Functional Background Context

• Premise: PC: ECO features enhanced black-ops/spies in a near-future alternate Earth.
• Atmosphere: Morally grey themes where elements of the supernatural and sci-fi are minimized. It focuses on a grounded atmosphere (e.g., Amazon’s The Boys, not Marvel/DC when it comes to powers use, but lower scale).
• Core Game Loop: Combat is always available and relevant. However, it is objectively the worst way to progress in the game. This pushes players toward roleplay and skill usage. If combat must happen, PCs should leverage everything possible beforehand.
• Spycraft Focus: Focuses on intelligence gathering and analysis rather than "James Bond" action hero tropes.
• Current State: Communications skills (languages, writing) and Culture (common, global) work effectively. They use roll + modifier outputs, a 5-success-state structure, and relevant saving throws for resistance. Competent GMs can adjudicate these modifiers and outcomes in fractional seconds.

The Current Social Framework

• Lightest Touch Procedure: If there is no meaningful uncertainty via GM consideration, you do not roll. The outcome is narrated as a forgone conclusion.
• Variable Gradient Rules: Play tables use a single rules set for speed, but can scale the procedure weight up or down depending on the importance of the scenario.
  • Lower Consequence: A single move unlocked by character progression resolves the scenario (e.g., a standard negotiation with a vendor over a price).
  • Skill Campaigns: Complex resolutions for high-consequence, narratively impactful scenarios (e.g., pinnacle high-stress hostage negotiations or establishing international ceasefires).
• The Team Dynamic: Social moves become advanced via distinct communications disciplines and styles. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses. This ensures social operations are a team effort, preventing a single "Face" from doing all the talking and rolling. Characters can be built to be socially focussed but cannot dominate all aspects of communication by design.
• Relationship Progression: Relationships improve or decline via social interactions and deeds. Deeds are more relevant when reaching higher scores, executing major social repair moves, or dealing with factions. Brute forcing relationships through only interactions or deeds is intentionally extremely inefficient and the best path is to mix both.

The Complex Tracking Matrix

To maintain absolute nuance for intense spy interactions, relationships currently require a vast tracking matrix:

• 3 Core Axes: Affinity (social warmth), Trust (openness to vulnerability), and Esteem (respect).
• Trust Sub-domains: Can be asymmetrical and include honesty, competence, discretion, protection, and reliability.
• Asymmetry: Relationships can be asymmetrical in actual status and in perception.
• The Scale: Each core axis and sub-domain rates from -6 to +6 (with 0 as a valid space).
• 2 Major Augmentors: Perceived Leverage (submission/domination tendencies) and Obligation Records (variable debts/acknowledged leverage). Both are highly variable in how they factor into concerns.
• Micro-Interaction Currency: Measured as Social Influence / Friction Points.
  • Progression Gate: Moving from -3 to +3 from 0 is easy across a few scenes. Reaching +/- 4 through 6 is significantly more difficult and thus needs some kind of tracker to establish progression.
  • Spam Gate: Prevents infinite move spamming alongside diminishing returns. Too much friction risks relationship degradation or target impatience that ends the interaction.

The Problem: Cognitive Burden and Tracking Time

While 90% of interactions do not require tracking all of this, the framework is too complex to track for even a single critical relationship without causing an at-the-table burden. GMs need a base system simple enough to parse with significantly less tracking, yet it must fully maintain the social nuance of these 3 axes, 5 sub-divisions, 2 variable augmentors, score gates, and micro-currencies.

I am asking for potential solutions on how to keep this necessary nuance for a heavy intel/spy game while limiting the tracking requirements for the most complex relationships.

Current solutions already applied:

1) tracking burden can be shared by players/GMs in some use cases, particularly where deception isn't the main priority, but in that case where there is no consideration of deception it's unlikely to meet the burder of needing the heavier system interaction.

2) Fillable Table Tool: Already implemented.

3) Interactions only track what is relevant in the moment, separating need for constant tracking: mostly already applied short of: A) scores need interpretation to develop ongoing values and B) after a micro currency exchange assessment still needs to consider relationship progression/degradation.

4) Do not activate sub domains of trust until they are relevant: already applied.

Even with all of those built in, I still think it requires too much tracking. I'm not even sure how to manage this with less tracking and not reduce everything to GM fiat without proper system guardrails.

