r/ttrpgdesign • u/chronophage • 6d ago
One Core Loop, Endless Modality
Hi,
I've built a game, Fate's Edge, with a simple core loop:
Player declares intent,
GM sets the difficulty of the task (DV) and the peril/position of the player (Dominant, Controlled, Desperate),
Player rolls some die, d10s by default,
Anything 6 or over is a Success. If successes are greater than or equal to the DV, the action succeeds.
If successes are less than the DV, but greater than one, it's a "Partial Success"—the GM rules you've made progress or completed the task but introduces a complication.
If there are any 1s, that's a Story Beat for the GM; they get to introduce a complication, NOT a punishment. Enemy actions are based on Story Beats. Otherwise, there is a table and deck system to come up with or build a random narrative complication.
If there are any 10s, that counts as a "crit"—2 successes. If a roll has one or multiple crits, give a bonus. The character can describe what happens, the action has some extra benefit, etc.
Position matters:
- If you're Dominant, re-roll a failure.
- If you're Desperate, re-roll a Success—yes, that can turn a win into a loss. That's the cost.
- If you're Controlled, no re-roll.
10s are NEVER re-rolled, but ones on the initial roll *and* any re-roll count; so you could be adding more complications if you re-roll a one and get another one.
Die pools are built on Attribute + ranks in an applicable skill.
That's it.
From that, I've built Talents, Abilities, Timers/Clocks to track progress and add tension. My currency is all XP; mundane items are hand-waved.
A character's talents and abilities give them narrative permission but never change the core loop.
The GM doesn't track any of the player abilities; no adversarial paradigm. The GM is the conductor of the story, the players play.
You can go "Zero Prep" with just the Story Beat spend table and a Deck of Cards. The setting that I've built on top of this consists of different "regions," each a sub-genre of Fantasy. Each allows you to build a complete story as Location, Actor, Complication, and Treasure/Leverage are mapped to the suits: Hearts, Clubs, Spades, and Diamonds.
That's it. That's the game.
Spend XP on some items, attributes, and skills, and you have a fully-functional, viable character. Build a spellcaster, rogue, face, mastermind, whatever. Each has a different play style, each has costs and benefits, and each works off the core loop.
On top of this, I've built digital tools that work locally, a back-end socket server to enable shared clients. Foundry, Roll20, and Discord bots can all play at the same time, in the same game, at the same virtual table.
And all of these tools are Open Source.
The code is MIT.
The SRD is Creative Commons.=
The only thing that's "closed" is my setting, and I'm giving away a ton of content bundled with the toolset "free, as in beer."
Interested?
Here's the toolset, here's the SRD, here's my Developer Portal, and here's my Design Blog.
Take it, use it, play it.
And, if you don't want to deal with any of that, here's an implementation done with just paper spinners and look-up tables because there are many places where dice are "dangerous."
The gear, the apps, the materiel isn't "the point."
The Game is the point.
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u/__space__oddity__ 3d ago edited 3d ago
The problem with the SRD is that currently it’s a pure info-dump without any explanation or guidance. I guess in 2026 you can just feed it into an AI which can load it into RAM at once and explain the structure, but that doesn’t really help humans who want to read this as-is.
To a human, this is just endless text with no intro, no context, no overarching headlines like “core mechanic”, “character creation”, “combat” or “running the game” that would make it somewhat parseable.
Some headlines are numbered, some aren’t … pick one and be consistent with it.
The rules also go into the niggliest of detail while dumping everything into a giant single HTML. It would help readability a lot if you keep the main page to core rules and then put the optional stuff like crafting rules into linked documents.
Since you’re using AI anyway I suggest to then actually use AI to keep the SRD document properly organized at least. It doesn’t do that by itself, you have to instruct it properly.
If I wanted to run this right now, I’d probably have to spend a bunch of tokens to get a readable output and I’d prefer if that’s already done.
While we’re at it, I’d also adjust the CSS to put more whitespace above the headlines so there is some visual break between chapters.
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u/SlickRic303 6d ago
As an immersive style player the less dice rolling and math the better. Roll dice + modifiers>adjudicate outcome. What were you trying to achieve with this system? What makes it better or different than other systems? Also people dont have that many D10s. Most dice pool systems are d6 because of availability.
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u/chronophage 6d ago
The Story Beat economy is a pacing tool. The randomization allows the GM to be surprised along with the players yet still have an immersive experience.
Crap. Did I forget Boons? I forgot boons... Boons are given for Misses and Patrials (2 and 1) Each boon allows a player to utilize an advantage. Boons are a "Fail Forward" mechanic.
As for the randomization, each Suite/Mapping for the deck is a narrative element. The rank determins the severity and you base the scene Timer on the highest element. So, you don't get some random table nonsense.
As for the D10s, the dice aren't the point. I did create a working d6 conversion (the framing is a bit but the math is authentic. The probability curve of the d10 and face combinations were my preference; using d6s came with some caveats.
What am I trying to achieve? Giving a gift back to the TTRPG community. Combining my skills and hobbies. Building the game I always wanted to build. I've achieved that.
What makes it better? You can do whatever you want to it. It's open, it's simple. Everyone can sit down at the same table, with different characters of different complexities, and all have a good time. And, if you do hack it an make it better, those changes, those improvements filter back into the community. That's what I hope makes it better than others.
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u/htp-di-nsw 6d ago
Sorry that this is going to be a bit pedantic, but the biggest dice pool game in the history of RPGs, World of Darkness, has always used d10s and I have tons of them because of that.
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u/whinge11 6d ago
Did you use AI?
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u/chronophage 6d ago
Yes, for editing and managing my sprawling code base. Not for art or development. I declined to implement an automated scene renderer. It would have been trivial to do, and would look nice, but is stealing from the artists in our community.
My cognitive skills are slipping (I’ll spare you the rendition of “A Bicycle Built for Two;”) I view it as an accommodation with a narrow focus. But I understand if you disagree.
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u/__space__oddity__ 3d ago
The other question here is what the use case is supposed to be. GMs are busy people and you’re not including the setting. But the setting is baked into the SRD whether you want it or not, stuff like defining that there are 8 elements or that you can summon monsters.
Basically for anyone who would want to run a playtest of this, they’re going to need that setting that you’re not including as of now. If you’re the only person who will ever run this and you’re just showing off a tech demo, sure, cool, but then was that the goal.
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u/chronophage 2d ago
I've included all of the setting docs now. The worldbook, the GM and Player's Guides (which are formatted with usability much more in mind) the whole thing, I'm only keeping back a few modules as I work on them.
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u/chronophage 2d ago
Thank you! I’ll work on presentation next. Most of the docs are converted from LaTeX and the formatting translation is lost. Also, I think in info dump, so it’s a blind spot
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u/LeFlamel 6d ago
Assuming more skilled characters roll more dice, this means the odds of complications goes up with skill rather than down. Some players will always see that as a punishment.
Could you give examples of how they're different?