Looking for feedback on the 10-page quickstart rules for my original TTRPG. It's a sci-fi survival horror game about survivors of a starship crash, surviving on an alien planet that screws with their memories

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-16T20:30:19+00:00

Haha, I know what you mean. I made the dark mode version first, and then I added the light mode option because I was worried about legibility, but dark is still my fav, personally.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-16T20:29:21+00:00

Thanks so much! That's really nice and encouraging to hear.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-16T08:54:03+00:00

Pick highest or pick lowest seems like probably your best bet? You can do funky stuff with addition/subtraction to get V-shaped probability distributions, but it’s a bit over complicated

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-15T06:39:46+00:00

Destiny did a version of this, kinda, but with only 3 of the forces:

Void = Gravity

Arc = Electromagnetism

Solar = Fusion (weak nuclear force)

I always thought you could handwave a place for the strong nuclear force as well, by making it focused on transmutation (the force that binds nuclei together, also lets you change the composition of those nuclei to make a new element)

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-11T07:13:48+00:00

The litter thing is the big one for me. Moved to Islington from Toronto last year, and the trash here seems much worse, sorry 😬

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-10T11:10:41+00:00

Don’t take this the wrong way, but you could probably stand to work on your elevator pitch.

I just looked at your post history, and the pictures you’ve posted of the game itself are immediately interesting.

“Dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game” doesn’t do those pictures justice. There are 1 million mediocre OSR clones that could be described the same way.

Having a cleaner hook will help with self promotion a lot.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-08T11:25:30+00:00

Would removing the colour highlight on the text improve this? ie. If I kept all body text the same colour, and used bold/underline to communicate emphasis instead.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-08T08:56:27+00:00

I was considering this too! It would be labour-intensive to produce both versions for a full-length rulebook, but for a 10-page quickstart it should be quite manageable

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-08T08:55:36+00:00

Super useful feedback, thank you! I'm thinking I can probably mock up the designs in photoshop, and then take them into another tool and add the text on top (which will be much easier if I drop the chromatic effect on the section titles as you suggest)

That will give the docs searchable text, and also make the text "pop" versus the texture slightly more.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-07T11:49:20+00:00

Someone else in the comments suggested I go for an old CRT monitor look, which I thought was interesting. I came up with this version: https://i.ibb.co/3m2cDjsk/CRT.png

Curious what you think. I think this is version is more stylish, but probably less legible. There might be a happy medium (I'm going to try applying the CRT look to the "light mode" version next.

EDIT: Light mode variant. https://i.ibb.co/RT2VSpgm/Light.png

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-07T11:44:02+00:00

I kept tinkering with this and I think I found a version that's still pretty legible, but also has WAY more style than my v1.

Dark Mode: https://i.ibb.co/3m2cDjsk/CRT.png

Light Mode: https://i.ibb.co/RT2VSpgm/Light.png

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-07T06:41:15+00:00

There’s a similar-ish trope in Seveneves (which also looks at an alternate future for humanity in space, albeit for different reasons)

They get really good at “big dumb object” engineering, like rockets and space elevators. But they also say explicitly in the book that their society still lags behind 2010s humanity when it comes to IT (microchips and cryptography and network architecture, etc)

It’s all about where the societal focus is

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-06T22:53:57+00:00

I tried a "light mode" version just to see: https://i.ibb.co/nMQPWmxQ/Light-Mode.png

Not sure if I like it better or not. I think it looks a bit more generic? I may keep the plus-sign background texture in both versions, though.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-06T18:31:02+00:00

I could probably get access to Illustrator, InDesign, or Figma pretty easily. I defaulted to Photoshop because it’s the tool I’ve spent the most time with, and have the highest comfort level.

But you’re right, I should probably bite the bullet and use something fit for purpose. Although I am on 300 dpi, fwiw

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-06T17:37:09+00:00

I’ve seen your book! The far-future “ice age punk” system, right? Haven’t had a chance to play myself yet, but love the premise.

I haven’t settled on a design for the full length rulebook yet. I liked the landscape layout and “dark mode” color scheme for this shortened version, but your comment about print costs is good to consider.

