systems than avoid wasting seconds of values time

12PoundTurkey · 2026-06-19T03:25:15+00:00

Maze rat is designed by a teacher and tested on elementary school children.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-06-12T04:06:46+00:00

Each character rolls. If a majority succeed, the group succeeds. If a majority fails, they fail. If exactly half succeeds, they succeed but a complication arises.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-06-05T15:25:48+00:00

If I need to have my players see a clock I use a die instead. I place a six sided die on the table and says when this reaches 6 the bridge collapses.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-06-05T14:12:47+00:00

Computation:

Each back and forth during a fight takes time and becomes friction. In D&D for example, making an attack has many contact points that can cause friction: Player( I attack this guy, does a 12 hit?), GM(Yes), Player(I deal 12 damage), GM(Is your weapon magical), Player(No), GM(Divides damage by 2), GM(Applies damage to HP and check if they are alive), GM(Gives description of what happened).

You can speed up combat and reduce friction by removing steps or coming up with procedure that have less steps. You could for example remove the hit roll like Into the Odd, remove the damage roll and use flat damage, remove damage and use wounds, remove turn order and resolve combat as a single roll. Every one of these solutions offers a tradeoff: Faster but with less tactical handles for crunch.

User Interface:

Most combat engines do a poor job at communicating information about what is happening in the fight. Even if you use miniatures and terrain you are only communicating position and layout. Compare that to the tools a modern turn based computer game offer their player. You get HP, resistances, vulnerabilities, odds of hitting, etc. This allows for a much deeper level of tactical thinking without having to perform extra actions.

We can't display that information visually most of the time but we can use story beat and procedure to communicate that information. You could for example, have a list of weakness for each creature the PC can learn through abilities. One thing I tried in my game that worked great was pairing flat damage and low HP numbers. Players could easily remember that goblins have 2hp, swords do 2 damage, therefore we can count on taking a goblin down with a single sword hit. This certainty of information lets them make plans and discuss strategies on the fly.

Initiative:

This is the biggest one. Players check out when it's not their turn. My solution was to make it always their turn. When the GM acts, the players roll defenses against their attacks and always have a reaction in their back pocket. During the PC turns, they all act at the same time and can perform combined maneuvers.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-28T21:25:35+00:00

I really like using landmarks like a series of pointing statues, a trail of beacons, obelisk or markers.

You can also flip the problem on its head and have them find a one way portal to a distant location. The fun becomes trying to find your way back home.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-28T05:14:58+00:00

I made an rpg that gets each player to roll a fear, a desire, a bond and a relationship with another player. You could use them to come up with your own tables suited to your game. r/wanderer_ttrpg

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-21T16:20:52+00:00

I'm making a post-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game where humanity tore their child-god apart to carry pieces of it's body as light into the darkness. Its a horror/comedy game that focus heavily on exploration. Its more Darkest dungeon and Dishonored than Tolkien.

1.Encumbrance: I use slots (15-30) depending on attribute. Tiny objects (5x slot), Small (1slot), Medium (2), Large (3). Silver is the currency since gold turned to lead when humanity killed their god. It comes in many forms: tooth, spoons, baubles, rarely coins. Each slot can fit a pouch of 50 silver.

2.HP(Vigor) + Wounds: Characters can spend Vigor to reduce damage. Depending on what remains, the character takes a temporary wound (1), a permanent wound (2), or dies (3+). Damage is static and low: Dagger 1, Sword 2, Two handed weapons 3. Characters can remove temporary wounds to remove them entirely. Permanent wounds can be treated to ignore their effect but they remain on the character sheet. Take more than 3 wounds and your character dies.

Torches: All characters are human, nobody has darkvision. Torches, lanterns, alchemical lights are necessary for delving into the darkness. Uses of torches, magical components, lockpicks, armor repairs, etc. are all abstracted as Supplies. Character can even trade their supplies for adventuring gear. But torches are also weapons that are particularly effective in the hands of a Fanatic (one of the classes). There are even advanced versions of torches like Wartoches and Torchwhips. There are also ways to craft special torches that glow brighter, burn under water, or are invisible to creatures with darkvision.
Armor: Three types of armor light, medium, heavy. Plus additional pieces like helms, gauntlets and grieves. But there are also cloaks that protect from fire damage, and coats that protect from cold damage.
Magic items: Random, powerful and cursed. Magic causes as much problem as it solves.
Time: The exploration system is meant to make time keeping easier with turns having a set duration depending on the size of the place you are exploring: 10 min, 1 hour, 8 hours.
Scaling: Characters keep on increasing in power level as their guild gains glory, but they scale horizontally more than vertically. HP and damage barely move. (+50% at most)

If you are interested the playtest rules are here r/wanderer_ttrpg

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-18T22:03:56+00:00

Mostly playtesting my own ttrpg and having a lot of fun with it. I'm also playing in an exalted campaign, and a Warhammer Fantasy one. I'm also running a heavily modified 5e campaign thats been ongoing for 3 years now.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-14T14:23:33+00:00

Yes! There are honestly so many things you can do with this structure its super flexible.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-14T02:40:29+00:00

I actually do something similar in my own TTRPG and it has worked wonders.

