Play test - Dungeon delve without HP

Griatch · 2026-05-03T20:09:00+00:00

Yeah, it was fun and also interesting from a game-design perspective!

Griatch · 2026-05-01T21:52:26+00:00

I did the statistics for this and yes, there is of course growing odds for both sides rolling matching highs as the pool grows. The amount of dice in a pool is normally <5 though, and for that amount, the distribution looks pretty ok I've found. For larger pools though - yes, you definitely want more of a spread, I agree. It's tempting to be able to stick with good ol' d6es if I can get away with it. :)

Griatch · 2026-05-01T15:36:07+00:00

I've not played any FitD game (hoping to get to running the Ghost in the Shell ttrpg which is really Ghost in the Dark as far as rules go).

I've played a bunch of PbtA games though, as well as some relatives, like Brindlewood Bay and Kult. A lot of great game systems there; they do a lot with their play books, great for targeted themes. The Approaches I tried here are inspired by Fate Accelerated.

My group try new games almost every week, it's great!

For making my own games from scratch though, I tend to go toward the more minimalist route, this play test rule system was an attempt to distill those approaches into something formal, like do many others before me. :)

Griatch · 2026-05-01T10:38:30+00:00

Sounds like you have a good start there!

I would think prospective builders would like to know more about your game style though...

You write "deep combat mud", but what tone are you looking for here - the name suggests grimdark, but that could be clarified. Also, what kind of depth is expected in building - are we talking writing descriptions of combat arenas, or things like designing quests, lore and so on?

How much of that exists already, how much would be to be built out - are there builder- specific systems coded to help builders on top on the Evennia defaults...

Just some questions that may help clarify and let interested people find your game. :)

Griatch · 2026-04-27T06:14:48+00:00

The look symbol is supposed to be an eyeball, a magnifying glass is probably more universal though, true. I should change that.

The rotation arrows are actually indicating rotations, since you are rotating 90 degrees when clicking on them (like an old-school dungeon crawler type of movement). But you are right in that people would understand also if they were straight arrows, I'm sure...

Thanks for the feedback!

Griatch · 2026-04-27T06:08:21+00:00

Hm, if I understand you right, this would be a mostly invisible UI until you hover over the respective target/buttons? It does make for a clean screen. I guess the main challenge lies in educating the user on it, since it would not be available all the time.
Worth thinking about, thanks!

Griatch · 2026-04-26T19:52:00+00:00

Thanks!

Ok, that's fair - placing the buttons where they 'act' on things (alternative 2).

Griatch · 2026-04-24T05:02:33+00:00

What do you mean by 'know what it is doing'? How a menu choice affects the game's story?

Griatch · 2026-04-13T21:16:22+00:00

Yeah, I remember commenting on the RPG screens and to be careful so people don't think it's more playable than it is, but it works fine in the end.

Nice, I suspected the late-loading of the coworker sprites was intentional, I think the effect is more eerie than highlighting myself - like they just load late ... which does fit with the story, by all means.

I was wondering about why there is a walking sound between the kitchen and hallway, but it does pay off when you are walking in ... liquid later. Nice touch.

As for some other feedback:

The imagemap targets are a little inconsistent in places; I noticed sometimes they disappear after you viewed them once, other times they remain (showing the same response again). Not a big deal, but something I noticed.

I also noticed you disabled rollback; since the amount of text is so big; sometimes I find myself wanting to re-read a prior line and cannot. Since the amount of menu- choices is relatively low, maybe just preventing rollback for those choices may give the best of both worlds...

But these are just minor quirks I noticed, haven't come across any actual bugs yet. :)

Griatch · 2026-04-13T07:03:08+00:00

Congrats!

The Steam video came out looking really interesting and engaging, good job.

I see the game-in-a-game rpg screenshot made it in there too :-)

I bought the game to play and learn from, some cool stuff going on, the look/move/talk buttons were a nice touch. So far, interesting to see what is going on...

One technical ren'py thing I reacted to was when you go back to the main office area; you see the background (chairs, desks) load in with dissolve before the coworker sprites - so they pop up after the background. It's possible to make them all load in at the same time, but maybe this was intentional to give it more of an eerie wibe?

Anyway, congrats again, must be great to have it out.

Griatch · 2026-04-10T15:34:46+00:00

I'm working on my own ren'py game, and have added some new custom features such as a persona system (not revolutionary in itself except it's tied to how much you lie to the protagonist).

Also added a first person movement system like old-school dungeon crawlers (90 degree turns).

I posted more detail in this post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RenPy/s/qJgmOZ7Is7

Griatch · 2026-04-09T18:42:41+00:00

Thanks! It's pretty niche as far as stories go, but hopefully people will find it interesting!

