Let's Build a Completely Open Source Fantasy TTRPG - Part One
Вставка
- Опубліковано 13 січ 2023
- Jeff bounces around some core ideas for the attributes and action resolution we might use while building an open source fantasy roleplaying game.
Be sure to get your geek on at www.thegaminggang.com
Don't forget we're also an affiliate of DriveThruRPG at www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.p...
Do you enjoy The Gaming Gang videos and website? Then how about buying Jeff a cup of coffee at paypal.me/thegaminggang
#TTRPGs #TheGamingGang #NotDnD - Ігри
![Lp. Последняя Реальность #107 РОДНОЙ ДОМ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IK3QKzKUlHM/mqdefault.jpg)
Around the 20:20 mark, you mention results of rolling right on the target number. Sounds like the "fail forward" technique. You make the jump over the rooftops buut drop your coin purse... You don't pick the lock but the guard on the other side opens the door anyway and is now staring you in the eyes etc.
Sounds like some good solid ideas, especially like the idea of skills just being modifiers on stat rolls rolls.
Would love to help contribute to this project!
Glad to see you doing this Jeff. We need more people building RPG's.
I would love to see more of this series! It's great to see your game design thought processes. :)
I'm closing in fast on 40 years of TTRPG experience, mostly as DM or GM, from the three booklets, 1st Ed. and Basic D&D, but turned from 2nd Ed. to WHFRP as my preferred set of fantasy rules, while playing other games for diversity such as TMNT (ninja turtles) and many others. As a GM, the game mechanics have always interested me strongly, and I've designed a couple simple ones, and been working on one in particular for 30+ years. This baby's for all flavors of gaming, ready to adapt from your favored tv show, movie or novel, for any setting in fantasy, sci-fi or in between.
A character's proficiency at something is determined by the sum of their core attribute added to their level of discipline in a particular skill. Each is a number from 1 to 10 and when combined, the "proficiency" of 1 to 20 is pitted against a "difficulty" of 1 to 20 to determine a "challenge" ratio that is indexed for percentage chance of success. Only one matrix is necessary for action resolution, and rather than even increments of success, the 1 to 20 scale operates more like a "bell curve", where a novice may start at a moderate level of proficiency gains through learning and experience, those gains become smaller and more difficult to obtain full mastery. But there is always a chance to succeed for the least skilled, and a chance to fail for the most skilled.
My system has 8 Core attributes, 4 mental, 4 physical, which are then used to derive as many as 12 Composite attributes (such as "Initiative", a composite of Focus and Speed). 40 pts. + 4d10 are used to allocate the Core attributes as they are preferred by the player, and none of the 8 are so trivial as to want to reduce their points by very much. There are Composite attributes that determine a spell casters ability so that "intelligence" of other systems isn't the player's only concern. Attunement is the composite of Focus + Logic, for the locating and gathering of magical or psionic energies. Channeling is the composite of Logic + Nerve for the manipulation and directing of magical or psionic energies. Note that both Composite attributes are heavily weighed by the Core attribute of Focus, which determines the bandwidth of one's powers.
I could literally write a book, but simple and concise it would be. My combat system is particularly unique, and involves more than "just dice rolls" to get players involved. Thanks to the Gaming Gang for starting a topic I find most interesting.
Taking a look over the system I do like the idea of your statistics having a direct correspondence to your abilities for your character. This could feed into skills if you go that path to say that someone with a particular statistic level is better at a specific skill. Obviously this has to make sense if you end up having archetypes. Just having a high statistic does not instantly make you able to do anything unless you are a particular archetype. Statistics could always be used to default when trying to achieve a task so long as it also makes sense.
When you were discussing just succeeding or failing rolls I kind of was on board with you to a point. I like the idea of degrees of success or failure Nothing should be negative so long as you succeed but rather you didn't achieve exactly what you intended and then the player has to deal with the result of their actions if they only perhaps just pass a roll. There should be hard and fast numbers that determine what is an almost success or a failure and have it up to the GM what the result of that roll would be.
