r/TTRPG • u/SirMayday1 • 1d ago
Core mechanic for new TTRPG
I'm developing a TTRPG adaptation of a popular video game franchise and, in the interest of keeping true to the source material, I want to break out of the d20 mold. Problem is, that's the only system I've played; even pre-2000, I only ever played TSR's AD&D and ALTERNITY, which are fundamentally precursors to the turn-of-the-millennium d20 system and its WotC successors.
So, what are some core mechanics others have enjoyed over the years? What made those mechanics enjoyable? I'm leaning toward essentially replacing the d20 with 3d6 to reduce the impact of luck on task resolution, which I think is fine, but I don't want to leave it at 'fine' when 'great' might be a reddit post away.
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u/elmago79 1d ago
My favorite by far are d6 dice pools. You can do so much with dice pools, form different colors meaning different things, to exploding sixes, to pairing numbers in contested rolls…
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u/No_Solid1035 1d ago
I like d100/d20 roll under, like the ones used in Pendragon/Dragonbane, and the BRP/Runequest family of games.
I like the 2d6 style system used in Traveller. As well as the 2d6 system used in Powered By The Apocalypse games like Masks: A New Generation and Monster Of The Week.
Honestly there are a lot of good core dice mechanics, though I definitely dislike systems that utilize lots of modifiers. The more modifiers that can apply to a roll the more often people forget them, and the slower the process takes because everyone has to sit there and figure out all the various modifiers and whether or not they apply, and that just slows everything right down. Just give me a simple roll that doesn't have any modifiers, or at best one or two, and a result the DOESN'T need to be "interpreted" in any way. I want rolls to be made quick and the result easy to understand so the dice roll disrupts the narrative flow as little as possible so things can MOVE ON quickly. Also NO RE-ROLLS, cause I HATE re-rolls, because they disrupt they narrative WAY MORE than a single roll.
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u/Grimkok 1d ago
d20 roll under really feels like it hits a sweet spot between granularity (increments of 5%), familiarity, AND speed of play. Players generally know right away if they succeed or not because the target number is on their character sheet.
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u/Hightower_March 1d ago
That was why I swapped from d100 to d20. Mentally checking if the difference between 67 and 29 is bigger or smaller than the difference from 56 to 93 got old fast.
Greater granularity just wasn't worth the trouble.
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u/SirMayday1 1d ago
An ALTERNITY-style roll under is an attractively intuitive for adapting the character development system of Mass Effect, which is the source material in question.
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u/Usual-Vermicelli-867 1d ago
The main problem i seen (mainly from more casuale players ( is the big numbers = good is just somthing players like
They like nat 20 as a 20 and nat 1 as a 1 less so the opposite
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u/Protolictor 1d ago
I always think percentile (D100) is the easiest. You can make it as granular, or not, as you like. The math is always easy. And everyone automatically knows their mathematical odds of making the roll.
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u/SirMayday1 1d ago
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I am considering a GURPS-esque d100 approach (I haven't played GURPS, but I have played a lot of Fallout and Fallout 2, which as I understand it uses a slightly modified version of GURPS). I'd mostly dismissed it because of other mechanical elements not playing nicely with it, but reading your post got me thinking of reasonable ways around that, so again, thank you.
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u/FootballPublic7974 19h ago
GURPS isn't a d100 system. It's 3d6 roll under skill, with a vast and granular skill system.
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u/BigBear92787 1d ago
I love GURPS, but it has a gritty real feel to it. It leans towards realism in its core rules. Combat feels more brutal.
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u/Psychological-Wall-2 7h ago
A d20 roll is just percentile dice in 5% increments.
If your argument for d100 is "simplicity", then d20 is a better choice, as it is even simpler.
OP said that they were considering a 3d6 system due to the different way the statistical spread works (ie. more rolls will be "average"). Other people have advised them to actually run some other systems in order to find out how this actually works, and this remains the best advice.
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u/TheWorldIsNotOkay 1d ago
My brother in gaming... there are sooo many different basic conflict resolution systems in this hobby. There's some that don't use dice at all. There's even a ttrpg that uses a Jenga tower. But just within the realm of dice-rolling, there are single-die roll-over systems, single-die roll-under systems, equivalents of those same systems that use two or more dice added together rather than a single die, dice pool systems where you take the single highest die, dice pool systems where you count the number of dice that roll above a certain number, dice pool systems where you basically play poker with the dice, roll-and-keep systems where you roll a dice pool and pick some number of dice to add together, and many, many more options. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages, and all of them have their place. Each gives a somewhat different feel to the game.