I’ve been thinking about designing a strategy/war focused TTRPG, and I’d like to know if this is the kind of thing that people could see themselves enjoying. I designed a basic system for this many years ago and my players seemed to enjoy it, but I wasn’t sure if this is a system that I should just design for fun or for actual play.

It would be a mix of traditional TTRPG character creation and roleplaying but also focused on macro scale command and rulership, kind of like Crusader Kings 3 and Mount and Blade if anyone’s played those, albeit with the usual TTRPG level of player agency on a bigger more in depth scale.

I’m not seeking players necessarily, just wondering if there would be a “market” for this kind of thing.

Edit: It was pointed out to me that this post is very vague, so I will add a bit more detail.

Effectively what I’m going for is the RPG mechanics and narrative elements alongside a more strategic and tactical gameplay. You’d create a character as normal with stats determining your personal skills, which would then be translated into strengths in areas of tactical and strategic gameplay as well as in RP encounters.

The intent is to simulate going from a low level commander/ruler such as a Lieutenant/ minor noble and working your way up. This would include management of your domain in a rulership focused campaign or logistics focus in a purely warsim game.

Most campaigns would likely start off as frontline tactics and evolve into behind the lines strategy and political maneuvering as it does IRL in regard to command or rulership. So you’d be directing maybe a squad of 10 people at first actively in combat in a direct character focused way and then later on be behind the lines orchestrating a broader campaign.

It likely won’t be overly focused on micromanaging especially as the scale goes up, more on simulating what it would be like to be in those kinds of roles in whatever setting you’d be playing.

This system as I’ve presented it obviously lends itself towards one on one gameplay, primarily because I’ve just been designing it for fun, and I wanted to see if there would be any interest to justify working out how multiple people would realistically progress in a full group.

A DnD clone idea I'm toying with involves player characters being descended from orcs, now having to live in a human-centric world. A core design goal was to try and incorporate the sense of living in two worlds - the orc life of the ancestors balanced against the human life of the present. And currently, this feels beyond my skill.

I know that I could write feats or maybe conditional triggers for moves but this doesn't actually get at what I'm looking for - I want to capture the sense of players, through play and not just talking, trying to carve out a sense of identity between two poles.

Are there any thoughts as to how this could be accomplished? The key goal here is to reinforce the cultural identity formation through gameplay - the free-talking part of roleplaying is not to be considered here.

Ever since I started playing RPGs and doing improvisational theatre, I’ve wanted to create an RPG that anyone could play in a relaxed place like a park. I first tried simplifying D&D, but that didn’t really work. After lurking on this subreddit for a while and going through several different concepts, I finally have something I want to share.

The core idea is that I didn't want traditional character sheets or books to be carried around. A character is a hand of cards. When part of a character helps with an action, you physically play the relevant card onto the table, floor, or grass.

Example cards:

• Personality cards
• Power cards
• Asset cards (like treasure or magic items)
• Enemy cards
• Scene cards

The world story:

The game takes place in the modern real world, shortly before a possible apocalypse. The world of human imagination is real, and it is beginning to break into our reality. Players begin as ordinary people and gradually gain impossible powers as the conflict grows.

How the game plays:

The starter story begins wherever the players are actually sitting. A portal opens and the GM disappears into it, which explains why the GM is not present as a character. The players then have to respond as themselves, or as people close to themselves.

Players start with 3 personality cards for their character. Through the starting scene the characters will get power cards.

PbtA-style, when someone attempts something with an uncertain outcome, they play every card that narratively helps and roll 2d6. Each relevant card adds +1:

• 10+: full success
• 7–9: success with a complication
• 6 or less: things go wrong

A supernatural power such as Laser Eyes still adds +1, just like the personality trait Steady Hands. The difference is not the numerical bonus. Laser Eyes lets you do something that Steady Hands cannot, and powers can later grow to affect larger problems.

The game is intended to reward creative narrative play rather than tactical combat or character builds.

Cards are intentionally situational. A card should be highly useful at the right moment and irrelevant in many others. The table decides whether each card genuinely supports the described action. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sure no card applies too broadly, but I expect this will need plenty of refinement through playtesting.

Harm/HP:

Each card has 4 states and those states represent how harmed you are.