Personality is fine but I've never loved a straight stat dictating your looks/presence or charm. This might not be what you were thinking but every system I've seen uses individual stats relating to a particular charisma like perk/skill that relates to the particular situation. So for instance if you had a certain level of intellect you might be more persuasive with your words or if you had a certain might score that might feed into the possibility that you are perhaps more attractive. These are just all thoughts of course.
Yeah I also like your idea of opposed rolls for combat. I think at the moment in some games there is a bit too much toing and froing. You attack then they attack until someone is dead or something else occurs. It might make for situational combat where players consider their placements and actually end up working together because it might benefit them for their roll. Having no armor class is also a good idea and instead rely on Damage Reduction would also be good because it then opens up the idea of targeting specific parts of enemies rather than just whaling on them till they are out of health when you actually do hit. Also the idea of loss is a good thing. Some of my most memorable games where when characters weapons either broke or something was lost which needed replacing. Players really are molly coddled an awful lot and aren't made to struggle sometimes.
Look forward to more videos and I hope this doesn't come across as a wall of text.
I love the concept of a new system. And I started gaming in 77 XD. And being a geek is awesome! I look forward to seeing how this develops.
I've always wanted to do a magic system that was about risk management more than resource management. In that subsystem, failing a roll to cast a spell by too much would trigger the cost of magic. In a system mimicking D&D, the cost would be that you messed up a word and got a result you didn't want. In other kinds of worlds, the cost could be increasing fatigue or madness. If something like this doesnn't make its way into TGGG, it could be my supplement for the system.
I like the idea of limiting modifiers. If you really wanted to simplify things, you could just have two kinds of bonuses: gear and circumstancial. Gear bonuses would come from things like magic weapons or having excellent tools, while circumstantial bonuses would be for conditions that make the job easier. You would get to pick a maximum of one from each category.
This is a great idea. EZD6 does something along these lines...you can roll as many dice as you want to to hit a number the GM sets (you only need it to hit the number on one of the dice). But if you hit a 1 on any of the dice something bad happens...the magic has gone wrong.
Sorry if this repeats others' ideas earlier, but I'd thought this as I was watching a few days ago. You'd talked about role-playing opportunities on certain rolls, this came to mind:
The "effort" of the roll is equal to the roll made as long as it is at or under your ability. Like if you have an agility of 13, rolling a 13 or less gives you that value in effort, the higher the better, which can be compared to difficulties or opposed rolls. Rolling, say, a 1 means you have a "yes, but," as in you barely scraped by. Rolling your current ability is a "yes, and." Different challenges might have different degrees of success based on GM decisions or the situation.
So in a sense you're still trying to roll high, just not above your ability to handle it. You wouldn't roll every time, but like if there's a task that requires precision, you could still make it with a roll OVER your ability but going too high would cause other problems. Like if you treat might as your ability to control your strength, not just raw strength, you could have someone put in enough effort to break open a treasure chest, but going too high destroys the treasure chest (and maybe some stuff inside) when you merely wanted to force the lock rather than bothering to look for a key.
A careful approach might mean rolling 2d20 and taking the lowest, meaning the effective effort is likely lower, but you're less likely to fail, while a reckless approach might mean rolling 2d20 and taking the highest, where you're more likely to max out your effort for high ability characters, but you're also likely to go over. Some characters (like ogres, say) could have a trait that forces 2d20 take the highest on might rolls, sort of exemplifying their might being too much for them to handle unless they train to control it.
With the above version I'd also say rolling a 20 allows anybody to get a "no, but", as in the maximum effort allowed some measure of progress (and it lines up sorta with how we've been trained to think 20s are a good thing in many d20 based games).
It's sort of what you're already saying but maybe a different emphasis on what the number means I guess. Enjoyed watching this more than I expected, as someone who's gone through the beginnings of this sort of thing several times on my own. Maybe just seeing another enthusiast jumping in at the start? Not sure :) Looking forward to more.
