Creating A New Diceless Tabletop RPG
The beginning of the parallax is here.
A LOT has been going on in the TTRPG (Talbe Top Role Playing Game) community this past month.
Wizards of the Coast, in what can only be described as one of the most brilliant ways of nuking customer good will.
The proceedings and my own thoughts on it could be a whole series of articles. But to make a long story short, this leak burned a lot of fans and and there have been various reactions to it.
Some, such as myself, are taking things into their own hands.
We’re outright making our own TTRPGs.
Taking the Plunge
I am not a game designer.
The closest I got were assorted notes and ideas on various little games I’d try to make with my own toys. At times, I’d try to create my own card games, but nothing really materialized.
In the wake of this WOTC-led drama, I decided to take a shot at making my own game.
For a good while, I’ve wanted to create a module for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (we’ll just call it 5e from here on out) that took place in a friend’s story.
I ran into various issues trying to port this over to 5e:
- The story used a lot of anthro animal characters. While 5e does have anthro races, these are limited in selection.
- One of the parts took place on a world where monsters outright didn’t exist, so that means making a binder-and-half full of non-monster NPCs to do battle with.
- Magic in this story requires the caster to overcome the reality around them in order to manifest their spells. That’s going to require a bit more than just adjusting spell slot levels.
- I also like how D&D 3e gave players the ability to invest points into different skills, allowing them to build their character the way they wanted.
I ran into similar issues when trying to port my own story concept into 5e — it got to the point that I decided to just handwave why things like monsters and increased magic appeared.
So, I figured what the hell? I’ll take a shot at this — I’ve got a reason to do it, and I’ve always wanted to create my own game. Sure, there are other games like Ironclaw and GURPS that may include anthros or have some sort of point-buy system.
But I still wanted to strike out on my own — after all, if you want something done right, do it yourself.
The Concept
My friend’s story includes a lot of character development and growth.
Characters change and grow, they have their worldviews challenged, at times even shattered, and they overcome their own personal obstacles.
This was something I wanted for the game — which I eventually code-named Project Ethereal to be cool. I mean hey, Kobold Press codenamed their game Project Black Flag so why not jump in on that?
The TTRPG would focus not just on character advancement (in terms of growing stronger and leveling up) but also character development (roleplaying character arcs and having them grow and improve in that department).
Sure, 5e had elements of character creation that attempted to lead in to character concepts and ideas and stories, but it wasn’t done very well. It felt kinda stapled on.
Now the challenge becomes how to actually make this part of the rules and mechanics. Yeah, you could leave it all up to RP’ing but what fun is that? Why can’t a phobia of spiders penalize a character when they see a giant spider, and why can’t that character get rewarded with a bonus or XP for overcoming it?
We have a motivation, we have a sort of concept, now we need a setting. It’s time to get spectral.
The Setting
My friend’s story, called Spectral Shadows, is kind of hard to put into one box.
The best way to describe it is the author putting everything, and I mean e v e r y t h i n g they’ve encountered or area fan of into a blender with a who’s who of genres and hit the holy hell out of the frappe button.
Well, I can try. Let’s focus on one part at least, shall we?
One part took place in a magical land called The Aslander School of Magic. This was actually a type of virtual world that certain character could gain access to in order to not just learn how to fight, but also gain all kinds of knowledge and experiences.
Our main group consisted of deer bothers Jon and Rael, prophesized children of destiny. Along with them was their younger human friend Christy, who took the form of a red fox girl during her time in the game.
Aslander was in this strange place temporally where folks from all across space and time could enter it as students — provided they either had a master that could get them access or someone to pull strings.
Designing a TTRPG that takes place inside what’s basically an RPG? How meta! Seriously, the characters all get little wristbands that track their stats real-time.
But Aslander is a dangerous place — it may be virtual, but any pain you feel is felt as if it were real. That, and players are eager to prey on you.
See, Jon, Rael, Christy, and the others may be fellow students…but they could also become potential enemies. Students enter the game with one life. If you lose that life, you’re expelled. Out. Done for.
