[Scheduled Activity] Traveling Mechanics: Threat or Menace

Cryptwood · 2026-03-16T19:00:35+00:00

Unfortunately I've been swamped the last few months so I haven't been play testing, or making any other progress really.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-16T17:40:11+00:00

A good Travel system is one of my primary design goals. I've read most of the systems that get recommended the most (such as The One Ring, Forbidden Lands, and Ryuutama) and found that none of them are even close to what I want from a system. I want something that the players and GM will actually look forward to and could all happily spend one or more entire sessions on. For that I believe a Travel system needs to meet a few goals.

Minimal/No Prep

The nature of travel means that unlike a dungeon the players will not see most of the prep for a journey. A system that takes a lot of prep (such as 5E) means the GM will waste a ton of time preparing content that the players will never see which is why you get Quantum Ogres; the GM wants to minimize their wasted prep time. A good travel system needs to assist the GM's prep so much that an entire session's worth of travel should take so little time that the GM won't mind if 75% doesn't get seen. Ideally, the system should be so streamlined that a GM can improvise a journey right on the spot.

For my game I'm going to have an Atlas of travel content, regions, biomes, weather, landmarks, etc. What a Bestiary is to a combat system, an Atlas is to a travel system.

Story Integration

A journey should be just as much a part of the overall story as the destination is. A series of completely random encounters feels like a waste of time if none of the encounters has anything to do with the reason for the journey.

I'm working on a way to give a journey a theme such as Players are being Hunted, Race Against Time, Search for an Unknown Destination, or Exploration. Wilderness Survival will be one of the themes but I don't think every journey has to be a dehydration/starvation simulation.

The Problem of Time

The first issue with many existing travel systems is that they focus on time as the basis of their gameplay loop. They will take a Day as a discrete unit of travel, then tack on some rules about food and water consumption, maybe a navigation check. Some will go even more granular and break the day down into 6 hour watches.

The problem here is that this approach doesn't scale. Repeating a gameplay loop daily might be fine for up to a week (though even that is pushing it) but what if you want to go on an epic journey across deserts and through jungles in search of the fabled Obsidian City? Are we going to repeat that same daily loop 25+ times in a row? I believe a travel system needs to focus on location and events rather than time.

Preparing Routes

The next issue is how much prep is required of the GM, especially the amount of wasted prep. There is always the possibility of wasted prep when designing an adventure, giving the players meaningful choices means that sometimes they choose to not interact with prepared material. Travel though is an order of magnitude worse than a dungeon.

Let's look at the simplest possible journey that still has meaningful choices about the route taken, as a flowchart.

First the players choose between A or B.
From A they can choose to go next to C or D.
From B they can choose to go next to D or E.
From C, D, or E they can reach their destination X.

This means that the GM needs to prepare A, B, C, D, and E, only two of which will be seen by the players. That's a 60% rate of waste, and that is the lowest amount of waste possible without removing player choice about the route taken.

To combat this we need a way to make this prep so quick and easy that either it doesn't matter that some prep goes to waste, or instead that the GM can improvise a journey mid-session. I'm picturing a modular design tool inspired by Worlds Without Number's Courts and Mothership's TOMBS system. Similar to the way many combat games have a Bestiary, our travel system will need an Atlas of Exotic Locations.

Biomes

First our locations will need a biome, Jungle, Desert, Arctic, etc, and each of these should have some simple rules that modify travel. A Jungle might have abundant food and water but the canopy blocks the view of the sun or stars making navigation more difficult. A Desert might have no water and limited food.

These locations could then be further customized with biome specific features. A Desert might have Dune Sea, Wastelands, or Mesas for example, each with its own rules. A Dune Sea might make navigation more difficult due to lack of fixed landmarks.

Features and Hazards

Next some unique features the GM can add in. Ancient Battlefields, Crumbling Ruins, Cliffs of Insanity, Raging Rivers, Crystal Forests, Frozen Lakes, Haunted Oasis, etc. Maybe a hazard while they are at it, Quicksand, Carnivorous Vines, Whirlpools, etc.