I think this will be a great series Jeff. Hope it gets the response you are looking for. I have thought many times of making my own RPG but there are so many good ones out there I am not sure I could improve on it much. Would love to see your ideas though. Thanks for the video.
I love this video and it’s future series. I would like to recommend stating goals on which we base our decisions, like, this game will simple to learn or the character sheet must fit on one handwritten page or it will be genre agnostic etc…
Also, being different just to be different does help you get out of DnD brain and be more creative, maybe start with the bare human aspects of body, mind and spirit. I think HAS is about to learn that the real value of the OGL was that it removed competition from the landscape…. Create your own games everyone! Start simple and let them grow as you use them.
When we get to combat i would like to see everyone have one action. When you have 3 things to do on your turn it slows the whole thing down. By the time some people have worked out what to do with an action a bonus action and a move half the table is asleep. It would also be great if people could join up to do combos to do more damage or increase chances of landing a blow, may be even doing spell casting together to make it harder to resist.
This looks to be an interesting series! Bravo, Jeff! I'm a fan of keeping things simple.
For a fun spin on initiave, how about whomever rolls Highest om Initiative begins the round... then the Initiative moves clockwise around the table! It eliminates the need for cards or lists of who goes when. It's worked well for me.
Great video. I'm currently working on a sci-fi dungeon crawl setting and system, quite different from fantasy but you make several good points I should listen to. Please keep the series going! Cheers from the UK.
Cool, thanks!
Great video!!! Have my own system I use in my games. Always has done me and my group well. But it’s always good to always have open minded ideas out there. I’d like to see more for sure
This is great for a newbie like me (hoping to RP solo) to see how an RPG is actually built from the ground up. Thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
I make simple 'RPGs' as a hobby. Really, they're little adventure board games but the mechanics are influenced by older RPGs like GURPS, TWERPS, Traveler, TMNT, Recon, BX D&D and the Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure books. Finding new ways to tread familiar ground is a great puzzle for designers. I hope you keep up this series. I feels like you really enjoy this subject which means we'll all really enjoy consuming it.
This sounds good...interested in more...
Amazing video! Getting some Black Sword Hack vibes which is timely as I just backed their new kickstarter and have been toying around with these “roll under” attribute in place of skills systems. Also damage reduction is a big plus - it’s like you are reading my mind!
This core mechanic reminds me a lot of an older game called Dominion rules (DR) it's a D12 system where have to roll under a threshold and that threshold is based off of skills. And there are other things that modifier what under you have roll.
DR actually got me interested in making my own keep trpg that is a D6 focussed system. I will be following along with this because it's good to have other people's ideas to bounce off of, and to see where I might be able to improve.
I agree combat & magicis difficult to work out.
I like how you pointed out charisma/personality is not nessary. I've had it stuck in my mind I gotta have this so if the players have to convince a guard they roll that ability/skill. But if you just roll play it, and play the guard as a guard things could work out naturally
Love it! Keep going with it, sounds great so far! Love you ideas!!!
Thank you! Will do!
Awesome video keep them coming !!! If you need help in playtesting keep me in mind.
There is a lot of the system Symbaroum has in this effort you have going. Not the 5E rules adaptation, but the original core rules. But, yeah... You're really close to Symbaroum.
Free League Publishing is where to find it for those that don't know.
It is a phenomenal system with some great world lore. Symbaroum is the basis for the homebrew rules we have in my playgroup.
When it comes to magic we adopted the magic system from EZD6 (DM Scotty and Runehammer) and tweaked it to dovetail into Symbaroum.
Personality could be what the players bring to the role play .It may not need a number value..Please go furthet making it. This is going to be fun.
I think I would change personality to Cool or Composure or maybe Presence. That way a person can roll play however they envision the character and it doesn't become a beauty stat like charisma, but you can still have a mechanic to represent how well you are able to bluff or or even if a characters is able to keep themselves collected under pressure.
I've always thought of Charisma as personality or social skills.
