Search found 339 matches
- Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:17 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: What is the best game engine to hack? (No PL)
- Replies: 33
- Views: 7138
Re: What is the best game engine to hack?
Alright I'll come clean If I understand correctly, you're taking your existing homebrew campaign/system and running sessions with various mechanics and subsystems swapped out to study the player reactions. If that's the gist of it, that's a great idea and definitely how RPG development should be do...
- Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:01 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Investigative RPGs (No PhoneLobster)
- Replies: 13
- Views: 4369
Chamomile did a nice writeup on mystery adventures in his blog . He suggests building a directed graph where nodes are scenes, edges are clues, and each node has at least three edges. The total size of the graph and the length of the shortest path to the conclusion give some sense of how hard it is...
- Wed Aug 19, 2020 9:35 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: What is the best game engine to hack? (No PL)
- Replies: 33
- Views: 7138
- Tue Aug 18, 2020 11:02 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: What is the best game engine to hack? (No PL)
- Replies: 33
- Views: 7138
Depends on what you're trying to make? Not just in terms of what will gel with what you want to do, but also in that if there's something you feel strongly about or enjoy writing, you don't need a system that's good at that, because you're going to replace that system entirely. For example I think p...
- Tue Aug 18, 2020 8:08 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Skills: let the players choose to succeed?
- Replies: 27
- Views: 5872
Fate-style compel mechanics could work for intentional failures. Particularly the sort of bartering aspect, where the GM might bribe you with more points because they have a really good idea where the failure goes, or refuse to give up points for a boring failure. I really like your idea of failures...
- Mon Aug 17, 2020 10:06 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Skills: let the players choose to succeed?
- Replies: 27
- Views: 5872
Auto-succeeding at things your character is Good At is underrated. Too many games set expected success rates close to 50%, which makes characters feel cartoonishly incompetent and slows the game down by inserting a significant chance that nothing happens. Plus resolving auto-succeed abilities is so ...
- Sun Aug 16, 2020 10:31 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Shapes and Shifts
- Replies: 9
- Views: 2390
- Sun Aug 16, 2020 5:35 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: [5e] Thorough explanation of why it's terrible?
- Replies: 261
- Views: 77119
On the topic of monster complexity in 3rd: the stat block has multiple lines of lists of references to other rules. Special attacks, special qualities, feats, plus sometimes spellcasting and spell-like abilities. Sometimes the items in those lists are just flavor, or things mandated by the monster c...
- Sun Aug 16, 2020 12:38 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Shapes and Shifts
- Replies: 9
- Views: 2390
Those are neat. Having flipping on the objectives as well fits with the rest of your themes. What if you combined that with shared objective cards? Like... achieving an objective means you flip it and give it to the opponent, who might flip that side and give it back. With the goal being to not have...
- Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:19 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Why 'Realism' in Fantasy?
- Replies: 31
- Views: 9658
- Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:47 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Shapes and Shifts
- Replies: 9
- Views: 2390
You did a neat job of conveying an interesting world out of very few mechanics. From a game design perspective, I think you'll have to treat being in the Otherworld as a resource to some extent. Like if you expect most combo/engine decks to share a bottleneck of getting cards to the Otherworld, that...
- Mon Dec 30, 2019 10:29 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Designing a Pokemon TTRPG
- Replies: 142
- Views: 21072
- Wed Dec 25, 2019 7:12 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Why is anyone here?
- Replies: 79
- Views: 10905
Homebrew on /tg/ was at its best when it was small silly systems or brainstorming about gonzo settings. Something Tome-like would never fit on an image board with transient threads, but there's more to RPGs than serious additions to rules heavy systems. I always enjoyed the anonymous, transient natu...
- Wed Dec 25, 2019 7:21 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Domain Rules
- Replies: 429
- Views: 61130
- Wed Dec 25, 2019 6:56 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Why is anyone here?
- Replies: 79
- Views: 10905
/tg/ is in such a sorry state because when it comes to media nazis only care about determining a cannon that they can venerate. They want to consume culture in the most correct way from the most approved creators. Homebrew and critical discussion are antithetical to the nazi ethos. They're also the ...
- Mon Dec 23, 2019 8:07 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Wizards of the Coast publishes Rick & Morty Dnd Adventure
- Replies: 64
- Views: 9778
The idea that companies are run based on output or profitability is an outdated fiction. Only the owners care about profit. Only the lowest level employees are conned into caring about their output. The vast majority of decisions are made by middle managers, and they're rewarded by being useful to t...
- Mon Dec 23, 2019 7:52 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Why is anyone here?
- Replies: 79
- Views: 10905
I like critical analysis of games and their design. That's pretty rare these days, and most of what's out there is god awful. The Den is one of the exceptions, so I come here to scratch that itch. The forum would be better with a little less negativity, but it's natural given that the state of RPG d...
- Fri Dec 13, 2019 3:40 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Review: Pokemon Tabletop United
- Replies: 164
- Views: 73406
- Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:02 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Review: Pokemon Tabletop United
- Replies: 164
- Views: 73406
I don't think there's a one size fits all solution for bad / joke pokemon. It's okay for Delibird and Luvdisc to suck, and I think that works for anything that doesn't evolve into something somebody cares about. Delibird at least has an amusing hook in that it can be carrying whatever is funny in th...
- Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:34 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Where to start with mechanics for a playtest?
- Replies: 7
- Views: 1422
Re: Where to start with mechanics for a playtest?
In deciding to make an initial playtest version, what are some general good principles? Know what you intended to make, what you actually made, and how to tell the difference. Know what you're testing, what you're not, and how you intend to check on those things with a playtest. What kind of number...
- Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:32 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Review: Pokemon Tabletop United
- Replies: 164
- Views: 73406
There's sort of an awkward mix of general-purpose features (gills) and species-specific minutia (Shuckle is a juice machine) in here. That's fine and good from a game-mechanical standpoint, but messy from a book layout and typography standpoint. It'd make sense to move all the exclusives to the poke...
- Fri Dec 06, 2019 3:25 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: [5e] Thorough explanation of why it's terrible?
- Replies: 261
- Views: 77119
End-of-life 4th Edition (errata, math fixes, all of the options) is better than 5th Edition as it currently stands. There, I said it. Sure, 4th Edition was a broken mess with no rules except for combat mechanics, but the tactical minigame for 4th Edition is much more interesting than 5th Edition. 5...
- Thu Dec 05, 2019 8:18 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Review: Pokemon Tabletop United
- Replies: 164
- Views: 73406
- Wed Dec 04, 2019 10:13 pm
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Review: Pokemon Tabletop United
- Replies: 164
- Views: 73406
Frank: that's a great list of questions. Almanac: i agree with all your answers. It is my opinion that every single Pokemon is someone's favorite, and I think it's valuable to be able to use your favorite Pokemon and not get fucking bodied for it. I should be able to take a Butterfree up against the...
- Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:48 am
- Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
- Topic: Review: Pokemon Tabletop United
- Replies: 164
- Views: 73406