itch.io

Ah sorry, I meant the Strain cost by default for freeform spells is 3, but the Action Cost is meant to be just 1 if used in Conflict phase.

Making curse magic that has debuffs is fair enough, it's probably not terribly difficult to brew looking at the other magic abilities.

You can use the Freeform Spells rules note in the Magic Alteration. By default, they cannot deal damage or inflict conditions, and numerically I would personally make them either work like Aid, except scaling with your Special Proficiency, or grant resistance/other benefit equal to the Special Rank of the caster (like casting an anti-lightning spell).

Duration-wise, if it's primarily combat-focused (like resistances or granting strength), I would make them last 3 turns (i.e an Active Effect 3), and if they're more exploration-focused (protect against Exposure, waterwalking, waterbreathing etc), I would make them last until Refresh.

If they want to cast something that's more "debuff"-oriented, you can increase the Strain or Action cost to cast it from the default 3  I lay out to break the "don't inflict conditions" limitation. I did try to make it so that most conditions are achievable without magic, but spells can obviously be tinkered with Range, AoE, etc.

Okay good to know that the pivot and expansion things weren't just me. Still, an excellent piece of kit already, even in its current slightly janky state! 

I'll see if I can wrangle my head around the ActorType document.

Thanks for answering! I'm primarily an RPG dev myself (You might have heard of WARDEN), but I do dabble in coding and stuff, though not with Unity (for a looooong while). I'm just really rusty with C# so I thought I'd ask if there was a simpler method in the works.

Another thing: I seem to be only able to expand the map area on X-axis (i.e A-X). Is there some hotkey to flip the expansion tool? 

Keeping an eye on this for future, I noodled around with it a little and I really like it! Any plans to make some sort of .ini template or something in-app to make importing systems easier? I presume that would be a pretty late addition, maybe even after 1.0.

Love all the tiny details, like the FFT/Disgaea-like stats on the bottom.

Thanks!!

Worry not, I'm... Going to make stuff, settings and pregens and all that, in time. With a generic game it's a little harder to make a "Beginner Box" since the settings are malleable. Would have to figure out something pretty universally appealing but noticeably different from, say, Golarion.

There is actually a Custom System Builder JSON for the game, very lean but good enough to run the game on if you know your way around Foundry. I just forgot to add it to the actual files when I purged my prerelease files. It will probably take a fair bit of time until I get a proper Foundry Implementation, but I know people who could make it happen, probably even happily as that would help them play the game as well.

Just gotta gather funds to do so.

Oh, sorry, this comment got buried! Yeah, the playtesting is going very well, I've noticed little hiccups with combat difficulty being too low (due to Mooks being that easy to dispatch), but other than that, it seems to be working well.

I'm going to be releasing a new version later this month, effectively the final playtest version before the game launches later this year / early next year. It's mostly just up to art assets at this point.

The entire core idea with the dice is to provide an alternative to number-based dice, and they are built to be versatile. For this reason, I opted to create symmetrical sets so they can be matched 1/1 without any math futzing.

In Genesys the dice are used in very simple way: You roll Green/Yellow/Blue dice, and compare them to Purple/Red/Black dice, and each has symbols that correspond and negate the other. Symbols come in three types: "Success/Failure", "Triumph/Despair", and "Advantage/Threat", and which symbol is more represented (positive or negative) is the primary one, so if you have more Successes than Failures, the check is successful, but if also have more Threat than Advantage, it's "Success with Threat", i.e it has some additional complications. Triumph/Despair didn't negate each other, they could stack, so you could have a situation where "You grievously wound the opponent, but your sword gets stuck" right in the mechanics of the game. 

Genesys dice are meant for this specific style of use case, so they adjusted the dice faces a little, where the "bad" dice have more Threat symbols and less Failure symbols, so it's more likely that players get Success with Threat.

The trick with the symbol dice is that as a dice pool, it means each die is basically a coinflip: The less Successes you roll, the more Advantage you roll, in Genesys terms.

My plan on how to use these dice is to, yes, replicate the Genesys die system in an open source format, but ALSO allow for different kinds of expression: Make Red and Cyan dice represent Hot and Cold in a relationship game, make the Triangle symbols represent Success with Danger, make the Plus and Minus symbols represent popularity in the eyes of the people... Whatever.

Effectively, the idea I have is to allow the creation of a second vector to any dice pool game that uses them, and most importantly allowing each die result have up to two symbols, where as unless you have color dice and start doing like "Red 0s on d10s", you can't really represent results more complicated than linear.

ETA: Thanks for the recommendation on VTT.io, BTW. I'll look into it!

Hey! This is actually the current final edition, next one I would make would be 2nd edition of the game (that would be closer in rules to WARDEN, the spiritual successor), if I ever get to making it. Thankfully, WARDEN has an editor and has had much more time to brew.

