The Gaming Den

You could significantly improve wild magic by moving it from output randomness to input randomness. Instead of pointing at a target and getting a random spell effect, you get a random spell effect then point to a target. Or have a "hand" of three random spell effects that you're stuck with...

Some want to feel smart or clever. They get that by having their plots work out well, finding emergent uses out of things that were only meant for utility, or for overcoming challenges through subversion instead of direct action. This is absolutely me. I'm happy with a session if I get to help some...

I think the property that Fox is saying isn't conserved isn't "who has the moment to moment focus of the group" but rather "who features in the group's memory after-the-fact." The latter version can be generated with memorable moments or destroyed in a forgettable session.

I like that one so much, Josh Kablack. Also, since Return Of The Obra Dinn has a specific concrete implementation of that... Memento mortem . If you touch a dead person, you can see the moment they died. You can hear five seconds prior to their death (from their perspective) plus explore a full 3D s...

Anyblade . You possess the Anyblade, a magical sword that, with a thought, can be transformed into any bladed weapon, and which is too lenient. Handy for suddenly having reach, a dagger, a giant honking sword, as appropriate. But also can be a sudden pole for pole vaulting, a sword too big for you ...

Great work folks! Good thread, I think. Keep it up. Well, I bet if you challenged me to write an entire 20-level character's worth of powers inspired by any one D&D spell I could do it, albeit with considerable overlap with many of the other possible random D&D spells. I think some spells wo...

In this thread Foxwarrior and I (and maybe MGuy?) think RPGs should try to give everyone the tools to do something memorable each session, and that a good way to do this is giving people flexible abilities. Foxwarrior adds that flexible limitations can accomplish this just as well as useful abilitie...

There are cooperative board games that solve the alpha gamer problem. For example, Space Alert solves it with a harsh time limit and private information. So I'd hardly call addressing it pointless. Yeah, sometimes someone is just bringing out-of-game baggage in and causing a mess for reasons that th...

I think that on a design level though you are trying to design a game that allows or promotes everyone to have the chance to do something memorable. I like this goal, and I think you said it well. Let's look at options for how to make it happen: It's good to give every player a nice toolbox that th...

I usually remove a few spells from an enemy caster's list as "already used," but I've never had them try to pace themselves against a player party (or really had a situation where the enemy should do that). Mostly the players face casters in their lair with ample warning, sometimes the pla...

I guess players often [conflate balance and consistency] though, they look back at a session and notice that one character accomplished nothing (because of poor dice rolls possibly) or stole the spotlight by rolling well, and infer that the game is unbalanced when really it's just designed to have ...

And if you're fighting a load of guys with 9 HP, the spell is the only one that ever one-shots anybody.

But does it have any bearing on the underlying point?

But the question is whether they're a good balance lever. Math-wise, they are the very definition of adding imbalance. It sounds like you're conflating balance and consistency, which I don't think is the most helpful definition for balance. I'd consider balance to be more akin to expected value. Th...

I imagine if you defined each quest as an "X Day race to save the world from destruction" then you could get the misaligned tools effect with daily power rationing. It would somewhat limit your quest design freedom though. Might work with one of those settings where dungeons are a transie...

As a DM it's nice when players have resources that line up with the thing I'm designing. If they have N daily powers, then I get a cheap source of tension when I give them nearly N daily problems. They have to consider when it's worth rationing, and are more likely to have to resort to tools that ar...

I enjoy that there's a Pokemon Trainer class in here. And also that, removed from the Pokemon setting, "Society that sends its children out to collect and tame monsters," is pretty fucked up, and also well within the bounds of horrible societies that exist in kitchen sink fantasy games. I ...

Rare miscasts that completely hose the character (or worse, party) aren't a very good balancing system for the reason Foxwarrior covered. Entirely reasonable mechanic for a big dumb hack and slash meatgrinder though. Very common miscasts (on par with missing) might be workable. That lets you make ma...

Mana Khemia is a good example of a game that very explicitly uses the system you're describing, Foxwarrior. Time is an infinite line of cards, and your turn gets inserted N cards into the future. I think you're right and the Memory Gauge might be mathematically the same thing as that, but it's a ver...

6 rounds sounds fine to me, no weirder than it taking 1 minute or 60 seconds. It's just a time unit. You only need to chop the flow of time up into round-sized chunks when there's so many of them going on that tracking them as partially overlapping blocks would be impractical. It's perfectly okay fo...

I'm enjoying the gonzo nature of these, it's nice to see people just go for it and see whether things work out or not. Goblin gang and intelligent weapon are suitably weird ways to play with the format, and look like they're executed well enough (to the level of detail I can see from a summary in a ...

In the context of dumb oneshots and hack and slash meatgrinders, a whole interlocking mess of dumb ways to transmute golems into other golems with wildly different challenge levels would be a lot of fun.

That is super interesting. I haven't seen it before either.

Is there a way to end your turn other than spending memory until you run out? What happens if you run out of (playable) cards? (Is that even possible?)

Three thoughts: [*] If you want to make progress, it'd be best to come up with 1-3 complex social encounters suitable for running as oneshots. Try to fit (enough of) your system into 1-2 pages. Run the oneshots, tweak the rules, try again with a different group, repeat. [*] Status effects and battle...

That's good your logistics sim is a sideshow, but if you want logistics to be a big part of the game, it'd probably be better to make it more nuanced and complicated over time rather than more streamlined. Like maybe hauling all your loot via airship is more efficient and better, but the fuel is har...

The thing that confuse me is that they say they want an interactive game but then make things that can't be interacted with (emblems, Hexproof, can't be countered), or it doesn't matter because you already get all the value anyway and not care (Uro...oh you counted it and didn't exile the card/grav...