Roleplaying Games Design

Wrote a new blog today about how much setting should go in a rulebook. It's different for every game, but I feel a lot of games put too much lore in with the rules.

I know it's really hip to have your setting lean on your mechanics and vice versa, so neither works great without another, but I am more of a fan of rules that support tone and play patterns that reinforce genre more than specific settings. Probably mostly because I am not big on learning a lot about a setting before I feel good about running a game.

I also like to have lots of room to improv and make a setting my own. I know you can do that with any setting, but I just feel more confident doing that with less definition in the setting.

I could probably drop a little something more into my rulebook as a stinger to get people excited about what kind of fiction the game presents. I guess that could be interpreted as setting, or at least adjacent.

Curious about what other think about this topic.

https://infantofatocha.itch.io/chronomutants/devlog/572397/whats-a-paradox-war-anyway

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Today's blogpost is all about my flailing to refine and streamline my design docs into a coherent rulebook. I read enough of the d**** things you'd think I would know how to compile and order one. I understand the basics and where I went wrong, and have roadmap, but compared to design development is long and grindy.

Would really love if other folks have input on what makes a rulebook good? what have people done to make their projects easy to get? Which books are your favorite examples? What are your biggest hurdles?

For me I intellectually understand what needs to be there, but actually getting the writing clean and succinct to read is a challenge. I see a lot of DiY books for of background art and such trying to emulate a AAA book but they don't have the text and order of content hammered out 1st, I didn't want to move to layouts until my text was set, but maybe that's a mistake? Curious to see what people think.

how would you guys feel about a magic system where humans can only gain magical powers by consuming monster body parts? like to be able to shapeshift the character would need to eat a pound of werewolf or changeling flesh? or to cast fire magic they'd have to eat a fire elemental's core?

Mechanically this works off of synthetic dream machine. You pay hp for spells and each level up gains you 4hp. Spells would have a fixed minimum cost thus enforcing certain level requirements. You would gain access to certain groups of spells if you eat a corresponding monster core, like you have access to all fire spells if you eat a fire elemental core but they still have hp costs so you can't just cast fireball at level one.

A lot goes into making a game, and each game and designer has a different mix of focus and needs for their games. Off the top of my head we have: world building, rules creation, technical and prose writing, art, layout and visual design, feedback and iteration, promotion and marketing, and community support skills.

Collaboration and contracting are good ways to make up for weaknesses, but so is practice and patience.

So what are you best at? What are you working on improving?

I thought I'd share this since it's running for the next month. Both one page RPGs and game jams are a great way to get something creative done quickly. They're especially nice as a breather from larger progress projects.

Looking for folks to trade a little proofreading. I will read your book and give the best feedback I can on your document. I am not an editor, consider this more like a playtest for an enthusiast seeing your book. I do read/love a lot of rulebooks and game. I can tell you what does/doesn't make sense to me. I can tell you what spelling/grammar mistakes I notice. I can tell you if I see any rules contradictions. If you want I can also give design feedback/impressions, but I was thinking more of a editing pass, at least for what I would like in return.

Specifically, I'm looking for feedback on clarity of my rulebook. Awkward sentences, poor grammar, unclear rules. My rulebook is 20,847 words. So if you have something for me to proofread it would cool to exchange. I feel like this is the only part of my book I cannot do without a 2nd person. You can DM me for specifics, and if you would like to see the gamepage to decide if you are interested first: https://infantofatocha.itch.io/chronomutants

I'd definitely suggest reading the articles and playing around with the tool a bit. Knowing the likelihood of different dice outcomes has been super helpful for me to do things like tailoring loot tables to include item rarity. I thought it might be useful to others as well.

This channel is shaping up to become a really interesting resource in the #TTRPG space. They've already got some good videos from which I've learned a thing or two. I encourage you to check them out.

This is an interesting blog post by @[email protected] about how to weave multiple stories/plots together in an interesting way, which makes it possible to organically "catch" the players even if they wander off in an unexpected (read: unprepped) direction.

This can be used in any #TTRPG, but it can also be turned into a mechanic, built into an #TTRPG. It reminds me of Fronts (I think they're called) in #DungeonWorld.

Hello there, fellow RPG designer!

If you're anything like me, you too love to discuss roleplaying game mechanics, and how they affect gameplay. That is precisely the kind of thing we'll get to do in this community. Personally, I'm currently working on a roleplaying game that I'm so far calling Unified RPG which I sort of think of as a "rules-lite, GURPS-like" TTRPG. So don't be surprised if you see me creating posts about that here in the near future.

But what about you? What brought you to this community? What kind of game are you working on, or what do you want to make in the future? I'd love to hear all about it!