Best products from r/RPGdesign

Yes! I'm a student studying RPG design, so I like to think I have at least a vague idea of what I'm talking about.

Some various sources, some paid and some free:

• Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore, a series of old blog posts by Vincent Baker. A lot of this stuff is boiled-down versions of what the Forge--which others have mentioned--was all about.
  
  
• Second Person by Herrigan and Wardrip-Fruin; it's a bunch of essays about roleplaying and roleplaying games. It covers both digital and tabletop, so it's a little all over the place, but it is quite good.
  
  
• Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. It's a huge history of roleplaying games and related games, which covers less hard theory than it does the evolution of the game itself. Super helpful if you're into the history, less so if you're not.
  
  
• #rpgtheory on Twitter. There's definitely some flak in there, but it's also definitely worth checking on every week or two, to see if there's been any good threads popping up.
  
  
• The Arts of LARP, by David Simkins. This is LARP-focused, but it has a lot of good stuff on roleplaying in general, especially the more philosophical angles.
  
  
• ars ludi, Ben Robbins' blog. He writes about all sorts of stuff, but if you go through the archives and find the green-triangle'd and starred posts, those are the sort of 'greatest hits.'
  
  
• Role-Playing Game Studies, by Zagal and Deterding. This is another collection of essays (which includes some stuff by Simkins and Peterson, too, IIRC) and is kind of the go-to for this sort of thing.
  
  
• And the Forge, as mentioned by others.
  
  That's a pretty good list of theory and texts and stuff.
  
  One of the ways to learn good RPG theory, I've found, though, is to just read good RPGs.
  
  It's also highly worth digging through acknowledgements and credits of your favorite RPGs and then tracking down the names mentioned. If you're reading a big, hefty RPG, like D&D, pay special attention to any consultants, specialists, or other people listed under strange credit areas.
  
  Anyway, when you eventually dig your way through all of this, I'll probably have read some more, so hit me up if you want more suggestions. Those top seven or eight things are probably the best place to start.
  
  Edit: my personal list of games was rather reductive, as several commentators have called me out on, so I've removed it. Go read lots of RPGs.

My guesses are :

I like :

- The idea. I'd like to try this game
- The limited options on character creation : Only one will have the +2 strength bonus, etc.
- Blank cards (maybe https://www.amazon.com/Dry-Erase-Index-Cards-Reusable/dp/B073K3CY52 ?)
- The idea of some card as item or as action ... but that lead me to the next part

I dislike :

- You try to replicate the character sheet AND a part of the rule book with your inventory card. I guess I will limit drastically the options here to reflect the attribute part : One big sword, one bow, one small dagger.

- It goes to complex : damage cards, metacards, I don't know. I expect simplicity here.

What I have in mind when you say "Traditional RPG without pen & paper" :

Parts of the cards are stables : the player keep it to represent the character : some attributes bonuses and penalties, some basics inventory (one weapon, one tool, one talent maybe ?). This can be "public" (on the table, in front of the player).

Other cards are moving : some cards are only scores (1-9 maybe ?) and replace the dices (please check the awesome Marvel "SAGA system" !!).

When the character needs to act : the player choose one "score card" in his hand + 1 for each "character card" that apply (strength and sword in a fight give you 2 cards, intelligence in an investigation gives you 1, etc) to beat your GM score.

If he get wounded you can reduce the size of the player's hand for exemple (Marvel !).

If you are blessed or leveled up, you rise the hand size !

At the end of the action, every one is refilling the hand (limited by their respective sizes).

This is awesome (like Marvel is) because you can use your cards wisely : keep the high score for the boss, throw your low score on less tragic actions,...

Laser Kittens has an approach that might work, though it is not strictly 'no-GM'. The game has a mechanic for rotating out GMs each scene. The GM is responsible for setting up the premise of the new scene, playing any NPCs, describing the results of any failed PC actions, and ending the scene. Next scene someone else gets the opportunity to run through that.

The next thing is more board game than RPG, but is still pretty close. Tales of the Arabian Nights has you roll for an encounter each turn, while someone else reads out of the story book, presents your options, and reads the consequences. When the player ends his turn he gets the storybook.