I am aware (and a little ashamed) of the state Pathwarden was left in, but what is done is done.

On the examples, I am not great at writing examples, I must admit, that's why they are so sparse. Discharge, for example, is meant to lower automatically, but you CAN lower it with an interact action, as well.

I'll answer the more exact questions as well:

1) Focus items don't grant the Cantrip, that is the benefit of learning the spell. I think that is implied by the rules.

2) Yes. That simply makes sense, sadly the rules don't imply that.

3) Spell Difficulty is just 10 + Magic Bonus

4) Yup, you got it.

It's honestly kind of ironic how the next game managed to fix basically all of these ambiguities more or less, and I'm releasing the 0.3 version which is pretty close to final, in a few days. It also has a better layout, and editing, and everything. It's very hard for me to recommend Pathwarden again before I make a leaner, cleaner 2nd edition that is closer to the ultimately much more superior mechanics of WARDEN.

The Explore action is something I'm definitely updating once I work some updates on the game, it's not well construed. To make it make more sense, imagine your default state in the game just being the adventure map, without actually caring too much about distances. "Explore" means you basically start a scene in the location you choose, and zoom into the game over there, and take any Exploration actions and run through Encounters etc, and then you move back to the map, and Explore a new location and continue.

It's a weird way to construe playing in a TTRPG, but it's what I had in mind when I wrote it. I'm planning on making better travel rules for the Exploration phase once I update the game. Generally, I would say that "Travel" to a location that is within a short distance takes one Exploration action, and to further places (Entire new locales like cities or whatever) takes one Horizon action. That's basically the scale I'm going for.

For the second question, yeah, Aid is supposed to be free and easy. It's a small roleplay opportunity, like throwing an enemy with a small rock to distract them, or giving an ally a boost if they're next to you, anything really goes. Basically, I wanted there to be a "default" Reaction characters can take even if they don't have a Boon or Feat that gives them a powerful reaction like Reactive Strike.

Eventually, but not right now. The game is currently up for as a freebie in my Backerkit campaign for the follow-up game called WARDEN, and it'll be part of a bundle next month.

After those have run their course, I'm planning on updating the game a bit and then putting up more Community Copies. However, WARDEN will probably keep me busy for a while.

Nah I just meant that while Affinity is great, for an open source project it's best to use open source software. That way you can easily share the core files in a way that are editable to anyone.

... Unless .svg actually does that for vector things, in that case I wouldn't really need to learn inkscape again.

ETA Anyway, I'll get in touch whenever I actually need the help (and I'm pretty sure I will).

Yeah, for sure, if you would prefer to just give pointers, I'm not gonna refuse any help I can get! I'm going to slowburn this project anyway, I just started higher education (again) and I have a moderately-sized Backerkit campaign starting in... 3 days (No Panik at all!). So I'm kinda strapped for time right now, but I will probably have much more time on my hands during the spring and summer.

I just put this thread and project on the wire pretty early because I think it really benefits from the longer timespans in the planning phases.

Honestly, all the ideas you have are very cool (doing a digital 3d roller app + maybe some VTT plugins would be cool and a good way to get the dice out there). I personally use Affinity currently, but good thinking with the Inkscape and Blender angle. I'm familiar with both, but not very proficient with either.

Oh, don't worry about it, no offense taken. I just got caught up in explaining the system so I didn't really take into account how I came off. Sorry if the response was a little blunt on that front.

But yeah, having a cursory understanding of how Genesys' Narrative Dice work will help in the thought process I have behind this endeavor, though the dice are a little different in that Genesys actually has 6 symbols and 6 different dice, not 4 like I do for both. The two additional symbols and dice are not without their merits, but I feel like they work better within the confines of Genesys itself. But then again, this will all be open source, so who is to say people wouldn't make additional polyhedrals in the long run using the symbols?

So Genesys is a slightly different beast despite being the origin. Though, I personally feel like ultimately the best mechanics that people can come up with on these dice will be much more interactive and imaginative than the basic Genesys-style subtraction.

For the digital art side... I will admit I am not an artist. I am going to expand my skillset to the realm of 3d modeling at some point, and I do some light graphic design, since I do the layout of my books by myself. What do you have in mind? Something akin to alternative stylizations or ornaments for the dice? I would definitely appreciate that.

Having alternative versions of the dice (simple, stylized, ornamental etc) would definitely help legitimize the designs a lot.

The dice distribution is obviously a homage to Genesys' dice distribution, with a purposeful evocation of the same design purpose as those dice: The circle / triangle results are  rarer but possibly more meaningful (generally they are closer to "hits"), and then the plus / minus results are more common across the board. However, they mostly mutually exclusive, leading into a situation where if you roll a lot of plusses, you probably didn't roll a lot of circles, and vice versa.

