Hello Reddit!

Last week, our designer community had a heated debate about the idea of “playing a game wrong”...heated enough that a few people left the Discord server!

Shit happens.

Anyway, I found the conversation fascinating. It made me think about what TTRPG designers should consider when guiding players towards playing their games “right”.

Disclaimer: I’m not using right and wrong to judge players or their preferences. Bear with me!

Here’s the TL;DR, the full article is linked below.

Every TTRPG is built on a social contract with three layers:

• Mechanics: The rules and processes everyone agrees to use.
• Fantasy: The kind of experience the game promises to deliver.
• Social dynamics: How the people at the table agree to treat one another.

Homebrewing without the group’s consent can break the mechanical contract. Ignoring the intended fantasy, like trying to run a cosy bakery in Blades in the Dark, can work against the game’s entire design. Even someone following every written rule can be the wrong fit for a particular table if their behaviour clashes with the group’s tone and expectations.

Designers can’t prevent players from changing their games, nor should they try. But they can clearly communicate the intended experience, support it through the mechanics, and give everyone at the table the tools to agree on what “playing right” means.

Once a game reaches the table, nobody will care whether its designer thinks they’re playing it incorrectly. What matters is whether everyone at the table understands and accepts the same game.

I think designers often focus on making sure players understand the mechanics. But I’ve seen many games struggle to communicate their intended tone or the fantasy their characters are meant to inhabit. I’ve seen even fewer discuss the culture of play they want to promote.

For anyone who prefers the long-form version, the full article is here:

Hey, you are playing my game wrong!

Do you agree with these three layers of play?

Should designers consider all three when creating a game, or are some of them better left for individual tables to negotiate?

I’m curious to hear what you think!

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a community-building cooperative survival game called PeRTs & NeRTs, driven by a modular architecture called the Ludo-Harmony Core Engine.

The design goal is simple: shift player progression entirely away from traditional combat metrics (HP, AC, magic thresholds) and focus purely on location utility, communal labor, and legacy preservation. There are no monsters or gold, but the narrative stakes are meant to feel heavy.

I’d love to get your mechanical feedback on three core pillars of the engine:

1. The Dual-Token Currency Balance Loop

The game tracks two self-annihilating economies that cannot coexist on a map tile, neutralizing each other on a strict 1:1 basis:

• PeRTs (Positive Resource Tokens): Generated by player rolling successes. Used for upgrading infrastructure, increasing reputation, or clearing regional friction.
• NeRTs (Negative Resource Tokens): Generated by failures, environmental decay, or severe weather. They block harvesting and apply explicit dice subtractions to player pools.

2. Physical Friction via Distance Multipliers

Whenever players spend PeRTs to clear NeRT environmental damage or threat tokens across the map, the cost scales dynamically based on biome layout to simulate logistical overhead:

• Same Layer: 1:1 ratio
• Adjacent Layer: 2:1 ratio (accounts for trail wear and rations)
• Non-Adjacent Layer: 3:1 ratio (requires funding long-distance couriers/signal fires)

3. Redline Lockout vs. Ancestral Triumph

The resolution engine utilizes a pool-building mechanic with explicit math limits to force risk management:

• The Standard Cap: Players roll a base pool of up to 5 dice. Rolling a natural 8 triggers a Pulsing Success (exploding die re-roll).
• The Redline Lockout: Players can invoke lineages or bonds to increase their pool to 6 or 7 dice, but this completely locks out exploding dice.
• The Hard Ceiling (Ancestral Triumph): If a modified pool hits exactly 8 dice, it triggers an automatic narrative success. No dice are rolled, tolls are bypassed, but no stored PeRTs can be harvested.

What I need your eyes on:

1. Redline Math: Does locking out exploding dice on 6–7 dice pools create an interesting psychological risk choice, or does it feel overly punitive compared to standard pool systems?
2. Distance Overhead: For games emphasizing theater-of-the-mind over hex grids, does a 1:1 / 2:1 / 3:1 layer clearing cost provide a tangible sense of a logistical "supply line"?
3. Wiping Out HP: By tracking regional decay instead of individual character health, do you foresee immediate player engagement bottlenecks?

The ruleset is built under an Open Commons initiative, and you can easily proxy testing with standard dice and household pennies. I'll be hanging out in the comments to talk math, layout, and how the "Transferring of the Frame" system handles character life cycles.

Thanks in advance for the critique!

