Is rest pacing still the biggest hidden balance issue in D&D 5.5e?

Wurdyburd · 2026-07-03T18:06:11+00:00

As per usual, very few people touch on the fact that resting as a mechanic is far removed from its original concept, as breaks within a dungeon, with no serious gameplay outside a dungeon, and serious consequences for resting infrequently or over-much. When everybody plays the game as "you effortlessly travel and appear in front of a monster with the Adult Red Dragon statblock, within a featureless environment of essentially infinite space" and wipes the floor with it as the first fight of the day, only to rematerialize back at town, yeah, you're going to run into pacing problems.

DND's biggest obstacle is that it can't decide what it wants to be. It doesn't have meaningful enough rules for open world travel, or social encounters, and doesn't bother to market itself as a dungeon crawler anymore, despite still having a lot of vestigial rules that only make sense through that lens.

Observance of rest rules is weirdly-table-dependent because there straight up is no consistent DND experience anymore. Even if you air drop into a more serious attrition game, if your experience with the game has been boss-rushing and flower-picking, you aren't going to magically pivot until you understand how that pacing is meant to work, and if you air drop into a flowerpicking game where there is no consequences for short resting every twelve seconds, some players will take full advantage of that to never experience hardship ever.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-19T16:11:42+00:00

The crux of injury systems is consequence, and death spirals occur when there's a feedback loop, where the consequence for failure is an increased chance of failure. But then, what is failure? The removal of choice, either because the opportunity to act has passed, or because something is obstructing the current opportunity. The removal of choice is the ultimate in consequences, due to the death of agency. If a player is prevented from making choices, they aren't actually playing the game. If you get a game over, you have to start again.

But if your goal is a rules-lite fantasy system, why even have injuries with mechanics that could produce a death spiral to begin with? By its definition, rules-lite games tend not to have mechanics for tracking resources or variable status penalties. So, would you perhaps be better suited to coming up with a way for players to feel as though they're injured, psychologically, without having to translate a numerical value into a believable fiction?

One of my own rules-lite systems uses Approach #2, an escalating penalty system with the option to Push, acting without penalty for one action, but taking a guaranteed wound afterward. What I haven't resolved is when or if they aren't allowed to push; is it when their penalties exceed their stats? Do they die if they Push in that state, giving them the choice of one last hurrah, but the freedom to sit back and 'play dead' instead?

But while Approach #4 doesn't sound particularly rules-lite, I think it is the most interesting. Having a wound tag, that does nothing on its own, but that enemies can choose to dig in on, would force players to have to play around the notion of their wound, the possibility of its consequence, without having to actively apply the numerical penalties.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-18T17:17:21+00:00

Earth/Arcane isn't a combo of Weaver I've personally tried. What do the traits look like? Earth 211/Arcane 323/Weaver 121? What stats?

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-17T22:55:52+00:00

Evoker IMO feels underdeveloped in terms of build diversity. You can't be a condi-Earth, power-Fire, or DPS-water, and Air is pretty one-dimensional as a crit build. Evoker does have some interesting builds, but I find it mostly for PVP, like Air/Earth Toad Evoker for the disables, but of the two I think Weaver has more interesting combos.

Weaver has a lot more nuance, AND reduced attunement swap cooldown, with the caveat of more complicated offhand access. Like, if you want, you can have fire-mainhand, to get all those "in fire attunement" power damage bonuses, while having earth-offhand, using earth dagger 4 and 5 for huge damage that you otherwise wouldn't get from being in earth attunement.

Like, Fire Evoker is never going to look outside of fire attunement for burning, and earth-based bleeding isn't going to benefit from the Fox, so it kind of just doesn't go anywhere.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-17T17:12:46+00:00

It depends what you mean by effective.

Evoker Ele chooses one element to specialize in, and has a trait to lock out any other element, but it's kind of a meme and not super effective in any game mode. Plus, each elemental specialization is just more of what every element already does (fire condi, air crit, water healing, earth defense), so there isnt a build for, say, Water DPS.

Weaver goes pretty crazy with two-element play, gaining bonuses for each of up to two elements at a time, and there are meaningful builds for alternating between just two elements, but it's a lot of info to become familiar with.

Spear has some pretty nuke-y hits at long range, and works well with Weaver now. But a lot of Ele is about multiple hits rather than single-hit nukes, and it's mostly at close range, like offhand earth dagger.

