r/RPGdesign • u/Wandering-Mendicant • 2d ago
Mechanics How does your rpg solve a design problem
What is a big problem you perceive to exist in the rpg design space and how do you think your game solves it? I can be something specific to certain types of rpgs.
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u/Cryptwood Designer 1d ago
I'll bite as I've observed a persistent problem in many successful TTRPGs: they don't teach the GM how to actually run the game.
A lot of designers have the understandable assumption that anyone that picks up their game is already going to be familiar with other TTRPGs (probably D&D). That is almost certainly a safe assumption but it leads designers to believe that they don't need to teach the basics of GMing because virtually anyone interested in GMing your game has GMed other games first.
The thing is though that modern D&D doesn't do a very good job of teaching GMs how to run it. As just one glaring example, it is entirely possible to run a 5E battle in 15-20 minutes using the rules as written, but almost no one does because they don't even realize that it is possible, the game certainly doesn't teach GMs how. Long, tedious battles are so pervasive that most people won't believe that it is possible, they literally think I'm lying.
I know what you are thinking, that's a D&D problem, D&D specifically is bad at teaching GMs how to run it. I've read 150+ systems though and very few of them are any better than 5E. They almost all make the assumption that any GMs running them have previous experience as a GM but where exactly were those GMs supposed to have learned the fundamentals of GMing from if the most common gateway TTRPG, D&D, doesn't teach them?
There is an entire secondary market of people peddling GM advice in the form of YouTube videos and blog articles, which really shouldn't need to exist if TTRPGs were teaching that stuff directly to GMs.
My WIP is designed specifically to assist me in running action scenes, so that the mechanics align with my GMing style, and I aim to make sure that anyone that reads my book will learn how to run fast, exciting battles, chases, desperate escapes, etc. Not just when running my game either, it is a style of running action scenes that can be utilized in virtually any other TTRPG.
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u/ArtistJames1313 Designer 1d ago
I think GM advice is great, but also, building a system that is easy to GM is also lacking across a lot of games. When I first picked up Numenera on a humble bundle years ago, and ran it for the first time, it was the easiest to GM game I had ever run. I was shocked how easy it was to build and run a campaign with it. I wish more games emphasized the mental load GM's carry like Numenera/Cypher System does.
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u/Cryptwood Designer 1d ago
That's a great point! So much of design discussion is about the player experience that the GM experience doesn't get talked about as much, even though I would argue that the GM experience is the most important aspect for a traditional TTRPG. If the GM doesn't enjoy running it, or prepping it, it doesn't matter how much the players love playing it.
To use the 5E example again, the only problem with 5E that I have that is bad enough to stop me from running it is how much time it takes to prepare for a session. But that is enough to stop me from running it which means none of my players get to play 5E even though they would like to.
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u/ArtistJames1313 Designer 1d ago
Yeah, I used to GM Cyberpunk 2020 back in the day, which required a lot of prep time. I had the time then. I don't now. On the flip side, I've run a Numenera campaign with as little as 20 minutes prep, and have run a few versions of my own system with zero prep on the fly. I think that D&D, Cyberpunk, and similarly more traditional and crunchy games aren't any more fun than simpler to run games in all honesty. They're more mental overhead for both players and GM more often than not. Not that they aren't fun. I thoroughly enjoyed Cyberpunk both as a player and GM. But the games I've run and played based on Cypher System have been equally as complex of stories and plots and just as fun with much less mental load.
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u/Brwright11 Remnant Space 1d ago
Yeah Mothership TOMBS system for horror, Dungeonworld and Without Numbers do the best in helping new GM's figure out how to run the game and what you need to prep.
A lot of the play examples have shrunk or been cut for page count reasons (money, which I get) but they taught players and GM's the kind of verbal back and forth that is the game.
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u/Cryptwood Designer 1d ago
Those are great examples of TTRPGs that go way above and beyond the average in teaching GMs how to run them. Two that I would add are Masks: A New Generation and Blades in the Dark which does a good job of explaining the exact procedure for action adjudication.
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u/darklighthitomi 1d ago
I haven't solved it yet, but the biggest problem is the lack of recognition of how you can have extremely different games using the exact same mechanics based entirely on changing the expectations of the people playing. The common view is that mechanics are rules and therefore define play, but other views don't see that at all and thus play like an entirely different game despite using the same mechanics.
Some people might not combat centric campaigns vs roleplay campaigns, but that is not even scratching the surface of just how deep the differences go. Most of it is very difficult to put into words.
