(Part 2) Best products from r/RPGdesign

Well there's actually some hints..

Quirks: unique traits of said character: what food does it like? does it have certain recurrent habits? He adheres to certain faith and/or ideology? Look for the ones that can be roleplayed. Ex: The character Son Goku in the japanese dub talks in a unique Japanese accent (a mix of Tohoku and Nagoya dialect put together).

Motivations: Why the character does what it does? It acts out of vengeance, wants to uphold the law or is on the trade just for kicks/money? Blood of heroes has this well mapped for the Supers genre.

Research about the Myers-Briggs types and think on a short questionnaire that could help identify how the character behaves.

And last but not least, what I as GM always requested from my players was to write a little backstory of their characters up to the point of the game's timeline. In that they said how/where they were raised, how they met their love interests/enemies, how they acquired their skills/powers, etc.. It works like charm.

edit:

There's also a business tool called 5W1H that could be tweaked to suit the TTRPG:

[Who] is your character? (name/race/gender/age, etc..)

[Where] you come from? Where do you want to go? (backstory and goals)

[What] the character does? Is he a cop or a fortune teller? (occupation/job/trope)

[When] you accquired your skills and powers? When you met your rival/ S.O. (the idea is to establish a timeline for the character itsefl)

[Why] the character does what he does? What are the stakes? What's in it for him? (motivations)

[How] the character does things? He rushes head in or is a careful strategist? How he interacts with people? ( the the MBTI types).

Love these ideas! Have you read The Scar by China Mieville? If not, you should, the flavor feels quite similar.

Yep, I had a really good experience with them, so I'll definitely use it again.

> Adobe's Classroom

would you recommend this book? https://www.amazon.com/Adobe-InDesign-CS6-Classroom-Book/dp/0321822498/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1512020921&sr=8-11&keywords=Adobe%27s+Classroom

In as much as I personally think the d12 is the epitome of dice coolness, availability may be an issue. You might be able to find some seller on Amazon, EBay, or some other similar site who has separated a few pounds o' dice and is selling them by number of faces, but they'll likely be an amalgamation of colors and styles. The only way to be sure to get six d12s of the same style and color (or d8s, d4s, or d20s...pretty much any die except d6s and d10s) would be to buy six sets of polyhedrals of the same style and color and plop down a pretty large amount of coin to do that.

I guess the hidden bonus there is that you'll then also have six d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, and d20s of the same style and color...should you need them.

Woops, spoke too soon...here's a set of all one color and style. The rub is they're taking almost two months to ship to you, so I'm still gonna class that into the "normally a bitch to get" category.

My go to links would be: http://www.thefreerpgblog.com/2011/11/how-to-write-free-rpg-prologue.html and https://hamsterprophet.wordpress.com/rpg-design-handbook/

Foremost he should read and play more games, so any basic rule books are probably good too. For example: Apocalypse World and it's derivate Dungeon World (which has a SRD), Fate Core and Fate Accelerated and also any of the 3 FFG Star Wars RPGs, for example, Edge of the Empire.

I don't know what gaming background your son has, but I somewhat expect D&D. Get him to read more games.

As a random aside, Quill have you read or heard of Railsea by China Mieville? The use of weird/peculiar "oceans" reminds me of that novel.

> How to discuss and compromise on decisions in a team

So, this is going to be super non-specific to TTRPGs/design work, but I cannot recommend reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team enough.

A TLDR for one of the major points of the book:

Reasonable adults don't always need to get their way but they do need to feel as if their concerns and beliefs have been listened to, considered, and addressed. This requires both trust and a team commitment to actually getting into productive conflict over contentious ideas or solutions. Without these, you're always going to have a hard time with decisions and getting the team to commit properly to them.

There is, unfortunately, no magic way to get to this point. You have to work together and build these relationships and behaviors. If you know a silver bullet, I'm all ears.

> Something like hockey without the pads? I approve.

I was making a bit of oblique reference...
Gnolls trace their origin to a short story from Lord Dunsany, in which they were probably a metaphor for a rival rugby team (& live in a cross between a haunted/frat house), and have a weird penchant for collecting emeralds

original story
also, someone literally wrote a book on gnolls

Magic Tea Party = Play Pretend.

Not that it has any bearing on the OP's question, but for all the other people stressing about whether or not you have a certain number of dice available, if you're a gamer of any kind, just get one of these bags of dice or this bag or this set if you want to be fancy and color-coordinated. Find a friend or two and split the cost and you'll have more dice than you'll ever need AND you can design any sort of game you might be thinking of. I regularly go to the teacher supply store and see what sorts of weird dice they have. I understand it's a cost that is being put on the gamer, but it's almost part of the ritual of becoming a player, selecting one's dice.

> I have no doubt that all of the other ones are amazing games.

Actually a lot of the games I mentioned are terrible or niche. I mentioned them because you need to play bad games to learn why they don't work. Basically, you need to have a vocabulary and literacy in games before you start designing.

Also, the "I'm only designing for my friends" canard (in addition to being the #1 backpedal the instant an amateur is challenged), is a bullshit defense because if you're designing for your friends and don't intend to publish then you don't need advice from us, just do your thing.

E: A few good books that you should read before designing anything: Robin's Laws by Robin Laws, and Rules of Play

I've seen a lot of RPG designers talk about The Non-Designer's Design Book as a way to learn the basics of layout.

Check this book then.
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Techniques-Ancient-World-3000/dp/0312309325

I am not trying to stop your fun but you realize they released a fallout rpg this year? Fallout Wasteland Warfare - Roleplaying Game https://www.amazon.com/dp/1912743272/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LdxUDbYPB44HN

This is more geared toward board games, but as far as analog mechanisms are concerned, you can't do better than board games.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Blocks-Tabletop-Game-Design/dp/1138365491

No, lots of "The Land" series, referring to this one: https://www.amazon.com/Land-Founding-LitRPG-Chaos-Seeds-ebook/dp/B0172GEB68/ref=sr_1_7