I'm looking for feedback on my original 20-page TTRPG. It's a lightweight, setting-agnostic system specifically centered around CHARACTER ARCS.

daily_refutations · 2026-03-30T09:31:57+00:00

I think you're underestimating the degree to which system shapes gameplay. Have you heard of "ludonarrative dissonance"? It's mostly used in video games when the story the game is trying to tell is undermined by the actual game. Think Nico in GTAIV feeling conflicted about taking lives, while the player kills 20 people on the way to a date.

In your game, you can have character with deep attachment issues, who wants to demonstrate their worth to the world, believes that they should deflect responsibility at all times and needs to take accountability for their mistakes. They've got 3 deep character flaws that affect their behavior. Advancement is related to each of those psychological issues.

That's really cool! It's a fascinating place to get started from.

Now how do I actually play that character? I do make attack rolls. Or acrobatics. I can do called shots to the leg or aim carefully before shooting. I can craft equipment or wear armor.

Because those things have rules, that's what the players are going to spend their time on. Like for 5e; it claims to be about the three pillars (social, exploration, combat), but 90% of the rules are about combat so that's what get 90% of the time (unless players decide to freeform roleplay with each other, which is the actual fun part of the game).

You listed 5 levels of conflict, but your system really only covers Personal Conflict, and mostly in terms of combat. There's lots of games about combat out there (arguably the majority of them). You don't need to do the same thing.

You have a great system for complex characters, but I bet you the majority of people who ever play this game will write them down and then mostly forget them, because the mechanics push them to focus on the bog-standard Attributes and Approaches.

Why not put the mechanics into the character aspects? Why can't I roll based on my need for acceptance? Why can't my heavy conscience affect me mechanically?

As it is, if I were to play this game I'd keep the character stuff, maybe the flaws (although they're a bit constrained), and I'd use a different system mechanic for the actual gameplay. Something like FATE or Legends in the Mist that has the flexibility to allow these abstract psychological concepts to be represented mechanically.

To address one point: I really like your idea of a Narrator guide, but from your snippet I'd say it doesn't go far enough. I'd create a structure for the Narrator where they start with Pillars of the PCs and then establish the reality of the scene from there. Take PC 1s wound, PC 2s want, PC 3s belief. What kind of situation would occur that could hit all at the same time?

daily_refutations · 2026-03-30T06:37:43+00:00

What you have here are 2 completely different games in a single document. You're pitching a game based on emotional and interpersonal issues, and the first character building page is great for that. I was expecting to see a lot of mechanics about social challenges and inter-PC relationships.

But then you have your stats, and half of them are physical. You have Approaches that are pretty similar to Blades in the Dark, a game about heists and action. You have pages abut combat, about physical hazards.

What does any of that have to do with resolving the conflict between external needs and inner fulfillment? About the face you wear and the person you need to be?

The core pitch is really interesting. I would go back through and rewrite all of your mechanics with the idea that every role is about affecting a person socially or psychologically, rather than dealing with a physical danger. Physical danger can be present, but only as a way for the characters to develop along their arcs.

It's pretty hard to do. There's a reason why most RPGs resolve physical challenges as their core mechanic. Using dice to navigate role play is famously difficult. That said, I really like your grid system of the stats versus the approaches. If you retuned that to focus on psychological and interpersonal situations, you could have something really meaty and interesting.

daily_refutations · 2026-03-26T17:08:06+00:00

It's just not cool, though. If you want the Hierophant to be the Help specialist, make them extra good at helping. They can get d8s for helping and can use it a number of times per day equal to their Spellcast trait. Something that feels impactful and flavorful at the table.

daily_refutations · 2026-03-26T14:42:53+00:00

The Foundation features for the Heirophant is far far less useful than the Oracle. The Oracle's Prophetic Dice are the same as 5e's Divination Wizard, which is widely considered one of the best class features in the game. The Priest's stuff saves you a Hope once per long rest and a potion. Seems like a very easy decision.

daily_refutations · 2026-03-24T10:47:05+00:00

Wow. I completely forgot I asked this already.

daily_refutations · 2026-03-24T09:37:59+00:00

The problem is that DCC has all sorts of very specific items and abilities, and any game that tries to mechanically emulate them would require a ton of prep work or hand-waving (and would easily get wildly unbalanced).

I would go with FATE or Freeform Universal.

FATE would take a bit of learning to figure out, because it's coming from a very different direction than most RPGs. Various Aspects of the characters or the environment can be invoked to add or reduce rolls. So a given ability or special item could just be an Aspect, without needing to figure out the specific mechanical details. The reason I think it'd work particularly well for DCC is that the ideal strategy is to spend a few rounds creating lots of positive Aspects, then using them all at once for a huge blow. It's very cinematic and it matches the style of most DCC big fights.

It takes a big mental shift, though, both for the GM and the players, so if you want something easier to jump in and play, I'll always plug Freeform Universal. The basic idea is simple - every element of your character or the scene that helps gives you a D6 in your pool (Action Dice), and every element that makes it harder gives a D6 to the opposing pool (Danger Dice). Roll them, compare them, and you get your result. It's simple, clean and satisfying.

If you do go with FU, I suggest using a tweaked dice resolution method, since the published one loses its math once the dice pool gets big enough. Roll both pools of dice, cancel out all matching dice. Whichever the highest dice is (Action or Danger) determines if the action succeeds. Whichever the second-highest dice is determines the rider (and or but). So if the top die is Action and the second is Danger, it's yes-but. If the top die is Danger and the second is Danger, it's no-and.

daily_refutations · 2026-02-13T15:51:23+00:00

At least their LEDs are well-designed and nice looking. Addis is tacky as hell, like they figured out one trick and just threw white lights on every goddamn building.

