August 3, 2023
Valiant horizon logoThis post is about the various mechanical choices made in Valiant Horizon at a very high level. I group these into three categories: Diceless mechanics (stuff that works), Roll for Magnitude mechanics (stuff that works but you roll to see how much), and Roll for Success mechanics (stuff that works if a roll goes your way).
Diceless The simplest kind of mechanic. This is what Assets, Exhausting Assets, and Burdens are:
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July 2, 2023
For @liananana's Narrat Jam 2, I'm poking my ideas for a political, intrigue-based mecha game that cares deeply about ties between people with power into a little linear VN storyline. A TTRPG designed for PVP troupe-level play is pretty different from a story following one person! So I'm gonna think out loud about what I'm changing and why.
Ah no I'm writing another dicelessness article by accident oh god help Off the bat, one of the technological aspects I ran into is that Narrat is very particular about skill rolls.
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May 16, 2023
apocalypse frame front cover croppedSame idea, different game. I'd considered dicelessness for APOCALYPSE FRAME first, actually, but decided it wasn't worth putting it in the core game because I wanted it to come out ever. The big reason I'd do it is that rolling dice actually does slow things down quite a bit and for the most part players usually just reroll with Tension in combat so it's not like consequences come up that much unless folks are using low-die Armaments with low Tension or rolling low Attributes for some reason.
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May 15, 2023
ANOINTED cover croppedI had been thinking about the topic of randomness when writing entries for Regions for ANOINTED23, but Spencer Campbell (GilaRPGs, creator of LUMEN/RUNE/etc) wrote two blog posts (with a third on the way) that got me thinking about it. Specifically, I'm wondering if I could/should just remove dice almost entirely from ANOINTED, my GMless or GM'd/group or solo soulslike game in development.
The current situation In the interest of not assuming people have any idea what I'm talking about (and also to have it in one handy place for later) I'm going to list out the random/non-random parts of the game.
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