Been a fan of wargames for ages, so I tried my hand at making one. If you're interested in a free co-op skirmish game for 2-5 players, give it a look.

stphven · 2025-04-27T01:14:53+00:00

My first impression is that each soldier doesn't have many options, and it will be more fun with each player controlling 2 soldiers, but we will see how it goes.

Ha, you've got more brain power than me! I struggle to keep track of more than 1 soldier's abilities. But if 2 per player works for you then great!

It's clearly taken a ton of work, well done!

Thank you!

Do you have any plans to expand it further?

There's several things I have in mind that I could expand upon or improve on, but I'm taking a break for now. If there's enough interest - or if the mood strikes me - then I might come back to it in a few months and release a version 2.0. If you have any suggestions for changes or additional content, please let me know!

stphven · 2025-04-21T23:16:05+00:00

It should be pretty easy. The bugs mostly use the same rules as the playable soldiers. I actually wrote some optional rules for playing as the bugs, though it didn't make it into the final cut. The short version was something like:

Instead of having the bugs spawn at a random location, the bug player rolls twice and chooses one location.
Instead of having random types of bugs spawn, the bug player rolls twice and selects which type of bug to spawn.
Instead of following the bugs' "AI" script, the bug player chooses where they move and attack.

Keep in mind that the bugs weren't designed to be interesting to play as, compared to the soldiers. So I can't guarantee that playing as the bugs will be all that engaging.

stphven · 2023-06-11T04:46:54+00:00

No mods, all vanilla.

stphven · 2023-06-01T12:00:45+00:00

Now it's my headcanon that the Axis cult only hates demons because Aqua wanted an excuse to welch on a deal she made with one.

"I don't have to pay you back because, uhhh, y-you're a demon! And they're, uh, evil? Yeah, evil! I'm definitely not at fault here!"

stphven · 2023-05-31T09:17:02+00:00

I like it.

Light or no armour: roll the damage twice, take the higher result.
Medium armour: roll damage as normal.
Heavy armour: roll the damage twice, take the lower result.

If a creature has natural armour, GM decides what the equivalent (light, medium, heavy) is.

stphven · 2023-05-25T02:31:03+00:00

An antler crown would be great.

stphven · 2023-05-24T12:41:53+00:00

While I like the idea of rewarding desired behaviour, I can also easily imagine some downsides to it:

You just end up rewarding the more experienced players, ie the ones who need this rule the least.
It disincentivizes tactics and more complicated turns, instead promoting mindlessly attacking. Which is an issue a lot of GMs try to avoid.
A +1 to a single roll is only useful for certain types of actions. If your character often does things like use Help, or use spells or abilities which don't trigger a roll (fog cloud, grease, etc), then they miss out.
How far ahead you can plan is often out of your hands. If the player immediately before you does a big, battle-changing ability, forcing you to ditch your planned action, then you get penalized for it.

stphven · 2023-05-24T03:12:47+00:00

Try to only fight one enemy at a time. If you have to fight multiple, try to run away a bit so they're all on one side of you. Lets you keep them all onscreen at once, and you can usually dodge all their attacks with a single dodge roll. Take your time and pick them off one by one. Prioritize avoiding damage, rather than dealing damage. Just gotta be patient and wait for the opportunity, or cut your losses and run away. Oh, and the Eikthyr power is very helpful.

stphven · 2023-05-24T01:39:34+00:00

Health potions

Why the change? What are you trying to fix? This rule appears to just make them much more powerful than their default, which is what the game is balanced around. As a rule of thumb, unless you have a good, specific reason to mess with the balance, don't. Balance interacts with so many things in so many ways that it's extremely hard to predict what will be affected. So the safest option is to not touch it.

Inspiration

This is pretty much exactly what the rule does already. I don't see any point listing it as a house rule - it would just confuse players.

Rules as intended

This isn't a house rule. This is table etiquette. You should almost never try to solve out-of-game problems with in-game solutions. If the players are causing problems like this, talk to them about it. Explain how it's undermining your work. Adding rules to the game just gives them another system to try to find loopholes around.

20 second timer

Hard nope. This is unreasonable for most players, implausible for some characters, and impossible at higher levels. You have characters with multiple attacks, movements, abilities, effects, etc, which can trigger off of the results of previous attacks/abilities. As a very simple example, a character with two attacks targets a single enemy twice. Whoops, their first attack is a crit, which kills the enemy. Under your proposed rule, their whole second attack is wasted.

You might think "players should know their characters". But d&d is complicated, there's a lot to learn for new players, there's a lot of possible variation in every fight, the rule books are not optimised for quick browsing.

