Ive been meaning post this someday to gauge a few things when my game has more substance. ive been working on it for a long time now, and between work, and trying to hammer out what i want this game to shape itself into, i finally have a small rulebook, containing 3 armies. but each army only has 2 units to their name so far. enough to test the gameplay and to give people a taste. but frankly im not prepared yet to go hog-wild and create public facing accounts over social media, people have rightly become enraged at other creators for not having enough content- and those creators had much more to show than i do. thats where you guys come in. on here, i have some benefit of the doubt as a perfect stranger so show what i do have. and see if it has appeal at all. If im lucky, maybe some of you will follow my work to the places i do have in the name of supporting what my little project could become.>what kind of game is it?its both a wargame and roleplaying game. im using a D20/D10 system of my own design (or at least if there are similar systems i dont have any idea they existed) to facilitate being able to field army units in the RPG for big battle encounters, and a (VERY unfinished) transfer system to make player characters into single-character champions on the wargame side of things.>whats its vibe?a bit of the grandiose struggle for the fate of man in 40k and WHF, some borrowed aesthetics and charm of Treasure Planet, and lots of semi-Arthurian legend vibes to go around. put in the tiniest splash of cool factor of the wraith lore from DOOM2016- and you have my setting. i cant reveal nearly as much as i'd like, because that would probably consume hours of storytelling. but i do have lots of lore planned for the lore enthusiasts to enjoy to their hearts content too.>alright, enough stalling, show us the gamehere you are, please give it a read: https://files.catbox.moe/jubkjz.pdf
Fuck, just deleted my post somehow. Reading it over, tone is really good, much better than expected with the intro you wrote here. Your formatting is however, quite bad. Explanations of squad size are needed well before how shooting resolves as it seems key. The wording of Volley makes no sense at all. Figuring out how BS works for shooting requires knowing how the stats and squad size work so should come first. Having damage be related to squad size but damage excess not effecting other squad members is bad and makes no sense. How does rounding for damage work? No idea. Again, the tone is very good with the unit descriptions. Won't have time to test this until the weekend but want to give it a whirl just based on how cool the mythopoetic Arthurian writing is.
Forgot to rewrite, having visual demos of deployment and gameplay would be a great excuse to get some scifi tapestry art in there and could work really well.
interesting. hard to get a good read on it without actually playing a game, but ill see how i go labbing one out in my mind palaceso the actual combat goes like this?>my unit of five(?) starknights fires on an enemy unit>they roll 15 on their shooting check. each knight has a ballistics "cost" of 3, so i can afford all five knights to shoot>the enemy unit has a toughness of 5 against my strength 5+D10 (5.5) shock guns. as before, this means i can afford to kill two enemy knights >volley would make this four knights(?)right now i can see some issues>unit sizesthese arent expressly stated anywhere in the document, which makes it impossible to know for sure if im actually interpreting this correctly. and with a fixed D20 there's a strong bias against large units. that's not a problem nesessarily, just an interesting quirk to keep in mind>unit abilitiesthese guys have three "spells" per squad. i think you expect them to be limited by the action point system, but i cant see clear costs so what actually happens? do they shoot then fire three spells per unit per turn? it's too much. >keywordsi get that its flavour and it helps with memorization, but do you need it? unless you're making this for the WAACfag tournament scene we can probably do with more plain text descriptions for things like open-topped and the spell effects. "gemenii threat" is a cool name for a misfire, but the most important part of the rule is me knowing that its a misfire effect, so i would just call it a misfireif this is meant to be a 30-50 model midsize wargame i can see it working really well. personally i would wonder if there's any reason to use units at all though. if it's supposed to translate to an RPG why not take a leaf from bolt-action and limit the number of command points? you're already set up for a you-go-i-go system, so it could smooth that out and help you break out of 40k's shadow a bit>sergeant Pisces issues a move and shoot order to these five guys.
>>98716660i ran out of characters>sergeant Pisces issues a move-and-shoot order to five guys>they move and shoot as a unit. if the unit were larger it would be more efficient, but the damage would cap more easily. smaller squads will waste less shots, but limit your tactical flexibility>Pisces is a level 1 command unit, so that's his only order for the turn. when you run out of commanders you run out of orders to give.
>>98716598you make a compelling point about stating what a standard squad should look like. do you recommend putting it before or after the larger stat descriptions?also you're right about the Volley explanation being out of place, i had to tack it on to make machineguns work. basically, imagine the volley as if its one shot in the cumulative roll. so it would look like this>declare shot with weapon>the volley is 3, so you shoot 3 times at the target>roll a d20 at a ballistic skill of 3, result is a 7>2 shots succeed>roll the D10 wounding test as the wounding table lays out (high strength than their toughness means i get a bonus of +2 to the D10 tacked on>i roll a 4(+2)>the cumulative test to succed in a wounding check is always 2, so all 3 shots wound>the enemy has only 1 wound per troop, so 3 targets die.a weapon with a volley as a stat is kind of how i get around a problem i created from trying to make certain weapons fire multiple times like in 40k.>>98716660yes, the standard squad size is 5 models, though you can combine and have units of 10 without issue if you so chose, if the stat you want to use is divisilbe by 2, you can just divide the skill and roll once if you wanted, or just roll twice for the test. for odd-number skills you want to roll with- better to just roll twice.and you also point out a massive blindspot i hadnt noticed enough to inform the player on, abilities! traits are passive and are always on, but abilities are a free toggle you can have on or off without spending any action points at all. i will correct that, thank you for catching it.>if this is meant to be a 30-50 model midsize wargame i can see it working really well.>personally i would wonder if there's any reason to use units at all though. if it's supposed to translate to an RPG why not take a leaf from bolt-action and limit the number of command points?(need to make another post)
>>98716765im not familiar at all with bolt action, but having a command-point action economy rather than just a general action economy isnt really what i have in mind in terms of vision of gameplay. i'd like generally the armies to be able to be highly adaptable without limiting what the player overall can do from an action reservoir, which giving them action points per unit allows me to do.>>keywords>i get that its flavour and it helps with memorization, but do you need it? unless you're making this for the WAACfag tournament scene we can probably do with more plain text descriptions for things like open-topped and the spell effects. "gemenii threat" is a cool name for a misfire, but the most important part of the rule is me knowing that its a misfire effect, so i would just call it a misfiredont mind that too much, the volume of keywords i have is one part rule of cool, and the other more important part futureproofing. im going to have a much smaller lexicon of actual keyword mechanics/abilities, but im making a bunch of things i think sound cool so when i eventually condense them- the ones that i keep/condense at the very least will have a cool, memorable name with an underlying more relevant keyword like 'jam' or 'misfire' to actually help explain whats happening in the shorthand.as it applies to formatting. where would the rule distinguishing between actions, command-point-actions, and toggleable/cyclable "free" (a shooting ability still means you're shooting, so it costs 1 action point just as shooting would) unit abilities go?