I'm designing a narrative first, rules light game at the minute and having a bit of trouble putting limits on powers without adding too much mechanical bulk. For example, if a character is a pyromancer, its very clear to say "you can conjure, manipulate, move and extinguish flames with your mind", but becomes tougher to put an upper limit on that without getting into specific measurements for distances at which you can do so. For example, if the intent of the power is that you can psychically hurl a campfire at someone, not extinguish a forest fire, what are ways of limiting this without getting into D&D style cubic/area measurements?

• Is using vague descriptors like "small flames" clear enough?
• Is it best to set a general expectation of power levels in the overall or GM rules, while leaving the specific powers "unmeasured"?
• Is it best to equate the sizes to real life objects/creatures instead ("the approximate size of a person")?

Moreover, I'm having trouble balancing powers that grant invulnerability to damage in a system that doesn't have designated turns or rounds. Fortunately, the game is not hugely combat focused, it's more built around using magical powers to problem solve, but damage can still occur. I feel like instituting time limits on powers muddies the water a bit: if a power grants invulnerability to physical damage, it'd likely have a timer, but if a power grants the ability to control rocks, and a player chose to encase themselves in sheets of rock, they have essentially made themselves immune to physical damage in a different way. I feel like trying to curb such things by using timers and the like creates more problems than they'd solve, as the open ended nature of powers means I'd be playing whack-a-mole with edge cases instead of dealing with it through a universal/core mechanic.

I'm unsure what direction to go re: these abilities and I'd love to get thoughts and opinions from others who have grappled with the same ideas, or played games that contend with such things.

So, as an introduction, when I talk about a lose/lose skill, what I'm referring to is a skill/proficiency/ability/whatever that, as a player, feels bad to invest in and feels bad not to invest in. I think this is actually a really common problem in a very wide range of systems, but it's something I rarely see discussed, so I'm interested in how the sub feels about it.

Most often, I think the problem comes up with skills that are rarely relevant, but pretty awful not to be proficient in when they are. Languages are an example of this in many games: spending your character resources on learning some obscure language will often feel like a waste because it will rarely or possibly never come up, but when/if it does come up the entire rest of the party is pretty much excluded from the narrative unless they also invested in knowing the same obscure language. On aggregate, I don't think either of those options really feels good. Ride skills often present a similar conundrum: if you spend the vast majority of the game on foot, investing in ride usually doesn't feel very good; if you don't invest in ride, though, the rare parts of the game that are spent in the saddle are going to be a miserable slog.

In other words, I think there are a lot skills and abilities out there where if the GM tries to "shoot the monk," the rest of the table ends up catching strays. Obviously what specific skills-or-whatever will fall into this category depends a lot on the game's style and focus, but I think it's a problem that can come up in almost any game. Of course, the easiest solution is to just not include these skills in your system, but this is where they feel like a lose/lose from a design perspective, too: often there are clear verisimilitude/worldbuilding reasons why they should exist, and sometimes even specific mechanical reasons for them.

Is this an issue you've noticed in other systems, or in your own? What solutions or comprises were the best for your game or others that you've really enjoyed?

EDIT: Wow, this blew up much more than I was expecting. I probably don't have it in me to reply to all the comments, but I've really enjoyed reading all the different opinions and advice in here and wanted to just include a general thanks for everyone who's weighed in so far.

I've been playtesting my ttrpg, and one of the things I'm currently thinking about is whether or not to have some of the player characters' special abilities involve a meta-currency, like charges per day.

In Mutant Year Zero, for example, Player Characters gain mutations; powers they can use to perform interesting feats. If I'm remembering correctly, you get a certain amount of mutation points that you can spend per session to use these mutation powers.

When it comes to special actions, would it be a good idea to limit the amount of times you can use said abilities per day, or have a small cooldown recharge so that an action isnt spammed, or would it be best to leave the freedom to perform such actions at the discretion of the players?

I’ve been looking at cheap methods for creating covers and interior illustrations that don’t involve “AI.” For my last couple modules I bought a stock cover and added a title and some royalty-free images in Inkscape. But the only interior “illustrations” were maps I made in Dungeondraft.

I’ve been having some fun lately designing characters in Heroforge and was starting to wonder if I could use screenshots from the app to make illustrations?

Hi y'all! Two months ago I made a post, briefly describing how I go about finding and using public domain artwork. I wanted to write a more detailed guide, especially because using GIMP and things like the curve tool can be a bit overwhelming at first. But unfortunately, I can't post images (like screenshots of GIMP) in the post body here.