Like low Cha is someone who can't keep eye contact and stammers, or someone who lies out of habit and doesn't really try to hide it.
High Cha would be a good orator or someone who argues very well, an honest person or someone who can hide lies very well.
Moving in a positive direction...I like it.
I started doing this earlier this week! :)
Really cool Jeff.
Triple g baybe. Im Currently on page 13 of my own rpg . My own art, and a skill based level up system. new stats, spell system in the vein of Wheel of Time, Starting basic, with Hobbits, humans, dwarves, and elves for race, and Fighter, cleric, thief, wizard and Ranger, as classes.
Cool vid!
One of the big tasks you did not mention was play-testing. That is a really important part of the process. Hopefully, your audience will be able to help out with that.
Also, if you have a Might stat, you really ought to have a Will stat.
I've actually been working on my own system on and off for about 6 months now. This whole OGL debacle has kind given me the kick in the pants needed to start working on it more seriously. Cool to know I'm not the only one thinking about that, haha!
I had and idea for a traveling, survive ttrpg..there is combat but it's not a sub system of the game any more and it's will played like any other "encounter".I had an idea for a dice system. It's a dice pool system..roll d6 and 6+ is a success. But skill can UP the dice. Pretty if I put a point in the fishing skill let's say. You don't roll d6 .you roll a d8. You can upgrade antill you roll d12(total mastery) items and abilities can also add dices or other buffs.. so pretty much whan you roll you : your attrebuits +items+ ability (max one buff from ability) UP skill
I want to see you develop this system more
zuper cool idea, following
More. more. more.I think this is a great idea. Thank you.
I've been thinking about something similar. The attributes I came up with are:
Brawn
Agility
Vitality
Intellect
Discernment
Chutzpah
I like having a charisma / personality attribute. And if I ever going to write my own OSR game, I would use that attribute for Initiative, since I think that initiative is something people with greater force of personality simply seize. I hate that too many games assign that to the coordination attribute, since it is of no concern how flexible someone is, if they have not that leadership instinct to push things into motion, they will not act.
I think it would be great content to talk about Homebrew and how you might use other people's already contributed information.
Awesome, please continue. I like roll under and think about how to do it all the time. Roll under, but closest to the Attribute? Like blackjack rules? Could that mean anything, like effects? Anyway, looking forward to more.
I have a magic system design that relies on magic charged objects that power the spell. No one appears to have done a pure magic battery system.
Perhaps fantasy races could get a set beginning value for each attribute they would normally be associated with, while humans could have a slightly higher amount of points to buy into the attributes? If we only have 5 and we start with 60 points, perhaps humans get 63-65 (if we do end up having a Charisma stat, I’m thinking either Appeal or Allure, then maybe humans get 72-78)?
Maybe soul instead of enlightenment 🤔 no personality as well... It should go with intellect (education, diplomacy) as for the appearance, a player could draw His/her character or describe him 😉
Instead of modifiers, why not avantage/disadvantage (5e), boon and flaw (barbarians of lemuria) - it came before 5e by the way 😉or boons and banes (shadow of the demon lord)... U add a d6 to your roll (boon) or subtract a d6 (flaw or bane)... Let's continue in the next video 👍
This is awesome. Would love to see your thoughts on a magic system.
Coming soon!
Would you consider using a blackjack system to determine degrees of success? By this, I mean rolling as high as possible while still being equal to or under your attribute score. No subtraction is needed, which will make combat flow faster.
4:02 it's not possible to copyright gamemechanics. We can take what we want from 5e.
It sure would be nice if people watched the newest episode of LegalEagle, and perhaps even gave the podcast he mentioned, (Opening Arguments episode 675), s listen.
It's so sad to see people uncritically parroting misleading claims about the OGL issue!
The trouble is all the commercial games want to constantly expand rules to make money. So they all make far too many rules and add-ons that over complicate, when most of the time the GM could call it easily. it would be great to have a generic simple system where people can tune it with mods by different creators so you can pick and choose
Cool ideas, how about calling personality "charm" instead? Maybe a good stat for bards?