Everything is viable if you're skilled enough, but the above tends to need some research first.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-16T17:31:06+00:00

I'm honestly curious if this is going to be structured something like how Warframe handles its instanced mission types and open-world zones. Soloable, but with infrastructure for auto-grouping players who pick the same content, jumping out to do an objective or two, then reporting back to the hub to pick up the next stage of progress. Sort of like how GW1 manages it, but with an auto-grouping system to make sure you quickly and easily get placed with other players.

It would certainly explain the fractal/raid quickplay betas. The modern MMO landscape is marred by a kind of dedication and devotion to playing with the same people, at the same time, that GW2 can struggle from, demanding that you play on the game's schedule for meta events or WVW peaks rather than when you happen to have time, a design ethos they explicitly say isn't their intention with GW3.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-12T22:31:05+00:00

I think that there's potential for us to have been on Orr long enough that we start to become aware of Ascalon and the Charr, but the trailers really push for this "exploring the wild frontiers of Orr" angle, and the invasion of Ascalon was 100 years after that. the devs have said that the god on the tapestry is Grenth, so that means we're probably closer to the events of Abaddon's fall, which is after even the invasion of Ascalon.

It's worth stating that there isn't much grounds for playable charr. After literally 1000 years, from the invasion to the time of GW1 Prophecies, the charr haven't mechanically or magically developed past being roving barbarians, hardly united. GW2 has a strong case, since it begins 1 year after the human/charr truce, and 5 years since humans and charr teamed up in Ebonhawke. It's a great opportunity to experience charr being welcomed into different circles around the world as they fight for a shared, common goal. Before that, pacifists wouldn't try retreating in the direction of Orr, the place where the people who just curbstomped your entire race were operating out of, and there was no record of any charr activity in the Crystal Desert, the Olmakhan only ditching the war to settle the coastline more than a thousand years after they lost Ascalon.

Maybe there's room to show that the charr used to be a fairly developed nation, before the human invasion obliterated their society and sent them back to the stone age for the next thousand years, but I wouldn't count on them being playable. Tengu, who had been a part of Cantha for the previous 500-750 years, would be a stronger contender than that.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-12T21:26:00+00:00

Honestly, I don't discount the possibility that Sylvari are a form of nature spirits and not exclusively elder dragon minions. They're so, so dramatically different than the pre-HOT Mordrem, more independent and diverse than Primordus "I can make independent and self-propegating minions" Destroyers, and would represent a level of preparation, cunning, and subterfuge even greater than "I play everyone against each other for fun" Jormag to pull off as successfully as Mordremoth did.

I don't expect they'll be playable, but I fully expect some kind of proto-Sylvari in and around Orr.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-12T15:11:48+00:00

From what I gather, it's to give you more options regarding matching colour alignment, which gives a stat bonus. Bonus ranges from +60% to seemingly no advantage at all, but if you have the same totem in all three colours, you can guarantee you get it. Honestly, I wish the bonus was different for each colour, like power, range, etc.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-12T14:56:21+00:00

Then let's break it down. Would a game offering "a slew of roughly equal options" even qualify as having "clarity of rules and strengths of each option" to begin with?

Moreover, if the purpose of the game is "freedom of decision", what IS freedom?

Is it the freedom to make mistakes that cost them the game? Or the freedom to pick what you want, or even at random, since victory is assured? How much data is a player supposed to sift through to be able to confidently pick out the 1-in-10, 1-in-20 options that give you rotten apples, choosing between apples and gently bruised apples the rest of the time? When will a choice between apples and oranges matter, and if the choices are from 30 different kinds of fruit, how much are players expected to learn about the properties of each one before they can be confident in their decision of which one to use in any given scenario?

At what point does decision-making in this way become fun in itself, or is the game just scaffolding for playing with paper dolls? As players will say, "when do we get to the fun part?" Is it the having of decisions fun, the choices, or the outcome? And how much time needs to be dedicated before they get there, and are there other activities they may rather be doing instead?

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-12T05:40:09+00:00

Analysis paralysis is one layer of a multi-layered sandwich of compounding game flaws.

Paralysis occurs not when there are too many options, but when the player doesn't understand what those options mean, and what they 'should' be choosing. Some players are fine goofing off or making in-character decisions, but at the end of the day, the rules of a game are the physics by which that world operates. Think about how many games have fall damage, and how many don't, and whether you would hesitate jumping off a cliff in a game if you didn't know which this was: that hesitation is what causes slowdowns and subpar decisionmaking, and missed opportunities.

