I figured I'd go ahead and make a thread for updates on my game. I've been working on it mentally for a couple of years, and have been actually writing for about a half a year. The whole project started as an idea around a status I'm calling 'Curse,' which is accrued as characters do harmful things or come into contact with demons.

I've taken most of the dice mechanics from The Cepheus System and adapted them for a fantasy setting.

It's a science fiction/fantasy setting that I'm writing, and I've got a small group that I'm play-testing with. I tried to get a spread of people, so I've got three who have varying levels of familiarity with ttrps, one who is completely new to role playing and table top games, and one who is familiar with table tops and does a lot of play-testing for board games.

We had our first session a few weeks ago, which was mostly me explaining core rules, and we ended by generating some characters for them. That session ended with everyone very excited to play.
We have our second session tonight, and I've got a pretty simple little session that's loosely on-rails to try to get a feeling for some of the major mechanics.

As far as influential media, or things I've taken inspiration from, I'd say this is my shortlist:
• Mobile Suit Gundam, mostly for the newtype/space magic with science roots
• Demon's Souls/Dark Souls, for some dark medieval fantasy worldbuilding and the way Fromsoft does resource management
• The Silmarillion, for the way Tolkien does magic, and integrates the spiritual and material
• Tales from Earthsea, for the way LeGuin does magic

I'll update this thread as we continue to play.

We had a great second session, I tried to take good notes during the game so that I can go back and do rewrites and amendments later.

Aside from gameplay, I think the thing we spent the most time discussing was how to get a good flow to combat. Everyone thought that it was fun, but it was noticeably slower than we wanted it to be.

We tried to do a little brainstorming at the end of the night, and I think we came up with some good ideas to try for next time. What we'll do is instead of everyone having individual initiative, we'll go back and forth between the enemy group and the party. The party can plan their turn together, and attempt to execute their action, but the enemy will have the ability to attempt to interrupt their plan. If they want to make their plan more likely to succeed, they can spend Souls, the resource they use to level up, and that will make it more difficult for the enemy to disrupt their turn.

We'll see how that goes!

Here are some options I came up with to replace individual initiative rolls. I'll talk through them with the group and see what they're interested in, but I thought I'd share them here as well and get some feedback. I like options 2 and 3 because I think it makes combat more interesting if the party has to coordinate around the enemy's actions.

For clarification: Soul Value is the number of d6 used to generate the enemy's stats. E.G. If the party is fighting an enemy with a Soul Value of 3d6, the GM rolls 3d6 3 times to get the numbers for their Vitality Endurance and Psyche (the three main stats for all characters).

Option 1: In combat, players and enemies act as groups. The enemy group determines their initiative by rolling Xd6 where X is their total soul value, and the group rolls Xd6 where X is their collective Dexterity Modifier.

Option 2: In combat, players and enemies act as groups. The enemy group determines their initiative by rolling Xd6 where X is their total soul value. Characters with a Dexterity score higher than the result of this roll take their turns before the enemy, and characters with a Dexterity score lower than the result of this roll take their turns after the enemy.

Option 3: In combat, players and enemies act as groups. The enemy group determines their initiative by rolling Xd6 where X is their total soul value, and each player rolls Xd6 + Dexterity modifier where X is their Dexterity Modifier or 1, whichever is higher. Players whose result is higher than the enemy take their turn as a group before the enemy, and players whose result is lower than the enemy take their turn as a group after the enemy. If a player's result is equal to the enemy's they may choose whether to go before or after.

QuoteAs far as influential media, or things I've taken inspiration from, I'd say this is my shortlist:
• Mobile Suit Gundam, mostly for the newtype/space magic with science roots
• Demon's Souls/Dark Souls, for some dark medieval fantasy worldbuilding and the way Fromsoft does resource management
• The Silmarillion, for the way Tolkien does magic, and integrates the spiritual and material
• Tales from Earthsea, for the way LeGuin does magic.

That is a fascinating list of inspirations. I am not sure that I can see them connecting, but my own game's inspiration is XCOM, Majora's Mask, and Call of C'thulu all wrapped up in the aesthetic design of the old Squaresoft RPG, Parasite Eve. Strange combinations of inspirations can absolutely make ideas which may as well be wholly original.

