Making My Own TTRPG | Part 2

I'm designing my own Solo Dungeon Crawler TTRPG! I talk about how I'm playtesting my game while shifting the design from a Finite, competitive structure to Infinite, exploration structure! I also talk about how to fight off scope creep with playtesting and some of the lessons I've learned from playing Gloomhaven, Ironsworn, Frostgrave and some other solitaire games!

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Twitter: @kylelatino

[noreaelvago]

I learnt the hard way that making too many complex pieces to your ttrpg kills them. When you make 5 ways to cast different types of spells in a game not centered around casting spells you suffer a lot, believe me. Anyway, I hope you can find out what you really like and stick with that.

[yotan]

As someone who has tried to make their own games over the years, I can heavily relate to your experience with Gloomhaven. It's exactly what you originally had in mind, but better, and yet you don't enjoy it. The hardest part for me in game design by far is getting a workable prototype that has enough mechanics to be interesting, but not too many that it becomes bloated and unuseful

[posadistpossum]

Always love seeing some Ironsworn love, seriously one of my favorite designed TTRPGs of all time

[digitalshadow]

I've tried to design a good few TTRPG systems in my time, but never wound up with a finished version of any of them that I absolutely love. It's very interesting how different TTRPGs treat the same 'story beat' with different levels of focus, reverence, or concern. There are zoom levels to consider, detail levels, and an ebb and flow of drama. TTRPG design is fascinating and fun.

[morgangleave]

Perfect timing Kyle! I'm in the midst of creating my first game, inspired by Tunnel Goons, Mausritter and Root. Rules lite and solo play included. Play testing is a really good idea - I could test the first part of the first soon, and I could see if actually works!

[sentientwaffle]

HOW DID I MISS THIS LAST WEEK? I love this stuff!

[Trashloot]

I watched Part one just a few hours ago. Thank you for the perfectly timed upload xD.

[mathsalot]

So... is this like opening up play testing to your Patrons? You have a TON of courage to put this on your patreon! I can't wait to check it out!

[theastralwanderer]

As someone who has been making RPGs ever since I started playing them, I feel the scope creep bit immensely. I recently jettisoned a whole weapons and armor system from my current game simply because it took the game's focus too far into mechanics-driven combat. It was a good system and all, but it distracted from the kind of play I was shooting for with this particular RPG.

Can't wait to see the shape your game takes!

[shatteredoverse]

Nice, a new TTRPG, definately more advanced than my own.



Progress on SrG is steadily going (yay)

[gorywriter]

I'm currently trying to design my own solo TTRPG, and I'm likely biting off more than I may be able to handle hoping to create an "infinite game, " if I go by the terminology from that book you mentioned, as a first time project. I'm at least making progress with it (world premise, 9 playable races, 15 playable classes divided between Str/Dex/Int, 3 levels of a resting system, a yes/no Oracle system, a stress/fatigue/illness system, and removal of the usual alignment chart in hopes of giving players more chances to RP their characters without the "Your alignment doesn't let you do that" problem), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't already considering a decrease in scale. I've been looking at other available games for inspiration, including Colostle, Castles and Crusaders, Delve, Mork Borg, Pathfinder, D&D, Sacrifice, and Ironsworn, so I have multiple ideas, just not much certainty on how to connect them all into something cohesive yet. I also need to find a way to start play testing as I go.

[BokettoNekomata]

Looking forword to seeing more on your game. I am working on probably to many games at the moment, including my own and helping friends with thair own. I like it though and I just keep finding youtubers who are working on cool games to watch as well.

[perkinsdearborn]

Great to see what else you are being creative at doing, "your doings." I am running solo OSE for myself using One Page Solo Engine and various random tables (new and old). I want to play games with my two daughters. Keeping everyone interested, engaged, and not struggling with mechanics has been my design principles. Where do you start? Do you have design constraints at the start of the creative process, or let them emerge organically? Thanks for the video.

[nikital.]