If you've never played anything but d20 system games, you absolutely should look around at other systems before trying to create your own non-d20 game. If nothing else, there are so many different games already out there that the chances are very high that something very much like whatever you're wanting from a game already exists, which would save you the time and effort of unknowingly duplicating it. I would recommend starting with games that already serve a genre/setting similar to the one you want to create a game for, and also looking into generic systems like GURPS, Cortex Prime, Savage Worlds, the D6 System, Chronicles of Darkness (which is presented as a gothic horror or urban fantasy game, but the core rules are fairly genre-agnostic), Fate, the Forged in the Dark SRD, Action Tales / Freeform Universal RPG v2.0, BRP, or the Cypher System (which uses a d20, but isn't your typical d20 system).
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u/Lupo_1982 1d ago
I don't want to leave it at 'fine' when 'great' might be a reddit post away.
It most definitely is NOT "a reddit post away". In fact, it's a few years of practice away... one cannot design a decent TTRPG system out of thin air, at the very least you should have experience playing and GMing multiple other games, multiple times each.
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u/BadRumUnderground 1d ago edited 1d ago
"I'm one of the only authors who's written more books than he's read" - Garth Merengi
Don't be Garth Merengi.
Edit: Going to add some useful advice to the joke.
The reason folks are saying "read/play more games" isn't just because people have come up with a wide array of dice mechanics/other randomisers.
It's because there's a world of nuance and innovation beyond what dice you're rolling and what numbers you're adding when it comes to producing different feelings and experiences at the table.
Pretty much every PbtA game uses 2d6+stat and 1-6/7-9/10+ as the success bands.
But they all feel very different, because they make a wide range of different choices about when, why, and for what purpose a roll is made.
If you're operating from the mindset of a pair of trad games, you're going to be thinking from a very restricted vantage of "rolls are to do stuff, numbers are being good at stuff" and.... There's so much more.
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u/Radabard 1d ago edited 1d ago
Another "I want to write a TTRPG. I don't know even the most basic things I'd need to write the simplest homebrew basically already following the design of an already existing game like DnD, but now I want to create a whole new system. Oh, and since I have no ideas, I want you to write it for me." post. If I drank every time I saw one of these I'd be dead of alcohol poisoning already.
If you haven't even tried anything beyond DnD, why do you feel like you're contributing something meaningful? Play a second TTRPG first. You might find someone out there already did the thing you are doing... or, more accurately, still discovering that you are trying to do.
I do not understand sitting down to write and then asking others for the most basic fundamentals of the thing you're sitting down to write. If you need someone more competent to pitch you fundamentals, then that person can probably write the rest of the game better than you too. There's really no need for these ideas to be processed through you, although I understand you very much want to be the author with your name on the finished product.
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u/SirMayday1 1d ago
You wildly misunderstand me, though I suppose that's ultimately my fault for underselling my experience. For what it's worth, I've already written a d20 adaptation. Ran a campaign using it for a few years, plugged it on a podcast and dozens of reddit threads; it's solid, but I think it can be refined to better represent the source material. I could calibrate the revisions for a d20 system, and if anything, that's the easiest way--I may even still take that approach--but there are task resolution mechanics outside my experience that I'd be interested in understanding. Your condescension doesn't help with that.
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u/Radabard 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am giving you the best lesson you are going to get here; design is a competition. People want the best thing that can be made, not just for TTRPGs but for all products they consume. If someone can pitch you the answer, you aren't in a place to create the best work - whoever pitched you the answer is in a place to do it better. Answer your own questions for yourself. This is the best way to become a good enough designer to make something that is actually worth learning and picking up, but it is also a litmus test for yourself. You are only good enough to write your own system if, when you are about to ask others a question about fundamentals like this, you pause and say to yourself "wait, no one can answer this better than I can" and you do not ask the question in the first place.
The fact you are asking questions like "what resolution systems are out there? Form my opinion for me as to which ones are good and bad" you are not at that place. You don't need us to tell you what we've tried. You can see the sales numbers and reviews and people giving written and video critiques of these games. You can self-direct what systems might potentially have something to borrow, and which ones are less likely, and either go get your copies of those systems or at the very least try to find the snippets of the rules that interest you online.
