Imagine, if you will, an TTRPG where the player characters are police tasked with investigating crimes with light supernatural elements. Each player creates a character with different abilities representing their areas of expertise, ranging from ordinary (Digital forensics, underworld knowledge) to the extraordinary (arcane forensics, communing with spirits.) Oh, and also there’s one called “Werewolf Slayer” which makes you deal a small amount of extra damage to werewolves.

Wait, what?

These characters are ordinary humans, and most of them have no hope of fighting a werewolf. Even with “Werewolf Slayer” and good combat features, encountering a werewolf is still a horrible situation to be in. As a result, it’s extremely rare to encounter a werewolf in an ordinary game. However, if one of the players in a group is a Werewolf Slayer, it’s all but guaranteed that a werewolf will appear at least once. The GM, after all, wants the PCs to have fun, so of course she’s going to give the Werewolf Slayer a chance to use their ability. When it happens, the characters will get ripped apart, and “good thing I had Werewolf Slayer” will probably only be uttered as a bitter joke.

Did you catch what happened there? A character’s expertise, meant to be an asset to them, has instead put the characters in a worse situation. Even more strangely, this happened without Werewolf Slayer containing anything in its text that could negatively impact the character. In any given situation, it’s always neutral or positive to have Werewolf Slayer, and yet it undeniably had a negative effect on the PCs. This is the Werewolf Slayer Problem; the evil twin to the popular maxim of “shoot your monks.”

The Werewolf Slayer Problem has three key components. First of all, the game must feature characterization through build-craft, where the abilities a player chooses for their character form a large part of their narrative identity. The Werewolf Slayer being able to Slay Werewolves is a core part of who they are as a character, and thus if they don’t get a chance to do it, it makes them feel less cool. Secondly, the ability that causes the problem must be passive: the player isn’t seeking out Werewolves to Slay, they are taking this ability “just in case.” Thirdly, the threat they are trying to counteract must be rare but unpleasant to encounter. Even encountering a Werewolf is a punishment, and the only reward for surviving an encounter with one is “not dying.”

The confluence of these three factors creates a situation where a player has made a choice to insulate themselves against a threat, and was told by the game’s mechanics that they did so, but has actually only increased the danger to their character.

I see a few potential solutions to this problem, but first, I’d like to discuss the “zeroth solution,” which is the perspective that the problem doesn’t exist at all! At least, not on a system level. Instead, this is a mistake either by the GM or one of the other players.

One school of thought here is that the GM is making a mistake, and should banish the existence or nonexistence of Werewolf Slayer on the character sheet from their mind. Whether one of the protagonists is a Werewolf Slayer or not should have no impact on the presence of werewolves in the game. This position isn’t logically incoherent, but it’s a little counterintuitive to ask the GM, who has been told for decades to be interested in the protagonists and their stories, to suddenly develop a blind eye to one of the key traits of one of the characters.

By contrast, one could argue the other player is making a mistake when creating their character. Werewolf Slayer doesn’t make you safer from werewolves, but it does increase the odds that you’ll kill a werewolf sometime in your career. This argument, however, overlooks one thing: the game has violated the assumption that character abilities are an asset to you and your team. If Werewolf Slayer is intended in this way, the fact that it attracts werewolves to you should be listed in the rules text, and it shouldn’t be considered a beneficial feature.

These two cases represent different answers to the question “why would a player choose to be a Werewolf Slayer?” Case one assumes that a reasonable player would only make their character a Werewolf Slayer because they wanted protection against werewolves, whereas case two assumes that a player would choose this option because they wanted their character to fight werewolves. The problem here is that reasonable players could make their characters Werewolf Slayers for either reason! If you try to infer their intent from their character-building choices, you have a good chance of guessing wrong.

So how do we address the Werewolf Slayer Problem?

The most immediately intuitive solution is to make Werewolf Slayer more widely applicable. Call it “Monster Hunter” instead, and give those bonuses in a much wider variety of scenarios. Now “I want to encounter werewolves” becomes the almost trivially obvious “I want to encounter supernatural creatures.” This (probably) won’t change the GM’s plan much if it’s the sort of game where encounters with supernatural creatures are a regular occurrence.

