Decision Paralysis

Hey all! Today I'm gonna go over my plans for resting and recovering resources in TA. The resting system is going to be pretty similar to D&D 5e all in all, the "adventuring day" structure in which the party's resources are steadily depleted by each encounter they face seems like the preferable analogue to JRPG adventuring and combat. Minor encounters perform the war of attrition, with a big boss fight at the end being the potentially deadly challenge. So we're gonna go for short rests and long rests. This should be a pretty simple system to tweak and refine to exactly what each party wants, since there are only really two resources in TA, stamina and health. However, there are a couple tweaks I want to make to the D&D formula for different reasons. First of all, on short rests in D&D you choose how many hit dice to expend. I don't really vibe with this, hit dice kinda feel like they're supposed to represent your natural healing capabilitie

Hey guys! Today I wanted to briefly go into a smallish topic of how to end negative status effects or "banes" in combat. Oh and the project has officially been renamed, check here for details . As previously mentioned in dev diary #10 , I'm planning on having a free-form ability construction system in TA. Abilities will be partially be inspired by the banes/boons system from  Open Legend . Essentially, an offensive ability will deal damage and apply a "bane" (a negative status effect) on hit. For simplicity, I'll just use the Open Legend terminology during this post. During this dev diary, I wanted to settle on a system for how banes might end on a character. As I mentioned in dev diary #8 , I'm not planning on having saving throws in the game (at least not a save for every attribute like D&D 5e), so the obvious option of repeated saving throws that is used in D&D 5e is ruled out. Before getting into any potential rulesets, I wanted to lay ou

Hey all! Just a short post here to let y'all know about the  new title for the RPG project. I was originally just gonna include this info in a dev diary but couldn't find a nice way to slot it in without it ending up confusing. For anyone unaware, I'm changing the name of this project from "Saturday Morning Adventure" to avoid confusion with a similarly-named video game called "Saturday Morning RPG". I'm currently settled on the name "Tabletop Arcade". It doesn't entirely  convey everything I'd like from the title, but it seems to me like it's good enough for now at least. Thanks to my friends that helped me with the new title. As for the previous dev diaries under the old name, I'm not gonna go back and update the name thanks to laziness and a vague sense of preserving the history of the project. I'll add some sort of notice on the project page, and maybe a footnote on the dev diaries to indicate the change of nam

Hey all! As promised last week, something that's hopefully exciting today. I've got a draft of one of the chapters of SMA for you! As you'll probably notice if you've been following the dev diaries series, the rules presented here have undergone quite a few tweaks and refinements since their conception. Here's a quick summary of all the major changes, but it's possible I've missed some stuff since I didn't record the changes as I made them: The range of attributes has been changed from -4/+4 to -3/+3. Added hit dice and initiative rank, partially as placeholders in case I end up needing them later. Removed the "Judgement" defense score, it just seemed too confusing without adding anything substantial. Changed from having "ability points" which are spent to gain new in-combat abilities to just having a set maximum number of abilitites based on your level. Adding an extra point-buy mechanic feels overly complicated, especially w

Hey all! Today's dev diary is all about the health, damage and death systems I'll be using in SMA. As you'd probably already guessed based on the whole "game-like" pitch for this whole project, I'm gonna be using a hit point system for tracking damage. Other options like wound categories, shock/pain/blood loss, limb tracking are all interesting and may work better in certain games, but hit points seems closest to the vibe I want for SMA. Obviously, a direct translation of JRPG systems wouldn't really work for a tabletop RPG. The typical system of an instant KO at 0 hit points works in a video game because there is only a single player. A character getting knocked out is usually costly or risky to remedy, and heightens the tension of combat effectively since you're capabilities as a party are reduced. However, something like this would probably be pretty frustrating when each character has a single player since death would be very sudden. Compare th

Today's dev diary is all about the specific bonuses you'll get to attack and damage rolls in SMA. Probably not that interesting to general audiences, but powergamers take note. I need to settle on how attack bonuses and weapon proficiencies work. I see two main options right now based on what has been set out already Treat them like any other skills that can be gained - characters will be able to apply skill bonuses from a relevant skill to whatever attacks they make. Maybe they have a "Brawling" skill, and when it comes to combat the GM might rule this applies to unarmed attacks, attacks with improvised weapons, and some special actions like grappling and shoving. Treat them as a requirement - weapons are given set categories which you can gain proficiency with like in D&D. If you have proficiency in a certain type of attack, you get some sort of set bonus to it. Or alternatively, not having a proficiency in an attack type gives a penalty. I want  to go w