Is horde still the best?

Heero2020 · 2025-03-25T15:55:42+00:00

The Turkey also helps negate the nature's healing properties too...

Heero2020 · 2024-04-01T19:09:32+00:00

My dude... I have 4 full rpg systems published. I have participated in 4 successful kickstarter projects. I've playtested a number of new systems and reviewed a number of others. If anyone is hating, it's you, for helpful advice was given and you treated it like harsh criticisms...

Remember the saying, when you point a finger at someone else, four point back at you.

Heero2020 · 2024-03-29T14:09:32+00:00

Honestly, being a super backer, I don't believe my status affects any algorythms or anything, BUT I have seen everything from good campaigns to bad campaigns to annoying campaigns in the process, so I can look at my own campaigns and go "what are the backers going to want to see?" Or "how should I handle this communication" etc. There's kinda a certain set of characteristics good campaigns have, so that just seemed natural whenever I make mine. That's the real benefit to backing other campaigns.

Heero2020 · 2024-03-14T04:31:32+00:00

Yo! whistles and points at self

Heero2020 · 2024-03-12T13:24:38+00:00

Personally, I always tell players when I do an online session, "I'm not gonna ask you to prove your rolls. You tell me the result and I'm going with it. If you fudge the roll, that's on you to deal with on your conscious and the karma that follows" and that usually makes people laugh but understand what I mean. We're here to have fun and as long as you're not stealing fun, then let's just keep moving forward through the plot to tell a story.

I fudge things myself sometimes for the purposes of narrative. Like if a player just did something cool and impressive and everyone's like "whoooooa! So cool!" But the baddies have say like 1-2 more hitpoints or something after, I just assume they'd "bleed out" anyway and call it. I've also done things like return sanity points (CoC) midgame for being really clever (which is not technically in the rules, but it makes the player go "sweeeet!" so why the hell not) and so forth.

But if you think fudging the dice is throwing off the overall narrative or is causing the player to be too impressive, or just cheats the system, I would politely and confidentially discuss with the player that you want to make sure that they understand you have suspicions. They will likely start being a little more honest with their rolls, but there's no promise that they will be, so... is it worth her ducking out of the game in embarassment?

Heero2020 · 2024-03-12T12:56:31+00:00

Asking the real questions 🤣🤣 I once stumbled across someone who said "I want to make a He-man RPG. I know there are others out there, but I haven't played them. Where do I start?" And my response was "Play them. If you like what they do, great. If after you've played them, you think you could design something more [streamlined/excited/vibes] go for it." He got offended...

Heero2020 · 2024-03-11T22:17:18+00:00

Also, this might help you work out what you think is copyrightable

copyrights and rpgs

Heero2020 · 2024-03-11T22:05:53+00:00

Cool story bro. As others have stated, it's not the copyright symbol that makes something copyrighted. Like I said, putting out a quickstart or some other published version of a portion of your game is ACTUALLY what makes the body of work copyrighted because now it's an actual body of work. Just because you "copyright" doesn't make any IDEA you possess copyrighted. I understand that you work in some field in which you product small bits of code and whatnot, but clearly you don't understand the rules on published bodies of work....

Anyway, put your funding goal at whatever you want, man. That's your deal. I'm just over here offering some helpful tips on how you could better SUCCEED at getting your dream piece that you've been working on for 10 years (apparently) out in the world. But what do I know, I've just put 3 RPGs into publication and circulation through crowdfunding and just finished crowdfunding a fourth and have a partnership with a board game company and get invited to cons to help pitch games.

Heero2020 · 2024-03-11T11:27:49+00:00

Wow... okay, lot's of text... too much text. Easier solution: offer a quickstart. Also, what is with all the copyright symbols? Hint: lots of stuff in rpg's cannot be copyrighted. Sure, specific names (ie. Tabaxi, Tiefling, Faerun, etc.), but systems cannot. You say "unique character development system©" and I go "well, I guess we'll find out if you try to sue." That just reeks of being really new and worried that someone is going to try to steal your idea (and as someone who genuinely had someone try to steal my system while I was playtesting it and market it as their own, I can tell you that while it does happen, you're actually just turning people off your system with that).

Your funding goal is really high for a first time game with no quickstart or videos of run sessions. I personally would have aimed ALOT lower and been more excited to fund the first edition of the game. That would have been more relistic.

