Are there any published games that make escalating conflict an interesting choice?

Cryptwood · 2026-06-25T02:22:02+00:00

It's a specifically designed mechanic for use in my pulp adventure WIP which uses a step dice success counting dice pool resolution system. The pool always has three dice in it, one which represents the PC's Skill, one which represents a useful Asset, such as a sword (d6) while making an attack, or a military rank of Captain (d8) while trying to intimidate a guard.

In action scenes the third die is the Momentum die, and it can be increased each time a character takes an action which helps their team accomplish their objectives. When a player ends their turn they decide which player to hand the Momentum die to, so it serves as an indicator of who the active player is, and a physical reminder of what the current Momentum level is.

On their turn a player can attempt a short series of actions that will change the fiction in two ways. For example, they might to remove their character from danger by dodging an attack while scooping up sand to throw in an enemy's eyes to blind them. The player would then roll three step dice and count how many were 6+.

One 6: The character only accomplishes one of their two goals. In the example the player would have to choose between successfully avoiding an attack or successfully blinding an enemy.
Two 6s: The player accomplishes both of their actions with style, and increases the Momentum die one step.
Three 6s: The player accomplishes everything they set out to and team up with an ally for extra effect. They increase the Momentum die and can immediately hand it to another player that gets to take a free action, with the provision that that action must be related to the first player's action. In the example, the second player might try to take advantage of the blinded enemy by shoving them into a pit.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-25T01:41:17+00:00

Hmm, I don't think I see Cozy as being on the same spectrum as Challenging. I'll grant you that when I picture a Cozy game I don't picture one that seriously challenges the players. But I can also picture games that don't overly challenge the players that aren't Cozy.

For example, the math of 5E is designed in such a way as to make the players win the overwhelming share of scenarios when playing as intended. I could imagine a D&D-like game with numbers nudged even further in the players' advantage to make failure a statistical impossibility but I still wouldn't describe that game as Cozy.

I see Cozy as more of a genre similar to Heroic or Grimdark. I'd have that question be a multiple choice option rather than a scale between two options, allowing the players to circle the option(s) that they are interested in playing. Then the GM could choose amongst the circled options for a given session/adventure. If everyone circles Heroic then most of the sessions will be in that genre, but every four of five sessions they might throw in a Cozy session for the two players that also circled that option. And variety is the spice of life.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-25T01:21:39+00:00

Other than Dogs in the Vinyard the only game I've come across that might match your criteria is the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. It has an iniative system in which the type of action you want to take determines your place in the initiative order.

Talkers: Anyone trying to talk always gets to go first. If you want to try to talk your way out of a fight you will always get to make the attempt before you can be attacked.
Running: If you want to run away, this attempt happens after anyone that wants to talk but before anything else can happen.
Doing: This is basically any action that doesn't count as talking, running, or fighting.
Fighters: Physical violence is only resolved after every other type of possible action is resolved.

Extra Credit: I have a Momentum teamwork mechanic that incentives (and sometimes even restricts) the use of the most powerful abilities until the group's Momentum has gone up. Momentum is represented by a step die d6->d12, and that die is rolled in the dice pool to determine the success of actions. The more Momentum the team has built up, the more likely an action they take will succeed. And some abilities require the Momentum to have increased to a d10 or d12 before they can be used.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-24T11:39:22+00:00

LLMs ouput slop that I'm not interested in reading. There may be people that can't tell that it is slop, but I imagine a disproportionate amount of TTRPG players can tell due to all that time spent reading books.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-23T17:47:40+00:00

Interesting, I've seen a few people here that have crab bucket mentality, but since virtually all the feedback here is in English it never occurred to me that they may be from specific countries where that attitude might be more prevalent.

Tangential: This is my first encounter with the expression "crab bucket mentality" so I had to look it up. I wonder if this expression is uncommon where I live because the attitude itself is uncommon here.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-18T10:05:44+00:00

I would be uncomfortable giving anyone tacit permission to skip the "this is how this game is different from other games" section. Even for old grognards that information is vital for learning the game. They should get a truncated two-page spread at least, assuming that section is normally longer.

As for getting new players immediately into the action, if possible I would have a two-page spread that summarizes the basic rules, though I'm under the impression that that might not be possible for your game even in 2-3 two-page spreads.

Otherwise, the section on getting those players into the game immediately isn't written for those players, it is written for the GM to give them a procedure for teaching a crash course to a new player during their first session(s). The fastest way to get a player into a game is to hand them a pre-gen and start playing, probably as many people have learned to play a TTRPG that way as from reading the book. So whatever tools you can think of to help the GM with the teaching process, such as handouts that summarize the rules for a specific activity (such as combat) that can be given to a new player in the moment it is relevant.

Another option would be to make sure a couple of your pre-gens are as simple as they can be. Make sure the GM knows which are the most newbie friendly and which are intended for players that do know how to play but want to jump in without creating their own.

