Untitled Tabletop Role-Playing Game: 2 Setting Basics

 In the end the two things that a ttrpg designer offers, a setting and a set of rules, act only as  suggestions as to the type of stories and games that will be eventually played. If you present a world of espionage and intrigue the player might be drawn to a spy caper. If you offer detailed rules on firearms the player will expect gun fights.

If there is a dissidence between these two, if the settings and rules seem to be suggesting two different things, it muddies the water. If the setting speaks of the power of friendship but the rules focus on combat the player won’t know what type of game to expect. The designer is effectively asking the player to fix the game, do their job, for them. If instead there’s harmony between the two elements, if you have rules that not only support but reward teamwork to go along with that theme of friendship, then the game because even more compelling, more attractive to players.

This all means that there is a limit to how much game design you can do focusing purely on the mechanical half of the equation. The details and themes of the setting should influence the rules. So maybe I should nail down some of that setting.

Untitled Tabletop Role-Playing Game: A Lovecraftian Sentai Adventure

That tagline is not great, and the title’s nonexistent, but it should give some idea as to the direction I’m headed; a team of transforming heroes fighting incursions from beyond reality. Beyond being a potentially attractive hook for players this starting point has several advantages during design process. Like all urban fantasies, the squishy genre this broadly fits into, the world building starts with “what’s outside your window except where noted” and if there’s some mechanism to enforce secrecy, to keep the supernatural hidden, it can basically end there.

It gives me two fairly deep genres (cosmic horror and sentai/henshin) to draw inspiration from. And that’s also the first potential issue as in all that depth there’s not a lot of overlap between those two. One is all about how small and powerless the individual is while the other is all about the power of a handful of determined individuals. Even if it’s just keeping the threat of the week at bay that is a much more positive outcome than you can expect from most cosmic horror. That is a bit of tough needle to thread, almost any thematic decision I make will end up favoring one over the other. About the only thing they share is a rather binary view of good and evil. So why am I sticking myself with that challenge? Because I think I can use the tropes of one to reinforce the other. 

The world is under assault; creatures, things from  beyond the very bounds of reality are invading, Breaking down the rules of physics as they go. Thankfully those very same rules appear to be toxic to them limiting their influence until they’ve created a foothold.

Those handful of lines establish an in universe for the escalation of threat; Rita Repulsa can’t start with the heavy hitters, she has to send in the Putties first. Only a handful more lines need to be added to create symmetry. To lock the player characters into the same pattern of escalation.  

As miraculous as the our heroes use to fight back are they are sadly just that; miracles, things that shouldn’t be possible and normally wouldn’t be if not for the damage our enemies have down to reality.

It’s this parallelism that first drew me to this setting, the idea that the abilities of both the player characters and the threats would be capped by the same environmental condition seemed like the perfect way to blend the two genres. The idea that incursions break down the fabric of reality, making the impossible possible, feels very appropriate for a cosmic horror tale. But it also completely justifies a sentai series repeats the same steps every episode.

This is a good starting point, and suggests some questions to be addressed early on. Is this corruption (do we even call it “corruption”) binary, the PCs can either transform or they can’t, or is some sort of gradated scale with different abilities unlocking along it? There is a certain simplicity to tiers but a scale offers flexibility; players could choose to favor more flexible low-powered abilities over anything at the upper end of the scale which would change the type of game they were playing.

I think having a distinction between a character’s civilian and costumed guardian forms is core to the concept which points towards tiers. But if we divide those tiers into a number of steps we’d recreate a scale and give us the best of both worlds so pencil that in for now. I also think that an ability unlocked in tier should have an improved effect in higher tiers, really because that just feels nice.

Speaking of tiers I’m thinking there’ll be three, one for the PCs’ Civilian form, on for their costumed Guardian forms, and a third to represent the mecha (zord) equivalent. Now that third one is a low priory and definite expansion fodder; a complex ruleset not required for the core concept and greatly expands the range of play. Even setting that aside there’s still questions to be asked about the basic costume transformation.

Like is costumed even the way to go or would a more horrific bodily transformation be more in keeping with the cosmic horror inspiration? How do we address the traditional color coding? Is it purely cosmetic or is there a mechanical component? Maybe it should be mechanical, the obvious solution is to make the “colors” synonymous with the splats  (classes or what have you) but there’s a risk of forcing players into builds they don’t want in the name of party “balance”. One way to help mitigate this risk is make the splats so numerous that there is little risk of overlap. Or making each splat flexible enough to fill more than one role. That is definitely the path I prefer but that’s a discussion for a later day.

-Comments welcome.

Untitled Tabletop Role-Playing Game: 1 Task Resolution & Probability Curves

Whenever a character in a tabletop role-playing game attempts an action and the outcome is uncertain the system steps in to determine the outcome. Arguably resolving that ambiguity is the primary purpose for the existence of the mechanical half of an TTRPG so it's not an unreasonable place to start the design process.