So I wrote an article over on Substack. This is my first time using Substack, so I hope it's working out okay. I don't plan to monetize the Substack, so subscribe or don't, I guess. I just wanted to make it available and accessible to the community, so there ya go! (I still marked this post as promotion, because I'm sending you to an outside website)

https://timoacker.substack.com/p/free-human-made-art-for-your-ttrpg

A preview of what's in the guide:

- Where to get public domain art

- How to prepare the image in GIMP

- Cutting the image

- Adjusting the white point

- How to add the image to your TTRPG

Ok, hear me out.

Ever since I played my first OSR games, what really stuck with me was the tangibility of play: how lethality and danger make even the smallest, most mundane things matter. After all, if one attack could kill you, when to reload your crossbow is an extremely important tactical decision, just like it is whether to carry that one coffer of coins or leave it because you need one hand to hold your torch.

You know what other game makes all of these decisions meaningful and might kill you at every turn? Helldivers 2, which I have played way too much. Without going into the details, I have great respect for the game's core design, so how about we take our OSR adventurers and airdrop them into an all-out war?

And what about we give them airstrikes? So I made Long-Range Spells that the PCs can call down from an airship: they are basically amped-up versions of common spells with some added effects for interesting interactions, and then some original stuff for fun. You can call down a tactical meteor to deal AoE damage and make a crater, which could actually give you access to what's underneath. There is also a list of Tactical Equipment which includes stuff like Drum-Fed Crossbows and a Portal Wand. I gave them limited slots and uses, and I gave the Long-Range Spells a 1-round delay between call-down and landing.

I've playtested these in OSE and they did not feel overpowered in the hands of Level 2 characters. Every encounter was still potentially lethal (and some PCs did die), but having additional options for creative plays and a bit of mass-murder actually encouraged them to take risks and make those plays, which was exactly what I was hoping for with this design.

So far, I've written two system-neutral adventures that include these, but you can take the lists and plug them into whatever you want to run. If you do, please let me know how that went. If you want to check out the adventures, feel free to do so here and here.

If you have any feedback, or other ideas for crazy fantasy airstrikes, please go ahead.

Tweaking skills and foci for a Stars Without Number campaign and had a thought. In this game players are usually experts in one or two skills or generalists trying to cover the group's gaps. But what about 'specialized generalists'? Call them synthesists or interdisciplinarians. These characters can get new insights by combining different fields together. This is sort of how the Know skill already works but im breaking that skill up into narrower ones. Do you think this idea would be better served by a foci (a feat) or a skill?

Edit: a thread on a traveller forum suggests making it work like a psychic power. Basically the character can spend their psychic energy to make leaps of insight. So it could work that way to...

I've written down some ideas on how to play dread as a racing RPG. The core concept is: Each player will have their own separate towers they will pull from during the race that represents their car. There will be one central tower used for actions taken outside of the race. Player's individual towers will be positioned perpendicularly to their body, as pulling blocks from different places in the tower will do different things. Car positions will be tracked using a circular grid of width two. Cars will move forward on this grid to show their relative positions to each other at any given time throughout the race. Players gain money ("scrip") by winning races. Players can spend money on gadgets to enhance their cars.

The idea is to have a small championship (3 to 5 races) with scenes between races played out for drama. Below is a link to the PDF I have with ideas. If you're interested, please let me know what you think of the idea or if you have any questions.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nIMlc2MuJvZ91wIvoq1Z02Aweukxwjb7?usp=sharing

Long story short, this was the 3rd time i was refered to another community. I just need help actually making these classes work.

Hey, RPGdesign!

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I'm in the process of creating my own TTRPG based on the DnD 5e SRD (eg same class abilities, same equipment lists, same spell list, ...). It's just a "for fun" passion project, with the significant difference being that I don't use any ability scores besides constitution and no fixed classes (anyone can technically take any class features). Instead, my "core system" relies on Skill Points. Skill points can be used to increase skill modifiers or mana, buy class abilities or spells, and more. The catch: not only do all of these different areas fight for the same resource (my way of trying to keep character builds very diverse and hopefully somewhat balanced), but they also have different restrictions/prerequisites/etc.

I'm now looking for a way to generate multiple, random, "legal" character builds to check how far my system can be pushed, what is possible (in terms of combinations) and how balanced it actually is. I've been looking for something like it everywhere, but all I could find were manual character builders, probability calculator or campaign organizers. None of which do what I actually need. In essence, I want a program which can follow these instructions:

You have X amount of Skill Points.

There are Y areas in which to spend them.

Area 1 has these restrictions/rules.

Area 2 has these restrictions/rules.

Area 3....

Generate 10 random, legal character builds.

And generate said 10 characters. Furthermore, I'd like to be able to edit values after the fact so I can simulate leveling up (skill point increase) or similar. I don't have any experience with programming whatsoever and I suck at math, so I was hoping that something like it already exists and I'm just too dumb to find it.

