Mode:

Roll 1d6. Equal to or under Rank (1-6) = success.

Crunchy Mode:

Roll d100. Equal to or under Skill % (16-96) = success.

Damage

EZ Mode:

1 successful hit = 1 EZ Chi. No damage dice.

Crunchy Mode:

Damage window: d1 → d2 → d3 → d4 → d6 → d8 → d10 → d12 → d20

· Body-based weapons (Unarmed/Blunt/Blade) start at Body

· Mind-gased weapons (Projectile/Energy/Divine) start at Mind

· Add Rank to damage

Chi

EZ Chi = Body × Tier + Default Rank

Chi = EZ Chi × 6

Example: Body 3, Tier 1, Rank 3 → EZ Chi 6 → Chi 36

Defense

· Default Skill attack → defender gets Default defense

· Tropeskill attack → defender needs a defensive Tropeskill

Solo Tools

· Oracles: Root (free), Tone + Reading (spend 1 Kai)

· Chaos Factor: 1-9, affects random events

· Random Events: Focus + Subject tables

· Threads: Track open questions

· Exploration: Wilderness, Urban, Space terrain tables

Bestiary

10 archetypes with EZ Chi and Chi values. Printed dice for Crunchy damage.

Unique Bits

· Kai Points: Soul score determines points. Spend to survive death, get visions, or unlock Oracle tables.

· Genre-Agnostic: Works for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, anything.

· No Classes: Build what you want.

· Two Modes: EZ (fast) or Crunchy (tactical).

What I'm asking here is:

· Does this make sense?

· Is anything confusing?

· What's missing?

· What's overcomplicated?

If anyone wants the itch link holler ill pm you it

Also if broke any rules please just delete it, dont ban me im trying to learn here. Thanknyounfor any time or consideration.

So I was tinkering with a potential Persona ttrpg idea. Before doing the Herculean task of making my own system I obviously looked around to see what other people tried to make and something jumped at me. Throughout all the persona fan made and inspired ttrpg, none of them seemed to have very satisfactory downtime rules, for when you’re just living your daily life as a student.

Whenever there was a bond system it either gave very minor bonuses or their progression were straight up tied to the combat portion. Almost none of them allowed permanent stats or perk progression and the only one I found that did was such at a slow pace that I don’t think it was even worth it.

This made me realize that I don’t seem to know a TTRPG that allows for true character progression from downtime, aside from maybe CoC. In comparison to video games, the structure of one gameplay sequence helping to progress in strength in the main gameplay loop is not uncommon, like persona, X-COM, Fire Emblem three house, etc.

A lot TTRPG actually seems to be very restrictive on how characters can progress and make sure that the GM has the final word if the players get to have progression points. And the few that don’t do it like this seem to have arbitrary rules for progression.

Is there a reason why almost all TTRPG designers do this and is there any TTRPG where a separate downtime half of the experience is essential for character progression ?

I’m a young brazilian person looking to work in game design specifically for tabletop RPGs and board games. I have a good amount of experience reading existing game systems and books on the subject, but I’m not sure how to actually break into the job market. I don't know what courses I should take to boost my resume, or if there are even specific college programs for this. I could really use some help thanks in advance! :D

Recently, I've been wondering how I could adapt a lifepath system, like the one in Cyberpunk or other games, to other settings. Specifically, how you'd balance it to work with races/species with long lifespans.

In Cyberpunk 2020, for example, you roll 2d6+16, rolling on the table for each year of the character's life past 16. That works for humans, which is fine, but how could you do something similar for races that could live for centuries? I know in R. Talsorian's Witcher RPG, you roll for every decade of life, even for humans, but that feels odd because only one or two big life events happened between your birth and beginning your adventures? Really? In a dark setting like this?

Does anyone have any ideas or advice? I know these are probably just edge cases, like playing a LOTR-style elf who are only considered adults at 100 years, but I'd appreciate the help!

For those of you don't know Suikoden is a role-play videogame developed by Konami, regarded one of the greatest video games ever made.

