Decision Paralysis

 Alright, this has been a long time coming and I've really been putting it off, but the blog is officially going on hiatus for a while. I had initially hoped that I'd be able to keep up with posting here at the same time as my university work but it doesn't really seem possible now. I'm not sure when this break will end, but I'll probably post regularly over the next holiday period. I'm still totally committed to finishing Tabletop Arcade, and I'm going to keep working on it behind the scenes when I can - I just won't be forcing myself to regularly share my progress. I may occasionally give an update here about it but I'm not gonna promise anything. If you want to keep updated on the blog's progress, you can follow me on social media here: Twitter: @DillTheHerb tumblr: decision-paralysis I also regularly post pixel art on both of these (mostly of Dragon Ball characters), so if you're interested in that as well that's a plus. Thanks for al

 Hey all! Today's post is another Tabletop Arcade draft chapter. This time, I've significantly expanded the available action effects, allowing you to create a much larger range of possible abilities. Let's get to it! First of all, some quick notes on structural changes that have been made. All effects now have a power level with each associated tier. Power levels are used to determine the MP cost modifier when creating abilities (double the power level to get the modifier), and are also used by the Dispel effect to determine what effects it can cancel. They're just pretty handy to have throughout the rules, and I might end up using them in other places later on. The idea of different effects having different "types" has also been formalised. This kinda came up before with the "Persistent Damage" effect, and it seemed like something that could be helped by making it universal. This also allowed me to compress a couple different effects into a single d

Hey all! For today's post, I've got another finished draft chapter for y'all. The equipment chapter includes rules for the various armour and weapons you'll use in-game, plus some rules for tracking wealth and inventory space. First off in the chapter is the Wealth system. It's pretty much the same system used in Open Legend, but I've added a couple small additions and tweaks. The Inventory system follows and is super simplified. The weapons system largely adapted from D&D 5e, just with some changes to make it more appropriate to the rest of the game. I'm particularly excited about creating some content for modern setting using these rules. The rules for armour take elements from both Open Legend and 5e, and I'm pretty satisfied with how they came out. I also took inspiration from Runequest in giving heavier armour a penalty to initiative - I think it works particularly nicely here as initiative is not rolled in TA. Finally there's the misc

Hey all! Sorry for the delayed post, but I've got the draft chapter on combat in TA finished! This one sure took a while to finish, I experienced a couple major setbacks along the way. Chief among them, I ended up rewriting the Abilities draft chapter a little bit along the way. Unfortunately I also overwrote the old draft on GM Binder, so it only lives on in PDF form. Well I see no value in wasting any time, so let's get straight to the content. The Document on GM Binder: TA Combat Chapter Draft And the revised Abilities chapter draft: The Document on GM Binder: TA Abilities Chapter Draft Version 2 I'm gonna give the semi-helpful ramble about what I learnt and what I changed while writing the chapter a miss this week if y'all don't mind. I'm frankly a little tired of looking at this thing lmao. Since this post has been delayed so significantly, I'm probably not gonna have anything new this weekend unless I think of something I can throw t

Hey all! Today I wanted to go over my thoughts on how retreating from combat might function in Tabletop Arcade. Now initially you may be thinking "well that doesn't sound very important", and you may be right. But stick with me, exploring this topic has unearthed the need for a couple design choices that don't seem to have simple answers. First of all, retreating doesn't come up very often in mainstream tabletop games. Players typically assume they can win any fight that they're in, and they're usually right. With the help of healing in particular, players usually have the option to sustain themselves for "just one more round" pretty much all the time. I've brought this up before in dev diary #12 , but this is kinda something I want to avoid. Consequently, I want retreating from combat to be a legitimate option, and sometimes even the best  option. So in summary, retreating is gonna matter in TA. On top of this, retreating is handled pr

Hey everyone! Got another draft chapter for this week's post, all about Feats in Tabletop Arcade. I won't waste your precious time by explaining the whole Feats system idea here, since I already did that in previous dev diaries and you should (hopefully) get the idea from the draft chapter. Creating this draft definitely helped me learn some more about designing this game, mostly by running into walls with trying to create certain stuff. For example, I'd initially wanted to include a "Permanent Boon" feat - it seemed like a neat idea that could give a bunch of options without needing loads of extra work. But when it came to meshing that idea with other ideas for certain boons it just didn't seem like there was a good way to make it work nicely. Most of the example feats I've included in the draft are definitely more on the simple side, and are mostly focused on altering the basic game statistics of your character. In future posts, I'll probably r