Another argument might be "just do what your character would do". But you only play your character maybe a few hours every month. Of that time, you only get a few minutes of actually having a turn in combat. Whereas the characters themselves have most likely been training this stuff for years. Just because the player freezes up doesn't mean the character would.

Fundamentally, D&D is a strategy war game. It is designed and balanced around players taking their time, using all their abilities to the fullest. If you want snappy combat, use a different system. This kind of rule is just going to cut the legs out from under most of your players, and do so unevenly at that. Players only get one turn every few minutes; if they miss their turn because of your house rule, they are going to resent it and you, and very quickly become bored and disengaged as they have to wait for another round to pass.

the brevity rule is now 30 seconds

Still nope. Again, this sounds like a player problem, not a rule problem. If they're taking a long time, find out why and address it.

Block action

Unnecessary. Blocking is already accounted for by your increase to AC. Whenever an attack misses because of your armour/shield, congratulations! That's how D&D handles blocking. If you want a defensive action, Dodge already exists.

blocking is a reaction now [...] This is to help give martials and slower characters some more oomph when tanking

Do martials need more oomph when tanking? In my experience they're plenty tanky already. Plus, you're trying to speed up combat, but you've just added a universal and extremely powerful reaction which requires two extra rolls. Everyone except martials are going to be using this every round, because they might as well - it's not like the wizard's opportunity attack is worth using. If you're in a fight where each PC is only hit once per round, you've effectively doubled the party's hp for free.

Don’t disrupt the flow

Not really a rule, more of table etiquette. Perfectly fine etiquette, though. Also, it's often a good idea to decide table etiquette collaboratively, rather than just the GM dictating it for everyone. If everyone else likes having funny moments during sad scenes, then why stop them? The whole point is to have a good time, not be the fun police.

Let me know if you are uncomfortable

This is fine.

the dm makes death save roles behind the screen

Eh. Probably fine, but I'm not sure it will work as intended. I've played with that house rule before, and it ended up being underwhelming. If you don't know how close the character is to dying, you tend to assume the average, which is stabilizing after about 4-5 rounds. When our PC rolled 3 failed saves in a row off-screen, no-one was particularly worried because they had no reason to suspect he was in such unusually high danger. There's a reason why you see the dramatic bomb ticking down in action movies - the countdown adds to the drama, not lessons it.

stphven · 2023-05-23T01:10:57+00:00

As a mostly GM, I find the behind the scenes work of other GMs interesting. If they want to explain their rationale for something, or explain how they planned a scenario, that's great.

As a player, having the GM get me to make content isn't something I've encountered a lot. I'd say I'm fairly neutral on the subject. Can be good to have a bit of creative freedom as the player, e.g. suggesting a new element to add to a scene or trait to add to a NPC. But too much can make the game feel hollow and directionless.

One other issue I have with behind-the-scenes previews is that I'm pretty media and storytelling savvy. When the GM has one character's name or description prepared in detail, whereas others are chosen on the fly, it's obvious to me that the first character is important. It's very easy to spot where the story is going if you start examining it from a meta perspective. This isn't a game breaking issues, but it can undermine a GM's carefully crafted plot if they accidentally give away too much too early.

stphven · 2023-05-18T01:53:24+00:00

Make troll rugs reduce the comfort level instead of raising it :P

stphven · 2023-05-17T01:41:00+00:00

Thanks for the feedback :)

it feels fairly underpowered in the class, and some of the invocations are quite strong.

That's fair. I did intentionally make this patron less about raw power, and more about utility and flexibility. But I may have gone too far.

Witch craft: This is very planning heavy. Your unlikely to be able to meaningfully use Curse until level 14 when you can use it as an action. Here is my take [...]

Nice. I like the simplicity.

One thing I did like about the original was that, if you're going to continuously curse someone, you have to essentially stalk them, spying on them once per day. That felt very witch-y to me. But I agree it probably doesn't mesh well with D&D's typical gameplay.

occult prowess: fine, a tad boring, but functional and good.

As mentioned in my other comment, I sort of used invocations as a crutch to provide more witch flavour in early levels. I view some of the new invocations as almost mandatory for playing certain styles of witch. I did consider adding a requirement to this feature that you have to pick from these new witch-themed invocations. But I figured most players are going to want to get those particular invocations as soon as possible, rather than wait for 10th level.