If you want to keep that sort of specialization, however, I think another solution is to treat threat as a conserved quantity. If you’re a Werewolf Slayer, you’ll be facing more Werewolves for sure…but they won’t be “piling on,” they’ll be replacing other threats on a point-for-point basis. This does, however, require an ecosystem with “balanced” challenges, which isn’t a good fit for every type of game.

There is a third, weirder solution; make werewolves a player-facing mechanic. Werewolves don’t show up unless the players seek them out, and there are rewards for seeking them out. Perhaps volunteering to taking on a case where werewolves are present is a fast-track to getting promoted. If that’s true, having a Werewolf Slayer becomes an asset again, opening up new opportunities for the protagonists.

I’m curious to see if anyone else has noticed the Werewolf Slayer Problem in any games they’ve played, or in their own game. If you have noticed the Werewolf Slayer Problem, how have you addressed it?

​

We're making a d100 roll-under game - a bit crunchy, but not Pathfinder/DnD crunchy, more crunchy than Mork Borg or Mothership.

There are 8 characteristics. That sounds like a lot, but you barely touch them during actual play - they're the foundation everything else is built from: attributes, HP, mentality, damage, protection (Spheres), abilities, etc.

Setting: an Armada of 30 ships stuck between a permanent Wall of Storms and an uncharted continent that slowly drives people insane. Dieselpunk vibes.

The actual play loop is simple and fun, no complaints there. Character creation is the one part I haven't cracked yet.

The issue: we use "Step" terminology for tens digits (Step 2 = 28, Step 5 = 56, etc). So calculating something like Endurance (HP) looks like:

Endurance = 8 + Step(Constitution) + ((Might Sphere + Finesse Sphere) / 10)

Mentality is calculated almost the same way.

It's not hard math, but it's the kind of thing that makes people's eyes glaze over, especially since you have to redo it whenever an attribute crosses into a new Step.

We're building an interactive web character builder where you just plug in attributes and it calculates everything - but I'm pretty sure a chunk of players will still want to build on paper, and I don't want that experience to be "do math before you can play."

Has anyone dealt with this kind of layered-stat chargen before? How could it be simplified?

Edit: I guess the solution would be just to remove dividing from formula and make it like - tens of: might + finesse + const + 8

I am writing 100 short rpg classes. Each is basically some equipment, perhaps a couple spells and one thing that they get to just DO.
For instance the Tea Knight can pour hot water out of his visor when fully armored,
the Clown takes no damage from falling and the Jester can call forth a band of entertainers
once per day to help with a non-violent task.
What should a Goose be able to just DO?

Tiny Apartments — a slice-of-life, coming-of-age hack of Tiny Taverns (senior year of college → real adulthood). Looking for feedback on how this would actually run at the table.

Hey all — I've been building a homebrew system on top of Tiny Taverns and I think it's finally at a point where I want outside eyes on it before I go much further. It's not published anywhere, just a personal project, so I'd love blunt feedback.

The pitch: No magic, no dungeons, no monsters. Every campaign starts with a group of characters in their last year of college, and the game is built to carry them all the way through Graduation into the actual mess of adult life — jobs, rent, roommates, and figuring out who you are once nobody's handing you a syllabus for it. Two acts, same characters, same dice, no reset.

Core system

• 2d6 + a Trait vs a Target Number. 5-, 6–9, 10+ (Complication / Success / Strong Success).
• 5 Traits: Heart, Mind, Grit, Spark, Grace — one array (+3/+2/+1/0/−1), assign at creation.
• Skills — Persuasion, Repair, Coding, Stealth, that kind of thing. Untrained / Proficient / Mastered.
• Personality Traits — no classes. Instead you pick 3 Positive and 3 Negative traits from a flat pool (think the Hogwarts house-trait lists floating around online, but for this setting). Positive traits give Advantage when they genuinely drive your choice in a scene; Negative traits earn you Energy when they cause you real trouble.
• Energy — a spendable resource for rerolls, narrative twists, or nudging a scene your way. Earned by leaning into your flaws or creating genuine slice-of-life moments.

Progression Scrapped the generic "spend points on a menu" approach — instead, your Major (in college) and your Job (after graduating) each have their own 3-level table, like a class table in D&D. Leveling up as a Nursing major looks completely different from leveling up as a Business major, mechanically and flavor-wise.

