Conflict Resolution based on Gatherings

I had another neat game design idea that I wanted to share. This one comes from a conversation with Izzy, Heavy, and the Moon Cell about how to do skills differently. Of course, don't expect this to be a part of the Runehack RPG, so far I actually don't have any plans for a game that would include this. I wanted to share it because I think it's neat.

Conflict Resolution based on Gatherings

A character is defined by a set of attributes with assigned values, as usual. But their purpose is not to be added or compared to a die roll. Instead, they define how many people you can attempt to influence by your attribute. Whether this succeeds is determined by comparing your level with theirs, and possibly a die roll if you want some randomness involved.

Let's make an example. Say you are trying to sneak through a corridor with some guards in it. Your stealth is 4, and there are 5 guards, so you need to select four guards you hide from, and figure out a way in which you could move so that the fifth guard doesn't get to see you. Then, your level is compared to the guards', successfully letting you sneak past anyone whose level is equal to or less than yours. So, if your level is 4 and the guards' levels are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, there might be one guard who you couldn't have hidden from. You better hope it was that one guard who you didn't choose. What if the guards try to search for you together as a team? They add up all their levels, in this case totaling 15, and at least one of them is bound to find you with a skill that's not a zero. But if you make it past them safely, they might not know you were there in the first place.

Upgrading your skills one digit at a time might be boring, so how about we use an exponential here? Imagine if your skill doubles every time you get to upgrade it. You start off by being able to hide from one guard, then two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, and perhaps more eventually. Imagine a master thief hiding from a crowd of a thousand heads.

The biggest flaw I can see here is doing stuff that doesn't relate to people. When you're trying to pick a lock on a door, do you compare your level with the locksmith's? What if you're just trying to push a boulder up the mountain? It will feel like a cop-out, but I'd ask how many average people it takes to do the same task or something along those lines.

Teamwork here would allow one very competent character to carry the whole group, naturally leading to a more diverse group with various specializations. What would be the limit though? Maybe people who you assist with your abilities also count into the number of people that you can affect. I don't know.
Prince of Persia concept art. I will consider this the source for now.

It is a very raw idea, but that's why I'm posting it here. I don't feel like making it into something complete right now, if I did I would turn it into a short game. If you want to, see where you can take it.

Have a great day!

Runehack RPG 0: Goals and Foundations

The time has come. Let's talk about what I've been working on for some time now. Just to be clear, these articles will be focused on the game's design more than on the worldbuilding.

The old cover art for the Runehack RPG was drawn by Kate Chaste. While it's fine work, over the years I changed my mind and ended up not using it for the game. The new cover art has already been drawn by my wonderful girlfriend Arell, but I figured I could use this for the article series so that these would still get a thumbnail of some sort. I'll reveal the new cover art when the game is finished.

Premise

I like the idea of going beyond the usual pillars of experience. I feel like combat has been explored in many games, the exploration is something some games already do really well, and social interaction is something I have my own opinions on (briefly: give tools, not skips). I will have to do something for some of these, but generally, I don't want to delve too much into those. So, how do I plan to go beyond?

This game takes place in my world Runehack which I talked about several times on my blog. In this world dominated by megacorporations, there's a secretive organization with its own goals. The base assumption is that the organization will face the megacorporations, trying to dig up dirt on them by infiltrating their buildings to search for interesting information about them and then sharing it with the public. Imagine whistleblowers but with exciting freerunning and hacking involved.

That being said, this is the base game that I want to publish this year. I'd like to expand on the game after with extra pillars of experience that could be added or removed without anything changing too much. Of course, you would leave out the base premise of the game if you were to remove the hacking and the freerunning pillars. Still, the same can be said about any system - if I remove combat from D&D, it becomes a vastly different game from what most players experience it as. The big difference I'm leading to is that in my game, I want everything I label as a pillar of experience to be something the game could easily focus on throughout a campaign, even if other pillars are dropped.

Goals

I aim to finish the game's first version by the end of this year. This includes the rules for the three pillars I wish to begin with.