If used in the Genesys model (You roll basically two pools of dice, and subtract the results of one from the other), it's very likely that you will be left with a more complex result than success / failure.

To my own use cases, I feel like dividing the dice into two symbols each has its merits in that it gives a designer the ability to control the symbols a game uses. The distributions themselves are still up in the air, but the current distributions already have a pretty good spread when you break them down.

With the d6, there's a 1/3 chance for a blank (which, by the way, can be used as a result in on itself as well), 1/2 chance of the minor symbol, and 1/3 chance for the major symbol. This maps into a d6 with 5-6 counting as hits, with an extra layer of the second symbol results.

With the d10, there's a 1/10 chance for a blank, 1/2 chance for the major symbol, 6/10 chance for the minor symbol, and 1/10 chance for double major symbol. This is closer to a 50/50 hit die, with a slightly higher chance for the minor symbols, and a "critical" result with the double major symbol.

These both are very close to common dice distributions in dice pool games when you think about it. They just have additional nuances with the secondary symbols.

To me, a flatter distribution with more symbols, like you suggested, has its merits for some designers, but I think the way I have distributed things is perhaps easier for gameplay purposes. I just feel like it increases the complexity of the design space exponentially when more symbols are added per die, as it feels necessary to use all symbols in the dice.

I dunno. The symbols will be open source, so if people want to make their own dice using the symbols with different distributions and symbol combinations, for sure. I just personally don't feel too inspired by the flatter distributions, personally. Sorry.

Oh for sure! It's pretty simple. The dice are symmetric (as opposed to Genesys dice which are asymmetric), with two symbols on each die type. Basically, the spread goes like this:

d6: Yellow has Plus and Circle, Purple has Minus and Triangle.

1. Blank
2. Blank
3. Plus / Minus
4. Plus / Minus
5. Circle / Triangle
6. Both Symbols

d10: Mint has Plus and Circle, Red has Minus and Triangle.

1. Blank
2. Plus / Minus
3. Plus / Minus
4. Plus / Minus
5. Double Plus / Double Minus
6. Circle / Triangle
7. Circle / Triangle
8. Both Symbols
9. Both Symbols
10. Double Circle / Double Triangle

I do have the symbols et al in Affinity files, so they are easy to extract as needed, but for Tabletop Simulator you also need the full spreads laid out on specific PNGs (which may be useful as well). I won't post those here, but they will make it into the Itch page for these things. 

I'm obviously planning on releasing all the Affinity files et al into the wild as well, so if people want to make alternative or additional dice using the symbols, they can.

I can also go further into the game design considerations of the spreads, if necessary. The only thing I'm not completely sold on yet is a name. I originally thought of something like Duality Dice or Protean Dice, but I'm not entirely sure.

This jam came at the perfect time, and with the perfect time frame, because this is one of the projects I'm planning for this year.

So, I want to create symbol dice that are open source. They are very much inspired by Fantasy Flight Games' Genesys dice, but they are distinct in colors, shapes and in symbol spread. I was always kind of peeved how the brilliant Narrative dice were just completely shut in to the FFG ecosystem, and seeing how they got bought out by Embracer group, I think there is little chance of those dice ever being used for new games again. Additionally, there are SO MANY WAYS to use symbol dice that open up completely new design avenues to RPGs.

Here's what they currently look like (on Tabletop Simulator).

• Make a sort of quickstart for the dice which goes through the dice in essence (This is probably Prio 1 for obvious reasons)
• Make various short games that utilize the dice to show different use cases
• Make a dice roller app for them
• Make 3d-printable models / a dice sheet for printing
• Go to various dice suppliers to see if I could get them to put them to their roster (Likely very low prio, but it would be a massive boost if successful)

I'm also open to hearing about other ideas what could be done. I just REALLY want to get these to the hands of designers and players, because I feel like symbol dice have so much untapped potential.

Sure, I can drop a few for the new year!

Oh! Weird. In the follow up game (WARDEN) I actually remembered to put in, and it works like this:

Forceful: Add a +2 universal bonus to damage for your second strike in a round, and a +3 for your third and further strikes in a round.

The context being (when using this weapon) of course. 

Thanks for the heads-up! I'll add this to the list of missing things I will ameliorate the next time I update the file!

Beautiful rendition of Endless Eight (and the entire Haruhi formula tbh), quite simple but very nice overall.

I really like the Activity Log and Intuitive Appeasement. They're really cool mechanics for a "blind" time loop game.

Thanks! It takes a lot of influence from Goblin Tax Fraud that I wrote a couple of months back, employing a similar half-LARP sort of structure, just in a different genre.

I'm currently trying to think of new games to use a similar structure, because I have noticed that I have a real affinity toward this half-LARP design space!