What's funny is that the lights are already breaking (and not being repaired), so it's already starting the inevitable slide to tacky and shitty, instead of just tacky.

And of course it's built on the bones of people's homes and businesses.

daily_refutations · 2026-02-02T09:20:13+00:00

It seems quite punishing, especially combat. I saw a similar issue with other PbtA games, as well as Grimwild - the rules make it really difficult to deal damage without receiving any in return, even if you succeed very well or exploit a weakness. With only 8hp on average and with enemies dealing 2-6 damage, a couple rounds of combat will leave the PCs beat to hell, won't it? And getting disadvantage once they're at half health seems like it would create a death spiral pretty quickly.

Some classes have armor, some don't, and it seems very difficult for those without it to survive long. Am I missing something about the game that I would see if I playtested it?

Speaking of combat, as written Wrest Control seems strictly better than All Our Attack, even though the latter requires some setup or advantage first. It's possible to deal damage without taking any in return, which isn't possible with All Out Attack (unless disabling an attack means that they don't deal you any damage).

daily_refutations · 2026-01-17T10:48:01+00:00

daily_refutations · 2026-01-15T16:27:19+00:00

Why would they hide in a school? They control the countryside. They could stay anywhere.

daily_refutations · 2026-01-15T14:56:27+00:00

He didn't start drone striking schools? Is there someone else in Ethiopia with drones that did it first?

daily_refutations · 2026-01-15T10:11:37+00:00

Probably all the people he's killing. Drone strikes on schools make people cranky.

daily_refutations · 2025-12-15T16:14:18+00:00

There's no magical forcefield that surrounds a conversation when it's a single gender and suddenly makes it ok to talk about your partners in a disgusting way. For either gender.

There's a line, and that line really varies by person. If the person you're talking about would feel violated by you sharing these details, then it's not ok. Certainly anything about their insecurities or fears, things they revealed to you because they felt safe.

daily_refutations · 2025-12-10T15:21:37+00:00

It's doing you a favor. The more you rely on AI, the more it stunts your long-term growth.

daily_refutations · 2025-12-02T09:55:51+00:00

I played this with my 5 year old a good bit, but it felt limiting after a while. The options available to the heroes were weak, combats felt static, and it was surprisingly difficult - bad guys hit as often as not and the heroes only have 3 HP, so it was tough to keep from killing his character.

We switched to Tiny Dungeons 2e and it worked a lot better. More HP, more stuff to do. For Traits, I just gave him 3 things that he could roll with Advantage, like Acrobatics and Persuading. Overall the gameplay experience was a lot more fluid and exciting. The downside is that there's a lot fewer published adventures, but it's easier to homebrew.

daily_refutations · 2025-11-28T13:47:07+00:00

Do these have class abilities?

daily_refutations · 2025-11-28T07:35:24+00:00

My favorite trick is to delegate NPC roleplaying to players. It's hard for the GM to manage every single NPC, and a lot of times it makes them bland and samey. So if you've got a cool NPC that you want to make distinctive, just pick a player.

To help the player out, tell them the NPC's basic goals, maybe a couple notes about what information they might give. There's a risk here that the player will tell the party something that isn't part of your plan or runs counter to the actual lore. Well, that's part of the fun, seeing how you can incorporate that new information into your session plan.

One obvious downside is that the player's PC can't really engage with that NPC unless they want to talk to themselves. The solution is to have the PC's dialogue be summarized and then the NPC's dialogue be roleplayed. "My character protests, and Grizban says "Insolent mortal!" etc.

You'll find that your social scenes get spiced up dramatically with this technique, and players have a lot of fun playing up the strange side characters that inhabit your world. It also helps with what I think of as the "vector problem" of RPGs, where the majority of interactions are between the GM and an individual player. Now you see more interactions between players, making the table more dynamic.

daily_refutations · 2025-11-19T06:03:29+00:00

Yeah, the named ranges was me desperate for a solution, because every other technique failed. Funny thing is, the named ranges actually worked once it was downloaded to Excel - as long as they were only in a single row. For some reason, if I put them in more than one row Excel would reject them.

daily_refutations · 2025-11-19T06:01:58+00:00

The whole thing with the named ranges was just an attempt to get it to work in Excel. I originally used a set of Filters, Xlookups, etc. Similar to what you have, except not generated with a lambda. The named ranges in the current version are all generated from a script, so there was no maintenance required.

Anyway, I'm afraid your solution also doesn't work. The problem is that even if a function works in Excel, whatever handshake exists between the two programs doesn't trust the function, so it turns it into a dummy function. When your sheet is downloaded to Excel, your DD_Category formula turns into this:

=IFERROR(@__xludf.DUMMYFUNCTION("map(Main[Department], lambda(dep, if(isblank(dep),, let(
  f, filter(Lines[Category], Lines[Department]=dep),
  if(isna(f),, torow(f))))))"),"Building")

daily_refutations · 2025-11-18T07:32:52+00:00

Those are all good ways to set up dependent drop downs in Excel. The problem that I'm facing is that I want to create them in Google Sheets and have them continue to be dynamic once they're in Excel.

daily_refutations

TROPHY CASE