The core pillar is the only pillar you can't remove from the game, since it includes the mechanics that other pillars rely on. These include your fantasy species, regular rolls made using your attributes, some additional background-related traits, and the core of the action economy that's shared with all other pillars.

The freerunning pillar is what I spend most of the time developing. The best way I can put it is that it's an upgrade of what I tested with the Fairy Heist: areas connected by passages that some can pass, some can't, and some can pass but they'd get slowed down. Think of this as Mirror's Edge, or Assassin's Creed, but done in tabletop and ideally without the players fighting their opponents.

The hacking pillar is the final pillar that I want to have in the game when it's published, but it's also the one I'd have the easiest time dropping if I don't manage to finish it on time. It's the dice-placing minigame from The Asterist.

Core Pillar

While the core pillar is something I'm largely satisfied with by now, consider it still a bit of a work in progress. It's unlikely that it will change from now on, but it might if I am compelled enough to do so.

This system's method of rolling is a roll-over using 2d6 or 1d12, with the addition of one's relevant attribute. When a character rolls for its attribute, it can choose to roll Reliably (2d6) or Recklessly (1d12). This is a concept I've described before on my blog, and it's to give the players some control over how their die roll might end up. I will happily borrow the rules for advantage and disadvantage from Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition since I want the numbers to stay within their bounds. An attribute has a range of 0 to 4, with some exceptions.

For now, I'm feeling a bit experimental. I want to preserve a proven mechanic from a previous game, which is why I've decided this game will have five stats, but two of them can be replaced by a single one for some characters.

• Might - physical strength. Pushing, lifting, dragging, and so on.
• Agility - dexterity. Sleight of hand, dodging, acrobatics, balance, and so on.
• Training - tools knowledge. Picking locks, making mechanisms, artistic performance, and so on.
• Comprehension - abstract knowledge. Physics, chemistry, psychology, history, and so on.
• Hunch - guessing. Searching for hidden things, intuition, and so on.
• Height - replaces the Might and Agility of characters who are so tiny that their Might and Agility wouldn't matter more than their height. Unlike other stats, this one ranges from 4 to 17, and when one uses it, they roll 3d6 and succeed when they either roll their exact height, below their height when they would use their Might, or above their height when they would use their Agility. Possessing a height stat also reduces the number of acts you can perform in a turn by 1.

Most of these attributes also come with some extra benefit attached to them. For now, since it will be relevant, I will mention just that you get a number of hunches per day equal to your Hunch attribute, which you can spend to make a guess statement towards your GM about a thing your character could reasonably guess. You must make it clear that you are using your hunch, by saying something along the lines of "I have a hunch that..." for example. Your GM then tells you whether your hunch was correct or not. Yes, it's the mechanic I've tested with the Clues and Hunches, I like it a lot.

When it comes to the playable species, there's a plan to include seven of them. I've considered including the digital ghost that I've introduced in Runehack: The Asterist, but in the end, I've realized it might be too powerful for the freerunning pillar. It would be fine as an opponent now and then, but as a player character, it's just too much. As for the rest, here they are listed along with a rough outline of their traits:

• Dwarf. Possesses a touch so sensitive, that they can see anything that's touching a surface they touch with their bare skin. This functions up to 1 area away.
• Elf. Can see in the dark and perform one additional activity per day. Their lifespan is also extra long, but that doesn't really matter within the game itself.
• Fairy. Possess the Height stat, and they can also naturally fly. Once per turn, they can use an act to move twice. I might add one or more traits, since right now a Small Runebot is an objectively better version of a fairy.
• Goblin. Over a week, they can adjust their physiology through a diet, gaining a trait of their choice. I'll be honest, neither do I know what exactly will these abilities be just yet.
• Human. One of their attributes is increased by 1. Furthermore, they can spend 1 hunch after a roll to force a reroll, keeping the new result.
• Orc. One of their attributes is increased by 1. They get an additional act on their turn that they can only use to move. They can also choose one attribute that they can increase after a time beyond 4.
• Runebot. Their body is a puppet remotely controlled by their mind from a safe location. Their body is highly modular, and it can come in a Regular or Small model (the difference being that the Small model has a Height stat). With the increase in level, they get more and more components that they can attach to their body. I will need to find a way of compensating the Small runebots for a loss of an act, but for now, this is it.