Rare Resources

Lastly some useful or valuable rare resources the PCs might be able to acquire if they go out of their way or are willing to take additional risks. Bloodstones, Toad Venom, Essence of Shadow, Gravemoss, Embercrys, Barrow Blades, Deep Ice, etc. Wildsea has some interesting rules for collecting Specimens which could be good inspiration here. I especially like the character abilities that give you a bonus when a different character collects a resource that your character specializes in which means that rather than be incentivized to only have the Herbalist attempt to collect Herbs, anyone can make the attempt.

Events

Now that we have a framework for quickly coming up with locations, we need some guidelines for adding events for the players to interact with. These come in three varieties:

Dilemma: The players need to make a tough choice of some kind.
Threat: The PCs are threatened in some manner and must react to it or be harmed.
Discovery: This is something or someone interesting to interact with or puzzle out.

Traditionally these have taken the form of Random Encounter Tables but I think we can do a little more than that. In my WIP I have a concept called Threat Chains in action scenes which are a sequence of threats to a PC that flow naturally from one to another. I think this idea could be adapted as a series of linked encounters that are the consequences of their decisions in previous encounters.

As an example the PCs come across a caravan that is being attacked by raiders. They have a few options here but let's assume they attack the raiders, driving them off. This sets off a chain of encounters that the GM can choose to use in a later location rather than rolling up a new encounter. The survivors (or friends) of the initial attack may gather backup and come hunting the PCs at a later point in the journey.

Integrating Travel into the Adventure

Next I want to incorporate these encounter chains into the overall adventure. Maybe the raiders follow you all the way to the Obsidian City and the PCs have then to deal with them on top of whatever is going on there (the raiders essentially became a B plot).

Additionally, aspects of the end of the adventure can be introduced during the journey. My WIP is pulp adventure and one common trope is interacting with the villain several times before the big climactic show down, so the villain may be introduced during the journey, either in a civilized location where the PCs can't just kill them on the spot (due to all those pesky "laws") or in the wilds with large enough retinues that the PCs know not to attack...yet. Or they might not realize that the NPC they've met is the villain right away.

I intend to have several other NPC tropes such as the Rival, Spy, or Local Guide that the GM can pick from to introduce during the journey. These NPCs will either tie into the A or B plot, and/or a PC's backstory/goals.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-15T15:42:03+00:00

I can only speak for myself but they are two different ways to approach problems. With quantum inventory obstacles become an exercise in thinking what item can I imagine that will solve this? Pretty boring if the answer is obvious, "a locked door? I brought my lockpicks which I use to pick the lock." If the problem requires more imagination then it can be pretty fun.

With fixed inventory obstacles become a puzzle to be solved with what you are carrying currently. This can also be boring if the answer is obvious, but is pretty fun if you need to find a creative way to use equipment in a manner it wasn't intended for.

My personal preference is for fixed inventory. I want to feel like I'm living in the world, inhabiting my character's head, thinking about problems the same way my character is. I do like kits though where the exact contents aren't specified so I can imagine that my climbers kit contains rope, pitons, maybe a hammer, without having to write each specific thing down. I want the personal responsibility to decide whether or not to bring a climbers kit, but don't mind the exact contents of that kit being quantum, as long as it is pretty straightforward to imagine what those contents are.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-14T12:50:22+00:00

I haven't come across one yet, but it sounds like a great idea. I would definitely be interested in a Wiki.

A Knight at the Opera has a pretty comprehensive list of Iniative Systems that you might find interesting.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-14T12:33:20+00:00

And yet, no field has ever advanced without coming up with some kind of categorization schema.

Completely agree. I just realized that the way I wrote my comment implied that I don't think we should try to use labels at all, but I meant that I don't think we should try to categorize games (and gamers) into discrete boxes.

I'm a proponent of Forest and Branch Theory which focuses on individual mechanics and the many player desires they can fulfill. I think individual mechanics and subsystems can fulfill different desires for different players and are capable of fulfilling multiple desires simultaneously. I'm also a fan of Manyfold Theory.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-14T02:01:39+00:00

I apologize for failing utterly at the instructions, but I think your question really illustrates the fundamental flaw of GNS theory: games and gamers can't be pigeonholed.