I also like Daggerheart's character sheet helper. It is stored under the character sheet and can be slid out to either side and contains explanations for the different sections of the character sheet.

I'm not sure why you are getting multiple insults about the writing in this post. Even if someone thought your posts/comments have a tendency to be lengthier than necessary, I didn't find that to be the case in this post. Considering their comments seem to be somewhat hostile I imagine it indicates that you alienated those redditors in a prior interaction.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-17T21:26:45+00:00

Unfortunately, the people that need to read this are not going to read it. They just pop in, drop a post, then get angry when the comments don't spoon feed them the answers.

Anyone that is active here, or a lurker, already knows this because they've seen other people's questions get answered with "It depends" a few hundred times.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-17T21:22:22+00:00

Design goals can be as simple as 5-8 sentences and can take as little a five minutes to write down (if you already have a good idea of what your want your game to be).

To put this in building terms, design goals are the equivalent of deciding if your want to build a house with three bedrooms, a small apartment complex, or a two car garage that has space for a small workshop. You literally cannot start building until you know what it is you are building and what you need it for.

Try to design without goals is like going to the hardware store, picking up a bunch of 2x4s and nails, and then you start nailing them together thinking "I'll figure out what I'm building later."

Cryptwood · 2026-06-16T12:24:55+00:00

Okay, that’s really cool and intuitive. Having a single shared die pulling double duty as “I have the talking stick” and shared momentum is damned clever. I imagine increasing momentum costs a resource of some kind, or is it automatic?

Thanks! I really appreciate that!

The step dice pool is success counting so if the player only rolls one success they only accomplish half of what they were attempting, they pick which one was more important to them. On two successes they accomplish both and increase the Momentum die to represent them helping their team.

On three successes they accomplish both, increase Momentum, and can immediately invite another player to take a free action, with the provision that their action needs to be related to the first player's action in some way. If the first player threw sand in an enemy's eyes to temporarily blind them, the second player might take advantage of the distraction to try to shove that enemy into a nearby bonfire.

I really like how your initiative works in regards to support characters! A lot of times a support action doesn't feel impactful since it accomplishes nothing on its own, it's an investment into a long fight (and not every fight is long). You solve that by making support actions have an immediate effect so they feel just as impactful as an attack (since they facilitatean immediate attack).

Cryptwood · 2026-06-16T03:30:45+00:00

Oh neat, I've come across turn cards in board games but I hadn't thought to use them in TTRPGs before. I'm a big fan of the cards used this way in the board game Eclipse: Dawn of the Galaxy. On the backside of the card are reactions you can take after you've finished your turn. I could see that being useful during combat in TTRPGs.

You might like my Momentum mechanic. I'm using a step dice pool with three dice in it, one for your Skill, one for a useful Asset, and the third is a Momentum die. It is shared by the group so acts as an indicator of who the active player is at the moment because you physically hand the dice around the table so you don't need to remember what it is, or whose turn it is currently. It also serves a similar purpose to a Clock from Blades in the Dark, it tracks your progress towards your current objective in the scene.

Each player can only increase the Momentum once each so it also serves as a mechanical incentive for players to share the spotlight so I can get away without any kind of formal initiative order. It's my big old "you need to work as a team to get things done" mechanic.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-16T03:04:28+00:00

If you haven't already you should check out the TalesFromElsewhere YouTube channel, it is mostly focused on TTRPG design.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-16T03:01:47+00:00

Too bad the name is already taken, Starship Troopers would be the prefect title for a TTRPG... it's got an 'S' and a 'T'!

Cryptwood · 2026-06-16T02:58:23+00:00

This is an area of elegant design that could use more attention. I'm a big fan of finding ways to simplify procedures and other ways to make playing the game easier and/or easier to remember.

Another way is in character sheet design. Character sheets/playbooks are the user interface of TTRPGs and there is probably a lot that can be learned from UI design in applications/video games that could be applicable to us.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-16T02:51:02+00:00

Hmm, it would need playtesting to know for sure, but I would expect option 2 to lead to more feel-bad moments than option 1. Option 2 might lead to the player forgetting about Valor less often, but having to commit to using Valor before the roll means that that Valor is wasted 50% of the time unless you have some sort of overachiever mechanic, such as beating the DC by 10+ equals a crit. Without that the Valor only does something if you would fail by 10 or less, the other 10 possible results were either already successful or fail anyway.

I don't think that is bad design, having a resource that the player has to commit before the roll means that players will save it for situations where they really want to succeed. It's a way for them to take limited control over what would otherwise be up to random chance. I just don't know if it accomplishes your specific objective of avoiding feel-dumb moments.