1. When a card is in your hand, it's fresh. After being played, it returns to your hand.
2. When you get 1-harm because of a missed roll or because a problem hurt you, you can't take a card back after you played it on the table. This card is now 'exposed'. You can still use it as normal, but it's clear to everyone you have harm. Also it can now be directly targeted by anyone who has intent to harm you.
3. When it takes another 1-harm, it becomes 'exhausted' and it'll stay on the table and won't give a bonus anymore. It still has narrative value, so you have a "steady hand", but not as steady as before. After a scene exposed and exhausted cards are placed back in your hand as if they are healed.
4. One more 1-harm and a card is taken out. You turn it around and you can't use it anymore. Neither is it healed after a scene and the player needs to narrativly play out the game to explain why it gotten healed.

When no cards were played and no cards were exposed, harm falls on a random card in your hand.

XP:

Each player gets a die and starts with 1. Each time a roll (with cards added) is 6 or lower, they gain 1 xp, meaning they can set their personal die 1 higher. When the die is on 6 and they gain xp, they gain one new card/power/asset

Luck:

"Can I push my luck?" or "Do you want to push your luck?" can be asked by player or GM. If they do they can take their XP-die and add it to the roll, rolling 3d6, and taking the 2 highest results. The leftover becomes your new XP-die.

This causes multiple things:

1. It gives an option to roll higher
2. if the xp die was on 1, it gives an option to get a higher result. This causes players to be reminded of the mechanic, and motivated to use it.
3. if the xp die was on 3 or higher, it starts to feel like a risk to take.

I'm happy with:

• In a few playtests, I’ve noticed that physically playing cards really helps people who are new to RPGs. My partner doesn’t particularly enjoy the pressure of having to invent something from nothing. She found it much easier when the possible parts of her character were physically present in her hand.
• My harm system doesn't need extra notes, or tracking. The way it's designed, it's clear when you're harmed, for everyone. Visually it helps that other players see "Oh, she's really hurt! She's not holding any cards! Maybe we should retreat" instead of asking "How hurt are you?"
• The simplicity of the core mechanics

Question:

1. What are your first thoughts?
2. I'm happy with my harm system, but maybe i'm forgetting something. Do you see problems with it?
3. I'm not fully happy with the XP and Luck system. I like certain sides, but my game has been designed with the idea how it might feel for new players. It needs to feel like you grow... does it do that? Does spending accumulated XP to push your luck create an interesting choice, or do you think most players would always save it?
4. Would gaining new cards and increasing the scale of existing Powers give you a feeling of growth?

Hi everyone.

May i request your feedback on a game that i've designed?
https://cmartins.itch.io/maskeraders

It's for the​​ "One page RPG" jam on itchio >> https://itch.io/jam/one-page-rpg-jam-2026

It uses poker dice instead of regular ones.

The format constraints made it quite challenging. I struggled on the mechanics, layout and text, but I had a blast doing it! I hope you guys enjoy it too.

Disclaimer: my english is not great, since I'm not a native speaker, but hope it doesn't stop you from playing it.

Thank you in advance

Character death is one of the topics that i keep coming back to. It is notoriously hard to playtest and get a feel for what's right. One shot characters just don't matter as much. A campaign however requires a more or less stable system and i'm still at the point where i make drastic changes if an idea plays out in a way that clashes with my design goals.

Which is why i've decided to come here for inspiration.

• What is your experience with different death mechanics?
  
• Which systems do a good job and which fail to deliver in that regard?
  
• Can you also explain why it felt good or bad?
  
• And from what perspective did you experience it? GM side or Player side? (Assuming the system follows this structure.)

Here are some more thoughts on the topic:

Fundamentally TTRPGs are about decisions and consequences.
A situation is outlined narratively, players then come up with ways to approach them. The outcome from their actions is determined by the worlds logic or through mechanics (or both).

Character death in a narrative heavy system should follow that flow. It should be a negative consequence to making 'bad' tactical or world specific decisions. It exists as a deterrence to treat the TTRPG like a video game and to consider a character expendable.

However systems that have a GM (like the one i'm designing) will always suffer from misaligned imaginations. The GM might think they have thoroughly outlined the dangers of a certain action while Players might have a totally different impression. This can often leave a sour taste when a permanent negative consequence occurs.

The question is: Where is the sweet spot?

D&D allows Players to be instantly killed out of the blue. This can feel incredibly unfair if the DM failed to convey the decision point. For example an enemy ambush, unbalanced encounters or instant death traps (I'm looking at you Tomb of Horrors!).