Out of curiosity, which--if any--of these are inspiring your intended quest design or are you making a traditional open-ended sandbox where the GM is expected to Bring Their Own Story?

Quote from: Fheredin on February 10, 2025, 08:22:42 PMOut of curiosity, which--if any--of these are inspiring your intended quest design or are you making a traditional open-ended sandbox where the GM is expected to Bring Their Own Story?

I don't have a "main campaign" or anything right now, just some bits of stories/lore I've written or ideas for lore that I'll come back to.

I'm leaning towards the open-ended thing, but mostly because I feel under-equipped to write a single full campaign at the moment, let alone more than one. I also like working with other people and creating collaboratively. For example, I didn't define races or backstories, and my brother-in-law (the guy who has never played tabletops) came up with this incredible character whose story I am excited to integrate into this world.

So far I've enjoyed providing a feeling and letting people kind of run with it, and then responding to what they respond to. To me, that creative feedback loop is very interesting.

So, long answer, but I think my ideal is a Bring Your Own Story, but the stories don't necessarily need to be epic. The idea for this game did start out as an epic fantasy that I may end up writing (not that it would be good, I have very little writing experience) but even if that big story doesn't get written down, there are little Dark Souls style stories that I can create as vignettes to set a mood.

Thanks for asking!

Last session we focused on more combat testing. Specifically, I brought a few options for initiative and we found a fun way to do the actual rounds of combat.

For initiative, we settled on a simple roll-off between the players and the enemies, with the higher result going first. Players get to each roll a number of d6 equal to their dexterity modifier, and enemies roll a number of d6 equal to their total Soul Value.

*Soul Value is the term I'm using for the way I generate enemy stat blocks. E.g. a 3d6 enemy would roll 3d6 for Health, Endurance and Psyche, the three main stats for all creatures.

Each round is 2 turns, the player group (PG) and the enemy group (EG). Let's say that EG rolls a higher initiative. To simplify and streamline, the number of d6s the enemy rolls for damage is equal to their total Soul Value. The GM rolls for the total damage and then players, starting with whoever initiated combat narratively, take turns rolling 1d6 around the table. Each player must roll 1d6 when it comes to their roll, but players may choose to take a roll for another player, rolling 2d6 so that the other player doesn't have to roll on that go around. Players roll this way, making note of their damage received as the GM reduces their rolls from the total damage for the round, until the total damage reaches 0. Then it is PG's turn.

Each player decides what they want to do, spends the appropriate Psyche and/or Endurance to take that action, and rolls for damage/tells the GM what they're doing. Then for the damage calculation, the GM rolls in the same way the players did, cycling between all enemy combatants.

We found this offered a simple but fun way to resolve damage, and help combat feel quick and dangerous. There's some fun in taking a big hit for the group, or seeing another player about to die and taking their roll for them. It makes combat feel frenetic and scrappy.

There are additional ways to interact with this system as well: For some context, in my setting it is common that the party is fighting demons, and there are mechanics built around those encounters. During combat, if demons are present, when they are reduced to 0 health they leave behind Soul Energy. Soul Energy is used by players to level up during rest periods, and also provides a temporary boost to Health.

In order to gain Soul Energy, a player must use their action on their turn to absorb the energy, meaning they cannot contribute to the damage rolls. If two or more players want to absorb the energy, they can choose to do a 1d6 roll-off, and regardless of who wins, any players who participate in this roll-off cannot contribute to the party's roll for damage that turn. Then when the party is receiving damage, if a player is absorbing soul energy, they roll 2d6 instead of 1d6 when rolling for damage received.

This makes it dangerous to attempt to gain Soul Energy, but to increase the risk/reward, demons are also able to absorb Soul Energy. If this happens, they gain health, and their Soul Value increases, meaning when they are reduced to 0 health, there is an even bigger pool of Soul Energy available.

Development seems to be going well, but unfortunately we're losing two play-testers. One who is moving but was really enjoying being part of the group, and the other was the one who isn't used to TTRPGs and feels it's too much of a time commitment for him. Things seem to be going well, and I'm continuing to fill out more details, such as working on an economy/pricing scale for goods and services.