I hate this problem because I don't like the common way of playing. It isn't the mechanics I have a problem with, it is the expectations people bring and operate on that I dislike. I don't want to play a game defined by the mechanics, I want to play like it is a freeform roleplay game but with mechanics as play aids, the kind of play that you could drop the mechanics entirely and still keep playing.
That is how I first learned to play, and that first gm was the greatest I ever had, and only a single game since has ever come anywhere close, and it is all because these modern players and gms treat the game like an overly complicated boardgame defined by the mechanics. Even when they run the same system, it feels more restricted and constrained because they are not using the mechanics as tools but instead treat them as rules.
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u/Dumeghal Legacy Blade 1d ago
I like your perspective on mechanic tools vs rules. The modern ubiquitous experience of video games has shifted the zeitgeist of player expectations quite a lot in my lifetime. The understanding of players that the rules of ttrpgs are an operating system seems to be the norm now. But as you say, they are tools, more constraints or guiderails than the path itself.
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u/darklighthitomi 1d ago
Constraints and guardrails is third option in addition to those I presented above. Never cared for that style myself, but it kinda makes sense for those groups that don't trust their GM.
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u/Dumeghal Legacy Blade 1d ago
The constraints and guardrails to me feel less like mistrust of the GM and more a very valuable and necessary component of maintaining predictable expectations for the players. The thing that ruins games for me is inconsistent internal logic. Even GMs that I have "trusted" sometimes have very different ideas of what is reasonable or likely or possible.
Humans have different ideas of reality, let alone fantasy versions of reality.
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u/darklighthitomi 1d ago
Consistency is a different thing from constraints and guardrails.
This part boils down to what constitutes "predictable outcomes" for players. One method is the more naturalistic method of interacting with the fictional world and getting feedback on how well you performed. Having the GM be the arbiter with guidelines for reference works well if you have a simulationist system.
The other method is to have mechanics that are constraints on the GM with player expectations coming from the mechanics rather than interacting the narrative world. I find this method tends to lead to more video game logic by the players rather than real world logic.
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u/FrostyKennedy Cyberpunk Witches- DGBATS 1d ago
I came into ttrpg design because of something that excited me when I read about it in VTM, but ultimately disappointed me:
Social combat. Basically there are rules that allow you to use your willpower (A valuable secondary resource) like a healthbar. Social combat never really came up, and it wasn't super fleshed out.
I made an entire ttrpg to try and make that social HP idea work out, and after many long months- abandonned it entirely as being too abstract and hard to do in the moment. What I ended up with for social confrontation is even successful social rolls always give the NPC a choice in response- rise to your goading or chicken out and loose face, be cowed by your intimidation or act in response and maybe make the situation worse, etc.
I did keep this idea of 'mental hp' as being core to the game, above and beyond actual physical HP, and (I think) improved on and condensed the core VTM roleplay systems of vices and virtues and compulsions and blood bonds and etc.
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u/Dumeghal Legacy Blade 1d ago
Always winning.
There is so much fun and story in losing! Some of my favorite memories of rpgs is the epic failures!
So the problem is: how do you allow for players to lose, but keep the game going?
Wrapped up in that is character death. I also wanted combat to feel more real, and dying in combat is a necessary element of that reality. So I had to figure out how players can lose, have their character die, and keep the continuity of the game.
The answer was semi-immortal player characters, and to keep it from feeling cheap, I had to get really creative with the setting!
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u/PyramKing Designer & Content Writer 🎲🎲 2d ago
I don't necessarily agree with your premise, as I do not think there is a "big problem". If I did it would be my oversized ego thinking I know best.
I came into design backwards. I developed a setting first and then spent a couple of years with a multitude of systems that I thought would fit it well. Add to that I prefer a more FKR and elegant approach to play, so I ventured into designing my own system.
To conclude, I did not and do not think there is a BIG PROBLEM, I am just interested in designing a system for my world and my prefer play style.
Currently in alpha play testing.
I will of course make a free version for the he community.
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u/digitalhobbit 2d ago
I kind of disagree with the premise. I'm not trying to solve a particular problem. And there are plenty of amazing games out there, which I enjoy very much. I could play many of them and be perfectly happy, I just want to have a game of my own
That said, there are certainly some goals I have in mind. E.g. I want to have a system that lends itself to impromptu pickup games, while being interesting enough to support a mini campaign. And that's easy to adapt to pretty much any genre and setting with close to zero prep. Finally, I'm exploring some digital tool ideas to go along with my game, which is something I'd like to see more of.
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u/LurkerFailsLurking 1d ago
You e already got a few people challenging the premise, so I'll skip that despite thinking along those lines as well. Instead this is an attempt to engage the question in as interesting a way as I can. I have two versions of your question that are interesting to me:
1) What's a design choice I've made that's unusual?
