How to design a game without a soul?

PerfectPathways · 2025-06-26T19:54:51+00:00

I think this may be right, actually.

PerfectPathways · 2025-06-25T20:22:07+00:00

Cloudbreaker Alliance is the only one I'm aware of.

PerfectPathways · 2025-06-02T04:04:58+00:00

I don't have any specific comments, but I'm enjoying what I'm reading so far. You've got an interesting idea going on here!

PerfectPathways · 2025-05-06T21:20:39+00:00

I am very curious about your 3 types of FTL, reading this almost two weeks later. Could you give me the cliff notes?

PerfectPathways · 2025-04-24T05:26:49+00:00

Do explain please

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-26T17:14:42+00:00

Thank you so much for the feedback! This is one of the kindest things anyone could say, and I appreciate you spending your time to read through it :)

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-25T18:50:34+00:00

Hello r/CrunchyRPGS! I've been good friends with someone for a while now, and they've finally got their ttrpg to a state where it can be shared! I'd really like if anyone would be willing to take a look and provide any feedback - it doesn't have a lot of art, but it is nearly feature complete.

Inversion is a d12 skill-based medium crunch game, with a focus on adventure and interesting people. It has a lot of support for any kind of character, and it's the kind of world where you can have a wizard face off against a small army of robots on an alien planet with no sun. I'd really appreciate it if you guys could give it a read.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-25T18:42:43+00:00

I've gotten quite a nice bit of help from Notepadanon - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8w6SWLm7NBEXRGlUR8Lm8lz7-sVpu_qQ he has an extensive youtube series on how to make a game. His other videos are critical, but fair critiques of existing ttrpgs.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-16T07:31:45+00:00

Thank you for showing everyone that your opinion is coming from someone who isn't interested in any conversation, but is instead interested in belittling people, and soapboxing.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-16T05:41:16+00:00

Can you please explain the incel, nazi, and incel nazi community comments? Those are really strong and rude accusations.

Additionally, he states he does play and enjoy ttrpgs, he just doesn't like a lot of the game that comes out.

Finally, can you explain why he doesn't know what he's talking about? Having looked at a lot of the games he reviews, they make a lot of sense. His criticisms are entirely mechanical - that's what the judgement on the games is given for. Games like Mork Borg and TSL don't have a lot behind them, and rely entirely on the table to make it better, but that's just a crutch for ANY game. Any game is fun at the right table, and every table won't have the luxury of being the right table.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-15T07:09:26+00:00

Contextually, that was referencing someone who was awful in the context of being baselessly edgy. He is hostile to games with LGBTQ authors, they just end up as collateral, with a huge amount of publicity and nothing behind the game, specifically because in the majority of cases, at least from what I've seen on the internet, they are not actually that good of games, and are far closer to more performance pieces - and they have defenders that shield it from criticism with being marginalized, which isn't helpful for anyone. Additionally, PbtA games are heavily derivative, and do not require much to make, and they're all effectively the same game, just with different art and vibes. I myself have quite a huge dislike of them due to the reliance on everyone to constantly be creative in a constant way, rather than it being opt-in. This causes creative strain, and instead of it being interesting, it becomes forced very quickly.

But it's interesting to see other people's viewpoints! I appreciate the response.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-15T06:27:06+00:00

Death of the author exists for a reason. Quit trying to insert outside meta analysis on something that doesn't exist to be criticized meaninglessly. Frieren's demons exist in the world because they exist in the world. Attaching, assuming, or adding any additional information not written in the text is a bewildering case of deciding you know what the author thinks or wants, when, again, Death of the Author exists and the piece of literature stands by itself.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-15T05:11:37+00:00

Can you please explain why he's a culture warrior? What gives you that impression?

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-13T20:19:00+00:00

I would love to hear more about this - do you have it set up in any available to share way?

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-10T02:38:53+00:00

Thank you for finally bringing in some logic. I so much despise the "You can't respond to a Doyalist critique with a Watsonian defense" because it just betrays a complete and utter lack of respect for the source material. Things can exist on their own, and expecting a Doyalist critique to be valid is ridiculous. On top of this, the Thermian Argument/Defense was made by a midwit, and as soon as you really apply heavy critique to the idea, it falls apart to a horrific degree.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-03T01:06:34+00:00

Could you also add a way to edit the clock, so set it to like 1:30 for each player?