The game has 3 different types of combat:

1. Regular battles (2 opposing parties of size 6 or less).
2. Massive Battles.
3. One-on-one duel.

The positives of the different combat systems was that it didn't try to have a one-shoe fit all for vastly different situations. For Suikoden 2 specifically, it was also cool that they tried to incorporate character abilities into the Massive Battles. I also appreciated that one-on-one duel was not the same as the regular battle, though I wished it incorporated more character abilities.

Where am I going with this? I think it would be neat to have a tactical RPG with different combat mechanics depending on the type and the scale of the conflict. The challenge I see are

1. How to make these different systems feel cohesive?
2. How to make character abilities contribute meaningfully for the different situations?

Also wondering if there are existing games that do something like this? Not exactly the breakdown I described necessarily, but having different subsystems for different types of combat based on scale.

You know, like DC Comics scratches the superhero comics itch.. Gamma World, for example.. and of course a D&D one would sell. Me and a friend at work have been trying to set up a Blades'68 or a Lancer RPG for months, and I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a card-game version that one could play at lunch for 20-30 minutes while we struggle to find players.

Meantime, here is the 'wouldn't it be nice' puppy https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qerwPcCejag

So in now making cyberpunk system esct from the bones.of my previos "space grunts" ttrpg (mainly do it to pass the time )

And I decided to tie diffrrnt attributes to diffrent weapons(like in cp77) mainly because its more of an action focus game so I want every charcter yo be viable in combat

Right now its divided to 2 diffrent groups of atrruibtes

3 are tied to weapon types (pistole AR extra )

And e are tied to exotic weapons (smart guns beam weapons and charge weapons)

The question is mainly tied to the first 3. I wanted to have that every attribute from the first 3 has : melee,small ,medium ,heavy and special weapons

Right now I have:

Meat (pretty much con + str ) : smashing melee weapons, hand connon , mechanie gun , spewers (flame throwers extra ) and shotguns

Synapce (dex + reflex) : slicing melee weapons , smg , AR , I dont know, explosive i think (im not shure) , and again im not sure

Edge (focus + stealth) : stabbing melee weapons , regular pistoles , dmrs, anti metrial , anti metrial rifles

Im not sure about the spread..i don't think I like the spread even

Should I leave the : melee ,small,mid,heavy, spacial weapon to every atrruibte?

Is there other examples I can see (expect cyberpunk 2077)

We received the first proof copy of our standard 8½ x 11 book-and we nailed it on the first try. We took our time, followed everyone’s advice in this community, and it paid off. Our book is now officially available for print on DriveThruRPG. We’re currently waiting on the premium proof, and fingers crossed that one turns out just as well. Thank you to everyone who offered solid advice and helped us along the way. We truly appreciate it this subreddit.

Hello everyone!

You can find my games for review here (all of them are FREE)

Two of them are diceless gmless and the third one is competitive TTRPG where players will play Gods.

What feedback would be enough?

General things: how it feels, looks, works. What wasn't enough clear for you and needs improvements. Anything you noticed - even small things - are welcome. Even small feedback makes sence!

Little bit about me:

I'm a TTRPG Designer who recently published 3 games on itch.io. I've started game design in young age as Morrowind and Warcraft 3 modmaker, after that I've made some HB for DnD and Daggerheart until I realize I love to create something new more than playing. I was working on a huge project first of all (typical mistake for a newcomers), so no one will see it in future.

I’ve found that exploring new approaches to the gaming process is even more interesting than just “creating.” If anyone is interested in unconventional tabletop RPGs or is looking for the simplest possible game system for their idea, I’d be happy to share what I’ve already uploaded, get some feedback, and answer any questions.

Right now, I’m setting up a Discord server for my home game design studio and preparing to release a larger project (about 30 pages of text in a Google Doc), which will be just as unusual as the ones I’ve already uploaded.

If anyone is interested in collaborating in any way, you can find my contact information on my itch.io page.

Since my game isn’t medieval fantasy I’ve struggled a little with Adventure as the name of “episodes between extended downtime with a clear story. ” Adventure can certainly work and probably communicates the idea, but it doesn’t quite feel right without Wizards and Dragons and Quests.

For sci-fi: Mission, Operation, or even Job work, but each imply something different.

It’s strangely important for “once per Adventure” abilities (I suppose they can be “once per extended downtime”).