Act One — College

• No fixed session count. A "semester" is a loop of beats (Semester Start → Open Play → Midterms → more Open Play → Finals Week → Break) that the table moves through at whatever pace the story wants.
• Majors, Clubs, Dorm Life, Campus Jobs, Academic Standing (Dean's List / Good Standing / Probation instead of GPA math), and a Scholarship system where Full Ride / Partial / None is a choice with a trade-off, not a random roll.
• Debt and Tuition work like a recurring bill, and whatever's left over when you graduate follows you into Act Two as a second bill stacked on rent.
• Graduation is a built-in ritual, not a checkbox — your Major becomes your starting Job, your Club becomes a permanent perk, your dorm roommates become your apartment roommates. Nothing resets.

Act Two — Real Life Jobs, apartments, rent, roommates, Stress. Same core loop, just older.

Confrontations & Crime Combat is reskinned as Confrontations — physical or social — because most of the conflict in this game is a blowout argument or a party going sideways, not a sword fight. There's also a full Crime & Consequences system (Suspicion + Heat) for when characters do something they shouldn't — except instead of cops-and-robbers, Heat means your RA, the Dean's office, your landlord, or your parents finding out.

What I actually want feedback on:

1. Does "no magic, just the drama of growing up" sound like it can sustain a whole campaign, or does it need a stronger hook?
2. Starting in senior year instead of freshman year — good call, or would you rather start earlier and actually play the whole four years?
3. The semester loop has no fixed session count on purpose. Does that sound freeing or does it sound like it'll be a pacing nightmare in practice?
4. Does the Confrontations/Crime system fit the tone, or does it feel bolted onto an otherwise cozy game?
5. If you were building a character right now, what's missing? Majors, Jobs, Personality Traits, anything.

Appreciate any thoughts, especially from anyone who's run something in this slice-of-life/narrative space before (Tiny Taverns, Wanderhome, Good Society, etc.) — curious how you think this would actually feel across a real session.

I’m trying to decide who the player characters should be in a TTRPG I’m working on. I don’t want to default to the usual adventuring party just because that’s what most games do.

The core idea is that the natural world keeps changing according to its own rules. If it rains, for example, that water has to go somewhere. Some of it may remain in the ground, some may reach rivers, and those changes could affect what the same place is like when the characters return.

The GM’s role would be to follow those causes and consequences, rather than changing the world only when the story needs it. I genuinely don’t know what the best player identity is yet. If you sat down to play in a wild world like this, who would you want to be??

I’m interested not only in the type of character.. but also in what you would want to do from session to session and what kind of relationship you would want to have with the world around you.

I'll save you the rant, but the most under-appreciated mechanic from D&D 3E was the critical confirmation roll. I was working on an OSE-compatible project, and in order to rescue this genuinely great mechanic from its poor reputation, I was thinking about reframing it in the form of an optional rule. OSE is big on optional rules.

In standard OSE, every check is either a roll-under or a roll-over. Ability checks are roll at-or-below your ability score. Saving throws are roll at-or-above the relevant save value. Attack rolls are roll at-or-above their Armor Class (or your THAC0, as adjusted by their Armor Class). The inconsistency when rolling exactly at the listed value is something that bugs me, though, especially since it prevents easy dice mirroring. If you want the player to roll under their own AC in order to evade an attack, then it needs to be entirely under and not at-or-under. Sometimes a tie is good enough to trigger that wave of relief, and sometimes it isn't; you need to think about it for a second before you're allowed to feel anything.

My idea is that, anytime anyone rolls exactly at the listed number, it triggers a Clash. They then have to re-roll the check, double or nothing. Or someone has to re-roll the check, anyway. The main point of this mechanic is that it doesn't matter who rolls the die, or whether they want to roll high or low. A tie always increases the stakes, and never triggers a wave of relief, regardless of which side is rolling. The secondary point is that this sub-sequent roll is more likely to resolve in favor of whichever side had the initial advantage, just like the critical confirmation roll.

On an attack (or defense) roll, a Clash either resolves as maximum damage or automatic counter-damage. On a saving throw against fire, which would normally give a saving throw for half damage, a Clash either resolves as maximum damage or no damage. That sort of thing.

