Design Update #3 - How to Play A Game

Welcome back to another design update!

To catch you up on where we are in the design process, we’ve identified our core conceptual elements, and we’ve studied some TTRPG examples. We spent the third episode of Wait, Roll That Again talking about dice mechanics, and finally putting some of them to the test.

Today, we’ll be talking about some of the big takeaways from the first playtest, and the changes I’ll make going forward.

2D6 or Not 2D6

That is the question! I chose to base the game on a six-sided dice system (abbreviated as D6) for a few key reasons: accessibility, versatility, and fun. Many people likely own a few of these dice if they own any board game like Catan or Monopoly, the probability distribution allows for a number of different mechanical applications, and I really like the feeling of rolling multiple dice!

One thing I was running with in the playtest was the idea of using a d4 to represent proficiency in one of the four stats- I’m scrapping that. I wanted to see if it had any value compared to a modifier to the dice role instead. In practice, I think its an extra element that the game doesnt need, and a modifier is a simpler and more effective solution.

So in the future I’m swapping that out to flat modifiers. Instead of having to grab one of the most esoteric dice in the TTRPG space, when you roll for Mischief, Manners, Agility or Knack, you’ll add a set number to the roll.

Narrative and Combat

One of the games I looked at in the last design update was ICON, an upcoming Mythic Fantasy game designed by Tom Bloom of Massif Press. Something that really inspired me was the distinct systems for narrative and tactical play the game used.

I’m gonna try the same thing here. The players really responded to the “scale-of-effect” system I tried out for combat, but I think for narrative roleplay a PBTA-inspired system might work best. The moves system might allow me to better create some interesting experiences at the table, and from a learning standpoint I’m interested in trying out both approaches; designing my own dice mechanic and adapting a system to my own themes.

My goal is to make two systems that aren’t confusing to switch between but also specified to their own role at the table. I love crunchier combat so having my sliding-scale system in place will bring elements of that to the game, and I also love PBTA’s more narrative skills and move systems!

Classes

Classes and character options are the next big thing. And, funnily enough, they’re the topic of the next podcast! So I’ll save most of that for then. For now, I’d love to share something!

My playtesters are pretty new to the TTRPG world. That’s really good in a way, because thats the target audience. I want the game to be easy to pick up for people who might’ve never played, or only played D&D.

But it does have its challenges, and one is that these players loved their character sheets in our D&D game, and found it hard to work with the spreadsheet. Inspired by a playtest I saw for the Aether Nexus Kickstarter, where they were using a prototype fancy character sheet, I started to toy with a design. Here’s what I’m working with so far!

I think the eventual character sheet could be double-sided, where the players flip it to find all their combat statistics! That would be pretty fun to do at the table, so it’s definitely on my mind.

Where the character sheets say “dice explanation”, I think the different scales could be demonstrated for narrative and combat play. I don’t want to have people feeling like they have to reference the books a lot, I want as much important stuff on the page as possible!

Schedule

Next week, look forward to episode 4 of Wait, Roll That Again! We’re talking characters, and we’ve got another special guest!

And incase you haven’t heard Episode 3, check it out here: