RPG game design Kiwis

Sargon's wife's son

Sargon's wife's son

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Feb 23, 2019
Hello my fellow Kiwis and welcome to sagans wife sons game design for stupid people
today we're gonna talk about how to design TTRPG's but first let's go over some frequently asked questions the people in my social circles constantly asked me
Q&A
Q can you just shamelessly copy D&D as long as you change enough stuff
A absolutely you cannot copyright game mechanics which Wizards of the coast is finally figuring out but you're still gonna have to win the lawsuit but you have great standing because most suits filed by these big TTIP G companies have went in the favor of the little guys

Q if I worked on a project with someone and they're trying to screw me over can I sue them
A if you can prove what you did on the project yes you entitled to money if it's ever published this happened to me on one occasion and This is why in all seriousness you should practice good social hygiene and not associate yourself with those types of people
Q is it expensive to pay people to make your 3D models for war games
A I've never worked on war games but I did pay someone for 3D models for one of the games I designed it's usually around 100 bucks for a good 3D artist
prices can vary depending on how many you're getting made for the overall models themselves


first of all the first thing you're going to need is a good setting for your TTRPG a lot of people think you need a dice system first but that's not true whatsoever the dice system is the second thing you create if you don't have a good setting worth playing or an interesting concept I'm really not going to consider your overall mechanics of the game.

That being said if you're just starting out TTRPG design just shamelessly copy someone elses system and modify it to your own liking people have copied systems I've worked on and I really don't care.


The people who tell you need to do everything from scratch well those people have never actually tried to design 700 different tables hundreds of unique combat designs and then had to sit there with five people going over them and having to change them every three weeks because one was broken

if you really do wanna get into TTRPG design design I would suggest starting out by homebrewing a few classes for simple RPG's like D&D that's how I got my start

I think everyone on Kiwi farms already knows to avoid anybody who is one of the pronoun people homeos never had a problem with lesbians and leftists in general they all toxic and not fun one more group furries every for every TTRPG player I've ever played with and designer I've worked with was an insufferable cry bully
 
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I've been working on my TTRPG setting for a hot minute. An embarrassing amount of time really, between making the map (the biggest factor) and having various topics written succinctly as not to bore my players when the time comes to run it. I just have that perfectionist itch in me and I'm never satisfied at times. I'm confident in my writing, but my drawing skills are lackluster.

It can feel overwhelming at times honestly. Work, school/studying, socializing. There's a lot to balance and it's not always easy. The good news is, I have no plans on publishing anything, and just do it for fun to have a (eventually) a long ass campaign to play with my friends as the DM. I'm constantly saving ideas in the back of my head to put to paper. Another chore I have to do is to rewrite a 30 page short story I drafted a year ago. I also want to find an artist, hopefully a fellow kiwi, to hire for some character art of my players. Id rather give the money to someone cool than some random art bozo online.
 
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For me the dice system is usually the least important part. I like roll over instead of roll under, and I don't like vast amounts of math, but generally any dice system works for me.

Mentioned in the other thread, but will repeat here. I've been very tempted to make my own mech TTRPG. The ones that get all the hype are, for lack of a better term, shit. So far, I've only found one that works, and it manages the lofty heights of above average. Mechwarrior intimidates all but the most autistic, and Lancer all but requires an app and has a setting that makes no sense.

There are two main road blocks at present. First is what software I use to write the PDF? I've just been using google docs, but I'm guessing something more robust exists.

The second is the ruleset itself. Simply put, the consensus elsewhere is that mech RPGs are impossible because they're vehicle based war games. Either the pilot doesn't matter, or the mechs are just played as standard characters. Where this fails in the inevitable moment when the characters leave the cockpit.

A third, albeit minor problem is the belief that battletech is the only setting that matters. Every time I've discussed something mech based (usually video games, but TTRPGs as well) people start asking about AC20s and Timber Wolfs.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
First is what software I use to write the PDF?
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Libre Office is free and can be run on Windows not just Linux.
Judge Dredd said:
The second is the ruleset itself.
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The way I'd do this is Mechs are the equipment and the pilot builds up skills/leveling in particular specialties. Really though there's so much shit that goes into "rule set" you'd have to expand upon what you want. Like do you want Hexes, box grids, or straight up measurements for how a board/units function.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
For me the dice system is usually the least important part. I like roll over instead of roll under, and I don't like vast amounts of math, but generally any dice system works for me.

Mentioned in the other thread, but will repeat here. I've been very tempted to make my own mech TTRPG. The ones that get all the hype are, for lack of a better term, shit. So far, I've only found one that works, and it manages the lofty heights of above average. Mechwarrior intimidates all but the most autistic, and Lancer all but requires an app and has a setting that makes no sense.