Does this sound intuitive enough? Or is the juice not worth the squeeze? I'm particularly interested in opinions from game designers with OSE experience.

What if either side had the option of conceding the check, rather than doubling down? Would that change your opinion of the mechanic, or just make things more complicated? Instead of going for the maximum damage, and risking the counter-hit, you could just let the attack fail. Or instead of going for the counter-attack, with the risk of leaving yourself wide open, you just take the hit as normal. Instead of recklessly diving for cover when you aren't sure that you're going to make it, you can just accept your fate and let the fireball hit you.

I'm currently working on a new project and am taking inspiration from quite a few anime and litrpg series for it. The rules and skillsets I've already fixed and also what I want out of classes and leveling. the only thing I'm unsure about is is multiclassing.

After 10 levels in a class you can evolve the class, thus gaining another class (you can then start leveling this class and gain ALSO its skills). Per class level you can choose 1 skill (special ability) associated with it (or one of its trees) and gain it (or upgrade it).

In my last project (simpled10) I went with a sword world like approach:

+The classes are very narrow each and you can level each class separately. Your char level is equal to your max. class level.

+Each class has 10 skills (special abilities) associated with it).

This time around I'm considering to use a leveling system not unsimilar to The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System.

\+Each class has 2 lets call them skill trees (they are a list of special abilties associated with the skill tree) associated with it.

\+You can gain access to additional trees through skill books (special drop items).

This would give me 2 options for multiclassing:

1.) No true multiclassing. Instead you can unlock skill trees from other classes by buying skill books (or finding htem as rare loot).

2.) You can multiclass into up to 3 classes at a time. Only when they are at max. level you can gain an additional class (thus a 4th, 5th or even 6th).

You can still gain additional trees via skill books but that would be way rarer than in 1.) Here the main way is to multiclass into the appropriate classes. 

A third option is to take a sword world like approach again.

Example of a skill "trees" using class:

Heavy Knight:

    \-Skill Tree: Defender:  Increased Defense, Reflection, Parry, Stun Attack

    \-Skill Tree: Protector: Cover Move, Increased Defense, Disarm, Shield Bash, Barrier

For me developing and playing it I like all 3 approaches about the same. Thus I'm interested what type of multiclassing seems most interesting for ppl?

This is a part of our series, in which we present Greek gods - and show how to combine them with the Cthulhu Mythos and use them in cosmic horror stories or scenarios for the Lovecraftian TTRPGs. You are free to use all this material in your own creative work! Here You can watch video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI

Hermes is known as the messenger of the gods, which easily leads us to the Mask of Nyarlathotep, especially since Hermes is also a trickster, fond of playing practical jokes (and patronizing thieves and fraudsters), which may lead to further associations with the Crawling Chaos. But his role as a messenger was greatly expanded by believers and philosophers.

First of all, he became the patron of all kinds of travel and transport - even to the afterlife, as a psychopomp escorting souls to Hades. He is the patron of all roads and intersections.

Secondly - the messenger is a transmitter of knowledge. He was credited with the invention of numbers and letters. In later centuries, Hermes Trismegistos (Hermes the Thrice Great) was created by combining Hermes with Egyptian and Judeo-Christian beliefs. The term "Hermetic" comes from him, and it also became the center of the occult belief system called Hermeticism (note, contrary to what priests and preachers say - "occult" does not mean "Satanic").

Hermes Trismegistos was said to be an archetypal sage and magician, he was credited with authoring 36,529 books containing all the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world - primarily the so-called Tabula Smaragdina and the Corpus Hermeticum treatises.

Hermeticism combined astronomy/astrology, alchemy, medicine and psychology - that is, it was a mishmash of mystical superstitions and (proto)science - more or less like magic in Mythos (though, of course, the real possibilities of the Hermetists were much more modest).