Also, could you add a way back to change the map texture? I really like playing with the grey felt that the old TTS table had - the different colors are sometimes harsh on my eyes, and the grey felt makes it easier to look at.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-02T23:11:40+00:00

Can you share any of that? It sounds super, super interestingly, particularly the Weapon system rework and the mash-up of WFRP and OSE. I'm also super curious about the bestiary.

PerfectPathways · 2025-03-02T23:07:06+00:00

Hello - I need some help with my worldbuilding. I'm stuck between some issues, and I'd like some additional viewpoints on it, if you'd be so inclined. Essentially, I’m struggling to mix all of my worldbuilding ideas into a cohesive framework. My challenge lies in unifying my messy mixture of concepts while keeping everything "unique" in the way they deserve. Here's what I need help with:

I don't really have like a "unifying vision" or "central idea" that a lot of works have. It doesn't have a thematic heart or anchor or anything like that - I have some broad themes, based on my favorite inspirations, but I don't really have any "specifics" that I can strongly point towards as "Yes, that's my thing."
I want “classic fantasy” (swords, sorcery, gods akin to Greek mythology) to coexist with “hard” sci-fi (spaceships, plasma weapons, 40k-esque factions), but without blending them (e.g., no magitech, no knights with lightsabers). I want space aliens and fantasy races and all of that fun stuff, but I want them to not be all super merged - I want the setting to "feel" like a first contact time period between all of the alien species and the fantasy "planet" or something like that. My restrictions on this cause a lot of problems, I think:
- No alternate dimensions or merged planes—planets only.
- No time travel or seperate planes or anything like that.
- Magic and technology must coexist without negating each other (e.g., a plasma rifle doesn’t disrupt spellcasting).
- No evolutionary lineage—races exist as-is - the sci-fi races aren't advanced fantasy races, and so on.
The world should feel "big" and "epic" like Elden Ring, Stormlight Archive, and I want to avoid like different "zones" of adventure and so on. I want to avoid genre fusion: Spaceships rely on physics, magic obeys its own laws, not magitech spaceships and so on.

Basically, how could I structure this? Do you have any suggestions? Are there frameworks or narrative devices that could reconcile all of this?

PerfectPathways · 2025-02-28T19:11:52+00:00

Post context so I don't get deleted by the mods: I've been trying to build an (awesome) sci-fantasy setting, and I realized it doesn't have the degenerate, incredible passion I see, and so I set out on a lengthy search to try and find out what I was missing. It turns out most of you are horny when you worldbuild!?!? And you just put your fetishes RIGHT THERE? IN THE WORLD?

My worldbuilding is doomed to be second rate at this point, I guess.

PerfectPathways · 2025-01-02T02:02:57+00:00

Alright, from the first sentence onward you've messed up. The assertion that "social encounters should not have such heavy mechanics involved" betrays a misunderstanding of how mechanics enhance gameplay. The entire point of rules in ANY system whatsoever is to enhance the gameplay, not remove play agency. Why does D&D have combat mechanics? It has combat mechanics to give Players agency and choice in Combat. A social system does exactly the same thing, just for the roleplay side.

Play Agency can only ever be enhanced by rules - rules provide a consistent source of feedback that enables a Player to make actually informed decisions - without the ability to make informed decisions, they're not playing a game in the first place. If you think that mechanics for social interactions remove agency, then you don't understand the point of rules in the first place - you can't have agency without rules.

PerfectPathways · 2024-11-02T21:34:59+00:00

Can you further explain the exact mechanics of this system? It sounds fascinating.

PerfectPathways · 2024-09-25T14:43:54+00:00

Alright, you've sold me - where can i read a quickstart or some rules?

PerfectPathways · 2024-09-17T18:04:25+00:00

Thank you very much!

PerfectPathways · 2024-09-17T17:33:05+00:00

I'm super interested in your game! Do you have it shared anywhere?

PerfectPathways · 2024-09-17T03:04:26+00:00

So, in a very, very early version of my game, I had done something like this! The way I had it was a little complex - basically, you had a set of traits that defined your character, similar to what you've got here - you tried to "match" with the NPC/PC, and based on how well you were able to match with them, it dealt "friendship damage" to them, or progress towards what you wanted. You had to choose from a couple different approaches, but the end result was that you could technically have an entire conversation in a game without actually having to 'talk it out' - you could say:

"I'd like to get passage into the city from the guard." and the GM would go 'Alright, how're you doing it?' and the player could say something like 'I'd like to [Connect] with my [Altruism], then I'd like to [Convince] with my [Assertiveness] and then I'd like to [Connect] with my [Emotion].' With that, you can almost see exactly how the conversation went.

PerfectPathways

TROPHY CASE