I've designed a few TTRPG systems and while I haven't published any of them, they've proven very popular with my gaming groups. Putting them into publishable shape would take many times the amount of work of designing them in the first place, and I have a day job among other various other drains on my time, hence why I haven't published anything. Anyway, I recommend beginning with explict design goals. What do you want this system to do? How scalable do you want it to be? (Roll under systems tend not to be as intuitively scaleable, but that's fine if your system will only need to handle PCs within a certain range of power levels or if the only things you need to be highly scalable are say, damage output and 'hit points'). How do you want it to feel? How do you want combat to feel? Should it be fast or detailed? If detailed, should it be narrative heavy or crunch heavy? Is it for experienced roleplayers, new roleplayers, or both? How easy will it be to learn and how will people learn it, etc.? There are dozens of questions you should answer before doing any system design. Why? because it'll put your mind into problem-solving mode with your design goals in mind. It becomes very difficult to solve problems if you haven't defined what those problems are in the first place. If you create your design goals as you go, you'll probably run into issues and conflicts, creating problems in the process rather than solving them. I get the impression that maybe you already have all of your design goals in mind but just haven't revealed them yet, and that's fine, but if so I advise writing them down. It's easy to lose focus when just working from a mental picture. One thing that should always be a design goal is consistency. I can't think of a good reason why anyone would deliberately set out to create an inconsistent system, but it's easy to do by accident if you don't have it purposely in mind - you don't need to look any further than early versions of D&D and AD&D to demonstrate this.
I'm experimenting with a system were rolling odd or even changes the result. Odd success is different to an even success. Odd failure is different to an even failure. This is not done in all cases.
Cool. Could you split Agility into Agility and Manipulation it's always seemed strange to me to tie acrobatics to lock picking there''s a lot of difference between what you can do with your fingers and what you can do with your whole body. I would probably have a dozen attributes in my system. You might hate it!
It's seems mores sence to me to combine str and con and split Wis to perception and will
Looks like Dragonbane to me ;)
Really looking forward to getting the Dragonbane box set 🙂
I'm looking forward to taking a peek at Dragonbane if Free League sends it my way. ~Jeff
@@Thegaminggang Free Legaue are nice people, so they will probably send you a copy 🤞🙂
Good luck with this new series. It's very interesting to follow the progress and development.
Hey I really really like this idea and have been watching as many of these as I can to see how other designers do it. I want to offer some feedback on something that a lot of designers are overlooking. I see a lot of designers taking a design forward approach which (I believe) is the wrong approach.
When designing we need to think about what it's going to be used for and *how* it's going to be used. The original TTRPG's we created by gamifying fantasy literature, TV shows, and movies. "How would this scene be expressed in game mechanics" is vital for game design.
The other thing that needs to be kept in mind is the difference between engine creation and game play. The Core Engine requires a hard physics system (think of the difference between a soft magic and hard magic system). The Core Engine needs to be no magic. This allows for modular plug and play where those using the engine can plugin extensions to make the game higher or lower magic, higher or lower technology, higher or lower physics. Game engine design has to be done simulationist, game play does not.
That said something I would like to see is a simple class set with three classes that go from level 0-5. At level 6 you get a second class that last's to level 10.
Example
0-5 Fighter
6-10 Squire/Beserker/Brawler
11-15 Squire becomes Knight/ Beserker becomes Bear Beserker/Brawler becomes Combatant/
This allows for a framework for third party creators to make new classes and places to slot them in while providing engine designers enough to work with.
The other thing I will recommend from an engine design perspective is that Role's become a thing (Utility, combatant, range etc) each tier should see the classes become more specialized in fulfilling roles.
2d8+2?
Gaming Gang Game? Say that 10 times fast.
Don't forget The...
Creation of your own tebletop rpg its nice idea. I like that topic.
You sound wise but not witty and this this may by boring for the audience.