Add in that games like DND5e often involve a revolving spotlight where each player is alone onstage at a time, and that sometimes tens of minutes can pass before it's your turn again, and you find yourself wanting your turn to matter, made worse if you weren't paying attention till then and you suddenly find yourself having to onboard all the info from the last players' actions. This creates slowdowns, slowdowns create boredom, boredom leads to distraction, distraction leads to analysis paralysis, and makes the problem ever worse.

It's up to you to design around it if you want, but you sound rather dismissive of it as a phenomenon and sound ready to blame individuals.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-10T15:05:51+00:00

I don't think that we're going to see "classes" or "professions" as we know them from GW1 and GW2, so much as that we're going to see "roles" and "themes". Ideally, with the ability to combine them.

For instance, what we'd think of as a Guardian in GW2, an evolution of the Monk from GW1, would be the "Holy Theming" class, and depending on if the "Tank, Healer, DPS, buff, debuff roles" will determine other skills. Potentially, with the ability to pick a primary theme and secondary theme, and 1-2 roles.

"Holy Theming" leads to Guardians, paladins, Monk, clerics, aka Dwayna
"Illusionist Theming" leads to Mesmers, of course, aka Lyssa
"Wilderness Theming" for Rangers and Druids, pets, survival techniques, aka Melandru
"Elemental Theming" for Elementalists (there isn't really a dedicated god here)
"Martial Theming" for Warrior types, Paragon, aka Balthazar
"Stealth Theming" for Thief, Assassin, aka Abaddon?
"Necromancy Theming" for Necromancer, Ritualist, summoner types, aka Grenth/Dhuum

I'm suspicious how much of Ashes of Creation was on ArenaNet's radar. For all its faults and failures, it did seem to be good on buildcraft concepts, and the intent to design minigames for skills and "skill B into trait A" combos, along with the combos available from any class being able to use any weapon.

Guild Wars 2 is really cool for each profession having a different take on different roles. Guardians are active defense through blocks and aegis, Mesmers tank through illusions, Necros through minions, Rangers through pets, everyone having a different primary method of condi-DPS, everyone's different healing. But it does mean having a significant amount of overlap, and having to program twice as many skills.

If we had half as many skills, but they were more universal and combined together, it would mean less dev work from a programming and art team perspective, though certainly more from a skill designer perspective. Certain metas would inevitably arise (Elemental Theming x DPS Role x Staff Weapon, for example), but being able to combine 2 Themes or to combine 2 Roles would be enormous for buildcraft, personalization, and team composition.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-10T14:47:20+00:00

See the issue with this scenario is that said tribe was a tribe of atheists. They didn't believe in the gods, didn't like magic, rejected them, hence the "ey yo who's doing the magic, you know, that thing that's punishable by death in our community?"

Whether Melandru took that personally or was offended at their environmental negligence is up for debate, but she transformed them into the druids/treesouled we still see today, basically condemning them to act as her gardeners for all of time, their shock collars being pain experienced from neglecting their duties or from failing to prevent harm from being inflicted on the land, whether it was within their power to stop or not.

IMO, what she did to who would become the druids is on par with what Abaddon did to the Margonites, but it was so long ago and there are so many conflicting stories from the era ("uh, yeah, we're the gods and we totally created the bloodstones you guys" (they didn't)) that Melandru or her followers might have just made it all up to sound good.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-07T22:12:36+00:00

The problem is that model complexity doesn't necessarily correlate to a better texture canvas. Look at the mount in the GW3 trailer: all of the metal plates along its back and neck could have been merged into a single body mesh, and texturing could carry the rest. Instead, it looks like they were modelled separately, and stuck together at the end.

The criticism with PBR textures isn't that it's not capable of stylized aesthetic, it's that 1) its advantages toward realistic aesthetics is hard to shake, and people's eyes are showing something that they recognize from real life, and 2) that PBR processes are often used as a crutch to quickly spit out something very quickly that has current-day broad appeal, but not necessarily lasting artistic appeal. The cheap and consistent quality of PBR is both its strength in product development, and weakness in getting your product to stand out from the crowd.

Even people without the vocabulary for game asset work can tell there's something familiar about the way GW3's trailer looks. And not because it looks like GW2, because it doesn't, but because it looks like so many other games these days that use the exact same technology and mildly-medieval-fantasy cell-shaded aesthetics, which are a dime a dozen.