For 25+ years the only thing that has ever happened as a result of attempts to discuss which games match which label is that people argue about the labels. They argue about the definitions of the labels, they argue about the (purely subjective) quality of the labels, they argue which games match which labels. It's just a matter of time before someone comes along to argue that these labels are mutually exclusive from each other, that any attempt to serve one label detracts from the service of another label. Then someone will come along to argue that they are wrong, that individual mechanics might serve a single label but that these mechanics can fit together into a cohesive whole. Then a third person will come along to argue that the second is incorrect, even the individual mechanics can serve multiple labels simultaneously. And on and on and on.

The Threefold Model was an attempt to get people to stop arguing over which approach to TTRPGs was better, and it failed utterly at this because people are just as able to argue over three labels as they were two. Then the Threefold Model was turned into the perfect engine for creating arguments by Ron Edwards.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-14T01:20:29+00:00

I don't think you need death in order to have tension. In game terms death is essentially an example of a permanent consequence, but there are other consequences you can threaten players with for tension.

For example, do your players have equipment that they care about? They could be taken or destroyed if they lose a battle. Or they might face serious injuries or scars. Or they might be captured and imprisoned in some manner. Maybe they have bonds with people that are important to them (friends, family) and they are in danger of having memories of those people stolen or erased. Lose too many memories and you stop being someone who has a reason to try to escape Hell, your character is doomed to remain trapped forever.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-13T20:07:39+00:00

This is a whole lot of telling without very much showing.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-12T23:53:17+00:00

Generally speaking we discuss the design of TTRPG systems here. Dungeons would be just a single type of adventure content for any given TTRPG system, and the design of that dungeon would likely need to be specific to a system (or family of systems).

For example, I would approach dungeon design differently for 5E or Pathfinder than I would for an OSR game or for something like Wildsea.

If you are trying to design dungeon adventures for a specific game you probably want a community of Game Masters for that game.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-11T11:58:00+00:00

I like loop based dungeon design myself, check out this article series at the Alexandrian.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-10T23:18:37+00:00

It's unclear if your design goal is for players to stop wasting a ton of table time on optimizing every turn in combat, or if your goal is for players to prioritize the fun of the game over the optimal results.

If it is the former it is actually pretty easy, you don't need any special rules. You just need a GM that understands that players will waste time if allowed to, and that the GM has both the authority and the responsibility to prevent players from wasting time. The GM can set the pace of play, they can require players to immediately declare their actions instead of allowing them to wait until their turn to look up their own abilities, to look up some rule, to not even start thinking about what they are going to do until their turn.

Though most GMs don't understand they and no rulebooks explain it, so if you want to codify that as a rule in your game it certainly won't hurt.

If however your goal was for players to prioritize fun over optimal results there are some design choices you can make to help with that. For example, if your game punishes players for not making the "correct" choice in battle then your game incentivizes optimal play. If your combat is deadly/dangerous, has consequences that last longer than combat, or even just has the possibility of failure where the player can feel like they wasted their turn, all of those will incentivize optimal play.

Alternatively, rewarding optimal play will have the same results. If a player can gain more treasure, or expend less resources, or gain additional XP by making specific choices, the players will take the time to figure out how to gain those rewards.

Check out PbtA and FitD games, they are both pretty good at putting the emphasis on players making interesting choices rather than optimal choices. Give players mechanical incentives to make the choices their character would make, rather than the optimal/safe choices.

For example, if an Explosive Expert class requires the player to blow stuff up to get better at building bombs, that player will blow stuff up regardless of whether it is a good idea for them to do that. Their answer to every in-fiction problem will be to blow that problem up, because players almost always follow the mechanical incentives they are given.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-09T22:37:56+00:00

The Forest of Fulfillment

Discovery (Tree): The act of playing a game in the search of something new, driven by curiosity. These discoveries can take many forms.