One of the mechanics from FATE is a step in the direction you want. Players can make skill rolls to declare that something is true about a character or a scene. Expanding that concept a little may be enough to get you close to where you want.

Regarding encounters, various board games run D&D like games without a DM. Each monster in the adventure has a set of rules governing it's behavior. You follow the rules and have no problems with issues of impartiality. One of the Ravenloft board games had a set of two or three rules on the card for the monster. Kingdom Death: Monster uses a deck built for the monster that has the actions the monster takes, including how to prioritize targets.

Dungeon World has a large focus on the mechanics following the fiction, and should be very easy to pass the DM duty around the table. You could also create a table of events that happen in your world to roll against at the start of each session, just to shake everyone up.

Regarding the party being split into two at cross purposes, it is beginning to sound like you want to look at rules for wargames and boardgames. Not many RPGs are really built with a head to head mentality in mind. That is a situation that is best ran with a neutral arbitrator to handle how the parties interact and handle any hidden information. That brings you back to playing GM instead of playing a party member. To be honest, some times wargames that are built to be played head to head are still better with a neutral third party. let us know how you manage to balance this all out.

I'd especially recommend looking at other game types beyond just role playing games, or tabletop RPGs only; things like video games, sports and so on also possess a lot of concepts which can be carried over design-wise.

To that end, suggest he look to any designer he can find an interview with and read/watch/listen to such. It doesn't matter if it's John Carmack or Tom Cadwell or Adam Koebel, anyone who can give insight on game design principles in general is worth listening to, and a lot of those concepts will carry over between genre and media format.

I have my own series on RPG design as well which is focused specifically on teaching game design principles in relation to RPGs so that could help as well.

For other resources I'd recommend, there's a good description on a lot of mechanics and design decisions from a designer's perspective here: https://youtu.be/E79DDGdX62I by Koebel. Lindybeige occasionally has videos which tackle game design elements.

You can also find tangentially related stuff which is really interesting as well - this discussion between the armored skeptic and sargon of akkad has some amazingly useful information but the talk isn't about game design, yet there's tons of stuff to learn from it just because of the discussion wandering into territory like medieval combat, the original rules of chivalry and how various religions got started and evolved over time.

Or to put it more bluntly, if he wants to become a great designer, he should be a sponge for information in general, not just looking for specific tools dedicated to teaching people, but rather soaking up knowledge from anywhere and everywhere possible, and thinking about how it can be used to enhance his designs.

Watch movies and dissect what makes the antagonist scary. What makes the hero heroic. What makes the setting interesting. How does magic work in the fantasy movie and how would it be described in terms of game rules?

Anyway, knowledge is everywhere, a lot of it's just a matter of thinking of the information you come across every day and translating it into a thought process of "how can I apply this to my game?" =3



EDIT: Thought of something else. http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Secret-Sages-Brady/dp/1566869870/ref=dp_ob_title_bk This is what got me started on my game design career over a decade ago. It's out of date in a lot of ways, but a lot of the principles are also timeless and won't change no matter what year it is, so it may be worth grabbing a copy of as well. It's mostly meant for video games, but again, there's a lot of overlap that can be carried over. =3

There are several levels of playtesting formality, and that will depend entirely on your access to resources. Something that will probably never change is that you have to start playtesting in-house before opening it up for public, because most systems are too raw when starting up. Public testing also serves a double purpose of collecting feedback and building an audience at the same time, if you're lucky and do it correctly.

About coming up with important question when going public, or even when observing your own players, I have a few caveats:

• Observing people during play is often better than asking them what they thought. Most people do not know what they want until they get it or are enough of design nerds to concretely understand and express why something rubbed them wrong. If you can have a friend run the game for other friends and be present as an observer taking notes, you might learn more than asking directly. Running the game yourself is, of course, an option, but it comes with the troubles of multitasking;
  
• "Did you like it?" are good question for encouragement, but not that good for playtesting (unless the majority of answers are "No"; then you have a great indicator). Try to ask more objective questions like how did players feel at certain points in combat, if there was a feeling of getting stuck at any point during play, &c.
  
