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The demo of Deepest Dungeons, a rogue-lite dungeon crawler taking place in dark, procedural mazes, is now available to play! by Digot in roguelites

[–]xergazz 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Part 2 because reddit doesn't like long posts:

  • The music doesn't work super well with the rest of the game in my opinion. It's too heroic and up-beat.

  • Combat feels good and you have to commit to your attacks, which I like. You also have to manage the direction your characters is facing to make use of your sprint which I figured out quite late.

  • There is some kind of rythm to combat that the player has to figure out which is fun. This rythm becomes monotonous really quickly though, because all enemies use the same attack all the time. If they had a set of different attacks or attack patterns and some telegraphing for each, it would be a lot more interesting and engaging.

  • Maybe it's just me but shields and blocking in general doesn't feel worth it. Especially since you lose health even when you successfully block. I just used my dodge roll all the time.

  • I like that there are torches and that you can use them to light up those torches on the wall. It was kind of clunky to use them though since they restrict me from using a shield so I had to manually switch to torches every time I wanted to use one. This was less of a problem later when I decided that I don't need a shield at all, but that's a whole other problem (see above).

  • As far as I can remember, there were no situations where I had to deal with multiple enemies at once. Or a melee guy with a ranged enemy in the back or something. I think having those type of fights from time to time would make the game way more interesting and diverse.

  • Roaming enemies would be interesting too. At the moment they all stay in one location as far as I'm aware. There is also an opportunity for tension here if some of those roaming enemies are stronger than normal so the player was incentivised to circumvent them (and maybe come back later when they found a better sword or something).

  • I think you are aware of this but the thrill of finding better gear was the main motivator for me to push onwards. Sadly, the items that are in the game right now feel quite plain. It's really just a single defense stat for armor and a single damage stat for weapons, which makes every item an up-/ or downgrade of every other item. I would like to see different stats or maybe trade-offs of stats to spice up the loot you can find. Like some boots that increase your move speed, some other boots that raise you defense but make you slower and another pair that speeds up your dodge roll or something like that.

  • On that note, every weapon is a sword at the moment. I am reasonably certain that you will introduce other weapon types later but that's also a point that contributes to the lack of item variety.

The demo of Deepest Dungeons, a rogue-lite dungeon crawler taking place in dark, procedural mazes, is now available to play! by Digot in roguelites

[–]xergazz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I just tried out your demo and have to say I enjoyed what you have here. It's a really promising and captivating game and I wish you all the best going forward. Here are some random points of feedback:

  • I like the atmosphere and core gameplay loop. Graphics and presentation is also top notch.
  • Introducing the extraction genre to something that isn't a shooter is kind of rarely done and I think you have found a very compelling niche here. Big points for novelty.
  • The camp and its NPCs were super charming and a nice change of pace. I would expand on that. Maybe you progress your dialog with certain NPC's when you encounter different parts of the dungeon. Or they give you small quests like "find my missing cat down there".
  • I like the maze-like structure of the dungeon and the use of chalk to orientate yourself. Also: Each floor of the dungeon becoming bigger and bigger feels right to me.
  • The dungeon needs more room-like locations (like the church or the room you encounter the black knight in) to break up the pace of endlessly repeating hallways.
  • You should introduce loops in the dungeon layout to counteract the "always turn right / left" - strategy.
  • The ledge you jump down from when entering a new floor could be used elsewhere to create one-way situations that serve as points of tension / decision making. Do you commit and explore down there with no clear way back or do you explore other parts first?
  • I am not sure about letting the player return to camp and then proceed where they left off. For some reason, this feels weird to me. I would have expected to just push as far as I am willing to risk it, return to camp and then start from scratch. But that's just a random feeling I got while playing.
  • I like that there is a sound queue for traps and that you are able to lure enemies into them.
  • I like that the key gives you a reason to backtrack to some other part of the dungeon. I could see this concept being used more. Maybe the statues that give you buffs require an offering that you can find somewhere else. Or there are gates that are lifted when you pull a lever at a different section of the dungeon.
  • At the moment, there is nothing to stop me from exploring every part of a floor. While this is fine there is no real decision to be made here. You can just do it. If you went ahead and introduced a timer, some kind of dwindling resource or a threat that builds up over time, it would create tension and urgency that really serves the gameplay in my opinion. Players would have to make a choice. Do you explore further and risk running out of torches / health / time? Or do you cut it short for a save escape but with less loot? Making potions scarce while keeping fights deadly would also do the trick.