This happens sometimes when smart person thrying to explain something to less smarter crowd(speaking loud and slow)
What if your stats came from 3 diffrend sources?
1 to 6 from race(heritage, culture),
1 to 6 from profesion(background),
1 to 6 from social status(because being fighter you cud by highborn knight, pour mercynary, barbarian from outskirts of civilization) -or adventturing inspiration. You chose all of them and add up all thre numbers i wish each of them gives you one special ability to chose. For example
-thief may move silently, have slight of hand or by expert in suprising strikes)
-wizard cud have basic spell that will set his scholl of magic(lighting -ofensive, invisibility -mind tricks, flying)
Task resolution by throwing less is limiting your abilities you cannot become that much epic if there is max 20 on your statistic and somebody right off the bat cud have 15,
I like one roll resolution in combat, like in d20 one rol to hit and thats it next round
-there is still a lot of things to make it complex: skills(tricks fighter konown how to use shield or axe), magic(special wepon abilities), what weapon aginst what weapon is used(reach adventage), circumstances(high ground)
I wish to see more complex for all the other rolls like WoD dice pool mechanic. So you cud slowly chasing down the thief(each roll things are happening) or climbing on the moutain gaining suceses in the number of rounds(and get flashbacks why are you climbing -whole adventure).
It's probably not a good idea to insult the content creator and tell him his videos are boring, he talks loud and slow, he thinks he's smarter than his audience, and he isn't witty and THEN make the rest of your comment a boring infodump.
@@nickyfieldman If in your neiberhood lying to other pepole is better thats your sthick not mine. Dud was honest in the topic I did reply in honest answer. Dont you think that If I was thinkig He is insulting I would rather respond in other weay than by speaking from the heart what do I think.
On the other side your comment bring nothing to the table just direspectful garbage. Do you know that If you dont have nothing to say you dont have to talk at all? Mayby when you will grow up I will talk to you again angry kid but for now you will by ignored
You repeatredly insulted the content creator in your first comment. Period. I highly doubt Jeff really cares about what you have to say. Why don't you launch your own channel and then you can grace us with the sorts of videos you feel should be made.
An experienced GM can run an RPG off the back of a napkin. At what point did the RPG enterprise turn into slavery to an “Encyclopedia Brittanica” of rules and resources. I always favored d100 systems unencumbered by lists of anything but fundamental skills and attributes. RPG bloat has become epic outside the current trend in OSR rules systems currently popular. Many players want to play the rules… not the adventure. Initiative order should be decided on the fly by the GM… not a calculus problem slowing down the pace of the game. Then again many players are slaves to popular trends in game systems orbiting a popular GM much to their loss.
Way back in the 80s we experimented with everything we could think of. One session we played without any rules at all...just a GM and players. It worked fine. I guess some people must love it because initiative rules exist but they waste a huge amount of time.
I've seen much better systems. No initiative - players always go first unless there's some reason they shouldn't (like being ambushed). Or players go first round the table clockwise and you get players to sit round the table based on how quick their characters are. Or simultaneous combat which removes the need for initiative.
I wonder why people don't question stupid rules that don't play like initiative. Back in the 80s we questioned all the rules.
I played with a simple flip of a coin a couple of times while out walking with friends. ~ Jeff
The Triple G? LOL! Emulate the best of the best ttrpg emulators D100 Dungeon.
Simple D 20 high wins Charecteristics and skills.
Example XP go toward 10 pips each MAFIE or Health pt.
With skills like locks, traps, luck, arcana etc. With same xp 10 pip for a pt. For no level needed just ability and skill increases. Search action should be based on aware and luck skills. 1 auto fail and 20 auto success. 1 give 2 xp and 20 = 1 xp. 1-10 armour's 1 head 2 shoulder 3 arms 4 left hand 5 right hand 6 waist 7 left leg 8 right leg 8 left foot 10 right foot. Head + 3 dmg foot -3 dmg. Shoulder as back +1 dmg legs -1 dmg.