I think that there are two chief components that might be a problem for you as far as Gloomhaven's concerned.
The first one is the usual problem of mechanics overburden. I have only given a read to the Gloomhaven ruleset and seen the gameplay from afar, yet it does seem that the following aspects contribute to it: resolution diversity (i.e. how the results of every action undertaken are procured), number modes of play (the more situations you model in a different ways, the harder it is to keep it all in mind) and, possibly the counter-intuitive math (it's usually best to always have "big numbers good" or "low number good" to not confuse the player without need), although I'm not 100% certain on that one, as I didn't get down to it, so if anyone have played, I'd be grateful for any corrections. Mechanics overburden can be eased by having a consistent and generally-applied resolution mechanics (one of the reasons I love GURPS so), cutting out the fat and juggling properties between the general rules and the particular cases (e.g. to choose between having a special text on a card vs. having a keyword of the rule with the same text).
The second one is something that, IMO, might be worth looking into while designing your game: the existence of a preset cycle. Not only does it turn the gameplay into chore, it also makes a game formulaic as far as the planning goes. Sure, it makes designer's job easier, being able to arbitrary reset anything that would be hard to balance around persistence from crawl to crawl. It's a good, solid, cycle, mind, but it can become tiresome - especially if the goal is to produce "endless" and aimless (which isn't a negative on its own) adventure.
I'm quite interested in the idea of an "endless" ruleset - one of my big goals is a flexible post-apoc kinda-sorta TTRPG with an emphasis on a solo play (although that's a long way's away), and one thing that is persistently a problem in my mind isn't so much a scope creep, as the "player-originated" entity creep. In the end some responsibility indeed has to lay on player's shoulders, yet it's prudent to gently push said player in the right direction. With the growth of a player-defined world it will become harder and harder to manage, eventually leading to an overburden of a different kind. Even with mechanics for shedding some of the entities and their connections to other entities, the scope will invariably grow, lest the game and player's past decisions lose any weight to them.

[AngryKettle]

Kyle, have you ever tried Pathfinder Adventures (the card game)?

I've only tried it a little but I'm curious what you think about it as someone interested in solo play

[addisonhithe]

I don't do much of playing rpg games, but I'm wondering something : I'm using old rpg books to think on characters/classes to draw. Does that count as world building even if you don't use the rules for it that often 🤔?

[AlexDayz]

Designing a game is always difficult since you grow attached to certain features, characters, concepts. Etc. For example I’m developing a card game where the main premise is you have to take down the opponents monsters before they take down yours. I’ve gone thru many ideas from giving the monsters a complex type chart (like Pokémon) to not allowing monsters to attack other monsters directly (only with item/action cards). The current iteration has some monsters with ability, removed action cards in favor of items, and a sort of “energy” system where each monster has a certain amount of energy to play (0-3) allowing you to only do so much per turn. You start with 5 energy and it can be increased with items. These are all still concepts and are always subject to change depending on how the play test go

[nichlasbundgaard]

This might not be helpful, but about a year or two ago i made my own game (that i still haven't been able to playtest yet) and it started out a mess, but over time kinda leaned towards the old saying that less is more.

I've always disliked that you can't help another player despite standing next to them so i wanted to emphasise on that. I also wanted to make sure you could play just about anything and have abilities related to that creature, and do re-rolls if wanted. So i made two stats/pools one for combat and one for out of combat.

Energy (the combat one) is as simple as you have an amount of energy that you can use on or off your turn. You regain expended energy when it is your turn again.
If you want to make an attack, that's one energy.
Do you want to defend against an attack, one energy.
Do you want to alter a spell that's one energy for casting the spell and one for altering the spell.
Do you want to combine a spell another player is casting one energy.

As long as the game master is okay with it i hope this makes for some creative and interesting combat.

The out of combat one which i call Chance can be used for things like.
Re-rolls
Character specific abilities such as fly for x amount of time if your character have wings.
And something specific to the game. These are regained after rests.

Again i haven't been able to test it but i hope this help in anyway.

Best of luck!

[shatteredoverse]

Out of curiosity, what art materials do you use? Like that thing you keep shaving black specs off of, aside from that, what do you use in general for your sketches. Also sorry if this is too much to ask, but do you have any tips for people wanting to learn to do sketches and stuff like how you do it?



Almost done with summons in SrG ;-;, finally I can start class reworks.

[GanoGaming]

I also wanted to make a series where I talk about making my TTRPG. There is a lot of content and a lot cool stuff to talk about.
But I am so paranoid that people who are much faster than I am will take the Idea and finish before me T.T

Anyways. Always enjoy seeing other people progress/process