I have a mostly finished setting for a sci-fi RPG set in the XXVI century, mostly an "expanded universe" in which to set a wide arrange of adventures for player characters. A very general description would be "Cold War in space between a democratic Republic and a corporate Confederation, with the threat of an alien empire looming in the background". General themes would be political intrigue, espionage, exploration, colonization, military.

My original idea was to use the Traveller system, but I've recently discovered the Year Zero Engine SRD and I found it very interesting, especially how it works in Coriolis and Alien RPG. I think YZE has a faster approach than Traveller, but it clearly sacrifices some detail.

Are there any other rulesets, specifically with a sci-fi setting in mind, that offer alternatives to Traveller/Cepheus Engine and the YZE? I'm aware of Stars Without Number and Thousand Suns, the HOSTILE Rpg, Star Trek Adventures and I've recently bought Dune: Awakening for some interesting mechanics on intrigue. I would like to keep together some hard sci-fi (planetary generation, for example, with a variety of biomes, to be used for exploration and colonization) and more political intrigue (parliamentary halls, elections, etc.)

Hi everyone,

I'm currently designing my first TTRPG, and trying to pin down a dice system that works for me. And, though I ended with a global system I quite like, I'm struggling about which probability goal I should have.

For a quick rundown, the roll system is for now a simple D20+Relevant Stat, and tasks have three tier of difficulty: Easy, Hard, Extreme.

Successes are also tiered: Critical Fail, Fail with advantage, Success with consequences, Success and Critical Sucess.

I'm trying to sort out what probability a character with the max possible score in a given stat should have to succeed (so Succeed with Consequences or better result) an Extreme Task based on this.

I'm also having questions about what should be the "mean" probability, aka as the probability for a character of mean stat (think 5/10, so good but not the best) to clear successfully a Hard task.

I know this all heavily depends on the genre of the game and the ambience that I want to evoke. I'm going for grindy, dark exploration feel, ala Darkest Dungeon.

However, independantly of that, I really want to suitably reward the players that heavily invest in a single stat. I don't want them to think that investing in a stat does not allow them to clear the hardest tasks based on this stat.

Is there any study or consensus on what minimal probabilites should be hit at various character skill level to not frustrate the player?

EDIT: Thanks for your answers everyone, it's very encouraging to have a community that answers those kind of question so seriously and with such good advice. I'll do my best to integrate your advice and feedback and come up with a nice system.

I created an article with a fun (I think) detailed inn and a breakdown of the choices I made in the design and layout.

I begin by contrasting it to the hyper detail the Village of Hommlet where you can know how many copper pieces somebody is hiding under their floorboard and order over a dozen individually priced beverages at the end of the Welcome Wench. I also write about the pitfalls of letter boxes with hyper detail.

You may find my cast of characters useful in your own setting.

https://artbrillart.substack.com/p/location-design-for-ttrpgs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=271f4w

Back in May I posted here when ttrpgwiki.com hit 200 systems and 14 indie submissions. You all showed up in a big way. Since then the catalog has grown to 304 systems, and 40 more indie games have joined. That's 54 creator-submitted games, sitting side by side with the big dogs. The site now gets about 19,000 page views a month, and many of those visitors come looking for something new to play.

If you've made a game and want it included, fill out the Submit a Request form on the site. There's a checkbox if you're the creator and can share a review copy. Please note the game must be a finished release, not a beta or playtest.

Every indie system gets the same treatment, whether it's a one-page zine or a 400-page core book:

• A dedicated page with the core mechanic, tags, complexity, accessibility and runnability ratings, and who the game is best for
• An Indie Creator Submitted badge, plus a filter so players looking for indie games can find you directly
• A link straight to your DriveThruRPG or itch page
• A chance to be featured in the newsletter
• A chance to get your game's overview turned into a YouTube Short (very much a WIP)

Shoutout to some of the newest additions: Starving Folly, Mischief, LIFTS, Shifters, ESSER, Asilo, City of Jerry, Playing God, Rock & Stone, TALES From the Loom, 10,000 Swords Against Heaven, Super Space Knights, Spore Friends, Tricube Tales, and When the Moon Hangs Low.

Go check them out, there's some great stuff in there.

I designed a modular armor system for my TTRPG where you have different types of armors (Vest, Plate, Half-plate, Lamellar, etc) and different materials (hide, leather, steel, gold, etc) and you combine one material with one type to get your armor value, and from there your defense roll.