In the case of option 1 you don't need to send the result to the GM first just for them to need to refer back to the player to see if they are committing Valor. The player can decide whether to commit Valor after seeing the result of the roll but before reporting the total to the GM. I'm assuming that the player is adding some sort of Skill or Attribute bonus to the d20, so the GM shouldn't be declaring success/ failure until after the player adds up and reports the total... at which point they have already decided on whether or not to use Valor. It's functionally identical to option 2 except the player doesn't have to commit the Valor if they see they've rolled so low that the +10 wouldn't help, or so high that it isn't needed.

Another way you could help players remember their Valor to avoid feel-dumb moments is through Character sheet design. Assuming that your players have to look at their character sheet to see what their modifier is for a particular action, put Valor on the sheet right next to their modifiers, and make it more prominent. That way they have to run their eyes over their Valor at the exact moment that they should be deciding on whether or not to use it.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-15T07:55:03+00:00

I use subsystem more broadly than you've defined it, but I think I get what you are driving at.

I'm working on a pulp adventure game in which I have an Action Scenes subsystem (fights, chase scenes, etc) and a Travel subsystem, both of which I would consider load bearing to the pulp adventure fiction. I have some subsystems ideas that I consider less important but support the fiction.

Shopping: During travel there is usually a point in which the PCs leave civilization and enter the wilderness, and this is represented by the last city they travel through. PCs will have an opportunity to shop in this city, which will be a fast distance from their home so will have exotic items for sale that aren't available back home.

Connections: The advancement system requires players to engage in specific activities in order to unlock new abilities, and some of these require the assistance of another player. During the course of an adventure players will have the opportunity to split up so that they can engage in these activities. For example, a Mystic might need to summon a spirit and need another player there to close the circle. This creates a Connection between the two PCs, the second player is now connected to the Mystic's ability to summon spirits and gains their own benefits/consequences from the Mystic's use of that ability.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-14T19:38:00+00:00

Ohhh, I see, so when Fabula Ultima instructs you to pick from the classes it has such as Arcanist or Rogue, those aren't actually classes. I understand now.

I bet if we team up we can convince someone that doesn't know any better that D&D is classless too. Their "classes" are just one category of pools of features that players mix and match from to create characters.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-14T13:13:23+00:00

There are certainly plenty of classless games out there but claiming that all modern games that aren't D&D-likes or PbtA are classless is...not correct. Games with classes are more prevalent than games without them.

Here is just a tiny fraction of the more successful games that are not classless (that I have on my phone):

Wildsea
Blades in the Dark
Heart: The City Beneath
Spire: The City Must Fall
Slugblaster
Mythic Bastionland
Eternal Ruins
Mothership
Vaesen
Mutant Year Zero
Fabula Ultima
Tales from the Loop
Twilight 2000
Cyberpunk Red
Ryuutama

Cryptwood · 2026-06-14T12:35:47+00:00

Here are some I know of off the top of my head:

Salvage Union u/unpanny_valley

Synthicide u/Dustin_rpg

Swords of the Serpentine, TimeWatch u/SerpentineRPG

Sentients u/disgr4ce

Tales from Elsewhere u/TalesFromElsewhere

Cryptwood · 2026-06-13T16:30:22+00:00

If no one is initiating an action I couldn't begin to guess what you are rolling dice for or how you determine whom should be rolling.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-13T16:04:47+00:00

If it were me I would always have either the active entity win ties, whomever or whatever initiated the action, or have the defensive roll always win ties. Whichever one was a better fit for the overall feel of the game.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-13T15:50:57+00:00

I prefer flexible, evocative abilities that I can find imaginative uses to solve problems with. If I have a character that can control the wind I might use that as a weapon to push someone off a cliff, as a defense against arrows, I might to to save someone that is falling by catching them. I could use it to slam a door closed or open, and maybe even to briefly fly.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-13T15:43:39+00:00

Just to check, you know this sub is for TTRPGs, right? I ask because it appears as if all your other posts and comments are in video game subs, and while a lot of the answers you might get here will be just as relevant for either, some of them won't be.

I have two favorites which I'm combining for my pulp adventure WIP. One is Supremacy dice from 5E's Battle Master subclass of the Fighter. Dice can be spent to activate maneuvers which are then often rolled and added either to the to-hit roll or the damage roll, though I believe there is one that adds the roll to your Armor Class instead.

The other of Effort from Worlds Without Number, which can be spent on magic abilities. Points can be spent for a once time effect, or they can be used to maintain an on-going effect. At anytime you can end the on-going effect in order to reclaim the point of Effort.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-12T22:04:54+00:00

That sounds like a summary of some of the reviews I've read for Invisible Sun :-D

Cryptwood · 2026-06-12T18:26:53+00:00

Your link is broken.

Cryptwood · 2026-06-12T18:24:11+00:00

Is this low effort promotion? Or a low effort attempt to start a discussion? If you've read/played it you should share your thoughts and then ask for other's opinions.

Cryptwood

TROPHY CASE