2) What's a solution to a design problem I had in my own game that I'm especially pleased with?
1) I've been very interested recently in using standard sets of playing cards in various ways. In my game Fractal Galaxies, the cards are used as a recursive galaxy generator that can help you generate everything from interstellar civilizations and alien ecosystems, to NPCs' childhood memories, from the martial issues of an 18th century Scottish cattle drover, to the schemes of a secret society within a wizard university. In my game TRACS ("Tactical Roleplaying Adventure Card System") the cards are the players' and GM's resources they use to act.
2) After the first version of Fractal Galaxies I came out, I listed to a podcaster trying to learn the game straight from the rules and realized that it was actually three different games super imposed on each other. One was the galaxy generator I mentioned. Another was TRACS, which was using Fractal Galaxies to generate encounters without a GM. A third was a cooperative sci-fi board game about exploring the galaxy that used Fractal Galaxies to generate the galaxy. Players had to learn all three games at the same time and understand how to switch from one to the other fluidly to play. It was a complicated mess. Realizing this, I've split them into 3 much simpler games that can be combined but don't require it.
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u/ArtistJames1313 Designer 1d ago
I can't say I saw a big problem in the RPG space in general, but just a problem I personally didn't like in an RPG I otherwise loved that I wanted to solve. At least, that's how it started. I was GMing Numenera after having picked it up in a Humble Bundle, and I fell in love with how easy it was to run as a GM. There were a lot of things it did right in really simple and straightforward ways. I only had 2 real issues with it that weren't deal breakers, but, I thought I could maybe improve on with a slight hack of the system.
First, the HP system being tied to the resources you needed for all abilities just didn't feel right to me. Effectively, anytime a player wanted to do something in combat, they were damaging themselves to do it, and sometimes moreso than just getting hit by an enemy. I get pushing yourself to do something really cool can tax you, but I don't think it should be the same amount as getting stabbed is. So I wanted to solve that, by simply decoupling HP from the resource system.
Second, the difficulty levels being multiples of 3, with "easing" the difficulty stepping the target down by steps of 3. It wasn't awful, but after over a year of playing, my players never really got fully comfortable with the math counting by 3s. Sure, some of us who are more inclined to math did it fine, but for several players it was never intuitive. So I wanted to fix how targets were set and still keep it on a simple scale.
And I figured while I was at it, I would address a few other minor nitpicks, like there not being any rogue class even in the Cypher System with all of its optional settings and character types. And I took the opportunity to just fine tune it for the setting I wanted to run.
Skip ahead 5 years and now my system looks very little like Numenera/Cypher System, which, I'm glad of because their newest version releasing this year already addresses the HP issue, and possibly more, so if I want to play it again, I can just pick up the new version. But also, I've found that what I really wanted was more than just a hack of Numenera. The problem I wanted to solve that was larger than Numenera's minor system issues was player engagement. I wanted to keep the ease of running the game it had, but add mechanics that encouraged player creativity and engagement. Most games I've run in nearly every system I've played, and most games I've been a player in, has had at least 1 player who at some point checks out during a session. They might be very engaged for some sessions, but just not interested in others. So I dove into story and narrative based games to see how they handle this, did a lot of research into a lot of games, even though I haven't had time to play many of them. But I've borrowed and adapted ideas and come up with a few mechanics that encourage player creativity, and am working on the last piece, encouraging teamwork before I think it'll be ready for the official version 1.
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u/jerrod_gunning 11h ago
I tend to separate the design problem from the player-facing promise.
“How do I make scarcity create meaningful decisions without turning the game into inventory accounting?” might be a useful design problem for me when creating a survival horror game setting. But nobody buys a game because I successfully solved an inventory-accounting problem. They care whether running low on supplies actually makes the session tense.
So I think the useful question becomes: what do I want players deciding, feeling, or doing at the table that they aren’t doing now?
Then the mechanic has a job. If it changes those decisions, great. If it only demonstrates how clever the solution is, it probably isn’t earning its place in the game.
Some of the hardest design work is realizing you solved the problem beautifully and should still cut the mechanic.
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u/stephotosthings no idea what I’m doing 2d ago
All these folks saying 'it's not solving problems'' are being quiet literal in the OPs post.
Any and all design elements are a basic abstraction of reality, and with that the problem is diluting real life down to something more simple.
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u/GrapefruitOk1242 1d ago
One common problem I aimed to address in my combat system is that of player downtime during combat - i.e. having to wait while everybody else takes their turn one-by-one and the resultant large amount of session-time that this eats up in a lot of 'tactical combat' games.