Pillars' Commonalities

I don't know yet how I'll work out the progression across all the pillars, but what I do know is that every time a character gets to "level up", they will have to increase one of their lowest pillars by a level.

There are two ways of tracking what a character does in this game: activity and act. A character gets to choose to do 6 activities per day. They could in theory be split up and shuffled around, but I've wanted a way of tracking the activities one does that's somewhat simple, so for now consider them uninterrupted blocks (as unnatural as it may be). Some activities can include sleep, work, mission, or anything else of significant time investment, such as an important social interaction, or research. Matters such as transportation, eating, and so on, aren't tracked and are assumed to be performed as part of these activities. On a turn-by-turn basis (like during a mission), a character can take 3 acts per turn.

I'm quite hyped for this project. It's been a long time coming, and I want to play it. There's still a long way to go though, so for now this is everything I can say here. Thank you for reading, and have an awesome day!

Opposed Rolls Combat System

I watched a video recently that described a combat system with possibly the best balance between authenticity and simplicity. I figured I'd take the idea and develop it a little.

"I missed!" "The enemy missed too." "Natural 1." "Enemy missed too, don't worry." "Aha, a critical hit! ... That's, uh... six damage."
Success in regular combat isn't just about hitting the opponent, it's about hitting an opponent without getting hit.
Shadow Fight, by Yerbol Bulentayev

At the start of its turn, a character gets a number of maneuvers determined by its level. (I'll keep the exact number vague since this would probably depend on the game you wish to make with this.) These maneuvers can be spent during the turn in the following ways:

• Attack. You attempt to strike another creature of your choice within the range of a weapon you wield. Roll the weapon's die, add a relevant attribute, and compare the result to the target's total for defense (see below). If your rolled total is greater, the target takes an amount of damage equal to the roll.
• Move. A maneuver can be used to move X spaces. X could be defined by your level, or armor, or just the same for everyone.

You can use maneuvers that remain in following mostly defensive ways even outside of your turn:

• Block. If you are wielding a shield when you are attacked, you roll its die and add a relevant attribute.
• Counter*. If you are wielding a weapon and your attacker is in its range, you roll its die and add a relevant attribute to it when you are attacked. If your roll is greater than the attacker's, you instead deal damage to the attacker equal to the amount rolled.
• Dodge. When you are attacked, you roll the die determined by your armor and add a relevant attribute to it.
• Strike*. If you are wielding a weapon and a creature leaves its range, you can attempt to attack it. (For the sake of brevity, works the same way as Attack would, and the target can use the above three maneuvers against it.)

* At your own discretion, the attacking maneuvers used outside of your turn might be restricted just to melee weapons.

All weapons, shields, and armor come with a die that you roll to see how effective it is. Shields and armor reduce any damage you take from weapons by their defined amounts.

• Dual-wieldable (2d4, 1d4 if just one is wielded)
• Ranged (1d6)
• Single-handed melee (1d8)
• Two-handed melee (1d10)
• Shields (1d12, damage reduction 2)
• No armor (1d10, damage reduction 0)
• Light armor (1d8, damage reduction 2)
• Medium armor (1d6, damage reduction 4)
• Heavy armor (1d4, damage reduction 6)

Action economy beyond this could exist too, of course, and I have no idea how this would work in the long run. What the hit points required for this system would be, what the distances would be, the height of the attributes, and so on is frankly something I'm too lazy to figure out right away. Unless I'd be making this into a full game, it feels like something someone else will be happy to do.

Now, someone might look at this and go "This discourages the players from attacking at all", to which I say... yeah? A battle isn't about enemies missing each other with 40% of their hits, it's about their hits clashing, and seeing who's gonna manage to damage whom. Unless you can make lots of maneuvers and take lots of hits, you probably shouldn't be on the front lines.