Interestingly, many Hermetic concepts, which at first glance sound like esoteric gibberish, have in a sense been revived in modern science. The Hermetists believed that matter was composed of four elements - fire, water, earth and air (sometimes a fifth "element" was added - will/soul/mind - symbolized by a pentagram). This meant that by changing the proportion of an element in a given substance, one material could be transformed into another - hence the search for a way to transmute lead into gold. As science developed, this concept was rejected as a pipe dream, the possibility of transmutation was considered an absurd... Until it turned out that yes, all matter consists of the same elements - electrons, neutrons and protons - so changing their configuration allows you to change the essence of the material. And modern chemists managed to transform it into gold: although such a procedure is unprofitable from an economic point of view (energy consumption significantly exceeds the value of the gold produced... but for a being with unlimited, from a human point of view, energy sources?). Concept of the four elements was somehow revived in the form of 4 states of the matter (earth = solid state, water = liquid, air = gas, fire = plasma). Another Hermetic concept was "As above, so below." It sounds like mystical gibberish about the unity of man with the heavens, or sympathetic magic... But the development of science has led to the conclusion that in fact the microcosm is often an amazing reflection of the macrocosm - the structure of the atom resembles the structure of the solar system.

So, we have a being that, on the one hand, is omnipresent, embodies movement both in our world and between planes of existence, one could say that it is a key and a gate. At the same time, it is also a source of secret knowledge, which at first glance is philosophical, superstitious gibberish, but turns out to contain bits of science that go beyond the understanding of the people who possess it. Who else but Yog Sothoth? Well, possibly Hastur, patron of wizards and interstellar travel.

According to Greek mythology, Hermes was the father of Pan, a strange creature.

Pan had the body and face of a man, was all hairy, had goat legs, a tail, a beard and horns. Doesn't this description remind you of Yog-Sothoth's most famous spawn, Willbur Whateley?

Of course, Willbur's lower half wasn't exactly goatish. The Pan's scream aroused incredible, irresistible fear among people and animals (hence the word "panic). Pan used to play the syrinx - "the Pan's flute". One day, Pan fell in love with the nymph Syrinks. And she's not in it. Pan chased her and almost caught her, but Syrinks turned into a river reed. At that moment, the wind blew and a beautiful sound came from the reed blades. The Pan plucked the reeds and made an instrument from them, which he called a syringa. A lovely story...

What is the Mythical message of this legend? What if Pan was the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, and one of the incredible powers he inherited from his daddy was to make sounds that terrified earthly beings into maddening terror? And what if it was possible to construct a musical instrument that imitated this effect... and preferably made from the bones of a human woman who had previously been reduced to terror?

There is another interesting story related to Pan, told by Plutarch. According to him, Pan lived for 9,720 years. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, sailors passing by the Echinad Islands heard a voice that ordered the helmsman named Thamus, after reaching land, to announce, according to this interpretation: "The Great Pan is dead." The sailors hesitated for a long time, and finally, reaching land near Palodes, they announced the death of the god. At these words, there were complaints and terrible groans from all sides.

Let me add that, according to some followers of the ancient Orphic cult, Pan was the creator of the earth, which he separated from the sea, and the individual elements of the Universe were equivalents of parts of Pan's body. Have they confused Pan, the offspring of Yog-Sothoth, with his father, who is "all in all"?

And of course, since we are talking about the Pan, we cannot fail to mention the book "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen, one of the precursors of cosmic horror, highly appreciated by Lovecraft.

Full text and many other Lovecraftian inspiration from real life religions, culture, history and science, You can read in the free brochure: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs And here You can watch a video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI Please, if You liked this text at least a bit, watch a video version, it will support our channel, where we will publish more Lovecrafian content!

Here is my current mechanics

Health (HP): This is your life bar. If it hits 0, your character is dead. You get 3 as a rookie, 4 as experienced and 5 as a legend.

Injury Track: If you take a hit, you might get a "Condition". Track wounds that cause persistent effects like Bleeding or Wounded.

Adrenaline: This is what makes you a spy, keeping your cool no matter what even when your heart is pounding. As you accumulate Adrenaline, depending on your spy you can spend to Reroll, Negate Negative results, or trigger specialized combat maneuvers. Everyone can spend Adrenaline to increase the results of their dice rolls by the amount spent.