To that end, my combat system is designed around shared turns broken down into phases that allow for simultaneous action most of the time - i.e. everybody moves together, everybody rolls attacks together, etc. The only enforced waiting time is when the GM needs to resolve or adjudicate on something.
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u/Fheredin Tipsy Turbine Games 1d ago
For me, the "big problem," was player disengagement while the initiative wheel cycles. Most games take a solid 5-10 minutes for the initiative wheel to cycle back to a player, and in less than perfect groups, that is plenty of time to go to the bathroom, look up cat videos, or go take a phone call. And that means you have to reorient the player to the game once they get back.
My solution is to never turn off the player's ability to act. Your turn is when you receive Action Points, but it isn't necessarily when you have to spend them (obviously, there's a limit to how many Action Points you can bank.) This means players budget their Action Points to last until they next get a recharge, and have to adapt plans if things change.
It does require a somewhat crunchier game core, but most playtesters don't notice. The more attention you pay to the game, the less difficult crunchy interactions become up to a point, and "act anytime" initiative wheels are really good at keeping player interest high.
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u/ambergwitz 1d ago
Most games take a solid 5-10 minutes for the initiative wheel to cycle back to a player,
Say what? What kind of games are those "most games" that you think of? Can't think of more than one or two games I've ever played that had this issue.
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u/Fheredin Tipsy Turbine Games 1d ago
I think you are confusing your group with a normal group. Even Savage Worlds--a system built and marketed for speed--tends to take average groups a bit less than 5 minutes to complete an initiative wheel. D&D can take around 20.
Average groups are not fast.
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u/ambergwitz 1d ago
I played with a different groups and different games, but not very much D&D and not Savage Worlds. 5 minutes is probably quite normal for a round, but not with any players just being idle while the others act. Guess it also depends on the GM and the group, what happens to the other characters are important and you react to that, you don't open your phone while there's action going on.
The exception outside of D&D is Shadowrun, but that's an outlier.
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u/Sup909 1d ago
D&D and PF2e regularly take that long.
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u/ambergwitz 1d ago
So, not most games. Solving a specific problem for D&D and close derivatives, that's hacking D&D. No issue with that, but it's not solving a general problem.
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u/Fheredin Tipsy Turbine Games 1d ago
I think this is a case of you never having timed a round, or not done it frequently, anyways. If you are engaged with the game, time will seem to progress quickly, and you will perceive the time used as being less than it really is. That, and Actual Plays are usually time compressed or edited down.
Fast systems use about a minute per player. Players can go faster than that, of course, but the GM will usually need more time than a single 1 minute turn, and handing initiative off often consumed a few seconds. Across 4 players and a GM, and a 3 second gap between turns--which I would not consider an unreasonable pause for most actual play sessions--you are talking almost exactly a 5 minute round.
In more ordinary circumstances, it's more common to see a group having fun play a really fast system that can manage 3-5 minute rounds at a 10 to 12 minute round rate so they can enjoy the game.
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u/ambergwitz 1d ago
Yes, some rounds take more than 5 minutes, but players aren't idle for 10 minutes and go to toilet, check their phone or whatever.
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u/blahthebiste 1d ago
This sounds incredible. Care to share more details of how it works?
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u/Fheredin Tipsy Turbine Games 1d ago
The basic idea is that you get AP recharges and a maximum AP pool size based on your stats and equipment.
You may spend AP to buy actions at any time. There's no my turn/ your turn; if you spend the AP and declare an action, it stops everything else until your action is finished. Unless someone else declares another action after you do, in which case it interrupts you. (This is a LIFO stack; this kind of mechanic is relatively rare in TTRPGs, but quite common in TCGs. Both Magic: The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh! use LIFO stacks.)
The other thing to note here is that you basically have to dovetail this with tanking mechanics. There's no reason to include a LIFO stack if you're just changing the order attacks play out; defense is the entire point. Especially defensive actions that block damage, spells which reduce incoming damage on another PC, or tanking actions which straight up take an attack off one PC and put them on another.
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u/blahthebiste 1d ago
Do you ever run into situations where everyone is just waiting for someone else to do something?
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u/Fheredin Tipsy Turbine Games 1d ago
It happens, but it isn't really a problem when it does. Turns where no one does anything take almost zero time, so you blaze through recharges and you get to a point where people have to spend AP or lose it.
The bigger stress is when a monster takes an action and all the players respond. So the AP pool limit is the component which actually breaks the game.