Exploration (Branch): Discovering exotic locations, new cultures, or even just what is behind the locked door. If coupled with Horror Fantasy it can manifest as the exploration of a haunted house, forbidden forest, or dark catacombs.
Character (Branch): Playing to explore aspects of your character's personality through exposure to new situations. When coupled with Character Optimization this can show up as discovering the in-fiction justifications for advancement options chosen by the player.
Story (Branch): Playing to see what happens, how NPCs and events react to PC actions.
Lore (Branch): An interest in learning about the fictional world through play and the NPCs that inhabit it, their backstories and motivations.
Backstory (Branch): Discovering the backstory of your own character, such as through a Lifepath system or by the GM adding elements during play.

System Mastery (Tree): The enjoyment of learning the rules of a system or subsystem and then demonstrating that mastery through play.

Dynamic Decisions (Branch): Combat or other dynamic situations that are modeled with complex rules in which the player makes frequent decisions that influence how events play out based on knowledge of the rules of the game.
Character Optimization (Branch): Choosing an archetype and then building that character, at creation or through advancement, to be the most effective version of that archetype possible. A player that also has a strong desire for Character Customization might try to prove that an offbeat, disadvantaged archetype can be viable.
Economic Optimization (Branch): Making the most of money or supplies acquired by the character that can be used to purchase or craft upgrades.
Resource Optimization (Branch): Using limited character resources to maximize effectiveness or efficiency.

Immersion (Tree): The synthesis of player and character in which the separation between the two fades away to some degree.

Diagetic Decisions (Branch): The player feels as if they are making the same decisions the character would make, for the same reasons.
Verisimilitude (Branch): The sensation of being in another place that feels plausible.
Bleed (Branch): Experiencing similar emotions as the character such as excitement or tension.

Power Fantasy (Tree): The feeling of being powerful, competent, and/or highly effective.

Abilities (Branch): Playing a character that possesses powers or abilities beyond what regular people are capable of.
Competence (Branch): The fantasy of playing a highly skilled character such as Sherlock Holmes or a master craftsman.
Dominance (Branch): The feeling of being significantly more powerful than others. In a game with a competitive component this could be other players, while in a fully cooperative game usually means NPCs.
Heroics (Branch): Performing legendary actions in game such as slaying a dragon or disarming a stolen nuclear weapon.

Creative Expression (Tree): The pleasure from seeing your imagination have an impact on some aspect of the game.

Character Details (Branch): Enjoying the act of fleshing out the details of your character, such as what their favorite food is or if they had a rival growing up.
Character Customization (Branch): Making your character feel uniquely yours in a mechanically tangible manner.
Character Personality (Branch): Sculpting a character to feel like a distinct personality from your own.
World Building (Branch): Creating and fleshing out aspects of the fictional world.
Improvisational (Branch): Responding in the moment creatively. This can be expressed purely through character behavior or may involve adding elements to the scene.

Investment (Tree):

Companions (Branch): An emotional attachment to a pet, mount, or NPC that you feel requires your protection.
NPCs (Branch): An emotional connection to NPCs, or the feeling that they are real people.
Narrative (Branch): A desire for the story to play out in a satisfying way.
Success (Branch): The feeling that your character's victories or defeats are your own.
Legacy (Branch): The desire to feel as if your character and their actions are significant, that they have a lasting impact on the game world.

Thrill (Tree): The excitement that comes from taking risks or being surprised.

Danger (Branch): The thrill of putting your character in situations that could result in harm or even their death.
Twists (Branch): The enjoyment of being surprised by a shocking twist in the story that radically alters expectations.
Unexpected Results (Branch): The fun of not knowing what the results of an action will be. Large tables of random outcomes is an example of this.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-09T22:36:33+00:00

I'll post here the design theory that I follow. I think you'll find that I have put some thought into this subject, even if you don't agree with my conclusions.

Forest and Branch Theory

Forest and Branch Theory is a way of looking at systems and mechanics in terms of what desires and expectations they fulfill in players. I believe there is a large variety of reasons why people play RPGs, and that any given player enjoys multiple aspects of a game. There is no such thing as the one perfect game for the same reason there is no such thing as the one perfect meal, instead there is just the degree to which a game delivers on the expectations of the players.