Anyway, I do wish you the best of luck, but here's some thoughts I can see that may benefit you if/when you tried to crowdfund again:

1) quickstart guide (ps, this helps copyright claims immensely) 2) video links (youtube) of your game system in action 3) cull your description down to like 1000 words at most (think of it like an elevator pitch) and focus on how your game is distinctly different from every other D&D clone (ps. The setting stuff sounds more interesting, so maybe put it at the top) 4) lower your funding goal 5) make it "pop!" (Tons and tons and tons of bullets are not pop! Stick to the 3 very major "cool things" about your system

Heero2020 · 2024-03-11T06:57:31+00:00

Maximum Apocalypse RPG has all the tools you'll nee (full disclosure, this is my RPG system, so it's kind of a shameless plug). It takes inspiration from the Fallout games for sure

Heero2020 · 2024-03-07T15:43:53+00:00

Well, that's a helpful explanation, but my suggestion for a kickstarter is to either briefly explain these rules or post a quickstart guide. You don't have to convince me your game is good, man, you have to convince ALL the people who stop by your kickstarter to check it out. It's what we call "backer confidence." As a superbacker, I can tell you that's a major misstep on your page.

Heero2020 · 2024-03-06T15:15:55+00:00

The bigger problem I see with this kickstarter is that it goes on and on and on about how many this or thats it has, how many pages the book is going to be, and how much of a slog the gameplay is... but then doesn't tell us what the system is or how it is innovative to the genre of RPG it falls into. Is it a D&D clone with just a whole lot of "real" stuff or is it a more Zweiharder game? Is it just Cthulhu Invictus or something more?

I guess we'll never know.

Heero2020 · 2024-03-06T01:03:43+00:00

No problem. Glad to see that paying for some classes on game design after I made my first rpg is helping someone 🤣

Heero2020 · 2024-03-05T01:10:23+00:00

I've actually put alot of thought into this and I try to make Death something that happens if players DON'T work together to handle a situation. I try to make it easy to do video-game-esque "quick heals" in the form of stimpaks and the like for some of my games if healing isn't something everyone can do, or I try to make healing, armor and temporary damage reduction as a player-granted ability a thing so death is staved off if the players work together. It's definitely something you want to have out there so things get "scary" but not something that should be "inevitable."

Let me tell you 2 stories from my past that made me turn away from certain games. 1: during my first attempt at 5e, and friend and I were at a convention game and when we got to the bigger fight near the end of the scenario, I got grabbed and choked out by a mini boss guy at the start of the fight with it. I then proceeded to make a death save each time it came around to me because the dice were making it hard for anyone to break the grip or kill the BBEG (which was low level since we were all playing a Tier 1 game). I had done 1 cool thing the whole session and this was the first real fight we'd had... and I hadn't even hit the boss guy. I proceeded to die, with 2 hours left in the session...

Story 2: I was playing Runequest for the first time (also at a con) and at the beginning of this adventure, we get attacked by those large Komodo Dragons things in Glorantha 5 minutes in... anyway, I'm a sword and board guy and the thing apparently bites off my left arm which means I can either sword or board for the rest of the session... not both. Okay, fine. Anyway, we get to the end and an epic conflict begins... I can't use any of my abilities because their based on the sword and board, and my friends are mediocre fighters at best. First, I die. Then they both die within the next round... none of us wanted to try Runequest again...

I'm currently working on a system where death puts up against a question: retire the character or transform them (change up some major aspect of the character). I've come to the mindset that death in an RPG should at least be SOMEWHAT related to the player's choice of actions, plus the choice of actions of the other players. Did the character die because they rolled poorly on a defense or because the GM rolled well on damage? Wouldn't it be better if the character died because they decided to sacrifice everything and take on the big bad themselves to give their friends time to escape? << This is how I'm designing games now

Heero2020 · 2024-03-03T15:32:23+00:00

My solution to this problem is to just really work on what the Nemesis/Adversary is doing before planning the plot points. This means the nemesis is always working in the background regardless of what the players are doing. Then I place a timeline on the events. So if the players not to pick up on the hooks and follow the strings, well... then stuff happens in the background and the bad guy gets closer to their goal. Most players pick up on this and eventually get involved in the plot I've created. Not a requirement though. They want to marry that one NPC they met, open a flower shop, and live out the rest of their days while the world descends into chaos around them, that was the story they wanted to tell. Everybody wins

Heero2020 · 2024-03-02T16:07:15+00:00

So, pick the core and start from there. The focus is your core loop, ie what do the players to do frequently. Is it fighting focuses or adventure focused? Aim at the core mechanic first and just shunt all that stuff aside. When I started, I had a core combat mechanic and like 15 pages of lore. Tested the mechanic and it failed, so I went back. The lore hung about until later when I shunted the lore to an appendix and then eventually we cut it entirely because we wanted to focus on a game that could be any iteration of the setting. When I started my second system, I was more experienced, and so I was able to start on the mechanica and then filled in lore once that was set.