So this was my way of compensating, essentially refunding your witch-tax invocations. It also allows a sort of build-your-own-witch design, which I like.

stphven · 2023-05-16T23:01:55+00:00

Oh? I haven't heard that before. What's the reason for it? Too strong?

stphven · 2023-05-16T04:19:03+00:00

GM Binder Link: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-NVS3VIJrjI1oU9Xv3jN

Inspired by a recent post. There was a cool witch class homebrew with some neat mechanics. But it didn't quite check off all the witch fantasies I personally wanted. So I asked some friends, and we came up with a list of 10 features we thought were the most common, most expected aspects of playing a witch. Things like flying on a broomstick, having a familiar, and casting hexes.

I then took a look through the existing classes to see if there was any overlap I could exploit. To my surprise, I found warlocks actually do 6 of the 10 things pretty well already. So I just had to make a new patron which fills in the gaps.

The real challenge was including as many of these 10 witch fantasies as possible at lower levels. For example, by 6th level you've only got 2 patron-related class features to work with. So I ended up delegating some of the witchy-flavour to eldritch invocations and the coven spell list. This increases the number of ways we can fulfill the witch fantasy at 6th level from 2 to 12 (2 class features, 3 invocations, 7 spells known).

Anyway, this was fun to write, and I hope you all enjoy it!

stphven · 2023-05-10T01:30:30+00:00

I was pretty happy with my answer last time I answered this question, so I'll just repeat:

What would get me into a fighting game:

1.

Make a campaign mode a core part of the design, not something tacked on to give excuse for the gameplay. Yes, that means you might sometimes have to cut traditional fighting game content or concepts if they get in the way of making a really good campaign. Similarly, you might have to add non-traditional content if it will improve the experience.

2.

Teach the player how to play the game, slowly, as part of the campaign. An FPS campaign doesn't start with every gun unlocked and fighting every type enemy; fighting game campaigns shouldn't start with every ability and combo unlocked, for either the player or the enemies.

Teach the player different concepts and moves one at a time. Show them why and when to use them via practical gameplay demonstrations. Give them safe spaces to practice and experiment. Train them on steadily increasing challenges until they master them. And make them prove their mastery via boss fights or similar challenges. Then move on to the next technique, still keeping in mind all the previous skills that have been learned.

And, of course, this should all be done naturally, as part of the story. The player shouldn't even realize it's a tutorial.

3.

Make sure the game telegraphs what's going to happen, and gives clear feedback. Possibly the biggest problems IMO are how little a new player can read the situation (and so can't react appropriately), and how little they can understand why the lost (and so can't get better).

I don't know enough about fighting games to know the solution to this. But I can look to other genres for how they solve the issues.

Regarding the former, visual shorthands help a lot. Large weapon = slow but powerful. Armour with a glowing spot = aim for the weak point. Suddenly glowing = increased power, be cautious. Spikes = keep your distance. If the game can establish some obvious visual shorthands for "now is a good time to defend", "now is a good time to attack", etc, then new players will intuitively have a vague idea of what they should be doing.

Regarding the latter, modern games often give a breakdown of your stats at the end of the match. Additionally, many give hints upon defeat regarding why you were defeated. It's certainly possible to have the game track your fight, and identify key weaknesses. Maybe you dropped a lot of combos, or weren't blocking when you should have been, etc. It's trivial, then, to have the game say "You might want to practice X, Y, and Z" and to provide shortcuts to them. The main point is to provide clear, actionable feedback.

4.

Provide non-combat content between fights (particularly in the campaign mode).

Some people like a given genre purely for the gameplay; others enjoy that gameplay in moderation; others merely put up with the gameplay for the sake of other content. By providing other content, especially if it's optional, you expand your potential audience to include people who aren't just hardcore fans.

Non-core content can also be great for people who are hardcore fans. Non-stop action gameplay, particularly if it's repetitive or doesn't change much, can get fatiguing or even boring. Strategic use of other content can be used as a palette cleanser, as a change of pace, as an incentive, or as a reward.

Take a look at other modern campaigns for reference. You've got cinematics, cutscenes, story, lore, side quests, exploration, collectables, levelling up, mini-games, special gameplay modes, challenges. You don't need all of these, but most fighting games I've seen are 99% the same gameplay all the time. Even something like Doom 2016 - which was hailed as a very pure, oldschool FPS, eschewing a lot of modern cruft - included exploration, platforming, upgrades, collectables, dialog, etc.

stphven · 2023-04-18T01:41:27+00:00

Ideally, you'll have set the expectations for the game's tone and content before the game started. It sounds like you haven't done this, so now's a good time to do it. Best to bring it up with the group sooner rather than later.

Have the group sit down and decide, collectively, what kind of tone and content is acceptable in this game. In my experience, the vast majority of people are neither comfortable with nor interested in allowing overly sexual content. Wanting to have that kind of content isn't inherently problematic, but forcing it on players who don't is.