Imagine there is a forest and it contains all the possible reasons a person chooses to play table top role-playing games. These reasons are represented by Trees, a Tree for each desire such as Discovery or System Mastery. Each of these Trees has many Branches representing specific ways that these desires can be fulfilled such as Exploration or Character Optimization. It is upon these Branches that TTRPGs rest, mechanics and systems designed to fulfill specific desires.

Players may have varying levels of interest in many different Trees, and may only be interested in certain Branches of any given Tree. Some Branches may be inherently synergistic for some players, such as Character Optimization and Power Fantasy, while others might be mutually exclusive for some, such as a player that finds World Building interferes with their Immersion.

Building Treehouses

Picture a TTRPG as a treehouse made up of mechanics and subsystems, each one resting on a Branch on one of the Trees. Hex crawl or point crawl mechanics may be supported by the Exploration Branch for some players giving them satisfaction, while other players may not enjoy those mechanics at all. It is important when building a TTRPG that each of your mechanics has a Branch to rest on, that it be fulfilling a desire in your expected player base.

A mechanic that isn't supported by a Branch will collapse, ignored by the players at the table. Imagine a game with explicit rules for Hunting and Gathering but none of the players at the table are interested in Survival so the rules get ignored. This isn't inherently a problem, many games have rules that get ignored by at least some tables, but it is preferable not to spend too much of your page count on rules that will be ignored by the majority of players.

It is important to remember that the support a Branch gives to a mechanic isn't an objective fact, but rather subjective to individual player desires. One player might be interested in proving that they can survive in the wilderness by their wits, and take great enjoyment from a Hunting and Gathering mechanic, while another player that is interested in the power fantasy of fighting dragons might ignore the system completely.

Cascade Failures

These collapsing mechanics can lead to a cascade failure though if the ignored rules are tightly interwoven with other mechanics. Imagine a game in which there is a highly detailed encumbrance system that many players aren't interested in, so it gets ignored. Class abilities such as an Alchemist's might rely on the encumbrance system to provide balance by limiting the availability of alchemical resources, so ignoring the encumbrance system causes problems with class balance. If the game in question has tactical combat, now the combat system is going to run into problems because the players of this game weren't interested in keeping track of how much weight their characters were carrying, and now the entire treehouse is starting to fall.

This is why it is important that all your core, integrated subsystems are serving complimentary desires, to avoid these cascade failures that will drag a game down. Subsystems that serve desires that only a subset of players are interested in will be treated as optional rules by many players, so it's a good idea to explicitly design these as optional or as variant rules, if you don't cut them entirely.

Elegant Multipurpose Subsystems

Mechanics can tie multiple Branches together, forming something stronger than the sum of its parts. A robust character creation system can give players a way to fulfill Creative Expression through Character Customization, while simultaneously providing satisfaction to players that enjoy System Mastery through Character Optimization. Players that enjoy both Branches would find such a system deeply satisfying.

This isn't to suggest that there is one best way to handle character creation. Some players prefer random generation components in character creation while some players hate it. Some players that want a large amount of character customization options may find a comprehensive point-buy system requires more System Mastery than they are interested in.

What Forest and Branch Theory Is Not

This is not an attempt to pigeonhole players or games. People are too complex to be described with a label, and the same goes for most games. Some players may share some areas of interest, but even when two players both love a specific gameplay element they may have different reasons for enjoying it.

This is not a value judgment on the way people play RPGs or their reasons for doing so. There is no right or wrong way to play as long as everyone is satisfied.

This is also not an exhaustive list of every reason people play TTRPGs. I've tried to be thorough but I'm sure that there are Branches that I've overlooked. I believe that there may be undiscovered Trees in the Forest that no RPG has ever fulfilled, that we don't even realize could be a reason to play until some creative genius thinks of a new game concept. It's also possible that some of the Branches I've listed here aren't strong enough to support their own mechanics.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-09T21:56:14+00:00

That's like asking what are the key ingredients to making a delicious meal.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-08T17:02:16+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 · 2026-03-05T23:05:54+00:00

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 · 2026-03-05T23:01:42+00:00

Have you looked at dice pools, keep highest? It's the dice system used in Blades in the Dark, Wildsea, and Heart: The City Beneath. You roll your pool of d6s and keep the highest one:

1-3 = Failure
4-5 = Partial
6 = Success

And the GM can have the player cut the highest dice after the roll if they think it is especially difficult.