Until then, I hope you've enjoyed my article, and I would like to wish you all a wonderful day!

Interrogation Minigame

Recently I encountered a minor problem. Since most TTRPGs are about combat, their fail state is death. However, an absolute death with no way back is an anticlimactic way to end a character, especially when they have unfinished business. Which is why I assume resurrection magic was introduced. And that creates a slew of worldbuilding issues I'm not even going to go into.

My game won't be about combat. Death could occur, but it's not the only fail state in the game, nor is it the most frequent one. See, the players in my game are to be members of a secretive organization that works against the megacorporations that own the cities. Capturing them alive is a lot better than killing them off because they might provide information. It could just take some... convincing. This is an ideal fail state for my game, seeing how this allows the other players to run a rescue mission, saving their friend.

But that got me thinking... what would the character be going through in the meantime? I mean, players will likely prioritize the rescue mission, but what if they don't? What if they leave the one player waiting for too long? What will the player do in the meantime (besides likely playing some weaker character substitute)?

My initial thought was "Oh no, I can't cover this with any of the stats in the game, do I have to add a Willpower stat into my game?" After some thinking, though, it turns out I don't need to. I can just reuse an old idea of mine: dice towers. No, I don't mean the kind that you'd use to roll the dice.

The dice are stacked, by Michael Summers

On every day of the interrogation, the GM asks a question and rolls 3d6, dropping the lowest roll. The player needs to put this many d6's on top of one another to keep the information away from the interrogators. If the stack of dice collapses, the information is revealed. The player can choose to reveal the information at any moment, or they can spend their Energy to lower the number of dice required for the stack. Additionally, the GM can decide after the die roll that the interrogators are going extra hard on the character. The player character takes a Wound when they have stacked a number of dice equal to the higher of the rolls, and when the stacked dice collapse. A character doesn't replenish its resources while captured this way and is stripped of its ways of using special abilities (in 5e terms, spellcasting foci and weapons would be perfect examples).

I started to write this back in December, believe it or not, but I didn't get to finish it until 2024. I'm honestly not sure if this will make it into the final game, but I'll have to test that in playtesting. This might be difficult because the first hurdle to overcome is the fact that I'll likely be doing my playtesting online. I want to make a minigame for this that would keep things interesting for the player characters who are out of the game. I want the minigame to have at least one choice for the player to make, otherwise it's more or less a waste of time.

At the end of the day, I might just replace it with a less physical minigame, but this was a neat idea that I figured I'll share here. See you soon!

Review of my 2023

Another year has come and gone. It was an eventful year at that.

2020 | 2021 | 2022

How was 2023?

In one word, this year could be summed up as eventful. With 11.6K views of the blog, it surpassed the last year, but not 2021. I feel like that's partially because of the fact that I stopped making D&D homebrews 3 months in, for good. Part of the reason for that is the distance that grew between me and D&D since then (see my review of 2022), but another part of this is an elephant in the room. Starting in early January, Wizards of the Coast have seen controversy after controversy. OGL, Pinkertons, AI art, misprinted cards, and so much more. The two things they have succeeded at are the D&D movie, which was good, but came to the cinemas with bad timing, … and Baldur's Gate 3. At the same time, One D&D has been renamed to D&D 5e 2024, and it's... not looking all that much different from what's currently 5e.

All this in combination with my dislike of D&D in general is why my publishing has slowed down this year. On April 1st, I released Null, my only serious published full class for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. This was also meant to be my final 5e homebrew, so I made sure it was an interesting one, breaking the conventions of the game to open up the readers' perspectives. I haven't stopped following D&D for some reason, though I did redirect my attention elsewhere.

Here's some good news, though! I managed to surpass my personal record of articles written in a year once again. My former record was in 2021 at 27 articles. When I found out that I was very close to this number in December, I figured I'd go just a bit further, pushing it up to 28. Maybe that's why there were more blog views than last year. The biggest contributing factor to this would have to be the fact that I gave myself a new monthly challenge of making a 200-word game every month. What I find funny, looking back at it, is the fact that my busiest months were April, October, and December. I can somewhat understand April - April Fools is something I always try to do, and the monthly 200-word game added another article there. October was around the time when I finished The Asterist, published a design article for another horror game of mine, and made a 200-word game, then I had some extra ideas. As for December, well... like I already said, I went a bit further than expected to break my personal record. I wonder if I will be active in these months next year too.