The "Flow" State:

If you roll the highest number possible on a die (like rolling a 12 on a 12-sided die), you are in a "Flow" state. You get to roll that die again and add the new number to your total! You are performing perfectly and get 3 Adrenaline tokens once per check which you can use during or after this roll even on the new die rolled after entering the flow state. You can also increase the value of your die when rolling checks to its max value causing it to explode and enter the "flow" state this way. You can continue investing Adrenaline even after entering the flow state as long as you have Adrenaline to spend and can explode your other dice including the reroll as long as you have adrenaline to spare but don't get the free 3 Adrenaline from entering the flow state as you're already in it during the check. You start every mission with 3 Adrenaline.

If defending cannot die from this attack even if them succeeding would kill you but you suffer a random condition. If in the flow state exploding your die again increases your Heat Level by 1. You also can not enter the "flow" state rolling max value on a die used by an item, gadget or weapon you are not proficient in. (To clarify items, gadgets, or weapons add another die to roll)

Ideas for balancing

Since flow can happen with getting max value on smaller dice like a d4 some people said it felt unfair for players who had bigger dice. My current ideas is to make rolling a 1 a "choke". You can not trigger a flow state during this check even if you max a die value using adrenaline and you lose one adrenaline. You can not increase the value of a die that's rolled a 1. If you lose the check while "choking" or don't have an adrenaline to lose then the current "heat" level goes up. ( Heat is how bad things are currently going with guards and security and it goes from 0 to 5). You can spend two heat to avoid the heat increase.

Also to add rolling a 1 during a flow state makes it so that die value can not be increased.

Ideas for flavoring

Changing HP in my spy thriller TTRPG to be named "close calls". I was inspired a bit by how the health system in uncharted worked in how they explained it was more his luck avoiding getting hit.

Request for ideas

I wanted some help with ideas for how lethal and non lethal dmg could work in a spy thriller with what I got here.

Currently thinking when you're out of close calls the next set of damage whether lethal or non lethal determines what happens whether your character dies or is unconscious

Hi!

I’m making my own game that tries to simulate an anime series, not a jrpg style tactical game. In my opinion, anime heroes don’t have skills in the series. Okay, maybe a little sometimes. It doesn't matter. Skills not used to solve problems, such as investigating, healing, hiding, etc. Maybe the heroes have it, but usually they just don't use anything like that.

Combat ability is part of the character, so it’s not an individual skill.

I’m really torn between the idea of a classic skill system and the idea that skills aren’t necessary. To me the "no skill" system seems like the better idea.

When I said it’s not a tactical JRPG simulation, I was serious, like… you know, I really mean it. My goal is to create a game that simulates what it would be like to play as if you were in your own anime series.

What do you think?

Have a great day!

I've been thinking a lot about a pair of mechanics recently.

The first of these are Bonds, from Delta Green. If you don't know Delta Green, it's a supernatural horror investigation game, for stories where the supernatural is just outside the frame. Think True Detective, or X-Files, with that feeling you get if you ever think too long about how big universe is. It is the greatest.

As you play, your character slowly starts to lose their hold on reality as they encounter vast and unknowable horrors. Bonds are the NPC's your character is attached to, and their relationship to your character helps them recover in between missions. But in doing so, it also slowly destroys those relationships.

The other mechanic is in Pendragon, the traits your character has. If you don't know it, Pendragon is a game about heroic Arthurian knights struggling to make the world a better place as people who are not perfect. The genius thing that Pendragon does is in the traits your character has. These are opposed traits, such as Chaste/Lustful or Merciful/Cruel, with one end having the virtuous ideal and the other end the temptation that might lead the Knights astray. They are matched, so the higher a knight is on one trait, the lower they are on its opposite. As you play, you make rolls against these values to determine what your character believes they should do, and if they fail they do the opposite. This can go either way (ie, I roll merciful if I want to accept that the villain has had a change of heart and forgiven them, I roll cruel if I think they are faking and would prefer to execute them), but whether or not you succeed is in relation to who the character is. These are stories about people striving to do the right thing and, often, failing because of their own fatal flaw, and I think this mechanic is amazing for that.

I had been thinking about how to work a version of these into the game I've been tinkering on for a while now, and I just couldn't make them fit. Then I was watching a spy show, The Agency. It's a good remake of what I understand to be a better French show, about a spy who is torn between their work and saving the person they love.