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u/Exciting_Policy8203 Anime Bullshit Enthusiast 2d ago
If I had to think in those terms, I’d say that a problem I was interested in solving, is forever games. Which is for many people a feature, one game, one group, one experience.
But I think games and stories are best when they have endings, and that ending a game and starting a new one encourages playing new things, and iterating on old ones.
I also think most games, focus on large group sizes. Five to six players or more when you include the GM. I know these games play with smaller groups, but it’s not generally encouraged and in some cases the game design discourages it.
So I made a game that has a defined start and ending, with a defined number of session, played by 3 people including the GM.
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u/Drudenfusz Curator of Roleplay Experiences 1d ago
Like other pointed out, the term "problem" might be not the best here. I mean sure you can have challenges if you want to create an experience that is not covered by the tools available in the paradigm. But that does not mean the system within the common play paradigm are somehow bad for not having addressed the item you consider a problem.
For me I had quite a few challenges, but that is solely because I was unsatisfied with the paradigms. Especially the competency focused play and how losing a character usually lead to the player no longer being capable to participate in play. Thus I needed a solution to apply randomness differently than in the competency rolls that is so common.
First I switched the order of the play procedure, borrowing from some board games. The default in our hobby is basically move, then roll, which changed to roll, then move. This means instead of first declaring the action and then check if it is successful, I went with you first roll the oracle for the scene and then assign actions to the dice results. But this allowed me then to go a step further and read the oracle as things happening regardless of actions the characters take. And in that divorce of character actions and the effects in the fiction, suddenly it was no longer necessary that a character has to be in the scene for the player to nevertheless shape play. Even a dead character was no longer an issue. As side effect this makes the role of a GM unnecessary and also works for solo play.
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u/flamfella Dabbler 1d ago
That premise is well suited to people with more of an engineering mind-set, and I don't think many designers on here are professional engineers (neither am I). But I like the premise, because I have that mindset anyway. Also, any major solutions created will be in a system's architecture rather than content, so there's a very slim fraction of people making TTRPGs where they focus on the (boring) parts that aren't setting, cool creatures, character abilities, etc.
I'm attempting to solve power scaling in all of its forms. To preserve asymmetry, physical consistency, and the visceral, immediate understanding that a cannonball will explode a human body apart. Where a combination of mechanics interacting allows everything to be relatively compared, such that the resolution and math is just the same for a SWAT team versus a street gang as it is for a god swatting down primordial beasts. There is minimal numerical scaling whatsoever, HP/Damage/TNs barely going from ordinary human scale to the cosmic/divine level. Nearly everything is discrete math: states, sets, categorical tiers, so the arithmetic you do is minimal. My core resolution is literally a physics engine built entirely on discrete math. It is very different than most simulationist systems which primarily use quantitative scaling (increasing numbers) where I use qualitative scaling, where the Grade of weapons/armor/effect (0-VII) interacts with nearly every aspect of core resolution to keep the cognitive load and math low, while boosting physical fidelity.
A formal example is how Grade and resistances affect Wounds. Wounds are in tiers: Strain, Minor, Serious, Grievous. 3 lesser wounds convert upwards to a higher tier (3 Strain -> 1 Minor). An equal Grade attack produces (1-3) Minor wounds by default.
- You make an attack with a handgun (Grade I) against a guy with a rifle-rated hard armor vest, which is Grade I with resistance to Conventional damage. Resistance boosts the armor to effective Grade II, so any wounds produced are Strain. Equivalent to minor bruising in the fiction, and does nothing mechanically until enough Strain has been accumulated.
- A knight strikes at a dragon's scales (Grade III) with their sword (Grade I); it does absolutely nothing as Grade III armor is equivalent to an armored vehicle (like an M2 Bradley). A cannonball (Grade III) from the castle walls then strikes into its body, producing Minor wounds. Scales might crack and blood might be drawn, but you'll need a lot more shots to bring it down.
- A king in fully enchanted mythril or adamantium armor and a sword to match it (Grade III weapon and armor) acts as a one-man army attacking a garrisoned settlement. He could wade through a sallied force of medieval soldiers being effectively invulnerable except to siege weapons, attacks targeting his visor's eye slits, or repeated heavy hits to the head. Meanwhile his sword produces grievous wounds, cutting through armor (grade I) and flesh like paper. The same sword would easily cut through the iron-banded wood gate (Grade II), destroying it in 1-2 attacks.
There are, of course even more interactions than such as involving called shots, and an Immortal/Mortal state for narratively important characters that prevents the death spiral and controls pacing until they reach 0 HP and feel the terror of a system that has been tuned by watching countless ballistic dummy videos.