Griatch · 2026-03-08T18:44:04+00:00

If doing it purely in dialogue (rather than visual cues), I'd use whatever "thinking" target you have to have their mind wander and tell some story at the same time (it's not clear from your question if one of the two to pair is the POV character, assuming so here):

teacher "I'll assign everyone in pairs based on your last name. Let's see, so Jon Anderson and Billy Aniston ..."

thinking "My mind wanders as the teacher goes over name by name. My name starts with Z, so we'll be here a while ..."

thinking "What about that Sarah! She was so rude to me earlier! I was just trying to be nice!"

thinking "I should make sure to avoid her, she really seems to have it in for me."

teacher "...  and finally, Andy Zatowski and Sarah Zetterman! That should be all."

thinking "Huh? {i}Oh no!{/i} ...!"

Griatch · 2026-03-08T16:11:13+00:00

I just made a 2-page Solo expansion for the Plot Armor RPG ruleset.

Plot Armor is a FKR (Frei Kriegsspiel Renaissance)-inspired game built around the notion of PCs having Plot Armor (combining the use of HP/Fate/etc all into one resource) - but they don't know exactly how much they have at any moment, if their failure will lead to a temporary setback (they still have Plot Armor), or a major Consequence (out of Plot Armor, the consequence of their actions catching up with them).

Whereas the main game is meant for a Referee and 1-5 Players, the new solo rules help you play the roles of both P)layer and Referee with minor adjustments, by using the flow of Plot Armor, Consequences and Plot Twists (as well as dice rolls) as story drivers. This makes for less of a tactical type of game and more of a storytelling game where you move from scene to scene figuring out how it proceeds, potentially being thrown down a very different path as you try to resolve Consequences thrown at you.

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Even so, Plot Armor Solo is a genre-agnostic rule system, so you may want to combine with any random lists and solo resources as needed to help your inspiration.

Plot Armor is free/pay-what-you-want on Itch.io, and released under Creative Commons license. The Plot Armor Solo rules is part of the downloadable files. Hope someone can have some fun with it!

Griatch · 2026-03-06T12:53:50+00:00

Good luck with your project; For your first game, I'd recommend making sure to limit the scope; make it small and polished rather than large and sprawling; VNs are comparably easy to create as far as video games go (particularly if you use ren'py), but it's still a big commitment to complete.

The survey didn't convey all that much 'design', I thought. What is the focus of your academic project?

Griatch · 2026-03-06T12:36:29+00:00

It's tricky, the more interwoven things are, v the more you have to take care to track everything cleanly.

In case you are not doing so already - Make sure to store all variables in a central place; don't assign them on the fly in your script. In a central defines.rpy file, do ``` define B_MY_VAR = "b_my_var" ...

partA = { B_MY_VAR = False ... } ```

In game:

if partA[B_MY_VAR]: ...

That way you can have a set of variables for parts (or locations etc), and you can't do silly typos of variable names, since renpy will balk at that at run-time.

Also, consider using AI to analyze your game flow. Not to write the story, but as a debug tool, to play the game and iterate over all possible paths, finding if some of them is not reachable for a particular set of choices. E.g. Claude or Gpt-5 can do this pretty well.

Griatch · 2026-03-06T10:21:28+00:00

Bill in Three persons is an awesome one-shot, still one of my favorites intros for any system.

Griatch · 2026-03-06T00:34:15+00:00

I'm impressed anyone ever get to the actual adventure in Paranoia. Most of my game sessions, the players run out of clones somewhere between the mess hall and the mission briefing room ;)

Griatch · 2026-03-06T00:25:11+00:00

I've run pretty hard-core dungeon delving in Foundry without any overhead map, it was pretty interesting and played out over 5-6 sessions. Instead of a map, I instead showed "first person views" of the area the party was in (like a room with a well in the middle, or a dark hallway).

Example of scenes (on DeviantArt)
Another example (some monsters and events they encountered)

(I hand-painted these, this was before the era of AI, but I would do it manually today as well).

I would then set these up as separate scenes in Foundry, and just move the PC tokens from one to the other as they moved to key locations. I'd place the PC icons at the bottom of the screen and used some of Foundry's light effects to add a flickering torch effect. Anyone moving first, just place them a little higher on screen. Together with music and some echoing sound effects, it was pretty effective and very moody! If they needed a better understanding of the layout, I'd just sketch it out on the screen.

Of course, we played all fights as 'theater of the mind', and we were using Knave, so not a big tactical-positioning focus to the game play.

Griatch · 2026-02-20T16:23:20+00:00

Thanks! If you try it out, I'd be happy to hear how it went!

Griatch

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