There are two main road blocks at present. First is what software I use to write the PDF? I've just been using google docs, but I'm guessing something more robust exists.
Click to expand...
Google Docs is unironically a perfectly adequate system to write TTRPG's
Judge Dredd said:
The second is the ruleset itself. Simply put, the consensus elsewhere is that mech RPGs are impossible because they're vehicle based war games. Either the pilot doesn't matter, or the mechs are just played as standard characters. Where this fails in the inevitable moment when the characters leave the cockpit.
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I designed a system that had both a vehicle based combat system which I designed amass combat written by one of the guys I was working with and it also had small squad systems and single player systems it's not hard to create all-encompassing role set a lot of people just admit to themselves they can't do it


Judge Dredd said:
A third, albeit minor problem is the belief that battletech is the only setting that matters. Every time I've discussed something mech based (usually video games, but TTRPGs as well) people start asking about AC20s and Timber Wolfs.
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Especially with battletech engaging with all the gay **** it's the perfect time to create a new Mac RPG that's based in red pilled


Dill said:
I want a Wizardry style game that has all the main lolcows as enemies and bosses
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well that would be a really fun **** post that wouldn't be commercially viable

the sector
ally with PPP and Andy warski against the Ethan Ralph ogre army ralpha males a disgusting group of hideous mutated fat ogres

the catamites
lead your holy Catholic on me against the fake cat boy Pope and his army of homosexual 13 year olds

Christian Weston Chandler
fight your way to an army of demon possessed transgender mutants mutated by dynamic powers
 
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LowlyPheasent said:
Really though there's so much shit that goes into "rule set" you'd have to expand upon what you want. Like do you want Hexes, box grids, or straight up measurements for how a board/units function.
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There's a lot I want, but I've managed to get a list of the main things I want, and so far the only element I've really figured out stolen is mech building.

So, a mech game has to have
  1. Mech building
    1. Without autism
    2. With costs/progression
  2. Mech combat
    1. including vs human, vs vehicles, vs mechs, vs monsters
    2. and combinations of those such as human vs human, monsters vs vehicles, etc.
  3. Pilots with meaningful customisation.
  4. Out of mech rules
  5. Out of combat rules
  6. Progression (levels, loot, etc)
  7. It would be nice if weapons were different in their use. Like rockets do splash damage, lasers pierce armour, etc.
  8. It would be nice to have some simple rules for location damage.
Most games are missing some of these. eg. Lancer has no rules for out of mech stuff. Tiny Frontiers: Mecha and Monsters has no rules for progression.


For mech building, I figured a simple system works best. Have hulls/chassis that allow X amount of weapons, Y amount of sub systems, etc. Or even make it more granular, like weapons being limited to X missile slots, Y ballistic slots, Z energy slots. This sound simple, but it works, and avoids the Starfinder problem of players taking 5 hours to build a ship that is destroyed in the third round of combat.

For pilots, I want to divide abilities into combat and non-combat. The idea here is to stop a problem common in games like Spycraft where the PC is useless outside their area of expertise. In those games, it's common for a stealth expert to be useless in combat, while the combat guys is useless at stealth.

I've got a couple ideas of how to handle weapon types, but nothing concrete. I gave some examples above, but to go into more detail. In the case of mech vs human. Using large canons is tough to hit a human, but automatic weapons are much easier to hit with even if the damage per shot is less. For missiles, it could be they take multiple actions to use but always hit, or it could be it requires a dodge save on behalf of the target which wheeled vehicles and helicopters suck at.


A quick explanation as to why I have these ideas. The adventures I want to achieve are similar to DnD. Sometimes it's a combat mission, perhaps where they have to clear bad guys so the a hacker can go inside a building and steal some intel. Or raid an enemy weapons factory to get some cool new weapons. But sometimes it's a more low key adventure where they're dealing with a mysterious disappearance or have to steal some object without people noticing.

I have a few setting ideas, but I'm guessing you don't want to read what amounts to fanfiction.


My end goal for this is to release a PDF on Itch.io for free. My main concern is a lack of playtesting, and that it would get lost in a sea of PbtA reskins and rules-lite OSR games.
 
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Sargon's wife's son said:
first of all the first thing you're going to need is a good setting for your TTRPG a lot of people think you need a dice system first but that's not true whatsoever the dice system is the second thing you create if you don't have a good setting worth playing or an interesting concept I'm really not going to consider your overall mechanics of the game.
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Copy anything other than DND. DND has currently the worst setting for an RPG as its so bland and overdone. Ive been reading Fighting Fantasy books when I learned the Soulsborne games copied their creatures and world design, theyre much better than DND. Even JRPG settings are much more varied and better than DND.
 
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Georgio Cocklord said:
Copy anything other than DND. DND has currently the worst setting for an RPG as its so bland and overdone. Ive been reading Fighting Fantasy books when I learned the Soulsborne games copied their creatures and world design, theyre much better than DND. Even JRPG settings are much more varied and better than DND.
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You honestly can't go wrong with Gurps
 
Sargon's wife's son said:
Hello my fellow Kiwis and welcome to sagans wife sons game design for stupid people
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You misspelt your own user ID in the opening post.

More on topic know what the thread is trying to do in terms of advice. If you want a simple system that can be used for pretty much anything as a quick pickup game and find yourself writing Rolemaster's system slap the brakes on and rethink.

Try to find a system way that makes the players feel good when they nail the moment that matches the genre it is to be used for.

Look at smaller games to see interesting ideas that are off the beaten path for many. I do not consider Smallville's Cortex RPG or Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies perfect games. But I love the former's world building via character creation and the latter's method of spinning later plot off what player abilities they chose to soak damage in the current session. Neither needs to be lifted wholesale but there are good ideas there that have merit for games trying something similar.
 
I’d love to see a Mage: The Ascension RPG done by competent developers who clearly love the genre (not Paradox) I’m tired of Vampire being the only World of Darkness property people touch. There’s so much potential to be mined for a good Mage game, even more so if you were somehow able to implement the complete freeform spell creation system from the tabletop.
 
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I know people made the joking post but I really do think you could make a lol cow board game were you gonna TTRPG or war game that would be fun I might start working on that
 
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