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u/Brwright11 Remnant Space 1d ago
I came around to a similar class structure but I stuck with qualitative. Multiplying the "damage" if weapon was class IV vs. Class I Armor would be 4-1 x3. But a class II vs a class III is only straight damage. This allowed for some interesting possibilities for light infantry weapons vs light vehicles to not be completely screwed by not packing rockets or stuff that can punch up to Class IV (military light vehicles) where there damage is halved and under a targets a DT threshold is a stress/strain type system vs. Actual damage.
Interesting, you've given me some food for thought on qualitative vs. Discrete thresholds or tiers.
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u/Altruistic-Copy-7363 1d ago
Succeeding on a dodge check meaning something - PCs can move a short distance if they succeed. Solves the problem of "just rolling to survive" and the actual of dodging having no tangible other benefit (where in reality it would change the battlefield).
PCs being able to act at zero HP. Solves the "I'm down so I'll disengage" problem. PCs are limited with their actions, but can still act. A huge deal in how people can play IMO.
Player facing rolls. Not new, but not universal (yet). Reduces cognitive load on the GM.
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u/NoxMortem 2h ago
I was intrigued by the more narrative games of Fate, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Brindlewood Bay, etc. but coming from 20 years of Shadowrun always felt like they dont give me the same kick of depth for the character advancement or fall short on longer campaigns or where tight to a specific system.
So I created a aystem that is setting agnostic, plays from One Shot up to 100 episodes, brings depth in character advancement without the endless rules of per item or ability of older rpgs and allows me to run with much less prep.
In a sense I did not solve THE design problem but found a space on the spectrum of rpgs that I felt was extremly underdeveloped since many new gamas always tried to position them on the end to make a very prominent statement of how different they are when I felt often: ... "but I liked cool equipment, special abilities, rolling vs opposition, ..."
It does of course not cover all types of stories but instead is focused in a very specific rags to riches hero journey where characters can start very low and become very powerful from both the personal abilities but also extending to their influence, reputation and wealth within the world. It's amazing for classical epic fantasy, Shadowrun or similar Sci Fi Epos since this is what drives me to the table and that I want to run.
In specific examples I solved:
- competency vs variance for opposing dice pool
- narrative player agency and control (as other narrative systems, not in a novel sense)
- freeform elements vs their respective power (being too broad, common or strong, too narrow, specific or weak)
- action economy and initiative with minimal gm bureaucracy (not novel)
- special abilities and their creative application (not novel, in a sense I did for special abilities what blades did for attributes, skills and abilities)
- freeform inventory (not novel)
- play on character abilities and their power level (influence, reputation, wealth) (not novel)
- reward for being attentive to other characters, players and staying interested in them (not novel)
As you can see I don't believe much In the need of doing something nobody ever did before you but you very much need to deliver a product that gives a novel experience at the table and answers: "Why don't I just play my current favorite gsme instead of yours?".
... and I hope to have found an answer to that for a sufficiently large player base since it very much answers it for me after every other rpg I played in the last 10 years.
I don't mean to have a better system than all of them, I played a lot of amazing new systems and love what those designers created and it just gave me even more drive to make my game better.
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u/Wedhro 2d ago
I could write articles on that (actually I did) but I'll stick to a few key issues for brevity.
First, assuming it's a combat simulator and the rest is 10% of the game. It keeps a lot of people away and forgets RPGs should be more about telling stories, yet the narrative part is left to people who can tell stories with little to no assistance from the game. My own game is a narrative simulator where combat is just one of the infinite possible things that can fuel or resolve crisis, like anything else, so I basically inverted the assumption.
Second, narrative games seem to forget RPGs are also games, reducing themselves to a structured make-believe with not real gameplay. My game borrowed mechanics from card and board games to enhance the feeling that you're playing an actual game, except requiring a lot of materials because it's just dice, makeshift tokens and paper.
Third, we're used to consider normal the necessity for books. Ok, there's one page RPGs but the majority of games requires hundred of pages. Who want to read all that stuff? Again, people who might like RPGs are kept away. The issue here is the coexistence of multiple systems in one (combat, social, travel etc.), having to provide a setting that nobody really wants to adhere to, and the need for minutia such as creature stats, weapon stats, spell lists, whatever, the more the better, right? My game has like 3 fundamental mechanics that govern everything and they only require a few pages because the game is about exploring the complex interactions between those systems, while minutia is abstracted away, and the setting is built while playing.
Bonus issue: D&D harms the hobby more than it helps it. Enough with wargame mechanics verging on videogamey assumptions, so many people don't care about that stuff. D&D is a gate that keeps people in as much as it keeps other people out.