While there are systems that use things such as playing cards or dominoes for task resolution the most option is to roll some number of dice. Normally in one of the following three ways: SINGLE, roll a single die; SUM, roll a pool of dice then add them together; and SELECTION, roll a pool of dice then select a subset to be the result. Each method has a different likelihood producing any given result, a different probability curve. And it is entirely possible to calculate these curves in advance.

Rolling a single die of any size has the same likelihood of producing any result within its range, if rolling a d6 each number has an equal 1-in-6 (or 6-in-36, to frame it in a way that will be helpful later on) chance of coming up, creating a perfectly flat "curve". Rolling and sum produces something resembling the classic bell curve, 2d6 has numbers looking something like the following: 2 = 1/36, 3 = 2/36, 4 = 3/36, 5 = 4/36, 6 = 5/36, 7 = 6/36, 8 = 5/36, 9 = 4/36, 10 = 3/36, 11 = 2/36, 12 = 1/36. Increasing the number of dice rolled both increases the range and flattens the curve, makes the central peak less pronounced. Calculating the probability for a selection method is a little more complected, requiring some assumptions to be made, but produces a curve that can only be described as spiky. If you roll 2d6 and care only about the highest result the odds look something like this: 1 = 1/36, 2 = 3/36, 3 = 5/36, 4 = 7/36, 5 = 9/36, 6 = 11/36. Adding dice to that pool does nothing to affect the range but does increase the likelihood of a maximal result. Which might have utility.

There are two main ways a character's traits can impact task resolution: it can either modify the dice pool, changing the number or size of dice involved, before the roll, or modifying the result after the roll. Changing the dice pool of either the single or sum method changes the range of possible results making it much harder to calculate difficulties. Which should be avoided. There are systems that do that, that change up dice pools (some of which I even like), but it should still be avoided. There is no such drawback with the selection method, as long as you stick to a single size of die, meaning you're free to use both forms of resolution modification, you can have different traits modify the same roll in different ways.

A useful framework for examining TTRPG systems is to divide a character's (task resolution modifying) traits into broad primary ones and narrower secondary ones. The more or less default approach is to have both types of traits affect task resolution in the same way; having them both add dice to the pool or value to the result (mathematically increasing the result is the same as decreasing the target number). This is completely serviceable, hence its position as the default, but it's more interesting if you can create a greater distinction between the two classes of traits. One method I've seen used by lighter, more narratively focused, games is it treat secondary traits as a simple binary; primary traits may have numerical value but secondary traits are only ever trained or untrained. But since there are two methods of modification at our disposal why don't we use both: one trait can determine the number of dice and the other can act as a bonus to the result. Since the number of dice in a pool has the biggest impact on probability that should be determined by the primary traits, leaving the secondary traits to act as bonuses, and bringing us our first actual game rule.

Basic Task Resolution: When determining the outcome of an action the controlling player will roll a number of dX equal to the governing primary trait, add the relevant secondary trait to the highest die rolled, and compare the result to the difficulty's target number (TN).

There are still things to be worked out even in that short paragraph; the type of die used needs to be nailed down, the specifics of the primary and secondary traits (both individually and as classes), the various difficulty target numbers need to worked out (at least partially based on the die used), and finally we most consider whether success will be binary or have degrees.

It should maybe have degrees.

-Comments welcome.

Untitled Tabletop Role-Playing Game: 0 Mission & Method

One of the most valuable questions you could ask is “why?” So why did I create this blog? Why am I setting out to design a tabletop role-playing game as an act of public performance?

Almost all creative endeavors can benefit from some degree of scrutiny (once again see the value of "why); forcing myself to explain the choices I make, including the alternatives I considered, might lead me to making better choices. More thoughtful choices? Or at least be aware of when I'm not being thoughtful and making decisions based purely on gut instinct. For the reader witnessing this project might give them some insight into game design, demystify the process, or if they think I made the wrong choice at any point it might inspire them to design their own TTRPG. With blackjack and hookers. 

Note for later: a blackjack based task resolution system might work for somebody.

Of course that sounds vaguely noble or purely artistic, but what's actually in this for me? First of all doing this all publicly might help guilt me into seeing this project through. I am definitely someone who has more inspiration than work ethic, flitting between projects whenever a newer shinier idea strikes me. Second, the readers of this blog might ask questions or raise issues I didn't think of. And finally, if I eventually decide to try to monetize the finished game doing it this way might build a fanbase for it.

Before I end this short introductory post, a little something about the "method" part of the title. My intent is to put up at least one post a week dealing with some element of game design, starting board and narrowing in as the game develops. Alternating between purely mechanical and narrative as long as that's feasible, which won't be long. I am currently labeling this project "Untitled Tabletop Role-Playing Game" because it is a tabletop role-playing game without a title, when the title situation changes I will likely go back and relabel all the old posts making this sentence seem weird. I'm taking the time to use a label because I may eventually use this blog for more than just this project.

-Comments welcome.