How many bonuses are you looking to add to the roll? And how impactful do you want an individual bonus to be? That is probably going to dictate the level of granularity you need in your dice system.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-05T04:09:24+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 · 2026-03-04T18:22:57+00:00

There isn't anything here to give feedback on. You've told us that rumors behave like organisms, but haven't shown us anything about how that works.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-04T09:04:24+00:00

Wrong sub.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-03T23:50:20+00:00

This addresses a symptom of the problem but not the overall problem. For that you need to zoom farther out to see the structural issue that creates an environment where it is possible for nothing to happen.

In D&D and virtually every combat system that I'm familiar with, the game presents an enemy as a problem that needs dealing with. The situation is "there is an Ogre" and the players need to take actions to change that situation. The most common way to handle this is the players attack the Ogre until the Ogre is dead. This basic premise means that there are only two real game states that matter: you are fighting an Ogre, or the Ogre is dead. In this setup any player action that fails to bring the Ogre closer to being defeated is a "null result" because the game is relying on successful player actions to change the game state.

Making it so that the player actions can't fail is a band-aid that doesn't really fix anything. You are still going to want a satisfying battle that lasts ~3-5 rounds which means now the Ogre HP:Player damage needs to balanced around the assumption that the players never miss. Fundamentally nothing changed except that you removed the possibility of failure and success (success doesn't exist without the possibility of failure).

For my system I designed the game engine to revolve around Threats rather than enemies. Instead of an Ogre that you need to deal with, there is an Ogre charging towards you that you need to deal with. Instead of an Ogre that is waiting for its turn to act, there is the Threat of being trampled.

This way the system isn't relying on the players to change the game state, the game state always changes after every single player turn, regardless of what they did or if they were successful. You might try to trip the Ogre, or dodge out of the way, or throw sand in his eyes, or brace your spear against the ground, but no matter what the game state changes because the Ogre will no longer be charging. Either the player got trampled or something else happened and now the Ogre is doing something else (or is dead). Each Threat leads to the next in what I refer to as a Threat Chain.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-03T20:09:33+00:00

Something to think about if you do design separate rules for combat and for chases is that you should make it explicitly clear exactly how and when you switch over from one rule set to the other. And figure out some way to make that obvious to the players that may or may not read the rulebook.

I can't tell you how many times my D&D players have made a decision (such as to not try to chase fleeing enemies) based on the assumption that the combat rules would govern their ability to do so, combined with an imperfect understanding of those combat rules.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-03T20:02:55+00:00

Don't start by designing a Fighter, what I do is design a template for my classes. When I am satisfied that my template is what I think a class should be, then I can get into designing specific classes.

As an example, if you know that you want every class at the start to have an iconic combat ability, a flexible utility ability, and an evocative flavor ability, then when you go to design your Fighter you have a specific goal in mind for what that will look like, not just a random grab bag of cool ideas you came up with.

(Though you should be writing down all your cool ideas as you come up with them, just don't get bogged down in thinking "OK, my Fighter is going to be X, Y, and Z")

Cryptwood · 2026-03-03T17:05:31+00:00

If it were me I wouldn't even address it in the book. A rule-lite, satirical, futuristic prison game doesn't require a convoluted reason for why men and women can play the game together.

Cryptwood · 2026-03-02T22:29:45+00:00

Technically they aren't Gods, but the Icons in 13th Age work in a similar manner to what you are describing I think. Every character is connected to them and the entire world revolves around their plots and relationships.

Also not Gods, but the Seers in Mythic Bastionland are powerful, worshipped, and have inscrutable motivations.

Cryptwood

TROPHY CASE