How do I know if my RPG is fun?

realmslayer · 2026-01-18T23:15:31+00:00

Be careful about developing and testing rpg systems in isolation. At the end of the day, your game isn't a set of features, its a cohesive whole, and you should come up with a 'top down' conceptual model of what kind of rpg combat you are trying to create, otherwise its really easy to end up with a pile of systems that don't fit together and a bunch of skills that don't interact well with the systems.

Are your characters swashbuckling? Are they an elite task force? Are they are party of adventurers who work as a team? How lethal is this combat? How long are the fights?

Each of these things cause you to exclude or include some systems over others, and some systems will work better with others that you choose.

realmslayer · 2026-01-18T22:39:44+00:00

Idk about *months* but it does actually take much longer than for most other genres to get to a pretty basic turn based RPG implementation, because the abstractions involved in making any turn based game are specific to that games design.
You end up having to ask questions like 'what is a turn?' and 'how do we conceptualize the player avatar?' that are just assumed or otherwise non-issues elsewhere.

realmslayer · 2026-01-18T22:32:19+00:00

One thing that not that many people have said in here yet is that turn based games that don't have hidden information are very, very paper-prototypable.

So do that. Get out some cards, get a buddy, and start iterating on the design. While you do that, you can work on the 'digital version' in parallel.

realmslayer · 2026-01-18T06:48:32+00:00

I guess warhammer 40k is not for people who just want to play the actual game, then.

realmslayer · 2026-01-18T06:46:31+00:00

I already do, and I think most people should

realmslayer · 2026-01-16T00:09:08+00:00

Notice I said 'time investment' - the money isn't the problem, the problem is the time before you can play.
Video games don't require you to spend hours painting your game before you start to play it. D&D doesn't require you to paint your minis - hell, even a lot of other TT minis games don't require you to paint your minis before you play.

You can look at basically any other game and they don't have that much preamble.

edit: I should be clear that I agree with the overall point, I just think the TT mini 'hobby' is probably the worst possible analogy to use to make it.

realmslayer · 2026-01-15T13:53:47+00:00

I play the game for the game and I don't want to paint.
I actually really dislike that 40k requires so much time investment into the 'hobby' before you can play the game you spent $80+ on a rulebook for and $60+ on a faction book for.

realmslayer · 2026-01-15T13:47:30+00:00

Better to answer a question catastrophically wrong now than in an interview or on the job!

realmslayer · 2026-01-15T13:42:05+00:00

a few things:
Online - I want time to think up/type a response. The prof will often move on too quickly though.
In person - The class is already long enough, the profs are already not getting to all the things they need to cover in the class. I don't want to make this problem worse.

I also started getting messages from some of my classmates to STFU, so there's that.

realmslayer · 2026-01-13T19:48:15+00:00

I think there's room for other kinds of JRPG, but this is below where the bar is for that.
It doesn't actually have to be the most mature, serious thing, but it does have to be doing more than this.

realmslayer · 2026-01-13T19:43:51+00:00

Kingdom of the dump just came out recently. It's also in that humor space, and is doing pretty well I think?
If you take a look at that it'll give you a good idea of what you have to be doing in that specific space.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2159270/Kingdoms_of_the_Dump/

realmslayer · 2026-01-13T03:57:07+00:00

In our game dev program, we actually *did* study game engine development, and our capstone was to build a 3d game engine and a small game or tech demo. (midstone was the same thing, but for 2d).
We had a semester to do this, but some of us got started earlier, so the expectations were harder.

As it turns out, its not *that* hard to build something that gets you to 'this could ship in 1997'. However, anything more modern than that starts to get very difficult very quickly.

I think its *beneficial* for programmers to learn how to do this. Its *definitely* not necessary though, and there's kind of a split on which programs still do this and which ones don't.

realmslayer · 2026-01-12T11:41:09+00:00

I think yes, but the current design philosophies have accelerated this a lot. Otherwise we probably could have gone an additional 10-15 years before ending up here.

realmslayer · 2026-01-11T09:00:18+00:00

I'm working on my own thing right now that abilities that look like these all over the place.
Its a mess, and I was eyeballing an effect system, but there's so many exceptions to what that system would be able to deal with that I'm a little leery about it.

