[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 2 weeks ago

Weird! I don’t know how that happened, can you give a page number for where it shows up?

And yes, please share any typos you find!

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 1 points 2 weeks ago

Just replying to let you know that I’ve changed move to Move whenever it’s not referring to movement and that I’ve changed Paralysis to the easier option of not being able to move this round and next round. It definitely plays differently, but it’s quicker and should hopefully be easier to understand!

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 weeks ago

Feedback is always more than welcome!

I might just change Paralysis at this point, it’s been a bit annoying to track in playtesting and if it’s apparently hard to understand as well it may not be worth it. The general goal of conditions was to have them go away as quickly as possible to keep things simple, which is why Paralysis disappears at the end of the start of turn, but having it just be no-movement for 2 turns is probably the better option. I’ll have to do some playtesting first, though.

And capitalising Move is probably the easiest option. I’d have to check if that causes anything weird, but probably not.

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 weeks ago

Hmm, techniques might work, but space is often limited and it’s quite a bit longer than “move”. I’m aware of the issue, but didn’t have a clean way of solving it. I couldn’t use “attack” since there’s already an Attack die and abilities are also a thing in Pokémon in general. If it was going to be confusing regardless, I figured I might as well stick with the name used in the games. Basically, move as a noun is an “attack”, move as a verb is movement. I may have to try to fit that clarification in somewhere…

The thing to keep in mind with Paralysis is that every round starts with determining turn order, any Paralysed Pokémon move to the end of the turn order and then loses Paralysis. The not-being-able-to-move bit is only relevant if the Paralysed Pokémon hasn’t acted yet that round.

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 month ago

Thanks!

I have never actually run a Pokémon TTRPG I didn’t make myself, but having read through a few, I was always struck by how much work they demanded from the GM. Having to basically design each Pokémon the players will face seems like such a daunting task. On top of this, enemy Pokémon usually have to be run the same as those of the players, which again means a lot more work for the GM. I’m a lazy GM at heart, and that just would not be possible for those games.

I tried my best to make things as easy on the GM as I could. With some experience, you should be able to start a battle from scratch in less than a minute, and you don’t have nearly as many decision points as the other players during the battle.

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 month ago

Feedback is always welcome!

The issue is that for out-of-combat actions, the move die has the same function for both types of moves, so giving it a different name could lead to more confusion. Additionally, any number mentioned on the move card always refers to the move die, so having different names might again be more confusing.

I hope I made it clear that special moves have a very different procedure, and as soon as you realise that, knowing that the “move die” is the die on the move card should hopefully make things fairly clear.

Part of the impetus behind the combat rules was trying to make a singular “Special” stat not just functional but logical. If it was just going to be SpA/SpD combined, there’d be no reason not to split them. Having the split be damaging moves and effect moves solved that issue nicely, but it did necessitate very different mechanics.

Thanks for the feedback, though!

33

Hey, Lemmy!

I’m a somewhat experienced TTRPG designer and my latest project is an RPG based on the first generation of Pokémon games.

You can download the complete game for free here:

https://heavenlyspoon.org/pocket-monster-adventures/

My focus was on ease-of-play and simple prep. Many of the other Pokémon RPGs out there seemed to involve a lot of overhead—especially for the GM. I prefer a more improv-heavy game, and having to do a lot of prep makes that basically impossible. 

Sticking to gen 1 made it so I could keep the scope small enough to allow for simple encounter tables, pre-prepared Pokémon sheets for every Pokémon, and a simple set-up for every Pokémon controlled by the GM.

The game is designed to be played with one GM and two or three players, and every aspect of the original games has been changed where needed to accommodate this.

I don't know how much interest there is for this kind of thing, but hopefully at least someone will get some joy out of it!

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 4 months ago

What? That’s not what independence means. They need to be independent, yes, because otherwise you might get into weird corner cases where the probably doesn’t converge to 1, but they don’t have to be equally likely. In fact, weighing the odds based on how often letters are used by Shakespeare should lower the expected timeframe. Heck, Shakespeare doesn’t use “J”, why would that key even be relevant? Where in the world do normal distributions even come into this? How does this comment have 4 upvotes? What am I missing here?

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 9 points 1 year ago

I’ve heard him (accurately) being referred to as a serial one-hit wonder. He also did Mouth Sounds, made the comic about Ariel getting 8 legs, and did the Guide to the Races of Star Trek and its spin-offs.

18

Hey lemmings,

I'm an amateur game designer probably best known for creating one of the more popular Feywild setting books for D&D. I’m putting the finishing touches on my far-too-ambitious TTRPG and figured I’d post about it here before forcing myself to do an actual marketing push.

The game is designed for somewhat standard medieval fantasy, which I know isn’t exactly a novel concept. However, it does fill a niche which I personally haven’t been able to fill with any other system. Most fantasy systems seem to either be D&D-alikes with a heavy focus on combat and heroics, OSR games with a heavy focus on dungeon crawling, or PbtA games with a heavy focus on genre emulation. What I wanted (and ended up creating) was a game with a focus on improvisation and shared storytelling without being constrained by genre tropes.^*^

My other big issue with a lot of fantasy RPGs is the reliance on mechanics which have no real connection to the fictional world. Things like hit points, experience points, and meta-currencies put the focus on the game part of RPGs and not the roleplaying part. What I wanted was a game where everything a player does has a clear and direct link to the fictional game world.

The result is The World Ahead, a system I’ve been building and playtesting for far too long. It features simple and collaborative character creation rules, a flexible resolution system, and a hell of a lot of resources, tables, tips, and tricks to facilitate play at the table. Everything is in service of making the game run smoothly and making things as collaborative as possible. It tries to be open-ended when zoomed in and streamlined when zoomed out.

The game is currently available for free on Itch:

https://heavenly-spoon.itch.io/theworldahead

People who aren't looking for a new RPG may still find something useful to steal in there. Perhaps the streamlined travel system, the collaborative worldbuilding rules, the tables for making things such as factions, wonders, and strange creatures, the magic items which all have a clear and obvious effect within the fiction, or the unique weather system. While most things are fairly well integrated into the core system, you can definitely rip stuff out without too much damage.

~*~~I~ ~will~ ~give~ ~a~ ~shoutout~ ~to~ ~Ryuutama~ ~and~ ~The~ ~One~ ~Ring.~ ~While~ ~they~ ~didn’t~ ~scratch~ ~the~ ~itch~ ~for~ ~me,~ ~they~ ~both~ ~have~ ~some~ ~excellent~ ~mechanics~ ~and~ ~are~ ~more~ ~in~ ~line~ ~with~ ~what~ ~I~ ~wanted~ ~to~ ~achieve~ ~here.~

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 year ago

And Last Chance to See! It’s somehow almost as absurd as his fictional works.

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 7 points 2 years ago

It seems quite a few modern birds (Aves) lineages survived the K-Pg extinction (at least 5, last I checked), but when exactly they diversified is apparently still a contentious issue. The common ancestor almost definitely lived sometime during the cretaceous, so not THAT long ago in the grand scheme of things, but it definitely lived either before or during T-rex’s reign.

I was referring to Avialae, which is the clade defined as all dinosaurs more closely related to budgies than to deinonychus. Many of them would have seemed quite birdy to us, but like the other dinosaurs not many of them made it to the current day and the ones that did are all Aves.

[-] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 29 points 2 years ago

In case anyone genuinely has this misconception: birds branched off from the other dinosaurs during the Jurassic, probably over 100 million years before the astroid hit. Dinos didn’t suddenly grow feathers and a beak because a big rock hit them.

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HeavenlySpoon

joined 2 years ago