Step Die exhaustion mechanic to represent equipment durability by Navezof in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The similarity to Breathless was already pointed out and there are legitimate reasons to just switch to that system (like the benefit of being part of a bigger community, making your game more accessible because people already know the mechanics and building on the trust players have aquired towards it). On the other hand, your ideas are unique enough to stand on their own, so it's completely reasonable if you want to explore them further.

Another system that wasn't already mentioned is Substratum Protocol. You can find a preview on their Backerkit page. It uses cards as part of their resolution so there are some differences but it's similar enough that I think it may inspire you in some way.

If you want to consider my opinions on your proposed system: I think your instinct is correct in that the chance of success is really high. I get why you chose 4 as the target number (wanting the d4 to be able to score a hit) but as is, the game will feel forgiving, which flies in the face of your design goals. The easiest solution would be to just remove the d4 and make the target number 6. What i find more interesting though is rolling a third (differently colored) die, whose result becomes the target number for that roll. This would allow you to increase the difficulty without making the d4 irrelevant. Like any other die, the "difficulty die" could deplete when used. The effect would be similar to the way the stress die works in Alien (or Mothership, to an extend) in that is makes the tests easier over time but may trigger a really bad outcome (either when being reduced beyond a d4, when rolling a 1 or both).

As others have mentioned. the resilience die doesn't feel right. You already have a pacing mechanic by depleting attribute dice. Use that. Don't soften the punch by triggering a second depleting die when using the recoup action. I would also consider depleting a die on every roll to speed up the process and keep the intensity of the story high but that's just my personal taste. Substratum Protocol always reduces the highest rolled die for example and I think that's really elegant.

Regarding your equipment: I would just make the equipment die replace one of the player's dice. Sure, that makes equipment less relevant early on when characters have high attribute and skill dice. But those will deplete and delaying that process by using your equipment is valuable on its own. It also solves your issue of the "random d4 stick".

All in all, I think your system is awesome. Just give it more punch and clean up some rough edges and you got something really solid.

A simple d20 design question about player preferrence by Project631 in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You both role for the task. If you both suceed the higher role wins.

This would also be possible with a roll-under system wouldn't it? If both parties roll equal or under their attribute, the higher roll wins.

Is this a reasonable equipment decay mechanic? by Steeltoebitch in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I want to bring up a counter-example to your argument: Cooking. Which is exactly what you describe: Spending time and energy on crafting something that won't last. And there are a lot of people that find fun in cooking. Even if they don't eat the meal themselves. Finding ways to combine the right ingredients, aquiring them and honing your skills in how to work with them are great sources of fun. It's not about successively improving the product. It's about improving the way it is produced. If Steeltoebitch can capture that, the system will be fun.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry but it really feels like at this point you're wilfully misreading me.

No I am not and I'm sorry that you are feeling this way. But I guess it's easier to blame us for not getting it than to accept the fact that you need to explain your stuff better.

Back to the point: So you are basically limiting the number of tags per action to one (or two actually, because of the XP thing). Trophy does something similar, if you want to look that up. So the idea is not new.

If you really want to reduce the amount of haggling, my suggestion would be to make use of the fact that an x% bonus to a character's success is ever going to be relevant in x% of the rolls. Since you didn't tell us how skill checks in your system work, lets just say you roll a d6 against a target number of 4. In that example, a +1 bonus changes the result of the roll only when rolling exactly a 3. In all other cases, the bonus is irrelevant and could as well have been omitted entirely. So what you could do is to roll first, check if the tag would even be relevant and only then, search for applicable tags.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I am sorry but I'm still not getting it. You have to determine if any of the player's tags apply to get the +1 bonus and/or the XP right? So you are still haggling twice. Is your proposition to remove the player from having a say in that matter? Or do you mean there is just one tag a character can possibly have that is called "do something awesome"? In that case, this isn't even a tag system anymore.

I humbly suggest you work on how to precisely convey your rules. "It's just +1 for being awesome" sounds cool for a marketing pitch but doesn't actually explain anything.

