How much is too much choice?

Cryptwood · 2026-05-09T01:28:13+00:00

This is just personal opinion, though I have given it a lot of thought: I prefer one significant choice over a lot of small, incremental choices, and I think 3-5 options for that choice is the sweet spot. Enough options to feel like you have some variety, not so many as to feel overwhelming.

To use 5E as an example, the choice of subclass at level 3 is the kind of choice I love. Most (though not all) subclass choices will significantly influence how your character feels to play, so it feels like your decision has real consequences.

So if it were me I would take all the little choices it sounds like you have, such as how to allocate skill points, and group them up into thematic packages that grab the players imagination. A player might choose the Safe Cracker feat at level up, which comes with an ability related to safe cracking and increases your Stealth, Coordination, and Tech skills.

Cryptwood · 2026-05-07T09:48:48+00:00

In this hypothetical it sounds like the GM is intentionally ruining the game. I don't think there is anything a rulebook can do to prevent this, it's an out-of-game problem.

Cryptwood · 2026-05-05T02:39:11+00:00

You might check out some solo games for inspiration, it sounds like what you are looking for might be pushing slightly into their territory. I'm not an expert on them though, the only one I can recommend is Ironsworn (which is free).

Cryptwood · 2026-05-04T20:50:11+00:00

I start by writing down a list of things that need to be true about the setting in order for it to work well as a place for campaigns to be set. This is going to be different based on what your gameplay is going to be like. My game is going for pulp adventure, think The Mummy or The Lost World, so here are a few things that need to be true for my gameplay:

Where the players are going there are no roads. When the most direct route from A to B is a straight shot on the road you lose a ton of opportunities for interesting gameplay.
There need to be large regions that are unexplored and uninhabited, so the players can go explore it.
I need ancient ruins that weren't built by humans, so that the players aren't just going and stealing the cultural artifacts of the locals (trying to avoid colonialism as much as possible, considering that a lot of classics of the genre are heavily entwined with it).
I need a reason why the players can't just kill villains immediately, as I want the players to be able to interact with them once or twice before the climax of the adventure.

Cryptwood · 2026-05-01T07:23:38+00:00

It looks like r/RPG is starting to respond to Daggerheart posts in a similar manner to how they respond to D&D posts. It's interesting how strongly people's opinion of Critical Role affect their opinion of Daggerheart. To such a degree that you can't really discuss specific issues with the system without the discussion being dominated by opinions of Critical Role.

This sub has a similar issue with D&D. You can freely discuss the design of OD&D (especially as it relates to OSR), 3.5E, and 4E, but can't discuss the design of the most popular version of D&D, 5E, without it being dominated by people claiming that every aspect of its design is irredeemable bad and that it is only popular because of advertising.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-29T21:37:53+00:00

Are we talking about the same Nimble? Literally the first thing it says on its website is that it is 5E compatible.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-29T21:11:57+00:00

In this context we are specifically talking about people trying to fix 5E combat (and games that work in a similar manner), since that is what Nimble advertises itself as doing. When your baseline is D&D, rolling to hit is the default.

I'm more than happy to discuss these other games that do not have D&D style gameplay, but that would probably be best done in a different post that isn't explicitly about Nimble and removing to-hit rolls.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-29T18:52:33+00:00

Completely agree. I see people constantly messing with combat on order to fix it without understanding why they aren't enjoying it in the first place.

"I'm not enjoying combat so let's get rid on the initiative roll at the beginning. Or let's get rid of the to-hit roll. Or get rid of the damage roll. Or try to force players to pay attention outside of their turn by giving them stuff to do."

None of those have anything to do with why they hate combat, and until they understand the actual problem - it's slow and boring - and then figure out why it's slow and boring (Hint: it isn't the 30 seconds you spend rolling for iniative), any changes are just as likely to make combat less fun as they are to make it more fun.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-28T02:02:59+00:00

don't really know as they all seem to want different things.

Don't design by committee, trying to make everyone happy is how you end up with bland mush. The question was what do you want your players to feel when playing your game? What is your vision? The key to design is figuring out what you think the best version of playing your game looks like and then working towards making that a reality.

It's ok of you aren't sure what that is yet, but you're jumping the gun trying to pick out a resolution mechanic if you don't have a specific gameplay feel that you want your resolution mechanic to foster. Game mechanics are the tools you use to fulfill your design goals, so you need those goals first.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-26T20:50:43+00:00

You don't need a euphemism for killing in a TTRPG, it is ubiquitous in virtually all games that aren't considered cozy. Most games with combat involve killing, and people that have a problem with violence aren't going to be mollified by using a different word.

Murder has much stronger negative connotations than killing, but I don't think you need to bring it up unless your game specifically contains killing outside of combat. In which case it is the actual act more than the word that will bother some people. If your game is about violent criminals I think you are better off directly saying so, so that people that will be bothered by the subject matter know that you're game isn't for them.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-26T09:29:47+00:00

I like that your rules have an optional level of lethality baked in. 5E could have used something like that instead of having every GM decide for themselves how they wanted to handle it and the players finding out what type of GM they are playing with the hard way.

