Decision Paralysis

 Hey all! Back briefly following a message over Twitter to present a quick compilation of all the advanced classes together in a single pdf. This should make it a bit easier to browse through them all. The pdf is separated into two parts, indicating which advanced classes I consider "complete" or not. Here's the content: GM Binder: Modern Manual Compiled Advanced Classes I also thought it might be helpful to briefly go over the difference between the "complete" and "incomplete" advanced classes. The complete ones are everything that I published from this post onwards , while the incomplete ones are everything before that. I explain the changes I made a little bit there, but to summarise advanced classes generally got a bit beefier at that point, with more features per level on average. It's also around that time that I tweaked advanced classes to start at 2nd level rather than 3rd. If you plan on using any of the outdated advanced classes, keep th...

 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...

Hey everyone! Just a smallish post this week, got the draft chapter on skills in Tabletop Arcade for ya'll. I've had this draft chapter done for a while, and to be entirely honest I thought I'd already released it. This has been a pretty slow week for making progress on TA, but I'm hoping to have something a bit more interesting for next week's post. I went over my main intentions for the skill system way back in dev diary #5 , and they haven't really changed a whole lot since then. The only main addition here is how learning languages is dealt with. I wanted to fold languages into the skills system to streamline the game somewhat, but having characters make ability checks to use languages sounded absolutely awful. Here, characters improve their languages in the same way as skills, with their associated skill bonus translating to a level of fluency. As it is now, it mostly relies on roleplay to work, and I'm interested to see how well it will work in pra...

Hey everyone! In today's dev diary I'm gonna take a quick look at different advantage systems in tabletop games and settle on an advantage system for Tabletop Arcade. When I talk about an advantage system here, I mean the system that translates circumstantial advantages to solid mechanical bonuses a character gets to a particular roll. The keyword here is circumstantial, characters only gain these bonuses temporarily, to particular rolls, or under particular conditions. There is clearly a lot of variety in these systems, so I want to lay out the goals of this system in Tabletop Arcade. For one, it should be simple to use. All else being equal, cutting down on the time it takes to do admin at the table is definitely a plus. I also want to preserve bounded accuracy - in summary, you shouldn't be able to stack advantages over and over again until the results of your roll  are as high as you want. It may sound strange that I want to promote ease of use in TA after the abi...

Hey guys! Finally got that draft chapter finished and I'm really excited to share it with y'all. The chapter is all about constructing your own custom abilities using a set of rules. This draft chapter really was a struggle to create, and has given me some anxiety and doubt about whether or not this kind of system is viable or fun. Though in the end I reckon I'm fairly happy with how it's turned out. First of all, I want to stress that this content is largely untested and unbalanced. When deciding the cost of various ability traits I mostly just guessed at what a good number would be, and compared it with the other traits that had already been given costs. My primary goal for this chapter is just making the system fairly easy to use and not confusing. Ideally anyone will be able to translate an idea into a solid, usable ability using this chapter, so I'd really love any feedback on places you think this can be improved. Current Issues I'll avoid going i...

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...

Hey guys! Dev diary #9 wasn't very juicy, so here's an extra one for today! In this dev diary, I want to go through the various means of character progression I am going to implement in SMA. Progression I'm planning for progression in SMA to follow a pretty free-form system, predictably inspired by the widespread point-buy progression systems in JRPGs. My current plan is for characters to gain a couple different types of points as they level up which can be spent on a different things to improve their strength: Improving Attributes Gaining new Skills Improving existing Skills Gaining new Abilities Gaining new Feats Improving Attributes Just like so many other RPGs, you'll be able to impove some attributes of your atttributes as you progress through levels. This will just be a simple system, something like "whenver you reach a level that is a multiple of 5, gain an attribute point". Pretty standard stuff all in all. Gaining New Skills & ...

Hey all. In today's SMA dev diary, I wanted to go over the actual mechanical bonuses a character will get from their attributes. I did debate for a little while whether to use only modifiers in SMA or to use a modifier/score system like D&D, but I settled on using a modifier system pretty quickly. The arguments for and against using both don't really seem all that interesting, so I won't waste time going over them in detail here. Also the last dev diary was one of those sorta comparison-y posts, didn't wanna do the same thing twice in a row. To give a quick summary, I just don't think having attrbute scores adds enough to justify their existence, and a lot of the stuff they are used for could easily be handled by just a modifier when the system is built around that. My current plans for player characters are to have modifiers that range -4 to +4 at character creation, before counting any boosts a character might have from their species. Players will be able ...

Hey all! In this  Saturday Morning Adventure  dev diary, I talk about saving throws and their inclusion (or exclusion as the case may be) in SMA. I've spent enough time browsing D&D subreddits to have seen the idea of removing saving throws brought up a couple times. I do think there's a legitimate argument against saving throws to be made, so I wanted to go through some of the major points for and against them quickly. Though before that, I should probably explain what the main alternative is. The most common proposal I've seen for replacing saving throws is a set of defence scores, like Armor Class. This is sort of what the  Unearthed Arcana: Variant Rules  system of "players make all rolls" uses, though they don't specifically refer to defensive scores. So what are the benefits of each system? Point to Defence Scores: A Defence for Every Attribute is Too Much Having a separate defence for every attribute in the game usually ends up with some ver...

In today's  Saturday Morning Adventure  dev diary, I wanted to go into my plans for designing the action economy in SMA. It seems to me that the majority of RPGs these days use what I'm gonna call a "fixed slots" system when it comes to their action economy. Every round, each character has the same fixed slots that they can use to perform certain actions. For example, in D&D you have exactly one Action, one Bonus Action, and one Reaction to spend every round. This system works pretty well for obvious reasons: it's simple, easy to balance, everyone gets the same opportunities to act during the round. And while I do think I'm probably going to implement this sort of system in SMA, I first want to at least consider an alternative: action points. Action Points In an action point based system, each character would get a number of action points or AP at the start of each round. This number would be determined by their attributes, and could be a fixed numbe...