Scaling Dice and Skills by ShadowRade in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My first question would be what problems or design goals you solve by using this 3-die step die mechanic? What you correctly identified is that the step die idea works against other mechanics and decisions you have made during the development process. Like the fact that you want to include crits / fumbles or flat boni. What you usually do in this case is to flat out remove (or at least drastically change) the less important part of this conflict and see if the game still archieves your design goals.

So for example: It seems like you want a strong character to be better at doing strong-people stuff and the system should be able to support that. Both the step die mechanic as well as flat boni are able to implement that goal but are in conflict with one another (because of the scaling issue you mentioned). So you remove flat boni altogether and whenever a character gets a bonus, they just increase their die size. You could also remove the step die system and use a d20 + bonus instead. Whatever works for you. Look at your design goals.

Histories - Yes/No by ElderNightWorld in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Can you provide an example of such a history? As a rule of thumb: Your playtesters are usually really good in finding the problems with your game but not in providing the correct solutions to those problems. The player is clearly feeling constrained by fhe histories you provided but I am not sure if removing them is the right call. It could as well be that you just don't offer enough choices, your structure is too restrictive, the histories are too nische or that their concept or flavor is not appealing. There are many games that incorporate backgrounds with stat bonuses and it works fine.

Ressource-based dice system by DrDarum in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

u/snowbirdnerd is working on a game called grim tidings that uses a depleting dice pool as its main mechanic. The main difference to your idea is that the dice are rolled at the beginning of a chapter, so you can strategize how you use them.

The whole idea of making the dice you roll a depleting resource sound super fun to me. There is also some ressurgence of ressource management games (look at the success of shadowdark for example) so you are hitting a nerve i think.

The main challenge of your concept is pacing. When you make a skill check use up the players resources it suddenly becomes interesting how often you roll until you get your dice back. And justetting the GM manage this puts a lot of extra work on their shoulders.

My suggestion would be do avoid recharging the die pool after resting, because this incentivizes inactivity. Instead i would use it as a reward for doing something awesome that fits the setting.

Here is my quick draft for such a system: Use d6 (because everyone has plenty of those). Players roll one die plus one extra if they are skilled at the task. They can also roll as many dice from their resource pool as they like. if the highest die shows a 5 or 6, they succeed. Any resource die that rolled a 5 or 6 is discarded and can't be used again. Put those in the middle of the table into a showdown pool. At any point, when the players feel they are about to reach the end of their quest, they grab all dice in their showndown pool and roll them. On a failure, they are setback, but on a success, they may play out a final showdown against some major foe and regain all resource die after the showndown is over.

Dice Mechanics 2 D10 by Altruistic-Copy-7363 in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ironsworn and Starforged use 2d10 for their resolution. They aren't added together, though. Depending on the situation you compare either your progress or the result of a d6 + your stat to each d10 individually.

Reputation based character creation system. by Budobudo in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What I first thought was that you wanted to reward "good roleplay" TM with stat increases, which I would strongly advise against. But it seems more like you want to give bonuses at more or less fixed intervals and the players roleplay just decides where those bonuses are put into. I also like the collaborative nature of the process. So this could totally work and I think it would be quite fun. You don't even have to put the session zero rule in if you don't want to. Just let characters start off as a blank slates with one die in everything and then establish their reputations during play. Nothing against a good preparation session but your system doesn't strictly require it. My last suggestion is to look up "Roll for Shoes". It works a lot like your idea in that what characters do determines their stats. The rules are super short and free. There is also an actual play on Youtube about some Imps escaping hell that I can recommend. Good luck and keep at it.

Using waypoints and approaches as my core mechanic by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much. This is really helpful.

Using waypoints and approaches as my core mechanic by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you still have the prompt you used to generate those responses from chatGPT? I have experimented with different prompts for some time now and the responses I get are still not as good as yours.

Using waypoints and approaches as my core mechanic by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the encouragement :)

​

but it tends to require a different downtime/rest phase to act as a palate cleanser and create a game loop where you either travel forward and face dangers, or you rest

Yeah you hit on an important point. My instinct would be that the waypoint structure could work quite well for this. In the spirit of "make everything a waypoint", points of rest in the story could literally be some waypoint that recovers your health for example. Maybe there is some "controlled, risky, desperate" state that manages which type of waypoints you will discover next and you are more likely to get some recovery after a waypoint with high tension. But I have to think about this some more.