That being said, let's address my resolutions from the last year.

Resolutions from 2023

I find it funny that I said I wanted fewer technical successes, that's pretty much most of the stuff I accomplished this year.

• Runehack: The Asterist is finally released! While I can't say I'm 100% satisfied with it, at least it's out for people to see and play.
• As for more Runehack Cities, I wrote... one. It's not much, but hey at least it's a technical success, right?
• Streaming was hardly present during the year, I think the Twitch recap told me I've streamed five times? Well, that changed a bit in December when I started to stream Lethal Company more. I'm not sure if I should count that though. I also started a Youtube channel like I hoped I would! But... it also has just one video for now, and even that's just an introduction.
• Dungeon23 was a big failure, with most of the wind being taken out of my sails due to the OGL controversy. Over time, I didn't feel like returning to it because I realized... I don't enjoy dungeons. I don't enjoy combat as much as I used to. My tastes have changed. However, during January I felt like releasing a 200-word game, and I also made one in February. This made me reconsider this goal, and instead of making a daily room for a megadungeon I'd never use anyway, I made a 200-word game every single month, most of which I will probably never play.

Some of my successes were not resolutions for me last year (or at least they should have been mentioned in my last yearly review). I managed to republish the Slasher Oneshot System with a new name Final: Sole Survivor. I started gathering information regarding my worldbuilding and even personal notes into an Obsidian vault, which I find to be highly useful now. I also traveled ten thousand kilometers to meet Arell, which was a fantastic experience, even if it was rather scary since I had to do it on my own.

Hopes and Goals for 2024

I'll still keep it light because I don't know how much I can afford to aim for. I only have two resolutions this year, the first of which is finishing and publishing the Runehack RPG, with regular updates on this blog, YouTube, or Twitch (based on whatever I'll go with this year). It will be a mixture of many things I wish to get out of playing TTRPGs, including most of the design from Runehack: Fairy Heist and Runehack: The Asterist. Both of these projects served as testing grounds for the concepts that would go into the Runehack RPG, and I can make it work within the next year. My goal is to cover at least the hacking and freerunning pillars of experience along with the core rules. I already started writing the first blog post regarding the system, though I wonder if I should be more active on YouTube. Not many people read my blog, it might be more interesting as a video. Besides, you can listen to a video while you do other things, such as chores.

My other resolution was actually something I came up with after New Year's Eve. I consume a rather small amount of media. There are recommendations I received for good things, and I was never too concerned with not spoiling myself on them, so I already know a fair bit about them. As some dude once said, the secret to creativity is in well-hidden sources. It needs food for thought, so my idea is to play 12 good games this year. If they are video games, I need to play them until I believe I've finished them to a sufficient degree. If they are tabletop RPGs, I need to play just one session. Those of you who have read my previous New Year resolutions might be wondering why I worded it the way I did - why not make it another "once a month" deal? Why not play one good game every month? Well, to put it bluntly, Witcher 3 is the primary reason. This game supposedly has 100+ hours of playtime. If I were to play it every single day in a month, I'd need to play for over 3 hours daily. There's no way I could afford to do that. But at the same time... I want to finish it finally. I don't know if I'll ever have enough time to finish it otherwise.

I can't guarantee I'll keep making more 200-word games, seeing how each one is more of a proof of concept rather than an actual game, but I can't say I'll completely stop either. The rest of my goals are either too personal to list here, or something I can't 100% guarantee I can do. Game jams, NaNoWriMo, and other kinds of challenges might have to go to the side since I want to focus on Runehack and gaming a lot more.

Thank you for reading my blog. I would like to wish you a Happy New Year 2024. Have a great one, I'll see you soon!