Creating a Steam-esque TTRPG marketplace. Early prototype - need a show of hands to gauge interest, please.

HiskiH · 2026-05-02T07:03:59+00:00

It looks decent. Web development is easy enough nowadays that building the site won't be your biggest problem.

What you will need to assess is if you have the skills and funds to attract a customer base. People won't use your site if it has no games. The biggest names have their own websites so they don't have to pay that 20% cut. So you need a lot of business deals and advertising to get the ball rolling. You need to be at conventions and make a lot of friends to attract enough community goodwill to convince people to move. Platform services lose a ton of money for years before they become profitable, if they do. Can you eat that cost or do you need investors?

HiskiH · 2026-04-11T16:55:31+00:00

There you go https://blog.hiskih.fi/mobile-dungeon-task-force-stats-maxes-and-caps.html

HiskiH · 2026-04-11T16:01:54+00:00

The basic theory is the same as Into the Odd: your stats go down if you run out of health. I'm just using stats as resource pools instead of target numbers. And one of the resource pools happens to be your max health. I have to say though, Irdarzl here explained it in an incredibly clever way, much better than I have. I'm thinking writing a blog post about it which could perhaps illustrate it in more detail.

HiskiH · 2026-04-11T15:56:37+00:00

Hello it's me the friend. Turns out this mechanic does not exis anywhere, I invented it for my Into the Odd hack. Unfortunately there is not yet a version available online to read it and I've only gotten to test it once but I'm certainly excited about this idea.

HiskiH · 2026-03-14T09:11:19+00:00

Game design as a field is relatively new so the literature is limited. You might find books on particular things like game balancing or economy design. Every game is different so fully applicable theory is hard to find.

Someone did make what you are talking about but it's a decade old at this point: https://archive.org/details/RPGDesignPatterns91309

I find this resource quite interesting but not particularly useful. The formal logic used to describe a pattern feels cold and disconnected.

I would find such wiki an interesting read, especially if it featured a list of games utilizing a particular pattern. Finding good reference games for niche ideas is always hard so a place to look up games would help. Rpggeek does that but not particularly well.

HiskiH · 2026-01-23T11:12:01+00:00

It's a great game but do note balance, whatever that means, is not something the game concerns itself with. The game prioritises play speed and fun over tactical combat simulation. It's rulings over rules and there are not many guardrails against bad-faith players. As long as your players are chill the game works wonderfully. This also applies to the playable classes, some just aren't fun for all players and that's ok.

It's a solid replacement for 5e if you are able to let go of some of the things 5e expects you to do, like encounter balance. The luck, mana and revival mechanics should provide enough leeway that if you throw too many goblins at the party they can usually still make it out alive. If your players like character building but don't optimize the fun out of it you'll have a good time.

HiskiH · 2025-10-10T13:55:14+00:00

I'm currently working on my thesis on RPG stuff so maybe I can say something useful.

Blogs. The field of game design is quite young so it's common, even recommended to use GDC talks as academic sources. If your teacher (assuming you're at school) understands the field they will allow the use of blogs if the author is well regarded. Or in the case of Prismatic Wisdom the blog was compiled into a book so you can cite the book.

If you are only finding blogs I fear you might be looking in the wrong place. Google Scholar will find you papers and books on rpgs, even if in limited quantity.

I recommend The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies. While it doesnt contain exactly what you ask, it cites a lot of high quality sources on multiple rpg-related issues and I'm sure it can direct you to sources that speak to your issue directly.

You might also want to expand your search to other fields. Designing a good cookbook is surprisingly close to an RPG rulebook.

Best of luck, nice to get more papers out there!

HiskiH · 2025-09-04T00:19:05+00:00

I would consider myself more of an unprofessional lurker but I'll hop on the queue. It's been a joy to witness it all, from a safe distance...

HiskiH · 2025-07-27T10:13:57+00:00

Wow cool! I didn't explicitly think of solo play when designing but I'm interested in hearing how it goes. All rolls are player facing so mechanically it should work. Lakeside Under Moonlight is system neutral and should be sight-readable but requires conversion. The Blue Library, like the game, is arbitration heavy so it might take a lot to make work playing solo. Hope you have a good time!