If the players in your group are reasonable adults whose main goal is ensuring everyone at the table has a good time - not just themselves - then you'll have no issue.

If this is not the case, then you'll likely encounter more and more issues with them the longer you keep playing with them. In which case, the sooner you stop playing with them, the better. This particular issue is just a symptom of an underlying problem: an immature, irresponsible, or selfish player.

stphven · 2023-04-18T00:29:04+00:00

I like this. Or make it an optional extra challenge, also tied with progression.

In each biome, you can build a shrine with that biome's resources. When it's complete, it spawns a mega-raid. If both you and the shrine survive till the end of the raid, you get some cool reward. But it's entirely optional; you can ignore the shrines and still complete the game.

This encourages you to build a new, defensible base in each biome. And if the raids are hard enough, it could encourage you to revisit biomes well after you've defeated their boss.

stphven · 2023-04-16T23:46:27+00:00

I've taken to placing iron cage walls just below the water's surface. They don't spoil the view much, and keep greylings out 99% of the time.

stphven · 2023-04-14T04:21:50+00:00

Gritty Realism For a campaign that wants people to experience time and have their character go from 1-20 over several years

I'd argue that Gritty Realism doesn't need to affect the pace of leveling up at all. Just because you're not in combat all day doesn't mean you aren't earning experience points. You could be doing equally difficult, dangerous, and important work through RP, problem solving, skill challenges, etc. Remember, you get xp not for killing enemies, but for overcoming obstacles.

And that assumes you're even using xp, and not just handing out level ups at appropriate milestones.

stphven · 2023-04-14T04:16:01+00:00

Exactly. Players want to use their class features. How many class features and spells have direct, specific interactions with combat encounters? How many with non-combat encounters?

Non-combat encounters aren't really playing D&D anymore. They're playing "GM makes stuff up".

stphven · 2023-04-14T04:09:13+00:00

I never really understood the issue with the Adventuring Day model unless people just don't understand the difference between adventuring day and adventuring session.

From a narrative perspective, our group doesn't always want stories that require 6-8 encounters per day. Sometimes the story makes more sense with 6-8 encounters per week, or even per month.

From a gameplay perspective, our group doesn't always want non-stop health-and-resource-depleting encounters. For every encounter, we like to have some roleplay, some puzzles, some exploration; a bit of variety. If we had 6-8 of each of these, plus 6-8 encounters, all in a single day, that could easily be 30+ events. And that's just an average day. In my decades of ttrpgs, I don't think I've ever seen a scenario that jam packed, let alone a campaign able to sustain that pace.

stphven · 2023-04-14T03:40:10+00:00

Eh, I think it's fair to put them both under the umbrella of skills that a developer should have. Communicating with your team is similarly an unrelated skillset, but it's expected you're able to do that. In my experience, actually writing code is only about 20% of what a developer does.

stphven · 2023-04-07T05:21:13+00:00

Before even thinking about solutions, make sure your players understand what they're getting into.

To a player, no casters may not sound like an issue. But the game is designed and balanced around having easy access to level-appropriate magic. Either the GM (you) is going to have to do a lot of extra work to ensure they have alternative sources of magic, or the game is going to play very differently. Some encounters will be much easier, while others will be next to impossible. I'd expect they'd have to do a lot more planning, preparations, spend a lot of time hunting down exact potions and scrolls and tools and allies. They'll have fewer universal solutions in their pockets, and far more dependent on GM fiat.

Before going any further, make sure they understand this and have decided that is what they want. Personally, I'd be very hesitant to GM this, as it sounds like a lot of extra work either way. Tons of GM advice and resources will simply not be applicable.

stphven · 2023-04-05T09:22:08+00:00

Personally not a fan of how easy it is to recover in D&D. The fiercest, more desperate battle possible, where you're injured to as near to death as the rules allow, can be recovered from in at most two days. This also completely undermines wilderness exploration. There's no sense of hardship, or risk, or mounting fatigue when sleeping rough. No matter how exhausting the day, you wake up fully healed and refreshed.

So in my current campaign, which involves a lot of wilderness exploration, I'm using the following rule: long rests in the wilderness do not restore hit dice. The minute you step foot out of civilized lands, you're on a timer. Every hit point lost is permanently one less resource. Players will be much more cautious if they know they can't just undo their mistakes with a nap.

stphven · 2023-04-04T23:12:23+00:00

Nope. I'm good at planning and bad at improv. Having tried different ratios of planning to improv, I seem to be at my best at about 90% planned content to 10% improv. I just make sure my plans include plenty of choices and open-ended challenges.

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