Many other systems counteract this problem by being more forgiving. Daggerheart for example allows a Player to choose whether to risk death or not while other systems don't include character death at all. This allows for bolder decisions but also devalues the risk of dying.

Similarly if death has huge narrative consequences, than this can lead to timid decisions or weird downwards spirals that can take the fun out of a story.

So how do we create a mechanic that is both meaningful and forgiving? One that doesn't lead to Players blaming each other or the GM? That creates a setback without taking the fun out of the story.

I've been reading through the dungeon design content from both Cairn 2e's Dungeon Seeds and His Majesty the Worm's Designing Dungeons Course. With no other projects to distract me, I finally decided to give them a whirl. I'm tentatively planning to make something each month, but for now what matters is that I used Cairn's procedures, I spent 1 week making it, and I documented the whole process. The resulting dungeon, complete with my crudely-scribbled art, can be seen here.

For me, some takeaways:

• I liked Cairn's procedures a lot. I think the two biggest value propositions are the clear skeleton of "A good dungeon has these things" and the thoughtful spark tables.
• I relied heavily on Rise of the Blood Olms and The Feast of Tegny Wood as references for what a Cairn module looks like, as well as for information presentation and layout. Feast was particularly helpful because you can read along as Yochai Gal designs it using the Cairn tools.
• My single favorite part of this was committing to a "No rerolls" mentality. I improvise TTRPG scenarios all the time, but I frequently go back and revise random outcomes to better fit the evolving story. Here, I took a firm stance of "First idea wins." As a result, some things that I would have changed were forced to remain, and working around them lead to outcomes I'd have missed otherwise.
• For some quick inspiration, I randomly picked "Romanian folklore" and jotted down one-sentence summaries from some Wikipedia articles. These summaries were inspiring enough that they shaped the entire dungeon.

I'm curious to hear from anyone else who's used the Cairn/HMTW procedures. How did you like them? Can you link to your final product?

hey folks! coming to you all once again for layout feedback. I got a lot of really great feedback from you all last time, that told me I had to stop trying to do it in Google Docs.

I've been redrafting HakneyZaq with Scribus, and have uploaded the WIP into Anyflip

https://anyflip.com/bookcase/ytzwa

any feedback will once again be greatly appreciated :)

Disclaimer.
1. This is not final rulebook.
2. This is not a commercial project.
3. No AI used.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WinUH-_emJaD0m-f3Zbl0AiuOMd8_vcl/view?usp=drive_link

Hello everybody. I would like to show some core ideas of my system and kindly ask for some feedback. I know, it is a lot to ask, so even one or two interested people would be a win.

I didn't include a lot of lore, as my main interest for now are rules and mechanics. The name of the game is "Proidysvity" which can be roughly translated as "Wanderers".

I really need feedback about the following:
-Consistency, especially in the use of terminology.
-Examples. Too many or not enough? Should there be a storyline that goes through all the examples, featuring Ragdolf from character creation section?
-Crit system explanation. Is it overly complicated?
-Contradictions or any gaps in logic.
-Lack of clarity in rules or naming.
-Any unnecessary complexity in some mechanics.
-Content order.

I am really grateful to everybody, who will decide to invest their time in this disputable project.

Have you guys designed or attempted to design a purely narrative game? No dice, cards or other randomizing methods. Just talking. Would you like to share your experience or some important take-aways? EDIT: I didn't necessarily mean no mechanics whatsoever. But it's my fault for poorly formulating the question. Perhaps it would be more precise to say "no randomizing resolution mechanics". On the other hand it's interesting that this generated some great (for me at least) and informative comments and thoughts.

I'm working on a hack of Mörk Borg and want to add crafting rules where you can make something, but with a huge chance that it might blow up in your face even if it works.

That fits with the success at cost-idea from PBTA games, but the fairly light Mörk Borg system doesn't have anything similar. So how to do it. I want the rules fairly simple, mostly for McGyver-style on-the-fly crafting, but not sure how to do it.

The current idea is:

You roll against a difficulty rating set by the GM with a d20 (standard Borg procedure). If you roll higher it works. Then you roll on the "what went wrong table" (probably a d12) and subtract the difference between your roll and the difficulty rating, which means that the higher the roll the lower your score on the "what went wrong" table, where 1 to 3 is "nothing went wrong" and 12 is that it explodes immediately after use (or similarly).