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u/BeGosu 1d ago
Hot take: games shouldn't have social rolls or stats, or if they do then social gameplay should be equally as intricate as combat or any other sub mechanic
I am so sick, of playing a social character - spending points and resources ar being good at it - just for another player to just say something really witty and convincing and succeed without even rolling! What's the point of it being an option to build a character around being social, if all that matters is what you can think to say?
And even if you do roll well, you get asked "well what do you say?" Something incredibly witty and convincing, I dunno, but I just rolled 18 dice on this.
In combat systems a player doesn't have to explain how their attack overcomes the enemy's armor, and neither is their critical hit negated if they can't.
So let's just do away with social stats and skills altogether if all that matters is the actual words coming out of our mouths. Or! Build out a social mechanic that's just as engaging as combat or any other subsystem, and stick to it.
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u/blahthebiste 1d ago
I'm in favor of removing social mechanics generally, figuring out something witty to say is the fun part of social RP. I take it a step further and support removing mental stats in general. My character having a really high intelligence number isn't going to actually improve my strategy in combat, and usually I don't want to play bad on purpose just because the number is low.
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u/Sup909 1d ago
I think this question is asking more about the design space then actual mechanics?
For me it is ensuring ADA accessibility in the documents. Moving away from full page graphic pdf's that are meant for paper and not a digital screen. Leveraging HTML and .EPub as forward facing document options. Ensuring that the documents are reader accessible.
When using a PDF making sure that the page layout offers the best options for a digital screen as opposed to paper.
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u/duckforceone Designer of Words of Power - An RPG about Words instead of # 21h ago
my biggest issue is luck variance with dice rolls...
some players just keep having such bad luck that it ruins their fun. Only getting worse in long fights where you don't have other options but wait until your next failed dice roll.
So i'm personally moving luck rolls into smaller dice so luck only does small things, and it's a more rock, paper scissors thing in combat.
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u/RPG-Nerd 2d ago
How about you make the list and I'll give you a specific solution?
The main problem I have with RPGs is dissociative mechanics. This forces you to switch your brain in meta-mode where you think about it as a game. You are no longer making decisions for your character, but making decisions based on the rules of the game. That removes the fun for me. I want to focus on the story. The mechanics should just work without me needing to remember 100 different rules and modifiers and options that my character doesn't have!
I don't want to know the tricks to maximizing your special action economies, what feats need to be stacked, or any of that. Instead, every mechanic is from the character's viewpoint, not the player's. Like, 5e says "disarm" is "optional". What does that mean? The player says "I attempt to disarm him". Does the GM say "Tough titty! We don't use that rule?" That's a violation of agency! I'm trying it, you tell me what to roll!
As an example, the GM does not hoard your XP and tell you when you level up. You don't have classes or character levels. Instead, each skill earns XP on its own, 1 XP per scene where you use it, pass or fail. We just pause after a scene and you add 1 to the skills you used. If that raises your skill level, then you go into the next scene with the higher level.
There is also some stuff in there that allows the range to expand during play. This is dead simple, increases role separation, and vastly improves playability at higher levels. Typically, fixed bonuses expand until the the modifier outweighs the roll. As your training goes up, the number of dice go up and the modifier goes down. You get a smooth transition but different bell curve with a wider range of values so that it's no longer impossible to roll low, just very unlikely.
For example, an amateur rolls 1d6. That is a narrow range, small values, random/swingy rolls, 16.7% chance of critical failure. A journeyman rolls 2d6, wider range, higher averages, and only 2.7% critical failure chance and results have a consistent (professional) bell curve. A master rolls 3d6, 0.5% critical failure, wider bell.
Combat happens as a series of overlapping actions in time. Whoever has the offense can take any action. We resolve that action. Targets get an active defense (with real choices), and these choices are differentiated by time. Players engage on both offense and defense. Movement is granular so the action continues around you as you run from place to place. Damage is offense - defense. GM marks off attacker's time, attacker rolls, defender selects defense and rolls, GM subtracts and announces damage. Next offense goes to whoever has used the least time. You might be just a ¼ second faster than your adversary! You'll need to watch for openings in your opponent's defenses!
But, the decisions you make are always character decisions. All situational modifiers are dice, so very little math. Most rolls are just 2d6+X, a basic skill check.
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 2d ago
Provides reusable mechanics, overlap and enough features and options to support Social Exploration Combat (SEC) areas, Gaming Narrative Simulation (GNS) methods and their combinations.
Needless to say, but I will type it, I didn’t start with a combat resolution system.