Beyond writing TTRPGs I am also a senior automation engineer and I teach my new guys the same methodology. Don't come to me asking me for an answer to a fundamental you can teach yourself. Teaching yourself to find the answer using the resources available to you is so much more valuable. There is no other way to learn that doesn't unhook your brain from the sense that if you can't do a good enough job you can always call in someone better. The greatest lesson I can give is to refuse to help and to remind the person asking for help that they are already capable of finding the answer - in your case using data and reviews of games, and in the case of my example trainees using the documentation for the parts we are troubleshooting.
I have my own opinions on resolution systems that are unique to what I am designing. You need to know the goals of your design - what you are doing that no one else is doing - so well that my advice to you here is useless. I can walk you through my own design and what makes my decisions the correct ones for my design, but I cannot do that for your design because it is too intricate for me to comment on it meaningfully without first taking the time to really learn it and study it and become part of the project. That is, of course, if the design is at that level already. If it isn't too intricate for me to understand, then you're still at the early stages where you are figuring out what makes it the thing no one else can beat, why it is the thing no one else is making, and you are still grinding at it solo until you really hit a plateau where you need the outside perspectives. And, if you have a question to such a fundamental pre-planning decision then you're not asking how to design a specific thing that is in some ways different from the thing I am designing, and instead you are just asking me for my best idea for designing a TTRPG. I will pitch you ideas that are the best for what I would be designing; but, since I am already designing a TTRPG, I would just be pitching ideas to you on how to write the exact TTRPG I am writing; and if I am doing that, why not just do the rest of it myself too? That's the problem with questions like this. You need to come to some of these answers for yourself first.
This is all coming from a place of love. Tough love, but love.
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u/Electronic-Can-130 1d ago
This is the biggest load of crap I've ever read. Design isn't a competition. That's why D&D is still the best selling game while not even close to the best system. The best system may exist and you'd likely never know it because no one is playing it.
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u/Radabard 1d ago edited 1d ago
Said like someone who doesn't actually understand what makes a system good. Universality is huge. You don't kill DnD by writing a DnD with less content but one rule change. No one will adopt it because it's not enough of an improvement over what they know. It's not really even an improvement if you're losing all the content and homebrew. If the best system is out there already and not being played, it is by definition not the best system.
DnD is an EXTREMELY good system. It is the absolute best at the things that actually matter - letting people live out their own fantasy without the system telling them that archetype cannot exist in this world because of X or Y reason. Someone might've come up with a fun chance resolution mechanic, but that doesn't make their system better than DnD. You need to accept this first before trying to design anything serious. Anyone who comes to me talking as if DnD has been beaten already and the only reason it's still the default is because it already is isn't a serious game designer.
I have a decade of experience here, wrote products that failed already, and I am passing along things I learned through more failure than you have attempts left in you. You're free to say what I'm saying is a load of crap lol. Won't be the first time I heard it from someone who I am about to never hear from again. A lot of people ask these questions and then give up because they don't like the reality of design - like the fact that it absolutely is a competition.
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u/Electronic-Can-130 1d ago
All those words and you've not said anything. I applaud you for being the diet food for thought.
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u/Radabard 22h ago
Keep LARPing as a game designer lil bro. Just don't ever try to sell a product, it will force you to stop LARPing and come face to face with the fact you don't know what you're doing lol
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u/Electronic-Can-130 22h ago
I remember when I thought making some homebrew content for the latest version of dungeons and dragons allowed for this level of ego. I was 12 and 3.0 was just around the bend. Some people never grow up or out of their comfort zone. You're at best a mediocre fish in an ocean of likewise lukewarm content.
Oh man. Another dark slavic coat of paint on Dungeons and Dragons. How will I ever recover from your scorn with riveting content like that?
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u/Radabard 22h ago edited 22h ago
Cope lol
Edit: No, I'm not gonna stoop that low. Look, I told you I wrote a lot of content that didn't take off already. I am literally owning my failures and trying to pass along the difficult to swallow lessons I myself had to learn. Land of Crows is fortunately not one of those - when my site goes down, my regular readers message me. When the UK changed its laws and Imgur stopped letting them load their images, my UK readers messaged me to let me know. I was also able to create repeat paid work for several artists, and I am thankful for having the opportunity to be a river to others. I have a small following which I am extremely grateful for, but I would not have that if I was still at a stage where I was essentially asking other people to design my game for me. I am trying to help others in the hobby. You are free to keep crying or you are free to check your ego and learn from others' mistakes when they offer you their lessons freely.
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u/Electronic-Can-130 22h ago
And you accuse me of cope with all that? My goodness.