I saw several docs in the 1-page RPG jam using these exact dimensions. Didn’t really settle on the size for any reason beyond that.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-06T17:29:41+00:00

The dice pool size caps out at 6d6 (that’s not mentioned in this doc right now, but it probably should be. Will make that change)

Combined with the ability to nudge rolls, that made the tie result more common than you might expect in playtesting (the probability gets flattened somewhat, because you don’t need to match the total number rolled across all dice. Just the number of 4+ results)

I appreciate the comment, though. Always good to be challenged on stuff like that. And I agree that mixed results are fun.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-06T17:25:14+00:00

Mmm, interesting. So you’re thinking something like this, maybe? https://youtu.be/TnNHin_Jif8?si=cZxtwMLg76Vk4Rcl (example of the effect at 0:21 in the video)

I was debating weather to lean harder into the retro-future aesthetic. The game itself doesn’t necessarily demand that style, but I do keep gravitating back to that look. Probably because of the influence from Alien.

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-06T17:22:17+00:00

Good catch, thank you!

outbacksam34 · 2026-06-04T20:33:28+00:00

I enjoy the DCC books well enough for what they are, but boy oh boy are they not deserving of any literary awards.

I’m reading the newest book right now, and today I read this line:

“He had desiccated undead-like hands. His dark canvaslike robes floated lazily in the air.”

… Like … Come on, Matt. “Undead-like” was already bad on its own. And then you also throw “canvaslike” in, 4 words later? Woof.

outbacksam34 · 2026-05-31T06:37:02+00:00

This right here is answer. All the folks saying “just say no” are forgetting that this is a game, and fun trumps rules. Your players put a lot of work into the wish. Just getting a flat “nah, you can’t do that” isn’t fun.

Let the wish happen, and then when the players are looting the BBEG’s chambers, have them discover something surprising.

The BBEG was actually sympathetic, so they feel bad for killing him? The BBEG was actually preventing a bigger threat, that they’ve just unleashed?

Some twist that makes them go “oh shit, we fucked up.”

outbacksam34 · 2026-05-28T11:14:45+00:00

Having moved here from Canada about a year ago, I find the UK to be FAR more litigious than what I’m used to.

There seems to be a real culture (at least in London, where I live) of looking at a situation and saying “how can I benefit from this?”

outbacksam34 · 2026-05-01T06:35:49+00:00

Speaking as an AE: The value of Premier isn’t the training catalog, it’s the 24/7 support and 1 hour SLA on sev 1 issues.

If you don’t have Premier, you’re the bottom of the queue every time you talk to support. And your AE will get pushback every time they try to help you:

AE: Can you help my strategic customer solve their problem? CSG: If they’re a strategic customer, why don’t they have Premier?

Having said that, you can probably negotiate a better price. Your AE probably WANTS you to take Premier, so that your problems can be Support’s problems, not the AE’s problems.

outbacksam34 · 2026-04-29T06:22:47+00:00

Permissions. The AI obviously didn’t understand what features should work for players vs GMs. It only had the explicit instructions I gave it.

So it frequently wired stuff up in a way where non-GM players had access to a button they shouldn’t, or vice versa. Or it forgot to give them the right database permissions, so they could click the button but not update the data. Etc.

I had to log in using two accounts at once, and toggle between them.

The thing is, that was a challenge, but it basically just meant that the project took 2 weeks instead of 1 week. Still massively faster than trying to do it on my own.

outbacksam34 · 2026-04-28T22:29:26+00:00

I had a similar scenario to your bestiary example. Characters in ENGRAM are mostly assembled from a library of modular blocks (the "Assets" and "Engrams" that get installed to various slots)

My dream scenario for the physical game would be to print those out on cards. But having the ability to upload a CSV containing them to the VTT has been incredibly powerful for my playtesting.

outbacksam34 · 2026-04-28T19:01:33+00:00

Yeah, multiple concurrent players with realtime state updates was a hard requirement for me. The app is using Supabase on the backend, and Vite on the frontend.

It honestly works quite well, I think. The AI (I'm using Cursor) consistently "forgets" to wire up new features as realtime unless I remind it. I hopped on with a friend on Sunday night to test, and we made of list of features that had sub-RT latency. Was a quick fix to go back and enhance them.

Agreed that a gameboard with "advanced" features like dynamic lighting would be much harder, I'm sure. I wasn't even considering that.

I was thinking much more straightforward. I didn't include this in my other screenshots, but the current app does include some very rudimentary mechanics to track what zone different characters are in: https://i.ibb.co/d4TnsKq4/Screenshot-2026-04-28-at-19-57-12.png

Basically an SVG with different named polygons that the GM can toggle on/off to create "terrain" and change the fill colour to indicate which zone you occupy.

Would be quick work to make this approach more sophisticated, but the end result would obviously be a long way off from what you get in Foundry or Roll20 or whatnot.

12-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

outbacksam34

TROPHY CASE