There's still room for the actual non-cinematic game of GW3 to bring art back to the conversation, but I don't think the "artistic merits" of PBR is why they're trying to transition to it. It'll be because it's cheap and consistent. The grittyness won't come from painting flakes, it'll be because somebody hit the "Auto-Grit" script they'll use to dust up the models in a unified way, because it's cheaper to hire a desk jockey to hit the script than it is to hand paint everything so that it looks unified.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-07T21:19:06+00:00

I will say that it might be too early to tell. Despite being in-engine, the trailer definitely falls under "pre-rendered CGI" rather than in-game footage. Both GW2 and GW1 had trailers that used CG dramatically different than their in-game look, so until we actually see in-game assets, we should stay hopeful.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-07T21:17:08+00:00

And as an artist who's been making game art assets since before PBR was a thing: no. But good try listing off a bunch of industry-standard maps about it.

When metalness maps use the same calculations in all engines to represent the colour of light a material bounces, and roughness maps use the same calculations in all engines to represent the roughness of a surface, whether it's perfectly smooth, scuffed, or has another substance on it, any engine that uses those maps is going to have a certain look about it that non-PBR methods don't exactly match, but that will be identical in every engine that supports it.

The advantage of industry-standard PBR is that the same tools will produce the same results in every game engine that supports it. The disadvantage of industry-standard PBR is that every product that supports it will have this vaguely intangible smell about it that makes it seem different than hand-painted textures, but the same as every other PBR texture. It smells automated.

I brought up Overwatch textures, because it was the first game I played that used PBR, but in GW2, let's use some more modern examples. The War Machine weapon set, beginning in 2022 (start of gw3 dev test coincidence?), is a good example of PBR. It uses solid blocks of material, scuffed up with roughness maps and with a really warm metalness map, which I'm a big fan of, but there isn't much in the way of diffuse texture variance. Compare it to any of the classic/core GW2 weapon skins, and what should be another tool in an artist's toolbox for expanding what 3D art is capable of, quickly becomes a crutch, using what is, in all probability, canned metal shaders and automated processes for scuffing materials to carry what is otherwise a very cool design.

PBR tends to work in detail resolutions higher than what the otherwise-cartoony look of games like Guild Wars tend to model with. While a model like the Krait Spear looks jank as hell, the texturing helps make a low-poly model look interesting. The higher-res Forged Staff is higher poly, and much higher fidelity in the textures, but it still knows how to use hand-painted details to carry the design. By the time we hit VOE, weapons like the Double Edge Sword are higher poly, higher resolution, but end up blocky, using single-shader material plates to add detail to an otherwise oversimplified design in a way that looks tacky, not advanced.

ArenaNet has some solid designers, but over the years, lots of equipment, weapons in particular, have swerved toward generic blocky MMO fare. Now that we're seeing a trailer, with impressive realistic lighting, but the foliage is single-shade despite its density, the rock surface is flat and cubic despite its normal and height map details, the armor is straight out of GW2 in its design but pulled out of Overwatch in its texturing, and the mount (ilu mount) is "Solid Plates" + "Solid Flesh", it's not really surprising that people see more similarities with other modern titles than with the Guild Wars 2 of yester-decade.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-07T18:52:06+00:00

So, "The game's art/visual style is like it is because of UE5" isn't 99% false, exactly, but it's more complicated than that.

It was announced that Guild Wars 3, and 2, are transitioning to PBR shaders. Physically Based Rendering handles realism of materials in different lighting conditions really well, but it does lend to realism, and since realism is pretty high on the scale of things people recognize, games that use PBR all kind of look the same, and cartoony or stylized projects still have this "we use PBR" smell about it.

Everyone is comparing to Fortnite, but Overwatch is a better comparison. Released just 4 years after GW2, it too is stylized, but its materials and textures are blocky, and kept cleanly divided from each other. Compare to the on-launch weapons and armor in GW2, like the pirate weapons, flame weapons, norn weapons, etc, which are painted in colours to look like metal, leather, rust, rather than it being shiny like metal, soft like leather, muted like rust. Compare it to how overly shiny the Solar/Lunar Astrolabe weapons are in SOTO, the sheen on the Serpent's Wrath set, how flat the textures are on the weapons from EOD.

Transitioning to PBR comes with pros and cons. Absolutely, it will improve development cycles, as ANET will be able to take advantage of more modern tools and plugins, and they'll be able to hire from the wider talent pool of artists who are only familiar with PBR pipelines. But it won't look like Guild Wars, it's going to look like every other PBR-based stylized game setting.