• While quantitative research is great for some metrics and finding new problems to solve, it sucks for finding solutions. When you're in doubt, opt for qualitative.
  
  Universal Methods of Design is a great book overall and explains lots of tools used in every part of a design workflow, and a lot of them are intended for product testing, if you're interested on some harder reading.

My next best advice: start keeping a dream journal. And you may be able to learn lucid dreaming, too!

I would think that keeping a dream journal would be what you are looking for. Dreams are surreal, of course. And they often tie into what's going on in your waking life. A good dream is like having a good surrealist story framework. Maybe make tables based on reoccurring motifs and stuff that appear in your dreams.

Maybe a dream interpretation guide could help? Like this: https://www.amazon.com/Dreamers-Dictionary-Stearn-Robinson/dp/0446342963/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1NGSTXJKLM6EV&keywords=dream+interpretation+books&qid=1570603491&sprefix=dream+interpretation%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-4

I think surrealism depends on allusion and metaphor. Probably more towards allusion. And always trying to be bizarre.

Bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJKNp7v5FOg

Thanks. I tried to address most of that in Steampunk Crescendo, that's why I had that list so readily available. Also, for a while I used to post on the "What's a GM to do?" forum for D&D. Really going through those posts and posts on /r/AskGameMasters/ gave me a lot of insight into what other GMs are up against.

> I think you are playing it wrong.

It is possible. I try really hard to play every game rules as written because I want to learn what is good and bad about each rule set. When I was running monster of the week, this came up in play. They had just got to town. They knew that people were disappearing and that is literally all they knew so far. They came upon the local diner and were scrambling to find a move. But instead, I just did roleplay with a few hints/clues scattered in at the end. I justified it as Make the world seem real/Name everyone they meet, make them seem like normal folks/Make them investigate for the Agenda/Principle/Move combo. Maybe I was stretching it, but I really wanted them to meet someone in the town worth liking, so they would actually want to save the town, lol

I recommend The Art of Game Design as a great resource for this specific question:
https://smile.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Second/dp/1466598646/

And if you don't want to spend the money, here's a hot tip: download the "Deck of Lenses" app on your mobile device. It's basically an extremely summarized version of the book, organized into a "deck". As you consider your resolution mechanism, flip through cards in the deck and ask yourself, "how does this lens apply? is my mechanism successful or deficient when viewed through this lens?". Not all lenses are going to apply, but it's a very useful exercise.

anydice is a great test bed to verify your math or try out different combinations and easily see them graphed out for you.

If you're going to deep dive into game mechanics, or are an incurable game designer, investing in some probability textbooks might be a worthwhile investment. For example: https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Games-Introduction-Probability-Textbooks/dp/1482235439

I'm right there with you brother, I'm also working on such a property. I'm trying to keep it more Black Mirror than Shadowrun. The first book is free as is the card-based roleplaying game. Feel free to check them out for inspiration or to steal some ideas.

Some ideas I like to explore are how much better life actually is with bold new technology. Cyberpunk has a tendency to look at how wrong things can go but what about how right things can go? How many extra conveniences do we have? How does easy access to information and products change the structure of an adventure?

Shit like that makes me giddy.

I bought this book for fun when I was a teenager, it's been awesome for art, differing stats on weapons, and just a huge list of ideas to draw from.

https://www.amazon.com/Infantry-Weapons-World-Twilight-2000/dp/1558780688

What's the purpose of them being magnetic?

There's one on Amazon intended to go in the fridge, but you can use it how you want, obviously. I used to use it for drawing maps, but I use thinner sheets that come in packs of 10 or something.

For character sheets, I use "wipe clean pockets". You just print off your sheet, write permanent stuff on it with pen, then slip it into the sleeve and you can use dry-erase pens on them.

List of studies: http://www.rpgstudies.net/

Recent book on the topic: https://www.amazon.ca/Role-Playing-Game-Studies-Transmedia-Approach/dp/0815369204