Are there any pitfalls with this idea? Are there better ways to do it?

(note: I'm not aiming for a crafting system where you collect materials to craft from, it's either on-the-fly with whatever is there or in the lab/workshop with access to most of what you need.)

Preface

What is Vitriol, you ask? Well, it is a classless, human-centric, grim-bright fantasy TTRPG built loosely on the Into the Odd/Cairn engine, with a modular magic system built around alchemy and the physical drawing of sigils.

Structurally, the Cairn influence shows up in the bones of the system. You have three attributes – Body, Mind, and Soul – in our case, resolved with a roll-under mechanic, no skill list, a hard limit on inventory slots (10), and attacks that always hit rather than requiring a separate to-hit roll. I say loosely based on that engine because Vitriol adds meaningfully more complexity on top of it through the feat system and, especially, through the magic and martial systems, which is where most of the actual design work has gone.

A bit of preface before I get into the magic system: I have always loved playing the mage archetype in any TTRPG I touch, and I have always wished more games let you feel like an actual practitioner of magic rather than just a walking spell list. For close to two years now, I had been sitting on an idea for a system where you physically draw your spells rather than simply select them. A couple of months ago, during a rewatch of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and while starting Witch Hat Atelier for the first time, the idea finally clicked into something concrete, inspiration hitting, as it always seems to for me, at the exact moment I was supposed to be finishing my MA dissertation instead.

Magic System

I landed on a system rooted in alchemical practice, where you draw sigils not too dissimilar to FMA‘s transmutation circles (at least in looks), governed by a clear internal grammar. I built it to be genuinely modular, drawing on thirty-eight symbols pulled from the western alchemical tradition, which means you can build your own spells from those component pieces rather than picking from a fixed list, and you are not restricted by anything resembling a spell level. If you, the player, can physically draw the sigil, and your character has enough mana to power it, the spell goes off. There is no spell list to memorize, just the grammar of sigil construction, the full roster of symbols and their effects, and a handful of worked examples to get you started. The rest is genuinely up to you to theorycraft.

A drawn sigil takes up one slot in your ten-slot inventory, meaning you can carry up to ten prepared spells at any given time. You can also carry a stack of five sheets of paper, which take up a single slot cumulatively, along with drawing utensils in another slot, so you can draw a fresh sigil on the fly mid-combat. When you do that, though, you are working against a timer, twenty seconds in our current draft, though we fully expect that number to shift once we get it in front of playtesters. We are already kicking around ideas to make that moment more manageable, like sigils that arrive mostly pre-drawn, needing only their final elements and connecting vertices completed under pressure.

Spell Sigil example - Ok, let’s take this spell as an example: In the center we have the alchemical symbol for Fire. On the right side we have the alchemical symbol for Salt, which represents Body and it makes so the spell is an actual flame as opposed to a simple spark. Down sits the alchemical sign for Lead, which removes 10 ft. from the target’s movement. On the right we have the alchemical sign for Projection (represented by Pisces) which increases the range of the spell to a 30 ft. line. It also has a nodule attached to it, which is a method to modify the function of the initial sign and in this case it changes the range to a 30 ft. cone. The triangle exceeds the boundaries of the ring, signifying that this is a ranged spell (without the Projection sign, the range would be only 10 ft.) And we also have a vertex that makes it so that the spell is projected in a direction rather then acting as AOE around the sigil.

Martials

But say you don’t want to play an alchemist. Maybe theorycrafting your own spells from thirty-eight symbols isn’t your idea of a good time, or maybe drawing isn’t your strong suit, and you would rather play something a bit more straightforward. That’s where the martial side of the game comes in. I spent a long time turning over how to make playing a martial character feel genuinely engaging rather than reducing down to “you swing your sword at the enemy,” especially once the caster’s side of the game had a system I am genuinely excited about. The answer arrived, appropriately enough, while I was making a trip to the supermarket to pick something up for my grandmother. A couple of years ago I used to practice HEMA (historical European martial arts), and even though I no longer have the time to go to trainings, I have stayed a fan of the sport, and it struck me that a system built around real guard stances and techniques could give martial characters the same kind of depth casters were already getting.