>>98716825>>98716765if i might pontificate how a small skirmish would play out, so you dont have to shoot in the dark about how certain rules work:>space knights (stats of rulebook apply) (squad of 5) vs weird little ape-oid goblins (squad of 5) [A:2, HP:1, M:6", BS:4, WS:5, S:3, T:4]space knights go first, they spend 1 AP to move into range with their Enlockes: they spend another action point to shoot (no abilities used)>roll a d20 BS check, i get a 4>2/5 knights hit their targets at BS:2>roll a d10 to wound the S vs T table because the knights have higher strength on their gun that the goblins' toughness, i get a +2 (the cumulative DC for one unit to wound is always 2)>result is a dud, i get a 1, but thats okay because i add the +2 from the strength bonus and one wound make it through>damage is 2, so a singular goblin dies by exploding into a million little giblets (i thought about maiming a target affecting leadership, so while you're not dealing splash or overpen damage- you're at least doing something, i thought that might be cool)>knights could shoot again (they have one more action point), but lets just say for the sake of brevity they dont>the goblins, enraged at the death of jimbo, move in for the kill with their dakka>(lets say by some stroke of luck a space knight dies, in-nomine-brevitus)>the space knights can no longer afford to play around, so they hold their ground and shoot, overcharging their rifles to fire tempest bolts>roll a d20, result is a 10, all 4 of my knights hit.>roll a d10 at a strength 7 for a bonus of +2 (needs to be double or more for a +4 bonus)>i roll an 8(+2)... for a perfect 10, all 4 shots wound >gemini hazard kicks in>all enemies die on the volley, the 3 wound damage to their little 1 wound bodies basically vaporizing them>the the first enemy that dies is struck by lightning in a 6" radius, but with no enemies to actually hit the thunder merely smites the spot>but lightning also strikes the squad(cont'd)
>>98716986>The Tempest Bolt causes energy feedback, hitting the knight who shot it>at strength 7 vs his toughness of 5, thats a plus +2 on the d10 against him>roll a 5... he's doomed>he takes 3 damage from the rebounding bolt, he's dead on the spot since he only has 2 wounds>because he died from the tempest bolt, thunder strikes him, in a 6" radius. >strength 5 thunder vs strength 5 knights, no bonus or penalty on the wounding roll>roll a 5, 2 knights take half the damage of the tempest bolt rounded down for 1 damage>the skirmish ends with a dead squad of goblins, 2 dead knights, 2 wounded knights, and 1 combatant completely unscathed
>>98717012and thats basically how combat goes with the exception of it being staggered move-move, shoot-shoot phases like how ive written it. but i digress.i could in theory make a play by play of this exact scenario and put it in the rulebook. but i'd need models and also have to take some photos to kinda help show what's going on. not impossible- but i'd have to kitbash something that doesnt look like its just a 40k model.
>>98716620sounds interesting, but how do you mean?
alrighty, ive made some adjustments to the rulebook!>added stipulations about making your squad a 10 man unit. and how to go about it>added what abilities are in the basic actions segment of the rules. and how they're meant to be used.>fixed the description for Volley so its actually a rule and not a tacked-on bit of gobbledygook.next, i intend to rearrange the formatting a little bit so that each step of logic is more concise and digestible for the rules.
>>98716470Please use a more neutral font. Fancy shit is okay for headings and short thematic passages, but for the bulk of the text it's very tiring.You should be able to auto-generate and update a table of contents.You're horribly wordy. Really, "upon rolling your D20 die"? Or "Wounds: The numerical value of a model’s health points, labeled Wounds or W"?Give a short description and a couple of examples for your resolution system instead of the verbiage you have now.
>>98718148>Please use a more neutral font. Fancy shit is okay for headings and short thematic passages, but for the bulk of the text it's very tiring.thats kind of a tall ask, since if i changed the font for just the rules for example, they would be at a ratio between it and the fluff that it would cause tonal whiplash i fear. but also, do you mean tiring for your eyes or just tiring in a more conceptual 'i grow bored of this' kind of sense? thats an important distinction, and i might be more willing to try and make an alternate fonting formatted document thats more simple if its your eyes thats the issue.>You should be able to auto-generate and update a table of contents.on google docs? thats a feature im not familiar with, i'll have to look into it>You're horribly wordy. Really, "upon rolling your D20 die"? Or "Wounds: The numerical value of a model’s health points, labeled Wounds or W"?im doing that on purpose. true- your example is rather verbose of me. but im trying to, in my eyes at least, introduce both a new dice system AND introduce that dice system to a totally brand-new player. so even if i make adjustments, it's still probably going to be pretty wordy.