In the final version I settled on additional damage dice abilities being added to the damage pool, with the same Potency. A rule of thumb is that you always just make a single roll when rolling damage, and unless you have increased potency you always just take the highest die.

Hunt Prey and Stealth Attack are primarily built to make attacks with lighter / ranged weapons noticeably more consistent in high / max damage rather than making them massive damage pumps. 

Not my highest priority, but people in the community are bound to make one soon, considering one person made a form-fillable version of a playtest sheet.

I seriously have my hands full right now and don't want to start a new endeavor with new software (I'm so rusty with anything that does 't start with 'Affinity')

Solo rules... I am not expert in making Solo games, so I can't really say, but I might attempt something like that for the adventures I'm planning on making.

I'm planning on dropping a chunk of community copies when I release the game (around next month), and maybe consider an option to buy additional community copies for the game.

The game is in Early Access at the moment, and I have posted the current file on the Discord server, so you can get it from there.

I highly recommend people here to check out The Art of the Menu for inspiration.

I am unsure if I will personally participate, I gotta see if I get inspired myself. 

How is it possible!? In the game file itself, I forgot to mention that while you're incanting a spell, taking any damage will instantly make you fail the spell!

That's absolutely my bad.

Making a new post for 0.9!

The first issue I noticed is that I forgot to update the name for Spell Themes into Disciplines in most places. These two are synonyms!

Yeah, it might be better to make a general level 1 block, for posterity as well. For example, the next game I'm thinking of making, Grimwarden, might have a Path not every character can even improve, so it makes sense to not include stuff in its 0 area.

The list keeps growing. It's gonna take a couple of weeks to make all the changes, I'm a little busy this week but V2 is definitely coming.

Made a devlog about it and put a link to the discord onto the store page.

I have discussed the game in the discord servers mentioned in the special thanks section, but I have gotten this question a few times now, so I think I'll just make a new server for it today. Might become especially useful when I start work on the alternate settings that go further away from Pathfinder.

So stay tuned! I'll try to setup the server sometime today and put the permanent link on the itch page.

Hello! Wanted to make a thread to document all the errors in the Early Access version, so I can fix them in the Early Access V2 when  I get some of the art for the game and so forth.

You can post any issues you come across here and I'll see to them!

Known Issues:

• Several Typos
• Potency and Power need clarification (Especially in that Power is always 1 by default unless it increases)
• Huge ranged weapons can be used for Stealth Attack, kinda bonkers
• Multiple Attack Penalty refreshing isn't written incredibly clean.
• Flanking Rules are missing
• All area effects should be in 15 foot and 25 foot increments, instead they are in 20 and 30 foot.
• Character sheet references using all Hero Points to avoid death, forgot to write the rule in the body of text
• Equipment Slots have mixed names (Gloves -> Hands etc)
• Fortitude and Willpower should scale with Martial and Magic paths respectively. Also some kind of General Boon or Feat to increase them manually would be useful.
• Retraining rules are missing
• Unarmed Fists do not have damage (outside of Brawler), should be 1d4, of course.

The minimum price has been set to 15, so it's probably that. I could change the character sheet from a "demo" itch forces me to call it to just a permanent dono fixture?

Oops! There are several typos in the game, but thanks for notifying me! This one slipped right past me.

The wording is a little confusing there, I must admit, but the point with that sentence is that once you have RESOLVED a flipped or foreshadowed card, you don't put it back to the deck. 

Normally, when you resolve an upright card, you may flip it and put it back into the deck, to facilitate foreshadowing. However, once you have foreshadowed the event, you do not put it back to the deck again. That's what the 'either type of flipped card' meant in this context. Because otherwise you could technically loop foreshadowing events forever.

For the actual flipping mechanic, I do admit that it's vague, but on purpose. The reason is because the timeline is fuzzy, you can leave an entire event hanging like that. I usually do it like you describe it, by leaving a blank space which I fill once I have chosen to connect it to something. But sometimes I might juggle the actual event further back, if it doesn't fit the current timeline of events.

I guess it would have made more sense if I had the two paragraphs (Flipping and Foreshadowing) the other way around, and instead say that if you flip an event, you write it only after Foreshadowing it with another event?

Flipping as a mechanic is older than Foreshadowing (which was added quite late), so I didn't really realize this kind of obvious connection with the two.

Edit: I'm probably going to release an updated version soon.

I think it is done for now. Unless I come up with a major improvement, I'm done with this project.

Thanks, it's a kind of abstract take on roleplaying, and it worked surprisingly well when I ran it. We had people needing to break free from pulling a toilet lever endlessly and another who thought that a bicycle was a human.

It got comedic but I think the idea of the game still shined through.

Sorry for being late to the game! I want to submit https://artificergames.itch.io/find-humanity to the bundle.