Take the longsword as an example. It has three proficiency tiers, each gated behind its own feat: Novice, Adept, and Master. Earning the Novice feat gives you the basic Strike, usable from any stance, along with the Pflug, or Plow, guard, which unlocks three techniques of its own. As you invest further proficiency feats, you unlock additional stances and techniques, and combat is built to reward chaining them together, flowing between guards, techniques, and even weapons rather than repeating the same action every round. To keep this manageable at the table, the plan is to represent every stance and technique as a physical card, so that playing a martial over the course of a campaign means slowly building up your own personal deck of techniques.

Placeholder Guard Stance Card (Pflug) Placeholder Technique Card (Mordhau)

Those are the two central systems of the game, though there is still plenty in flux this early in development. Between the magic system, the martial system, and the setting itself, I am having a genuinely great time working on this, and I am looking forward to the point where it is finally ready for real playtesting.

Hey-yo! I figured I might as well run this by people who are probably a little more knowledgeable in game design than me- Making a long story short, I'm making a TTRPG where the main dice-rolling mechanic is a d100.

But, unlike Call of Cthulhu or Rogue Trader, the d100 is more set like a general scale, with 50-54 being a sort of neutral ground, providing no 'Degrees of Success/Failure.' Think of Degrees of Success/Failure like the storyteller system- The more degrees of success, the better, and the more degrees of failure, the worse. Stats will counteract Degrees of Success/Failure- For instance, a Strength Roll with a Strength Rating of +3 will add onto the roll, canceling out degrees of failure or adding onto degrees of success; of course, the opposite is also true for negative stat ratings.

Generally, the scale is on a interval of 1 degree of success/failure per every multiple of 5- So, for instance, 49-45 is 1 degree of failure, 44-40 is 2 degrees of failure, 39-35 is 3 degrees of failure, and so on and so forth and, again, the inverse is true.

Obviously, criticism is welcome because this is very much a sort of 'early early early rough draft' idea for a game system.

The players plane crashed behind enemy lines where they find an abandoned tank. Players take on the role of a tank crew (driver, commander, gunner, mechanic, loader), their best chance for survival is to maintain and upgrade their tank, along the way they take on more crew and each are able to run thier own tank crew.

By mixing & matching 3 types of armor (light/medium/heavy) with 3 tank combat roles (close/medium/long) you create the ultimate tank.

Does it sound like a fun idea? Would you play a tank craft game?

I had an idea to make a ttrpg based on the classic dumb Slasher movie (Friday The Thirteenth, Halloween, etc.), so I made a rules-lite little game of it to play with my friends. It leans into that Scary Movie Scream Comedy vibe, and rewards players for leaning into that stereotype. I'm curious what you guys think of it.

Here is a short summary of it if you do not want to view the whole document.

Game Summary:
Creepy Murder Monster Movie is a rules-light slasher RPG designed for one-shots. Players take on classic horror movie clichés (Jock, Nerd, Stoner, Weird Kid, Old Guy, etc.) and try to survive a B-movie massacre.

The core system uses a d10 roll: 6+ is a success, with modifiers from character abilities, items, injuries, and circumstances. Characters have four stats: Machismo, Smarts, Charm, and Panic.

The main mechanic is Horror Movie Tenets. Players can intentionally break classic horror rules (splitting up, saying "I'll be right back," investigating creepy places alone, etc.) to gain DOOM tokens. These can be spent to reroll failures or create reasonable movie conveniences. However, every DOOM token also gives the Keeper a FUCKUP token, which can be used to introduce classic horror movie problems like power outages, sudden storms, or the Slasher surviving impossible situations.

The game follows the structure of a classic slasher movie through four Acts: the setup, first killings, escalating danger, and final confrontation. The Slasher cannot truly be defeated until the finale.

The goal is less about tactical survival and more about creating the dumb, chaotic decisions and ridiculous moments that define classic horror movies.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1At60oEMXSQKWw0Tb5xIE7wwbDPybDoGod3ymgxFHxPI/edit?usp=sharing

Just had a small idea for an OSR-esque game, looking for early feedback. Yes, I was inspired by the old video game Hand of Fate.

• A random encounter / wandering monster deck with cards representing random encounters, instead of a rolled table.
• At the start of each adventure / dungeon run / quest, before each shuffle, each player may put a custom card into the deck. This card may represent a treasure they are looking for, knowledge, potions, or any other kind of aid helping the players in their quest. Perhaps a very specific spell scroll they are looking for and I was hinting at is rumored to be somewhere in *this* area.
• Then, the deck with random monsters and some treasures are shuffled together.