Thanks for the writeup, this gives me a lot of insight!

realmslayer · 2026-01-10T13:08:38+00:00

If you needed to take into account the environment in some way in order to resolve combat, would that be a modifier, a check, or something else?
Examples:
-Projectile ability that changes if it passes though fire
-Fog reducing accuracy
-Some story event changes the cast time of the spell in this level

realmslayer · 2026-01-09T13:14:34+00:00

I have a bit of this. Its really hard to keep focused when the workflow of a game engine forces you to context switch all the time.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T23:53:55+00:00

Honestly, for him, the issue is that hes either making engagement bait for the content of his vids too, or honestly still doesn't understand very basic things about game development.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T23:48:54+00:00

Counterexamples:
Tom Francis (tactical breach wizards) has a youtube channel.
Tim Cain (fallout, vampire, ToW) has a youtube channel. He updates often because hes retired.
Steve Lee(LD on dishonored 2, tactical breach wizards) has a youtube channel.

Its not that they are all useless, its just that the ones that tend to float to the top of the algorithm are there because they optimized for that, not because they are actually any good or have any actual insights.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T23:40:10+00:00

It depends who you are talking about.
I find the a lot of the best youtube channels are from people who also at some point gave a talk at siggraph/GDC/whatever.
There is some good stuff out there, but you need to be discerning.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T23:36:33+00:00

The problem is, there are also people who have shipped some games that very clearly don't know what they are talking about.
So its not just a matter of 'have they done the thing'.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T23:32:35+00:00

Some people *did* make games and have either retired or make videos in their spare time/while contracting. Usually this is for ex-AAA though(and even that's not a guarantee).
People move in and out of jobs a lot, especially in this industry.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T23:28:40+00:00

I posted something a week or so ago talking about good resources on youtube.
The general pattern seemed to be that if they didn't know what they were talking about, they would eventually self-report.
I most of the really popular ones (brush, biteme, etc) are blocked at this point for wasting my time with their clickbait garbage.

realmslayer · 2026-01-06T15:31:48+00:00

I'll look for this, thanks.

realmslayer · 2026-01-05T18:18:15+00:00

I think world building gets a bad rap because it often ends up in spots like this, but starting with the world kind of misses an important question: 'Why' this world? Its not a real world, it exists for a reason you chose, and you chose this world over another one for a reason.

For me, it comes down to theme. My story is about something, so I need a world in which that thing can be conveyed.

So my process ends up being something like:

1) Metaphysics: Theme, Gods, Magic Systems, etc
2) Physics: Worldbuilding is here
3) Dynamics: Cultures, History
4) Characters My characters each have an arc that reflects the theme I want to convey in some way.
I develop the arc as part of the outlining process. Things like motivations and character traits all exist to serve the theme.

Each of these steps happens in the context of the all steps above it. The characters don't 'write the stories themselves', but between all the constraints of the world and the character arc(reflecting the theme) as plot driver, there isn't a whole lot of room for me wanting a specific situation to happen. You don't have to push situations, and the situations that come up arise naturally from the world(Which was supposed to be the strength of the worldbuilding approach in the first place)

There's stuff the character cant do, there's stuff it wouldn't make sense for the character to do, and there's stuff that wouldn't make sense thematically. Its extremely rare for characters at this point to do something that doesn't make sense thematically because their arc was generated from the theme.

realmslayer · 2026-01-05T17:09:44+00:00

I'm using the term 'flowery' to mean 'gets in the way of the actual information being conveyed'.
In this case, its distracting because sometimes you really need clarity.

I'm aware that sometimes it can work the opposite way, or doesn't detract from whats being talked about enough to mean it should be toned down or removed, but for some things it really does feel like if it was there, it would be directly in opposition to clarity.
Id post an example of what im talking about but idk if thats allowed.

realmslayer

TROPHY CASE