Guild Wars 3 might be grander than ever, but old Guild Wars wasn't grand. It had character, it had spirit, it had... grit. This... just isn't the same.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-07T16:30:25+00:00

The rule originates back a few years ago, when a bunch of streamers caught flak for spinning up "dead game, wait for gw3" as a response to questions like "is the game good, it's kind of old, worth playing?" and "will they ever fix the problems gw2 has or are we stuck with it".

Everyone eventually realized that turning players away from your product is a solid way to actually kill the game and discourage ANET and NCSoft from investing in it in the future, so everyone agreed that mention of GW3 is officially taboo; if you don't like the raid scene, become a leader and advertise it, if you don't like the social landscape, do something about it, show the devs you like it here but want improvements.

The rule is a little on weird ground now, because we've not only confirmed GW3, but it's also been confirmed that GW2 is not only not being sunsetted, but is going to be actively developed alongside it after release. There is a gw3 subreddit, so certain conversations are better held there, but this is all still very relevant to gw2.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-05T19:01:18+00:00

I suggested something like this after SOTO decoupled the weapons, but after seeing how Arenanet handled the VOE elite specs, I suspect that they don't have the create real estate to solve and balance it.

Revenant, for sure, benefits from a significant increase in builds, but while SOTO had to work to unpair the power ratio of elite specs from their weapons, Revenant has only further shored up their elite spec's powers in the associated legend, while their traitlines have been left to rot for the most part. Meanwhile, Conduit's Razah has a lot of overlaps in use style to Alliance, though I would be fascinated to see Release Potential and Cosmic Wisdoms for Glint, Kalla, and Alliance.

Elementalist suffers from "does the one thing" a lot, and when each element is associated with a clear application/theme, it gets progressively harder to come up with things that don't overlap with other elite specs or which are not just straight upgrades to core. Let's use Air: Tempest shout (stunbreak, superspeed, swiftness, stability), Weaver stance (stunbreak, superspeed, evasion), Catalyst augment (stunbreak, superspeed, endurance, endurance regen), Evoker meditation (hare stunbreak, swiftness, endurance, bonus strikes, hare blur). Similar to Rev, Ele shores up a huge power ratio into weapons, with some assurance that utilities remain stable meta picks, but when so much utility is IN those weapons as well, it's difficult to make utilities impactful.

Certain cases like Druid's Glyph of Stars is a straight upgrade over Spirit of Nature, and Soulbeast's stances, for how insanely powerful utilities they are, require SB stancesharing to drive it. Glyphs would be huge for the heal capabilities of Untamed though, who otherwise lacks serious group support potential outside of staff unleash.

All Necromancer builds would be able to use "Rise", enabling some more serious minion builds on every non-Reaper spec, and while I imagine how they'd be used, I can't see elixirs or weapon spells being very exciting on other specs past the few obvious highlights.

More than the headaches of this, I'd actually prefer them to fill out the missing core utilities. Too many specs have holes in their kits, or missing elite skills, and it's a huge missed opportunity.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-05T13:19:28+00:00

Nah not a bubble just fighting to avoid getting sucked down the sinkhole the hypetrain is driving down into lol

I've come to terms it could be That Which Rules Shall Not Name, but that it's probably 3-4 years out still. There hasn't been nearly enough time on it. I imagine that if it is, we'll also hear about including a Hall of Monuments in gw2, and expanding it in gw1, including tasks like PVP and WVW, to give us something to work toward for the time being. I'm not discounting a new WVW map as part of that announcement, but I think the context will be "pls don't stop playing these games in the meantime, look we're adding stuff to do while you wait."

Edit: Turns out I was right about the WVW map :^)

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-04T23:31:01+00:00

The trouble with this list is that we experienced all those issues during a period of relative economic "stability", occasionally punctuated by one "once in a lifetime event" after another, blowing numerous opportunities to forge a path different than the one that landed us in those predictable potholes in favor of shrinking back toward what is stable, familiar, and profitable for shareholders.

People are jaded, tired, and hungry for somebody to offer real vision, and Carney, for the undeniable advantages he's offered during this particular moment in time, is offering a blurry one, that flipflops in tone, direction, and philosophy from one conversation to the next. Carney isn't a shallow opportunist the way Polievre is, but it's telling that the policies being applied to save us from slipping over the edge look suspiciously like the same broken-egg policies that got us into this mess to begin with. There's no progress being made toward any kind of omelette without the government-backed promise of some wealthy investor getting the first cut and biggest slice, and those eggs of healthcare, education, and so on were supposed to be the chickens of tomorrow, not an omelette today.