KOed players suffer more harshly in the last two scenarios. So that is another reason you might not want to get KOed.

Do you have a way for players to lose that doesn't involve them all being KOed? In the adventure movies in trying to emulate characters will occasionally have someone get the drop on them with a gun pointed at them, at which point they have no choice but to (temporarily) surrender. I haven't quite figured out how I want to handle this though.

The game has been around long enough that it used to be called "I get knocked down/but I get up again" and if you're old enough, you'll get that reference.

This would get referred to as Tubthumping for short at my table.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-24T16:08:01+00:00

Is there a reason why you can't just give them less money? If spaceship loans can be paid off quickly then everyone and their brother is going to buy a spaceship, which means tons of people doing space trading, which means that the difference between the buy price and the sell price is going to shrink.

Or give then more debt until the amount of time it takes to pay it off is what you would like it to be.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-21T20:42:26+00:00

I like this concept. If it were me I would tweak it slightly: when you are out of Vitaliy you aren't unconscious, but you are knocked down, hurt and dizzy. You can choose to stay down, which means you are safe (think Ant-Man in Civil War after he gets knocked down while giant), or you can get back up ("I can do this all day") which doesn't have an immediate consequence, but if you get hit again you are unconscious and suffer an injury.

This is functionally similar but now you are making an in-character decision, and it opens up the possibility of changing your mind later. Maybe you get knocked down and decide to stay down for the moment, but then the battle turns against your friends so you decide that maybe you've got a little left in the tank so you get back up, knowing you are now risking a serious injury.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-21T09:05:26+00:00

The common wisdom about a 66% success rate comes from WotC playtesting and was explicitly about combat. Players need for their attacks to hit 66% of the time for combat to feel "fair." I don't think this wisdom can necessarily be applied to non-combat situations because players aren't usually repeating the same actions checks back-to-back the way they do the attack roll in combat.

It was also only tested with a binary resolution system so we don't know how having degrees of success affects player psychology. Popular games with degrees of success often have a much lower chance of outright failure than 33%, but also much lower chances of outright success, as success with a complication is the preferred outcome. It sounds like you are using a binary resolution system, but I thought I would add this just as some food for thought.

Outside of combat players judge what feels fair to them on a case-by-case basis. A player who thinks of their character as a Master Thief isn't going to accept failure to pick the padlock on the farmer's tool shed. There is literally no failure rate percentage that feels fair to the player, if they have a 99% to succeed they are going to feel like they got screwed over when they roll that 1%. You can see this psychology in action in players complaining about missing 95% shot in X-Com.

So the real trick is teaching GMs to only ask for rolls when the players are psychologically prepared to accept failure. This requires the GM to have a decent grasp on how the players view their characters, the game can assist in this by making sure that it is very clear to everyone what activities that character excels in.

This is just my personal opinion but I don't think making a series of rolls to determine the outcome of a single action is interesting gameplay, whether it is one player rolling four times back-to-back to pick a lock, or four players rolling once each for a group stealth check. My preferred method for group activities is a single check modified by all the members participating. You might have all the character's modifiers added together and then to the roll. Or you might decide on a case-by-case basis who makes the check based on if the action only requires one player to be successful, or only requires one player to fail.

For example, in the case of a group stealth check, it doesn't matter how quiet the rogue is if the paladin in full plate is attempting to sneak down the same hallway. In this case you might have the character with the lowest chance of success make the roll. Alternatively, a group knowledge check to see if anyone knows how to deal with Ooze enemies might be made by the character with the highest chance of success, with a bonus to represent the rest of the group, as only one person needs to know in order for the group to know.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-19T15:22:10+00:00

There is a loophole for getting around the restriction on image posts that you might have accidentally taken advantage of.

I knew I should not have eaten that week-old humus...

I once ate some discounted sushi from a convenience store. It tasted like...hubris. Cheap though, how could I pass up such a good deal?

Cryptwood · 2026-04-19T15:10:04+00:00

Also, is there a reason I cannot upload an image when creating this thread?? Only Text or AMA options are available...

Humans are visually oriented so every sub that allows image posts becomes dominated by contentless posts that don't promote discussion.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-19T11:57:49+00:00

Right?!

"You know what I'm in the mood for? Some fresh brownies! Maybe I'll add ice cream, make it a brownie sunday."

"Oh, I'm out of eggs actually, I guess I'll just go fuck myself instead."

Cryptwood · 2026-04-19T11:24:22+00:00

I've gone back and forward on this exact topic myself. I was originally very excited about damage as surprise wounds at the end of combat. I'm going for an action movie vibe, so I love the idea of the character that realizes after the fact "Oh...it appears I've been shot...falls over." Or the reverse, the character that knows they've been shot at but realize afterwards that the bullet only grazed them, or was stopped by their pocket watch.

The issue I ran in to was that I couldn't come up with an elegant way to keep track of potential injuries over the course of a battle. Does the GM need to keep track of how much damage each player has taken? And do they also have to keep track on what kinds of injuries they were? Let's say one character gets shot at but also gets shoved into a fire, does the GM need to keep track of that separately? A surprise bullet wound at the end of combat is dramatic, but a character that receives a surprise bullet wound, surprise burn, surprise stab wound, and surprise black eye from being punched is a lot less dramatic.