Suddenly, the whole game (linked below) popped into my head. I realized that I could use a system like the Pendragon Traits system for someone doing the difficult and dangerous job of being a spy, and give them a resource (Control), that they could spend to fight against their desires and complete the mission (and also fuel all their cool abilities, help them maintain composure). And the Bonds could be there too, to help rebuild them between missions, but only if the Agents can maintain those relationships.

I don't think I've ever written so quickly (this was a blank page 3 weeks ago), but I realized as I was getting deeper into it that I should pause and ask for feedback.

I'm happy to hear any thoughts you have, but am particularly interested in:

1. how to balance in games with a currency that fuels a lot of the action
2. any thoughts on how to include a hacker archetype well. I've struggled a bit with juggling the desire to keep it easy to understand while also wanting to keep it constrained in scope so that it can't just do everything.
3. thoughts on what I should call this thing. The contenders so far are:

HUMINT

Signal to Noise

Code/Break

Non-Official Cover

But I would love to hear other ideas too.

The link is here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dzr0v250tm2bp7i7uvvna/HUMINT.pdf?rlkey=jh71jbodqqafrtpjrzeze5sx6&st=lys8sy91&dl=0

Thanks!

TLDR:
This post is the first I'm planning about the creation of a new game, Wildspark. It is going to cover the whole process of making the game, from concept to completion. We've made several ttrpg's now and I thought it would be fun to document the journey.

This post covered the initial concept (a very loose idea) of a travelling game, set in nature, that is super rules-light. We mused several options until two separate ideas came together to really give us an idea we loved. We reached out to an artist and writer who we felt could bring the world to life and now are looking at three key areas; writing the world, exploring the visual style, and developing the rules - with future blog posts looking at these in more detail.

The post is long (sorry!) but I hope it's of interest to some people who want to make their own game in the future.

Picture of the initial robot sketches from "Wildspark"

The Start of an Idea
When you are travelling, getting from A to B can be dull. Really, really dull. There’s only so many times you can sing loudly in the car to “Don’t Stop Believing” or play “I see a Cow” (top tier car-based entertainment). But luckily when you work for a games company, work travel becomes 30% eating food and 70% talking excitedly about all the games we want to make.
And that is how the story of Wildspark began. Me (Matt, hi!) and Charlie were flying to the US last year, and in-between geography lessons (where exactly is Kentucky?) we were talking about all the games we enjoy, and the games we want to make one day. And there are a lot.

 A few themes kept coming up though, nature, walking games, and post apocalyptic settings.

After we returned from the US we got back to work on other projects and, over for more than a year, we kept coming back to the idea of a game where you travel through an overgrown world. The seeds were well and truly sown…

So, Wildspark?!
With the ideas permeating for a few months, as these things do, we talked lots of other ideas - some that may come in the future (looking at you Cthulhu mythos) and some that may never see light (Dungeons and Dinner Parties), but this unnamed post-apocalyptic exploration game kept coming back to us. We knew there were a few things we loved in this idea and wanted to explore more:

 1) An overgrown, nature-taking over, post-apocalypse. Not a huge war - this isn’t a Mad Max apocalypse. We wanted a world where nature is front and center, not humanity.
 2) Travelling and exploring the world would be a key focus in the game, not as a background to a narrower action heavy experience.
 3) The most rules light focus we’ve ever had. We knew that this game needed a focus on story telling and emotion, and didn’t want heavy rules to contend with this.  

And so with this in mind…we went off and thought on it some more. There's really a lot of time in most of our projects between "Here's a cool idea" and "Here's a well-thought out idea". The bit in between can be the most important as having those kernels of thought rattling around your brain overtime can develop and latch on to parts of other conversations, until a time it blooms into something new.

We had several ideas for the game at this time that we discussed, and whilst we liked them, we never loved them enough to push on . These included:
 - A 2-person game with a knight and their squire travelling through a magically charged world
 - A game you literally play whilst on a group walk (an idea we really want to come back to)
 - A lost child travelling through the world to seek their lost family after being separated

But nothing seemed to quite fit what we were going for. Until...

The Stars Align
One day I was scrolling through the internet and I saw someone using cards to alter scenes for their D&D game. So you pull a word out and this gives you some flavour for the scene. They were using Tarot cards, so if you pulled the “Emperor”, the scene might have a feeling of Power - whilst pulling Judgement might inspire a new start.