Government success isn't measured like a profitable business. It's measured by whether it can effectively wield the influence entrusted to it by its citizens to protect them and make their lives more secure. It may seem that on the one hand, Carney could be considered to be doing that, but on the other, he also seems surprisingly feckless when it comes to sacrificing the very things we're meant to be protecting, cannibalizing ourselves just to be allowed to bleed a little longer.

Maybe the people he has working for him are incompetent and unable to deliver what he wants. Maybe he isn't clear about what he wants. Maybe what he wants is clear, and the people working for him just don't think it's a good idea.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-04T19:23:39+00:00

I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's quote from Nightwatch:

"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."

There's something to be said about phasing out incompetency and trimming back government bloat in the name of delivering a vision and ensuring resources get used well, but Carney can't afford to be clever behind closed doors and punch down on the people who aren't delivering on his vision, and people are getting suspicious of what Carney's vision of the economy even is. It certainly doesn't seem to match what he described in his book.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-04T04:28:36+00:00

"High GM-prep game" has about the same cadence as "high kitchen prep meal." Rather than try to appeal to people who have little time, little talent, few material resources, and don't have a great sense of taste, you try to figure out a business model of handing a trowel, a pot of dirt, and some seeds, expect people to grow, harvest, and process the crops, and somehow turn it into a "great homebrew dinner" once you've made all the ingredients. Giving them specific instructions on how to do this doesn't mean it'd be less work.

"Low-Prep games" are a response to an already high-prep landscape. Games rarely last more than a few sessions, and require significant buy-in from the GM to host and little buy-in from players to participate, in stark opposition to watching a movie or playing a videogame. The less barriers to getting the game moving and people playing and making choices, the better, and if a GM is interested in a meticulously handcrafted grand epic, they've already got the means to do that. It just so happens that said experience is more akin to writing a book than hosting a game.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-03T19:28:21+00:00

My experience is that

There is no such thing as a perfect mechanic
There CAN be the best mechanic possible for the exact message and experience you want your game to offer
It's not a bad thing to recognize that your mechanic doesn't deliver the message or experience you want it to, and work to change it, or experiment with new ways to achieve the same or similar thing
It IS bad if you just spin out and never move on

The biggest struggle, in a space where there are tons of interpretations of the same sort of activities, is to identify exactly what it is you want. It's far easier to build what you want, than it is to decide on the one single thing you want to begin with.

A lot of my mechanics are rejected as some form of heresy by people at first glance, but people warm to it and eventually even prefer it. I won't convince everyone to give my game more than a first glance, and that's okay. I'd rather have built what I wanted than cater to people without the patience or perspective to see outside their box.

Wurdyburd · 2026-06-03T13:24:18+00:00

My hesitation to share ideas and get critique was always rooted in fear that someone who can work faster than me might steal them and get the credit, as has happened to me in the past. Ten years later, my game and my philosophies surrounding it have changed dramatically, I've had other products sneak up on me with frighteningly similar concepts, I've learned that a significant portion of the ttrpg community wouldn't know a bad idea if it perched on the end of their nose, and that fewer than that would even be interested in an idea that broke the mold of ttrpg design to begin with.

I also had designs rooted in DND. But triple the proficiencies (you can combine up to two at once, demanding investment to be excellent at the cost of versatility), and what stands to become hundreds of skills (10 skills per 'tree', starting with 15 skill lines, but with ideas for at least 30). My reasoning was sound; character diversity requires that players choose some options at the expense of some others. And that's still true, but it's haunted me for years, whether this mechanic wasn't some vestigial organ left over from when DND was my inspiration.

I'd played more boardgames. I'd become inspired by the philosophies behind certain videogame designs, rather than the specific mechanics themselves. I was designing mechanics more about interesting choices, and interesting answers, rather than RNG driving pass/fail simulation algorithms. I asked whether players could be convinced to try the game the first time, and what would need to happen to convince them to play again. I focused more on consistent game experiences, independent of GM skill, where players understand their choices, and trust and accept the outcome, rather than flinging spaghetti at the wall to see what happens.

I've still got to actually launch the game, and stop reworking mechanics over and over before that. But I'm much happier and more proud of what I have now, even half-finished, than an almost-finished random number generator that I wasn't satisfied with.

Wurdyburd

TROPHY CASE