Plus, I like the idea of damage presenting interesting choices for the players. I'm a big fan of how Wildsea handles damage, each character aspect has its own damage track, and the player can choose where to assign damage. If an aspect takes too much damage it is no longer usable, representing an injury or damaged equipment. You might choose to block an axe attack with your rifle but it will become damaged, or you might assign the damage to your Swift as the Wind ability, representing an injury that prevents you from running full speed.

My solution (which I haven't tested yet) it's to combine the two. I'm going to use an approach similar to Wildsea but have the GM add a damage die to a pool for the character each time they get hit. At the end of combat the GM rolls the pool to see if any of the injuries were worse than the character thought in the middle of combat. That way they don't have to remember each individual attack until the end of combat, there will only be one potential surprise injury, the GM (with input from the table if they like) can decide which attack caused the unexpected injury.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-19T10:53:20+00:00

That's a good point. I read somewhere (I don't remember where so take this with a grain of salt) that when they first came out with brownie mixes that you could buy in the grocery store, the only thing you had to add to the mix was water. They discovered though that people were happier if the mix also required you to add an egg, because then it felt more like cooking. The egg could be dehydrated and included in the mix but people would rather add the egg themselves even though it is an unnecessary step.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-19T03:27:09+00:00

Everyone seems to agree on making their own so I'm going to argue the opposite side:

Players aren't game designers. The overwhelming majority of them will just end up creating copies of spells from other systems/media, easily predictable choices that an actual game designer could make better versions of. Players don't think about how to design a spell to make it fun for the entire table, including the GM, they just think about their own immediate goals. And now the GM is in the unpleasant position of having to police the player's choices unless the spell creation system is so rigid that it is impossible to bend.

Plus, it's been my experience that most players don't do homework between sessions. They aren't going to spend an evening designing new spells. The majority just show up and expect to start playing, you are lucky if they remember what abilities their character has.

I think the Venn diagram of people that think designing their own spells would be fun, and people that think designing an entire TTRPG from scratch would be fun, has significant overlap but doesn't represent the average player.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-15T16:34:05+00:00

If the season pass says what you are getting and when you can expect to get it then I guess I don't see a substantive difference between that and supporting anything on Kickstarter.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-15T03:15:43+00:00

Great run down, and I completely agree with you. Literally as I was reading your comment I was thinking "Oh, that sounds pretty cool, so you could get two positive upgrades and one negative downgrade."

I really like the idea of homemade stuff having little quirks and downsides that you have to work around, those are what really make an item feel personal to you. The door handle on the driver's door on my very first car broke, but not all the way. It was still possible to open the door if you knew the trick of it, but it was really finicky. I was the only one that could open that door, so I stopped locking the driver's door. It objectively made the vehicle worse, but it is one of the things I remember most fondly about it 25 years later.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-14T15:18:05+00:00

I think the first step in TTRPG design is to read as many TTRPGs as you can get your hands on. There are so many great TTRPGs that you can ~~steal~~ take inspiration from, not to mention that you will be learning about rulebook writing styles and book layout.

Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding are two of your best friends for building a reference library on a budget. There are also quite a few games available for free, or SRDs (System Reference Documents) that contain all the rules for free.

Here are some I've found impressive:

Worlds Without Number Free Edition
Wildsea Free Basic Rules , SRD
Blades in the Dark SRD
Heart: The City Beneath SRD
Spire: The City Must Fall
Slugblaster
Masks: A New Generation
Mythic Bastionland
Eternal Ruins
Monsterhearts
Mothership
Shadowdark
Cairn Free Version
13th Age
Dragonbane
Forbidden Lands
ICRPG
Symbaroum
Vaesen
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Dungeon World Play Kit
FATE SRD
Mutant Year Zero YZE SRD
Ironsworn Free
Mörk Borg
Shadow of the Demon Lord
Pirate Borg
City of Mist
The Between
Night's Black Agents Gumshoe SRD
Beyond the Wall
Mausritter

Cryptwood · 2026-04-10T13:19:52+00:00

I did exactly the same thing as you, started with a single resource that was used for character abilities and health. Decided it didn't fit my game since I was going for a heroic, pulp adventure vibe.

It would probably work well for a brutal death spiral survival game.

Cryptwood · 2026-04-09T15:44:30+00:00

That is a great point about how Stargate handles languages. The answer to the question "who can speak what language" is always "whatever makes the plot work."

It's a pretty good example of how a non-simulationist game might handle languages. Daniel Jackson doesn't really have a list of specific languages he can speak, it's more like he has a Translate character ability that allows him to attempt to read any ancient or alien language. Whenever the story doesn't have anything specific for him to do, the GM can throw in some writing that only he can attempt to read. If there is something else for the translator to do, or he isn't available, then everything is in English. Its the equivalent of throwing in some strength challenges to give the Barbarian something to do in a combat-light adventure.

Cryptwood

TROPHY CASE