Decision Paralysis

 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 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 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! 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...