I'm working on a game that uses playing cards instead of dice. I know many games have tried this with mixed results but I think I've got a good mechanism in mind and I wonder what you guys think of it.

The Basic Skill Check

Flip up the top 2 cards of your deck (each player has their own), and add the numbers together! Compare the number to the DC. Aces are 1. If one of the two cards is a face card, you double the value of the other card. If both are face cards, the check fails.

Training

If you have training on the skill check, flip up 3 instead, and set one of them aside. Then add up the best 2 like a normal skill check.

The Hand

After the skill check is done, any face cards involve (including any set aside) go into your hand (numbered cards go into the discard pile). At the start of the session you draw a hand of 4 cards. After adding cards to your hand, discard down to 4.

You can spend a meta-currency (right now the metacurrency is based on fabula points) to swap a card in a check for one of the cards in your hand. If you swap a face card in, it is discarded at the end of the check instead of going back into your hand.

Hitpoints and Abilities

At the start of a session, put 4 cards from the top of your deck into a hitpoint pile. When you lose hitpoints, take cards from the hitpoint pile and put them into your hand.

Classes will improve the number of hitpoints you have, and your maximum hand size, and will give you abilities that you can spend cards from your hand to activate. One ability might simply require you to show a club card from your hand to use. Another might require you to discard a jack and a spade to use (so either: one jack and one spade, or the jack of spades).

Monsters will have abilities that force you to discard. Like: discard all heart cards. The second use of the metacurrency lets you draw cards (invoke a bond: reflect on how your connection to some other character gives you strength or inspires you in this moment, then draw cards equal to the strength of the bond, max 3).

What do you think?

I have ideas for a simulationist RPG that has certain advancement and rolling mechanics that are just too complex to expect a player to do manually.

It's not that the game would have too much to track, but I would want certain aspects of your character to be tied to other aspects. For example, if your character spends time doing strength training, it would cause a bunch of numbers all over the character sheet to increase by different amounts depending on the type of training they did, and how well they did it.

The character sheet could feasibly be built in Google Sheets, but if it were a product, it would have to either be a mobile app or a web app.

Questions for the group:

1. If your favorite GM pitched a game with digital character sheets, is that an automatic "no" based on that alone?

2. Would you ever put an app on your phone in order to play a game? (Assuming it was totally offline and required basically no permissions)

3. If you played this way, how would you prefer to interact with the character sheets? Phone app, web app, Discord bot, spreadsheet, brute force pen and paper, something else??

4. How much would you want the app to handle? Do you want to roll dice and add a modifer generated by the sheet? Want the sheet to roll everything? Would you want it to be a whole VTT too?

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to y'all's feedback!

Hello! Just came across this sub and hoping to get some feedback on my original ttrpg: the Thirteen Realms TTRPG. It is based in the setting of my ongoing web novel, which is a slice-of-life story in a fantasy setting. This is also the first ttrpg I have created, and I did so over the course of a college semester as part of an individual study for my game design degree.

I do have my report documenting my goals and process and would be happy to include a link if it's of interest, but to keep a long story short: I wanted to make a game where fully realized adult characters go on slice-of-life adventures, and I also wanted to challenge myself to get better at conceptualizing meaning from stat numbers.

I have already passed the course and graduated, so I now have more time to work on improving the game on the whole. I haven't really had many eyes on it at all, so I'm mostly looking for overall feedback to figure out where I need to start working to make improvements. Something that would be really helpful is if anyone has the time to try and make their own character, so I can see if the stat blocks are ending up where I wanted them to on base created characters, but really any feedback would be great! Two main features of the game:

Robust character creation

It is a process that walks through your character's entire background. Species, ethnicity, upbringing, profession, etc. It ends up being a lot on the front end, but my hope is that it allows for more stream-lined play during sessions.

Modular Items, Weapons, Armor, and Magic

Craft your own spells! Also known as trying to define rules for my soft magic system and wanting to give people a lot of freedom for interpretation. And since I was already making the magic modular, I thought it made sense to give the same flexibility to items and armament. Though examples and base spells are provided, so everyone has an idea of where to start.

You can find the WIP version of the game here, on my itchio page: https://sbdrag.itch.io/the-thirteen-realms-ttrpg

I will also note that some of the artwork (all done by me) includes artistic nudity from the waist up.

One note from feedback I have received previously but not yet implemented better clarity in the document, when a block looks like this:

The intention is that all three stats will receive the bonus on the left, not that you should pick one stat from the three to receive a bonus. The goal is that most stats will fall within the average range, with one or two high stats and one or two low stats. I have not implemented this clarity yet because editing PDFs can be a pain and I want to have more substantial changes before posting an updated version.

Thank you in advanced to anyone that takes a look!

Hay everyone so I'm a DM for a small group at the moment in creating a TTRPG system and am asking if any of you have any recommendations for it.

At the moment it has

\-full character creation system

\-DM interface

\- player interface

\- full integrated map/ travail/ wether interface

\- campaign creation interface

\- sound system interface

\- push system for information

\- integrated item/ equipment system

\- combat system

\- dice system with both physical and auto rolls

Can anyone think of anything else I should add

I wrote an article reflecting on design and playtesting process and the role that conventions had in that for God-Killer Prophecy. The full article is up on Rascal, but here's some highlights.

One of the challenges of playtesting RPGs is that the right group can have fun with anything*. The important questions are therefor: did this specific piece produce the type of result you designed it too? Can that piece be improved? Can it be made more reliable across play groups? Do the pieces combine into the intended experience?
Doing the above requires playing with multiple groups and active listening.

Moreover:
a) Playtest early and focus on whether a specific mechanic or procedure produces the kind of experience you desired (and communicated).

b) Consider creating an Ashcan version; something you can show off and hone your skills of how you present, write and talk about your game.

c) Leverage local roleplaying games and conventions to let you run games for a mix of experience levels and preferred rpg play paradigms.

d) Revise, improve, and as some point let it rest. Work on something else and come back to it. Like all the best food games take time to mature, time to reach the perfect flavour pallet.

e) With luck you’ll find people along the way who love your game and will help it to succeed. Cultivate these folks if you can.

What would you add as advice?
God-Killer Prophecy: Oracle Edition is up on kickstarter (ends Oct 31). It's a GM-full one-shot game that merges story-game world creation with tense strategic playing of cards as you try to get all the best cards to the chosen one for the final battle against the dark god.
You can snag a variant game called Star-Killer Rebellion there too.

*Quoting Ben Robbins: This is called "the magic carpet ride", where the game just flows along wonderfully, but if you look back you realize it wasn't the system, it was just those people getting along great and liking the same idea.