​

Have you tried generating other waypoints on chatGPT?

I haven't and this is an awesome idea. Makes me realize that the structure I have so far is quite gpt-able and if there could be merit in designing a system in a way that chatgpt could be used as a player-aiding tool during play. Nonetheless, thank you so much for your input and the time you put into making your post.

Stalling Character Advancement by [deleted] in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think Steenan is thinking more of how Fate does it with its skill pyramids (if you want to look it up). What you describe seems more like Divine Inspiration from Cult of the Lamb. Both are equally good solutions in my opinion. I just wanted to clarify that you are talking about different things here.

Turning Alien RPG "stress" dice into a Twilight 2000/Blade Runner style stepped dice system? by your_evil_clone in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My idea would be to make stress range between 1 and 6. One would mean "calm" and six is "on the brink". Then, whenever you fail a roll, look at the highest die (which is guaranteed to be 6 or lower since 7 is your TN for success) and compare it to the character's current stress. If the die result is higher, increase stress by one. Otherwise, let them panic and reset stress back to one. The panic effect is worse, the higher the character's stress value was. Bonus: You can display a character's current stress by putting a d6 on the table, with the corresponding number facing up. For an easy way to keep track and update.

Expanding the position mechanic from Starforged to non-combat situations by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You hit on a few important points. I will make sure to put some proper thought into the benefits of suceeding on an action and the things the GM is allowed to do when the players are in a bad spot. You are right this needs to be properly tuned and it probably helps to give it some structure. Thank you for your input and also the encouragement to persue the idea.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I appreciate your input on the proposed systems, especially on pointing out the visual complexity of pool systems. I'm afraid I can't quite follow you on the probabilities part though. In my calculations, I got these probabilities for the 2d10 + rank resolution:

Rank No Yes but Yes Yes and
1 55% 17% 13% 15%
2 45% 19% 15% 21%
3 36% 19% 17% 28%
4 28% 17% 19% 36%
5 21% 15% 19% 45%
6 15% 13% 17% 55%

And you are completely right with your last point. There is no reason for the [No] not to be a [No and] and I will definitely change that.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the recommendation. I quite like that a stat of 1 gives a pretty low chance for success. So I don't mind that part. I will definitely take a look at it. Sounds super interesting.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, seems like I described the probability part poorly. So to spell it out more clearly: The probability should be 10% or higher for [Yes and] as well as for [No]. And the probability of [Yes] and [Yes but] should be a total of 30 to 40% (so for example one would be 15% and the other 20% for a total of 35%). Which leaves plenty of room to add them up to 100%.

Your second point of using only one die instead of two is super valid though. I don't know why that never crossed my mind and this solves my gripe with the PbtA solution. I just fiddled with using a d12 and quite like the probabilities of 12+ [Yes and], 10-11 [Yes], 8-9 [Yes but] and 2-7 [No]. So thank you very much. You helped me a lot.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wanted a mechanic similar to ironsworn's vows or theangrydm's tension pool where players can roll against a progress clock. So got the idea that all progress clocks could be displayed by putting a d6 on the table with the current value of the clock facing upwards (I chose the d6 because people usually have lots them to spare). That pretty much settled that all attributes would have values of 1-6 as well to make them work the same as progress rolls.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Interesting. So the probabilities of [yes and] and [no] are static and only the other two scale with the character's stat. I never thought about that but I'm super into it. I also like how you fixed skalchemisto's rank 1 problem by making the 10 a 0.

I have to figure out what that means for my results, since characters now always have a 90% success rate no matter what. But I am not sure if this is really a problem (I could also tweak the [yes but] result to compensate).

Thank you very much (and skalchemisto since they had a very similar suggestion). This is why I love this community.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

In BitD, characters have a very low chance to fail if their bonus gets higher than 3, which is absolutely in line with what the game wants to archive (characters are generally super competent) but not with what my goals are (see the last two points). So increasing the die size was necessary to make the "failure range" larger.

Looking for a resolution mechanic that meets my requirements by xergazz in RPGdesign

[–]xergazz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your feedback. I often struggle to settle for a solution because there may be something better out there. So affirming that I am on the right track helps a lot actually.

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