Can you get more lives? Sure! You just have to kill another player and take a life from them. You could cooperate with a trio you find out in the wild, sure, but can you and your party be certain they won’t stab you in the back? As if having to deal with monsters and dungeons wasn’t enough!
You need two things to graduate: passing classes, and defeating the final boss, Omega. Or at least, being in a party that defeats him.
So this means this setting includes some school time. And being like college where you can explore different disciplines of fighting and magic. You might even “change your major” so to speak!
Now, how would this all work?
The Mechanics
My friend hates the idea of using dice in a TTRPG.
She thinks it leads to lackluster storytelling, and if that weren’t enough, now you’re basically living and dying if the gods decide to care about you and have the dice land in your favor.
Diceless systems exist. But I didn’t want to lean too heavily on things being governed by RP solely. Sure, this would work great if Christy wants to use her charms to get a discount on magic wands. In combat, where players typically live and die, RP-only hangs on the maturity of players.
So how do you govern combat without dice? I thought about using cards, but even then, that adds a degree of randomness.
And then I found out about the Marvel Universe RPG.
This game let players become Marvel heroes, or create their own. It was also diceless. No cards here, however. The short of it is characters are granted a pool of points to spend on actions in a turn. The amount you start combat with, and the amount you regenerate in the next round, is tied to your stats.
Bingo. This is what we’ll do.
Granted I’m not ripping that system off completely — only using it for inspiration. There are several things I’m doing differently.
For example, in MURPG, how you allocate points is done in secret. Then the fastest character goes first, and things resolve in that order.
Hmm….I think I’ll change this. Instead, the quickest character goes first, but they don’t pre allocate anything. They’re able to move around, make decisions, and then take one main action, like attacking, and spend their points, called meter in this game, on that attack. If you got any magic or special powers, you’ll also need to use will points.
The defending character, then, can spend their own meter in retaliation, buffing up their defense stat and hopefully blocking the attack.
Oh, and meter doesn’t refill until the start of the next round. So spend carefully — blowing all your meter on one powerful attack sounds great, but now you’ve got nothing to protect yourself with when it’s the legion of kobolds’ turn. Be even more careful with will — this recharges even slower than meter.
But how to handle character creation? Simple — a point build system.
What this means is during character building, the player will be granted a set amount of points to build out how their character begins the journey. They pick a background, which gives abilities and proficiencies (the skills in this game).
After that? They spend the rest of their allowance to build out aspects of their character: other skills, magic, special abilities, traits, and even disadvantages that refund points.
You can only build your starting character out so much, and only take a certain amount of points worth of disadvantages.
Be careful though — you’ll be expected to roleplay these disadvantages. As well as try to spend time overcoming them using your will points. You could neglect that and let your self-doubt give you -1 for the round. But if you keep doing that, it’ll get worse; now that -1 is at risk for becoming a -2.
Can’t let roleplay do all the heavy lifting for character development. By tying disadvantages into the game mechanically, players now have a reason to get rid of these.
Another thing I tossed were bonuses granted due to the race or species picked. Actually, my friend did. The idea here is you come in as-is — only what you’ve accomplished dictates your starting stat.
Plus, you can be darn near whatever race/specices you want in Aslander. A human can, in fact, be an anthro deer. And if it’s a nexus of all sorts of different worlds, realities, planets, and who knows what else coming in….well don’t it seem silly to go “all foxes no matter where they’re from no matter what life for foxes is back on their home world get +2 tracking.”
This also makes balancing easier, and means anyone can be any race/species they want, and the GM doesn’t have to try to homebrew stats for another race. Everyone wins!
The Parallax
That’s a general overview, anyway. Some of this stuff, like character building, I’m still working out.
But I thought I’d share what I’m up to anyway.
As I work on and build out more aspects of this game, I hope to share more with you. Maybe help give other designers insight into the creation process.
I’ve also considered changing the name from Project Ethereal to Project Parallax. Why? Because it sounds cool.
And it shows a part of game development — sometimes names, ideas, and concepts change.
Until next time, fellow student of Aslander.