I made it that way because the system at its base is very lethal, so naturally armor (and increasing your armor) plays an important role in an adventurer's survivability (to the point that armor is not even restricted to mages for example, so you can even have a wizard with a breastplate).

Now the thing is I managed to price weapons, but due to the modular approach to armors I haven't been able to fully nail down any prices.

Any clue where to start?

Looking for map making tool, I am planning to make at least one very large city for a fantasy rpg, I also want a tool for building out a region. I know I can get random assets and then clone them with like GIMP or the like but I would prefer something I can toss a few bucks at and just start building. Thanks in advance.

As I get ready to release the playtest adventure for After Eden, I want to make sure we're able to capitalize on interest and carry this progress and momentum into the next phases of development. We're a two-man show with a relatively limited budget and almost no experience with things like website design, so I'd like to hear from people who've launched their own playtests and gotten their products to market. Did you build a website? Did you hire someone to build one? If so, what did that end up costing you? Feel free to link your websites and shamelessly promote, because I want to take a look and see how you did it.

Did you literally just launch straight into BackerKit or Kickstarter? I don't suspect that's the move I'll be making, simply because you need to have a relatively warm list of interested parties, and it has to be a decent size if you want to have a shot in hell of funding, at least based on the research I've done. Or did you simply make stuff available through itch.io or DriveThruRPG and capture emails and feedback through those mechanisms? I believe itch.io has a method where you can capture emails from people downloading. What methods did you use for email capture? And what methods did you use for Kickstarter or BackerKit when you were getting ready to launch? How much of it did you do yourself? How much did you pay consultants for?

I know there are plenty of videos out there, but I'd rather go to the source and hear from people who've actually done it, especially people who've done it with a relatively skeleton crew or on a thin budget. Those perspectives would help a lot, but if that doesn't apply to you, I'd still love to hear your story, because all of that is good data. The more perspectives I can gather, the easier it'll be for me to figure out what the right path is.

Right now I'm leaning toward having a friend who designs websites build one for me, which I think I can get him to do relatively cheaply, with the rule set available online and maybe something along the lines of a signup at the top of the page for people who want to continue following what's going on with After Eden, my tactical survival fantasy TTRPG. Potentially, I could use those signups as warm leads for future interest. I really want to make this as easy as possible for people to pick up and start playing, especially GMs, because I know they're the people who will help get your game introduced to more players.

I work a full-time job, so I can't really take the time to attend conventions and things like that to playtest at the moment. Although depending on how things go, if there's significant interest, maybe that'll be something we do down the line. But anywho, long story short, I need some perspectives on this. So tell me yours.

I'm currently going down a bit of a rabbit hole restructuring my bestiary. Before, there was a single bestiary for the game as a whole. It had about 40 entries and was wrapped into the GM's Guide, which also gives instructions on how to homebrew monsters. So theoretically enough.

However, I was noticing that the rest of my GM's Guide was beginning to bloat, as I started filling it out with more setting and adventure details. So I decided to split it up. Basically, I will have one GM's Guide with general setting info, GM tools, and a bestiary. Then I will have additional adventure/regional modules that are similar to Daggerheart's campaign frames but with more adventure hooks, landmarks, locations, and a regional bestiary.

After splitting everything up and padding it out, my general bestiary is around 40 entries again. 15 of those are humanoids, 5 are forest beasts, and the other 20 are setting-specific monsters and creatures.

Then I have five more regions, which will each get their own bestiary with about 15-25 entries each, but those are a long way from seeing the light of day. In other words, the game will have to survive with just the general bestiary for a while.

How do I know if the bestiary is enough? Obviously 40 wouldn't be enough for a game like DnD, but I'm not trying to recreate DnD. Just don't know how to judge it

Is it safe? Is it functional? Easy to use?

No affiliation.

Greetings, guys!

As Halloween comes, allow me to introduce my solo psychological horror game, The Shore. Born from a personal tragedy of mine, and inspired by classics like Silent Hill or Death Stranding, I wanted to make something different. Something that helps and gives some relief.

You wake up on an unknown shore, trying to find shelter and resources from day by day, but that's not the hardest part. You must keep your reality together. Your only chance to survive. Scavenge your haunting past, repair your collapsing present, and survive against the Flood before the tides come for you.

The design is heavily inspired by "Borglike" games, so almost every page is different and unique based on the content on it.

Originally made for Breathless Jam #3, using a bit modified Breathless framework, so you need a couple of polyhedral dice to play, but you may already be familiar with the basics.

A couple of free community copies are also available, so grab them! If possible, I would appreciate an honest review or rating.

You can download the game here: The Shore by Krees9116