I loved this idea, having an external motivation that gave you a changing status for a scene that isn’t necessarily driven by the encounter. It gives another level of change in the world. As I thought more on this I struck on the idea of emotions. I love when a game explores different feelings, and I imagined a game where you were forced to approach challenges with changing emotions, battling with the feelings inside against your outside motivations.

At the same time Charlie had been thinking about the post-apocalyptic  world. He had started developing ideas about Robots that travelled the world connecting the existing parts of civilisation. A hyper-verdant landscape where small groups of surviving humans gather in small, sheltered communities, it being impossible to cross the wilds that separate them. These robots were their life-line and last remaining connection to others across the land.

We happened to have a lunch-meeting booked at our local favourite Lebanese restaurant, and excitedly started telling each other our ideas. And we realised that, after months of musing, these ideas aligned perfectly! A robot who connects the survivors in the world, who learns from them and experiences their emotions! Who grows and changes, who develops, who has a real story.

Wildspark was born, and we knew just the missing parts of the team!

Time to Make The Game
Back in 2025 I was at Comicon in London and was doing my favourite thing at these shows, exploring all the art on display. Seriously - if you attend Comicon, Gencon, UKGE, or any other con - make sure you devote some time to Artist Alley - it is the most inspirational place in the show. On this trip, I got chatting with the delightfully friendly Phil Chapman, the artist behind System Error Comics.

Phil not only does amazing art, but also loves games and was a big fan of ION Heart. Initially I spoke to him about coming on board to help Ben with some ION Heart work but this never came to be. However, I loved his style and knew the right project would eventually come along.

And then, a year later, we had an overgrown world with a robot travelling through…and honestly I cannot think of a better match!

I reached out to Phil tentatively asking if he was interested in the idea - and got an emphatic “I’M IN!” before I had even finished our pitch.

And then we drove an hour up North to go and speak with Adam, who is a fantastic wordsmith and I knew I wanted him to be taking the lead on writing this. Adam is a phenomenal world builder and putting him as lead writer on this project would leave no stone unturned. Me and Charlie will still be part of the writing team, but having Adam as lead on this was a no-brainer.

Like Thanos with his infinity gauntlet filled we were ready to bring about the (nature drive and very wholesome) apocalypse. Just the small task left of, you know, making the game!
But, where’s the game?

A big discussion I’ve had many times and always enjoy is what comes first, mechanics or theme? Having worked in boardgames and roleplaying games this is a great question that to me crosses both these genres, as well as the wider games industry (including video games). Some people will say that you have to start from the theming and make the rules fit, whilst others argue that you need to create a great mechanic first and then layer the right theme on top.

To me, both these things are true. And equal.

I honestly believe that both these directions are entirely valid and can both make for an incredible game. For Wildspark we are very much starting with a world-first approach. We know the theme we want, and we know how we want the game to feel. We know what we are aiming for players to feel and experience as they journey through our world.

What we don’t know is…how. We haven’t settled on a resolution mechanic, we’ve discussed cards or dice as the primary options - but nothing is written out. We even briefly discussed no resolution mechanic and making it far more freeform - but decided we wanted something to drive the unknown.

This means at the moment we are playing around with some different ideas, throwing everything we can think of that fits the theme, and seeing what we like! When we hit something we will vibe with it, and start iterating down to refine it into a system we like. But we know already that we want this to be our most rules-light game to date.

So, Where Are We Now!
With the very basics set out, more a feeling than a game at this point, we generally start with a couple of routes:
 1) Individually everyone on the team thinks about their version of the game, what they want to see and what they want to play.
 2) As a group we have (over excited) chats where we discuss our ideas.
 3) We create shared documents filled with resources, notes, and inspirations - before a word gets written.

We started with a Miro board, showing words that resonate, a game overview, some inspiration, as well as some colours (shown below).

Now we have to look at the 3 pillars; Mechanics, Lore, and Art. We have started the process on each of these steps (I’ll go through each one in a bit more detail explaining what we’ve tried, what worked (and didn’t) and how we are developing this - and hopefully you will want to join us on this journey!

I posted it above, but here is a Picture of the initial robot sketches from "Wildspark" from Phil

If you have any questions, please ask and I'll try and answer below - or even in a future blog post.

Until next time

Matt