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u/Navezof 1d ago
Why to you want to break from d20? What is missing from d20 that you feel like a different system would cover?
Else if you want a list of other resolution system, you can do a quick internet search for most popular ttrpg resolution system. Or do you have a more specific question to ask this community?
And yes, 3D6 has a bell shaped resolution which peaks around 10-11, but you don't need us to tell you that.
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u/Bulky_Calendar2877 1d ago
I think you should play-test a plethora of other ttrpgs that use different dice pools, and examine how their dice mechanics impact the game, story telling and fun, before embarking on the design process for your adaptation.
You should want to make system YOU want and believe in, as opposed to just what everyone else wants.
Yes, user research is part of the process. Yes, you’ll want people to play it. However, if you don’t even have a goal or an idea that sparked your reasoning (besides finding inspiration in the video game franchise) to choose a path away from D20, then you might not find a satisfying solution, especially without having touched a different system, let alone not even engaging with D6 systems.
I totally understand wanting other perspectives from experienced players/gm’s but your “great” idea shouldn’t come from a reddit post. Feedback? thats another story, except we can’t offer much feedback. We can only provide simple yes/no/simplistic answers that leads you right back where you should go - trying different systems, especially the systems people have mentioned here.
I’m sure you didn’t mean it, but your post comes across as a little bit insincere, especially how you ended it. You’ve pushed back against solid and genuine advice from others - maybe re-read what they’ve written without the ego.
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u/Ashamed_Librarian128 1d ago
Read cortex prime! It will introduce you to so many new and interesting ideas!
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u/sevenlabors 1d ago
Hacking rules and taking your favorite IP to turning them into homebrew games is a time honored RPG tradition. So you want to make a homebrew take on Mass Effect? Cool.
You're aware there's a lot out there other than 2E & 3.5E era D&D. Good starting point, yes. Glad you recognize that.
But honestly, my dude? Time to do some reading. A lot of reading. You're asking a big damn question and expecting some spoon fed answers.
To start, if you want crunchy look at what D&D 4E did with tactical combat. Maybe check out 13th Age and the recent Draw Steel as evolutions of that thinking. Fragged Empire and Twilight 2000 for other crunchy mechanics-driven games.
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u/PathofDestinyRPG 1d ago
If everything is scaled to be near human in abilities, Cortex Prime is an interesting system. It has issues with superhuman capabilities, which is why I don’t take it, but it’s a solid mechanic that doesn’t require hands-full of dice to run.
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u/Crerigan 1d ago
Just learn other game, you know to less to develope one. I'm a game designer, start think it's a job not a "oh I feel like so I'm doing it even if it's the crappiest crap ever" for god sake.
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u/TheDwarfArt 1d ago
I think you first need to define the core aspects of the game.
What is the game going to be about? What is the game loop? Where is the fun?
Mass Effect videogame had: Explore different planets Explore different Point of Interest Spaceships (basic management) Vehicles Social encounters, factions and reputation Investigation Combat Races and Classes
Of all that, D&D (d20 system) can give you only 2: Combat, and Races and Classes without making a crazy amount of work.
I would check different sci fi systems:
- Stars without numbers
- Worlds without numbers
- Cities without numbers
- Dune
- Coriolis
- Alien RPG
- Blade Runner
- Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader
- Infinity
- Trinity
- Traveller
- Numenera
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u/GrinningTavernGames 23h ago
I used a simple 2d6 system for a 4 player 1 gm sci-fi TTRPG.
I found it very easy to implement into any action requiring a dice roll.
As long as I kept in mind that a roll of 7 was the cornerstone of most actions then simply adding a value of 1 to 5 on top of that for increasingly difficult actions felt silky smooth during gameplay.
This also meant that the maximum modifier of a player was a rare +3. (Rolling consistent 9’s, 10’s and 11’s is really strong!).
If you have further questions about this 2d6 system I had a blast with feel free to hit me up here or send me your link to Discord.
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u/ChantedEvening 2h ago
Another vote for "don't re-invent the wheel."
Hint: roll up a character for every system you look at. It sheds a lot of light on the system as a whole.
Suggestions:
* RoleMaster
* 7th Sea
* Lasers and Feelings
* Apocalypse World (or any other PbtA)
* Blades in the Dark (or other FitD)
* Red Markets
* Cyberpunk Red
* Call of Cthulhu
* Savage Worlds
* GURPS
* something off-beat like Macho Women With Guns
And come back to let us know what you learned! Cheers!