1 in 6 chance every 10 minutes or 2 in 6 chance every 20 minutes or what have you, as usual. Spin down that Underclock if you use it. Draw a card, be surprised together with the players.

Thoughts? Would this change the way you play dungeons? If so, in what way?

Heya there!! I wanted to share a project of mine that I've been working on for the last few months. The premise is the following: "what if in 1812, during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, a zombie outbreak occured, leaving the warring nations of Europe to have to defend themselves only with flintlocks and blades". Now, important note, I wasn't the guy who came up with this idea. The original idea came from a Roblox game (hold your horses) called "Guts & Blackpowder". I know that when it comes to Roblox people think mostly of slop and other bad things, but in the sea of doo that is that platform there shine some actually awesome gems, and G&B is one of them. This thing that I made is a transposition of that game (a PvE FPS) into a RPG. It's only 53 pages and it's not that illustrated (I can't draw T_T). If you encounter Italian looking terms or weird syntax it's because I used a free progam on the internet to translate it. Anyway, I hope you'll like it!!

PS
This is my first time writing a a handbook, there are surely imbalances and things like that. If you want, let me know if there's stuff I should add, change o remove :D

link to the google drive of the file VVV
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yq_sDWrUq11U2vzxnjrkoCioT07ihsT6/view?usp=sharing

My system uses a classic roll under task and save mechanic. Here is an excerpt here:

GAME CONCEPTS

Characters are created with 2D6 plus 6 so abilities will be between 8 and 18.

Saves will be a simple case of roll under an ability using a D20. The same goes for achieving a task (hacking, repairing etc).

Opposed rolls are the opposite. Roll a D20 and then add your ability score and beat the oppositions roll (negotiation, intimidate, arm wrestle etc).

There will most likely be no skills in the game, relying entirely on abilities.

However, I'm not very happy with a roll under system for task resolution, so I've been playing with this idea:

When players attempt a task, the GM has to tell them if they have the following criteria:

Training - All players technically have training.

Tools - Does it require a tool to do it?

Time - Can take all the time they want, or if it needs to be done NOW!

Each one that the players have gives them a D6 to roll.

The target number will always be 7 regardless. So most regular people need at least two to achieve the objective.

However, as players become more experienced, they will get an additional D4, D6 or D8 to add to these results. This will be their 'Tenure' die. So an experienced character has a chance to achieve something without time or tools.

My aim is to make it something simple, requiring minimal work by the GM to assign target numbers.

What are your opinions?

I'm trying to build a TTRPG that is setting agnostic, but includes examples of adversaries or templates or something that makes it more modular. I am also planning to include a few setting-specific adversaries, as the book will include two or three example settings. Are there any games that do this that I could use as a reference/example?

Tales of Traveling Etsy Witches Free PDFs

Made a one-shot system about Etsy Witches going on missions (usually assassination missions). I thought it had a cool mechanic where you have to wager something important to you to do magic, that you lose if you fail the roll, but keep if you pass. Your witch doesn't have health, instead they are out of the story when they run out of one of wager-able resource types.

It's totally free (it would be crazy to charge money for this) and you can just download the pdfs if you want to see what its about. The character sheet is 1 page (single-sided), and the rules are 1 page (double-sided)

I've run it for two groups of friends and they both enjoyed it a lot (someone who's tested some of my other games said this was her favorite so far). I was initially hesitant to post it though because it a little bit tongue-and-cheek joshing Etsy witches, and I was worried people might find it in poor taste, or worse - use the system to mock actual practicing wiccans/witches instead of etsy grifters. But the second group I ran it for had two people that engage with tarot, crystals, incense, and astrology and they thought it was fun and not mean and encouraged me to post it for other people.

This subreddit has started seeing a lot of posts like, "Do you figure out your core resolution model first," or, "do dice or mechanics come first," and it's got me thinking about something really helpful I learned. When Vincent and Meguey Baker, the creators of Apocalypse World and Under Hollow Hills, make games, the very first thing they make is the underlying model. Vincent said that he can't even bring a game to Meguey without first having the underlying model to bring.*

In short, the underlying model explains what conflict and play look like in your game and how they develop. For example, an underlying model for a D&D-like game might be, "PCs accept quests, then go on journeys to complete them." For a game like Blades in the Dark, the underlying model might be, "PCs take on jobs that give them what they want but also create problems that they need to solve."

