Decision Paralysis

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! 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 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! 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...

In today's Saturday Morning Adventure dev diary, I discuss my plans for the magic system in SMA. In the video games that inspired this entire project, magic tends to work quite differently to D&D. Sure magic can be used in combat, using set spells to create certain effects. But outside of combat there is usually no need for ruleset to govern the magic, so it tends to be narratively hand-waved. Characters seem to just create various effects on the fly using their own prowess and knowledge without necessarily following a set formula. This vibe of having magic more like a skill than bunch of set effects someone can create is really something I want to come through in SMA. The mechanical inspiration for my proposed system comes from listening to The Adventure Zone , an actual-play podcast that's just fantastic. In one season of TAZ, they used the RPG system " Monster of the Week ". In Monster of the Week, magic users have access to two options: the "Use Magi...

Hey all, in this  Saturday Morning Adventure  development diary I'm going to go into what my plans for the skill system in SMA. It should be no great surprise to regular readers of this series that I am once again citing The Angry GM, this time particularly the articles " I Hate Ability Scores (In D&D 5E) " and " Being In-Flex-Able ". The core ability check system that is widely used in many modern RPGs can go really underappreciated. I would wholly recommend the Angry GM articles I mentioned earlier for anyone that wants to learn a little more about what RPGs were like before the ability check was broadly adopted. But to summarise, the ability check system - in which a player describes their action, then the GM decides which attribute it falls under and if any skills apply - is a very solid and versatile foundation when done right. However, Angry also points out one of the issues with the skills system, in that often players can see their skill li...

Hey all, in this Saturday Morning Adventure dev diary I wanted to talk about something a bit less direct than just the mechanical systems of an RPG, but more a particular design philosophy behind RPGs, that being design symmetry. So what is it? I'm glad you asked, imagined reader. Design symmetry means when the design of a game applies in the same way to two different things somehow. Here in particular I'm talking about symmetry between how player characters and non-player characters are mechanically treated in the rules. In a symmetric system, a player should be able to point to an NPC and say "I want my character to do that", and it should be possible within the rules. Whether the GM lets them is another story. For example, in D&D 5e the NPC mechanics are somewhat symmetrical. NPCs can make attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws in exactly the same ways as PCs. The ways in which they interact with the game world are symmetrical. However, their ...

Hey all, in this Saturday Morning Adventure development diary I discuss the use of character attributes in RPGs, and attempt to decide on a set of attributes for characters in SMA. First of all, I should probably clarify what I mean when I say "attribute" here. It's a fairly common and intuitive term in RPGs but for the sake of avoiding any ambiguity let's give it a solid definition regardless. I'm using the same definition put forward in the Fudge RPG system - an attribute is some trait that is shared by all the actors within the game world. So in D&D your "attributes" are your ability scores, for example. Objective Attributes vs Narrative Attributes Before getting into my plans for SMA, I wanted to briefly mention the main two "styles" of character attrbutes in RPGs. Most mainstream RPGs use some form of what I'm calling "objective" attributes. Objective attributes describe something solid and measurable about a charac...