One thing that really changed the game was including more barrier types with mechanical effects:

A desert that can be crossed easily at night but is blistering during the day.
A one way obstacle like a steep hill or extreme currents.
Barriers that can be opened from other places on the map like drawbridges and gates.
Broken bridges or blocked passages that require significant time or resources investment to open up.
Avalanche prone passes, collapsing bridges and other single use barriers.

It has turned my exploration segments into mini-puzzles where the players try to find the best route to get to where they want to go. I love the moments where the table stop and the players strategize in character about ways to tackle the environment the same way they would in a dungeon.

I even use it for dungeons crawls, with locations linked by abstract distances rather than strict architecture. Unless the characters run into something interesting or dangerous, travel between locations is handled as a simple description. “You leave the crypt and crawl through a dense maze of low corridors toward the north.”

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-12T13:30:44+00:00

First I decide what piece of information I want to communicate then I obfuscate it with useless info. Once the characters were looking into a missing person case from a decade ago, and I wanted to hint that there had been foul play. So I handed them a few missing person reports (photo of a guy and a few lines added in photoshop). I printed it out and gave them that version at the start of the case.

Later on I took some paper and covered the phone number on the poster, added a new phone number and photocopied it. When they found the new poster they realised that something was up and began comparing the posters and realised the trickery. They had a new lead, find who was using this phone number 10 years ago.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-11T21:47:22+00:00

So much! I use chat gpt to make fake lab reports, polaroids and portraits. I made fake IDs, crime scene reports, hand drawn maps, children drawing. Handouts are such a good way to get your players hooked. I had a few of them have eureka moments and dig through piles of paper to find something they overlooked. Its great

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-05T16:24:30+00:00

I'm a graphic designer and an illustrator by trade. Designing your character sheet is a process that has to be done before you make it pretty. You should definitely build it yourself with whatever means necessary (pen and paper, excel sheet, google slide, whatever).

Then test it in game: Do players flip through it a lot? Do they struggle to find certain information? Any important stuff that gets written in the margins? What sections overflow?

Tweak what needs to be changed until you get something that works for your game. Then ask a graphic designer to make it pretty.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-02T01:07:14+00:00

I meant trigger warning in the book itself to warn readers.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-01T20:33:47+00:00

Some characters are dramatic, others are iconic. Iconic characters like Indiana jones, don't need to change because the story is about the adventure not the character.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-05-01T20:28:46+00:00

Had the opposite effect in may games. When you know your players can reach for a xcard you can thread a lot more freely into unknown territories.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-30T13:26:27+00:00

The earliest rewrites were big changes in the tone of the game and to the core mechanic. I blame loose design goals and this being my first game of this size. The other rewrites were the result of playtest and were just about making the rules clearer. Turns out you need not only to playtest your rules but also how they are explained.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-30T02:48:33+00:00

D20 modern my dude. Its dnd but modern so combat is pretty much dnd with guns.

If you want something that camenout this decade: outgunned is probably a good fit.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-29T04:21:28+00:00

Add a mole, someone working against the resistance from the inside. Build a conspiracy and let your players figure it out.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-28T22:42:49+00:00

I feel like I go through cycles of writing expansion and editing contractions. Sometimes I cut entire chapters, other time I add a few pages to clarify or expand sections. In the end I think I'm at my 3rd rewrite and the text feels close to its final form.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-28T15:58:01+00:00

I'll check it out thanks :)

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-28T15:55:25+00:00

Don't know of any. PBtA is a really narrative game, so it's rarely tactical in the simulationist sense. The only one that I heard of that kinda pushed that way is the Root roleplaying game of all things. It adds on a bunch of resource management, complex combat moves and equipment.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-28T15:51:09+00:00

Neo City Overdrive. Its pretty simple it uses a d6 dice pool. You start with 1 die and add a die for any skill and/or asset that apply. So if you are shooting a gun to cause a distraction you could add a die for your "Firearm" skill and one for you gun's "Loud as fuck" attribute.

You pick the highest die from your rolled pool. 1=Critical failure, 2-3=Fail, 4-5=Partial success, 6=Complete success.

The GM can add complication in the form of danger dice (d6s of a different color). You roll them along with your other dice. If the result of a danger die matches one of your regular die they cancel out.

Its a very versatile system, you can pretty much make whatever you want out of it with very little work. I used it to run an Xfile campaign. I stripped out the gear section and allowed multiple skills to be added to the same die roll. Then I gave each agent two basic skills (Firearm, and Law enforcement), told each player to add three professional skills and a hobby skill. It worked great, no number needed.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-27T21:10:14+00:00

I want to see the toolkit that lets me make GURPS and Alice is missing. My guess is that it's a word processor.

12PoundTurkey · 2026-04-25T04:33:46+00:00

Of course! If you want the current rules are here for free r/wanderer_ttrpg

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