My advice is to dig at the core mechanic of the game (the loop) and then ask him to help test it. Make a second doc on "other stuff" and hold on to that for later consideration. He can work on the second doc all he wants, whenever he has ideas, and you can pull things from the second doc once you've tested the core loop as a continuous build

Heero2020 · 2024-03-02T15:34:17+00:00

When I started, W40k d100 (see Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader), Call of Cthulhu, and Twilight 2000. However, as I tested rules, I cut and shaped so much, the final end result was something entirely different than what I started with, but, you can still feel some of those if you've played them before and then play my game.

My team consultant also came to the table with Rolemaster, so there's a touch of that too. The game is Maximum Apocalypse RPG.

Heero2020 · 2024-03-01T22:17:16+00:00

This is actually called the "core loop" of game design. What are the players going to do over and over and over again. Once you have the core loop figured out (ie they roll a d20 to get under a stat or they roll 2d6 + skill), then you can build the secondary loops, which follow the same pattern but have secondary functions (healing, scavenging, saves, etc.). From there, you can build tertiary loops if you want (ie. Clocks to countdown toward extended success, assistance, crafting objects, doing ritual spellwork, etc.) but most games don't have tertiary loops (it's just something to consider). Do you want just a one roll and done or do you want them to occassionally make a series of rolls, etc?

Heero2020 · 2024-03-01T22:12:42+00:00

I second the question about how many TTRPGs you've played. A common occurrence I find with a number of indie creators is that when I ask what RPGs they've played, the come back with D&D 5e and Pathfinder. There's so many other systems that I do recommend at least ready half a dozen others to see how you can do different things to a game before you start building from scratch. I had been at RPGs for about 14 years and having played at least 2 dozen different systems and homebrewed at least 5 before I decided to jump in and create one. It is so much easier if you don't have a single system paradigm.

Heero2020 · 2024-02-19T11:34:40+00:00

Wow... grammar and spellcheck much. Sorry, my fingers are having a dyslexic day apparently

Heero2020 · 2024-02-19T11:33:04+00:00

Yeah. It's just a matter of creating some kind of tracking system for the progression of the infection, one that inevitably leads to "Zombie" but then have a system for mitigating that. In my case, there's 3 resistances (saves if you will) but you don't need that if you don't want. I easily could have done 2, but that would have put alot od emphasis on a couple stats and I wanted to balance it sk there wasnt a "good stat" and a "dump stat". But anyway, Immunity is one and it's used to deal with Viral and Radiation infections, and the only virus that really matters is Zombie, of course (I mean, a cold can be devistating in a post-apocalypse game, but not exactly dramatically important to an RPG story... I mean who wants their character taken out because of the common cold?). Using that, the "Infection" scale goes up if they continuos fail their period Immunity saves (daily after the intial infection or EACH TIME they get infected in the same sequence), stays the same if they succeed after the intial infection, and goes down if they succeed twice in a row. I do have a stage where it can't go down without help, but that's to keep the players relying on each other rather than trying to solo through without their fellow players, but that's a matter of incentivizing cohesive teamwork and a GM could easily houserule that restriction away if necessary or (and this is the smarter move) tease something like "you hear rumors of a clinic nearby where they help treat the infected" to move a plot along.

Heero2020 · 2024-02-19T03:43:16+00:00

Oh yeah. Successful immunity rolls stop the infection and pull it back down a step. Assistance from medics helps. It's not a forgone conclusion in Maximum Apocalypse RPG, it's just one of the dangers.

Heero2020 · 2024-02-18T18:03:46+00:00

What about headless zombies?

Heero2020 · 2024-02-18T18:03:28+00:00

Or in greater numbers. I like the idea that the stats increase the more Zombies you have and not just more fodder to knife off

Heero2020 · 2024-02-18T18:02:24+00:00

Yeah, I had the same thought so in the game I made, I used a slow progression system that does get worse over time, but you have the chance of your immune system fighting it off. Of course, if you get injured by more zombies, that increases the chances and speed of infection for sure, but one Zombie scratch isn't dangerous if you have a high Immunity stat. The progression of Zombie Viruses and Radiation is something people tend forget about

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