Post by E5Burrito in BEFORE THE WORMS comments

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I was nodding along through the first half or so, enjoying the declared intent and the theming, side eyeing the mechanics for a few minutes but eventually coming around. Then I got to the situation / scenario design section and realized:

This is a practical work of genius.

I don't believe one could better present better advice on how to prep a session. My own paranormal heartbreaker TTRPG, with over a decade of slow tinkering, is essentially an excuse to codify and streamline scenario prep, and I do believe you've put me to shame here.

Very well done. Great stuff. J Alexander should hire you to go on the Con circuit with him to explain his ideas, you've captured the Three Clue Rule magnificently.

Goblin Door Games21 days ago (4 edits)

Wow... I'm at a loss for words. That's incredibly humbling and heartening to hear. I've definitely tried to work in and condense some of the best advice I've heard on the subject, along with my own personal perspective as a GM and game designer.

I always hope that, apart from anything else, the things I'm making will be useful to people. So thank you, it truly means a great deal.

Goblin Door Games21 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Also, I just uploaded a new version with a minor tweak to the core mechanics (basically, you draw a number of cards, usually 1 - 3, trying for a face card). The probabilities are a bit cleaner this way.

Not sure if that had anything to do with why the mechanics got the side-eye, but I'm always interested to hear critiques, as I'm always trying to make it better.

I also added a couple more pages with advice on framing scenes, and more art!

E5Burrito20 days ago

My earlier "side-eye" was more of a personal preference issue - "Drawing cards for resolution doesn't ~feel~ like rolling, the kinesthetics of it are off, it always feels more like fate than a gamble." But you did win me over when I started doing very rough head math and realized what a tight engine you had built, one that nearly guaranteed the PC's lives crumble but not fall apart, where success is almost inevitable with reasonably well directed action but can't occur without setbacks. So, yeah, cards as randomizer, because they feel (almost) random but generate more reliable results the closer to 52 draws you make.

So, "side eye" wasn't meant as any kind of hard criticism. I do like how the new system doesn't involve memorizing the success span of various difficulty levels, but I'm unsure if the potential tradeoff of debating for extra cards before every draw would be worth it. (I have a specific player from my table in mind who might be happy to add a half minute of 'friction' before each draw trying to shoehorn in job and equipment leverage, and the extra card mechanic feels more impactful than a minor shift in the success range, even if the math is similar. I don't know, I might be overthinking it, I'd need to play test both to be sure.)

In the new draft, page 44 references GM arbitration over the number of cards to draw given a desired difficulty "in other circumstances", which left me a bit stumped. Might be a lack of imagination on my end, but at this point we have PC action resolution and a generalized GM deciding-the-undecided resolution already. Might need an example?

Page 42, the second bullet point ends with some bonus punctuation and the fourth one is missing a word in the second half of the sentence.

Goblin Door Games20 days ago

Thanks for the feedback, and for catching the typos! As I noted in the most recent devlog, there seems to be some sort of cosmic rule that you must notice a typo immediately after you hit submit on something.

As for the mechanics... Hmmm. Yeah, I worried about players litigating draws too. I might just change it to combine the two? That is, GM decides likelihood, then players draw a number of cards corresponding to that assessment (1 = unlikely, 2 = even odds, 3 = likely, 4 = very likely, and "draw two and take the lower" = very unlikely.

Goblin Door Games20 days ago

Or maybe I should just go back to the earlier version. It's possible I over-tinkered :P

Goblin Door Games20 days ago(+1)

So, because I'm an obsessive madwoman, I posted another update (3.1.3) in response to this feedback. I changed the core mechanic to kind of combine these two versions, but maybe more importantly, this helped me clarify some things about defining stakes, assessing narrative positioning, and the kind of experience I want the GM to have when adjudicating things at the table.

I also wrote some more thoughts down in a Devlog if you're interested!

https://goblin-door-games.itch.io/before-the-worms/devlog/1374867/squishy-meat-b...