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u/__space__oddity__ 2d ago
Provides reusable mechanics
How would you even make a “non-reusable” mechanic in an RPG?
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 2d ago
When the resolution system is different for different parts of a game. D20 plus mods for combat, modded results tables for magic, and random tables for social interaction. Morale check with 2d6 and thief skills use percentile dice.
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u/NullStarHunter 2d ago
I like the idea of the dice introducing "random" happenstance to rolls, prompting the GM or player to add something to a given action like reinforcements arriving, finding somethihg unexpected or achieving something unintended. The inspiration here being games like Genesys or many narrative games that often come with "yes, but" and "no, but" rolls.
I severely dislike this happening on every roll, or even the majority of rolls.
My solution is turning two dice in my dice-pool game special. If both of them roll a 6, it's good fortune. If both of them roll a 1, it's bad luck. After some testing, I changed the rule to PC-dice-pools only. The amount of pure bad and good luck events feels good now, so I'm pretty happy with it.
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u/LeFlamel 1d ago
Balance. An example is action economy - enemies having distinct action economy means encounter balance gets broken by the presence or absence of units. This makes "encounter balance" a line item in a GM's mental accounting. And it doesn't need to be there. Making action economy symmetrical and moving unit scaling elsewhere puts the balance in the system rather than the encounter designer. Likewise I moved attrition recovery outside of in-game time to avoid players cheasing the rest mechanic. Together it means any encounter can remain a challenge on any time scale or number of players. It's so liberating to make an encounter and it just works.
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u/Wandering-Mendicant 1d ago
I understand what the problem is but I'm unable to parse from this how exactly you solved it.
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u/LeFlamel 1d ago
If every character has 3AP (PF2e style), then the balance of 4 players vs 4 enemies gets thrown off by 1 player missing. Or you get the issue of 4 players ganging up on 1 boss and the fight loses all dynamicism.
Symmetrical action economy just means that the enemy has the party's combined AP. Four players with 3 AP each means 12AP for the enemy side. If one player drops out that session then the enemy side has 9AP, and nothing else about the encounter needs to be changed. The encounter's difficulty auto-scales with the number of players. To pull it off there are a lot of downstream system changes that you also need to make - mass combat and minion rules become necessary defaults rather than optional add ons.
Solving attrition recovery (rest) is trickier - I made recovery cost a set amount of XP. Still working out the optimal ratio but you could think of it as a choice between resting or gaining a level.
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u/Cryptwood Designer 1d ago
A designer after my own heart! I completely agree with the issues you've identified and your solutions to them. Giving every individual enemy their own action economy inherently limits the encounters you can build, and makes it so that every single battle is anticlimactic as it gets easier and easier the more enemies you defeat.
And tying resource renewal to in-fiction time (such as D&D's Long Rest) means you cannot tell any kind of story that spans a longer time frame than a few days. Long journeys are impossible in attrition based systems that are designed around a day/night cycle.
I cannot fathom why you have received any downvotes, let alone at least three. How dare you try to innovate the obvious problems in many traditional TTRPGs?!
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u/LeFlamel 1d ago
Based on the most upvoted comment in this thread - there are apparently no design problems to be solved. There's nothing inherently wrong with D&D - it's just not for you if you don't like it. /s
Giving every individual enemy their own action economy inherently limits the encounters you can build,
I remember going back and forth with someone who claimed the opposite - that symmetrical pools of AP minimize the number of ways a fight can go down. I was utterly baffled.
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u/Cryptwood Designer 23h ago edited 22h ago
I remember that! It was on this Combat Encounter Design post that I made on my old account. I still can't fathom how they didn't understand the point you were making... and then they accused you of trolling! I can only assume they are one of those people that conflate "I don't like this" with bad design.
I especially enjoyed when they accused you of being stuck on 5E (even though the example you used was Pathfinder 2E). You see, "5E am bad" so if they accuse you of liking 5E they automatically win. It's one of those internet cheat codes.
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u/__space__oddity__ 2d ago
I don’t like to think of RPGs as solutions to a design problems. Sure you might run into design issues on the micro level and spend a lot of time trying to solve them, but I the only person who will ever know that you solved a design issue is you. Maybe some other RPG desiger will run into a similar issue, look at your game and be like 🤯 whoa there’s the solution, but that’s the exception.
GMs and players don’t think of games as solutions to a problem, but an experience they want to have.
That’s how we get this disconnect when talking about games. The designer will be like “Look what I made! Finally a narrative-sideways inverse dice pool that perfectly discombombulates the non-deterministic fluxon flow!” and the player will be like “cool so how do I make a space pirate?”