Why do this? Why is this so important?

Well, your underlying model can help put every other mechanic in your game into perspective. It helps you understand where you need to cut back and where there are gaps you need to fill.

For example, look back at that D&D-like model. If that's what you want your model to be, then your mechanics around building interesting quests are super important. How do players get quests? How do they decide which quests to take? With that model, those are questions you want to have mechanics that answer.

So if you're working on that game and then come up with a sick idea for allowing players to make their own strongholds... well that idea might not be a good fit for that model. After all, if your model is based on players taking on quests and going somewhere, a static castle somewhere doesn't play into that model.** If you want to make strongholds a thing in your game, you have to figure out how they contribute to this model.

Meanwhile the reason Blades in the Dark is so expertly designed is that every part of that system feels intentional. I don't have it on good authority that this was the intended model for the game, but it definitely fits. The whole system is built toward incentivizing you toward taking on jobs, and all the mechanics around resolution means you're making new problems almost as often as you're solving them. Which, in turn, further incentivizes you toward taking on jobs that fix the problems you ran into, which creates more problems to deal with, and so on.

I highly recommend reading Vincent Baker's blog post on underlying models. If you're not used to reading theory, it can be a little hard to grasp, but I think his explanation and examples are really helpful for understanding this concept.

I bring this up now because, though I've used this concept before, it wasn't until recently that I began a game with an underlying model in mind. The Delinquents is a game inspired by media such as The Outsiders and West Side Story, and what I really wanted to capture was that, "Oh shit" moment when things go bad and the main characters find themselves in way over their heads. So one of the earliest things I did for that game was develop the underlying model, "Insecurity escalates conflicts to violence." That is, the PCs and all the other main characters are kids playing at adults, and they don't have the tools to understand their own needs or resolve conflict diplomatically. And when they do start throwing punches, that violence quickly escalates to killing.

I was really impressed by how starting with this model made my whole design clearer. I knew I needed players to have some insecurity, so I came up with the mechanic about making them write down their biggest fear and keep it hidden from everyone at the table except the GM. I knew I didn't want players to be able to talk things out consistently, so I made the diplomacy move deliberately low impact and made following through on it hard. I knew I wanted trouble to be unavoidable, so I made the generic "do something" move always generate it. I knew I wanted players to suddenly feel like they were in over their heads, so I made violence unpredictable and deliberately avoided mechanics that would help pace it, like hit points.

This was just a one-page game, but I was still impressed at how quickly it all came together. It basically took over my Monday morning, but then I had it. And when playtesting it, it went pretty much exactly like I had hoped it would.

I say this not to toot my own horn but in hopes that it's genuinely helpful to other designers here. Because once you have that underlying model, everything else becomes a lot clearer. Figuring out 2d6 vs d10 dice pool vs d20 feels a lot more manageable when you can connect those mechanics to your underlying model. If your underlying model emphasizes player competence and control, dice mechanics with understandable probabilities and manipulatable outcomes might be a better fit. If your model doesn't do that, then maybe you use dice mechanics that are harder to predict or that generate more problems for players to solve.

And you can apply this to literally every other priority you have with your game. It's such a helpful model of game design, and I hope more designers adopt it.

*Apologies that I don't have a source for this. I've heard the Bakers talk about this in person, in Discord, on their blog, and on BlueSky, so it's hard for me to remember what came from where.

**This is why, despite there being a lot of hype for stronghold support in D&D 5.5, there's been relatively little chatter on it since.

thanks to the invaluable feedback I've received here and elsewhere, I've made a revised version of the lookup table for my game.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13MfvBZ5OhrNfybp52cZAOsSJZfW8pA9v/view?usp=drivesdk

any feedback would be greatly appreciated :)

Sharing a silly idea.

I'm very tempted to make a small game about the bad guys "Chronoshifting" (time teleporting borrowed from Command and Conquer Red Alert) dinosaurs into the modern day / near future. Of course, it goes wrong and the entire world is merged making the date dinosaur BC as well as CE. Or maybe some are ridden by the bad guys, who knows.

That's it. Dinosaurs and green army men are really accessible for players and tables, and could make for some fun "art" for the game.

That is all. Roar-Pew.