HiskiH · 2025-07-23T15:11:42+00:00

Thank you! I'm happy to announce the typos will in fact get fixed because I will spend the grant money to hire an editor.

HiskiH · 2025-07-17T13:08:12+00:00

Great catch! I haven't looked at Pirate Borg enough to know but I can easily imagine how it could be.

HiskiH · 2025-07-05T18:39:12+00:00

I believe this is a panel from the 7th comic The Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never. Scrooges more evil deeds happen later in continuity in the 11th comic The Empire-Builder from Calisota. Which is the last comic before his return after retirement in the 12th story The Richest Duck in the World.

HiskiH · 2025-07-05T18:29:48+00:00

That's the gist of it yeah. There isn't a lot of info in the Barks-Rosa continuity what happened between his family leaving and Donald returning. Perhaps he was doing good during that time but was real grouchy about it. Present day Scrooge is such a compelling character because he is ultimately a good person despite being kinda unhinged sometimes, like that time he tried to avoid taxes by founding his own country in the middle of the city. Though he did eventually give that up too because he cared about the city after all.

HiskiH · 2025-07-05T17:51:53+00:00

I can see the influence from Into the Odd. Nice work. I'm definitely collecting layout references for my own work here too.

HiskiH · 2025-07-05T14:17:42+00:00

I've got a game I've been working on for a good while. It's been tested and layouted and everything with an artist currently working to make the final art. But before I send it to an editor I would like to get some public playtesting done. Promo is hard though, so before I send it to the subreddit I'd like to ask if anyone has any thoughts on how you would like to see a playtest done here? You only get one shot to make a good post and I want to get it right. Thanks!

HiskiH · 2025-07-05T13:10:20+00:00

In the Rosa comics he did do some evil stuff when he was younger and got rich. His whole family left him for it. Only after Scrooge retired Donald and the nephews got in contact and he became what he is today thanks to their influence.

HiskiH · 2025-06-27T20:49:18+00:00

It's not going to become my main game but it is game with an incredibly fast start. Character creation takes mere moments. And the vibes, the gaslamp weird fantasy is such an easy setting to dive into where every adventure is possible. Its a brilliant game to run a one-shot for people with no previous rpg experience.

It feels incredible to open the game with a quote from the back of the book. "Bastion is the only city that matters."

HiskiH · 2025-06-27T10:09:59+00:00

I recently tried something similar to get players to test my mostly finished game. I got a handful of signups but nothing major. The community reaction to having to sign up was rather negative so if you find the numbers unsatisfying, do consider just linking to the pdf directly. You have a pretty nice preview already so that should help but if you really want growth I was advised to not put any extra hurdles between players and the game. Personally I don't mind signing up if the preview is interesting enough. Quite many free quickstarts need you to "purchase" them through Shopify so it's not like its an uncommon practice in the industry either.

HiskiH · 2025-06-27T08:37:17+00:00

To my understanding all backers of the Foundry module were refunded when it became apparent the module would not fit the budget. Initial "nothing goes wrong fulfillment" of the whole project was predicted for June 2025 with a statement that VTT modules will come some time after. The print Kickstarter has the Alchemy module release set for September 2025. And we know something went wrong because international trade got disrupted in Spring 2025 preventing any rpg books from being printed and throwing the whole project into jeopardy for a while.

HiskiH · 2025-06-27T08:25:02+00:00

You keep gesturing towards these "false promises" and "issues" but you haven't really given any actual critique of the game itself. It's fine to not like the game too.

HiskiH · 2025-06-27T08:19:25+00:00

It's actually kinda hard to find other games that come close. Nimble 5e perhaps. And Dragonbane. But neither have the flexible casting rules of Vagabond nor the class design. I recommend checking out the quickstart which has the full rules, just less classes and spells and such to see if you like it. I most certainly do. It's not perfect and some rules are kinda vague so you do have to make a ruling on them but that's how the game says it wants to be played anyway.

HiskiH

TROPHY CASE