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!