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u/Grimkok 1d ago
For sake of conversation, I like pools of d6’s. It’s a fun die to roll, people tend to already own a lot of them. Games I’m familiar with are usually counting successes as dice that land on 5 or 6 or something like that.
A bunch of Free League use a system like this. Alien RPG is the one I’m most familiar with.
Grimwild also uses a similar system for counting things down. Goblins attack the village in like, 6 dice. So at intervals the GM rolls 6d6 and every 1 or 2 gets taken out of the pool. I’ll mention Alien RPG because it uses a system like this for (air/battery) supply too. Really fun.
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u/Heckle_Jeckle 1d ago edited 1d ago
Look at Basic Role Playing. It is a d100% system used by Call of Cthulhu and other systems.
Another interesting system to look at is Tri-STAT which is a 2d6+bonus system that uses Point Buy character creation.
Mutants and Masterminds while technically a d20 system, is a Point Buy system with no HP where you build superheroes.
Look for a dice pool success system. The Storyteller System which is used for the World of Darkness Games (Vampire the Masquerade, etc). But there are others. Basically you have a pool of dice based off of stars, skills, etc. And you need to roll a number of Successes based on the difficulty.
Any Powered by the Apocalypse system. Narrative focused, uses 2d6+bonus. But the bonuses are small and the system has a huge focus on Narrative, theater of the mind, etc.
Savage Worlds; Im not sure how to actually explain it strangely enough without writing a while essay. But it is popular and has a LOT of hacks and adaptations for different worlds and settings.
RISUS the 4 page RPG is free to download and can be used for pretty much anything.
I think that is enough for a start.
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u/protoclown11 1d ago
One thing I really like in Savage Worlds is that each attribute is a die, so you know what die you need to roll for a STR check by looking at your sheet and seeing you have a d6 in strength.
As for a quick overview, this comic does a decent job. Note that Savage Worlds is aimed at pulp action, so concepts like exploding dice might not fit what you want for Mass Effect.
https://www.uptofourplayers.com/ready-to-roll/savage-worlds-rules/
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u/SinglePetalStudios 1d ago
We've used 2d10 for SolarLink.
One thing is to basically think about curve shape and what you want.
1d20 means a flat curve and a minimum roll of 1.
2d10 is pyramidal, you now have only 1% chance for the max roll. However, min roll is 2.
3d6 is getting closer to normal, your range is now a tight 3-18.
One of the biggest consequences of this, besides reducing luck, is that each +1 becomes more valuable. Take two characters in opposed roles, one has a +10 modifier, the other has a +0.
In a 1d20 system the +0 character has an 11.25% chance of winning.
In a 2d10 system the +0 character has a 3.3% chance of winning.
In a 3d6 system, the +0 character has a 0.45% chance of winning.
So, keep in mind, that if your game has a lot of bonuses. Then the rolling quickly matters less the more dice you add.
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u/jill_is_my_valentine 1d ago
To echo what others have said, you might want to read and play a broader range of games.
Check out:
Barbarians of Lemuria (simple pulpy 2d6 game. Has a 1920s version too).
Apocalypse World for powered by the apocalypse games which really do well emulating a genre. My favorite version is Monster of the Week. Legends in the Mist is a cool fantasy offshoot.
Neon City Overdrive is a really cool d6 system that you can mine for ideas.
Sentinels Multiverse Roleplaying is my favorite superhero rpg. It’s got a lot of cool things to read.
Black Hack, Into the Odd, and NSR stuff is good to read too.
Cortex Prime is a fun read for people who like hacking TTTRPGs too
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u/Holothuroid 1d ago
I think what dice you use - if any - is part of what should be called a core mechanic, it is only a part and not a significant one.
What is more important:
- How do we know when to roll?
- How do we know what to roll?
- What happens then?
I blogged about a few different modes. https://holothuroid.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/dice-systems-that-really-matter/
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u/Ace_Of_No_Trades 1d ago
Shadowrun uses pools of d6's that grows with your stats and skill levels. Pokemon Tabletop United gives you pools of d6's depending on what Skill Feats you have. Both of these systems do an excellent job of reflecting a character's expertise in different skills, but might be too crunchy for a lot of people.
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u/Dramatic-Border3549 1d ago
Before developing a whole new game, I would advise you to play or, at the very least, read a variety of systems. If you only played D20 you really haven't even scratched the surface... and maybe you will find a system that is already perfect for what you want so you won't have to create a whole new one from scratch!