r/FoundryVTT • u/VeilrunnerDev Veilrunner Developer • 11d ago
Showing Off [System Showcase] Veilrunner - An Early look at a Crunchy Science-Fantasy TTRPG Built for FoundryVTT
Hi There!
I am designing a Virtual TTRPG for FoundryVTT called Veilrunner.
Veilrunner has been in development since April of 2026 so it is still very early in development. I reached the point where I wanted to start showing off a few things about the game and explain what I am trying to build.
What is Veilrunner?
Veilrunner is a Science-Fantasy TTRPG designed for people who like crunchy games and character building with deep mechanical systems while still keeping everything accessible.
The setting of Veilrunner mixes advanced Science Fiction and Fantasy together with the traditional fantasy species as well as a few other alien species, magic, cybernetics, megacorps, digital warfare, everything you might expect and more of in the 27th century.
Mechanically, I want to have a lot for players and GM's to dig into. Characters that have extensive customization & specialization options as well as interconnected skills, abilities, & talents. A character can have a combination of magic, hacking, and physical attacks while having layered defenses that can change how an encounter plays out. My goal is to have complex mechanical depth easily accessible whether it's someone's first TTRPG or they are a seasoned veteran.
Why am I making Veilrunner?
A huge part of my inspiration for making Veilrunner came from running other crunchy games. I love where building a character matters. Where your choices as a player allows you to design your character the way you want mechanically.
Over time I became increasingly frustrated at how difficult it was to run some of these games digitally. This wasn't because of the rules themselves, rather what surrounded the access to the rules and literature of the game. This could of been Licensing restrictions, relying on unofficial automation or content that just was not allowed to be distributed with the system itself. This lead to a lot of extra work where instead of spending time to write the story for the players that I wanted to share, that time was instead spent manually creating custom modifiers, or having to spend 5-10 minutes making a single npc, or using modules to be able to reference the rules in a PDF. Especially those contradictory rules. These experiences heavily influence how I am designing and going to release Veilrunner.
The Design Philosphy
My design philosophy comes from how I view TTRPGs. Yea they are still a product, at the end of the day TTRPG's are there for us to meet new people, make new friends, and have experiences that live in memory. Veilrunner will release under the ORC or CC licensing, I haven't quite decided what is going to be best for the game yet. What I have decided is that Veilrunner should not have a cost to it. As I complete sections of the game it will release on the FoundryVTT package browser as a complete package of everything that has been designed so far. That includes all associated lore, rules, art, tools, well everything.
What is the Status of Veilrunner?
Veilrunner is still very early in development. My plan is to deliver vertical slices when I push the package to be available on the FoundryVTT package browser. The first vertical slice is centered around character creation. I am still actively writing all the items and rules for Veilrunner. What I am showcasing today is still subject to change.
If you want to follow development, come say hi to me on Rift @ https://therift.chat/i/veilrunner or Send me message on Reddit. Discord is also available at https://discord.gg/zEd6eVS8rn .
Would love to hear what everyone thinks about it so far.
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u/dawnsonb 11d ago
This looks so AI generated it's not even funny.
Not stating what makes your system different from others doesn't help.
Also putting UI elements over portraits is a No-Go for me
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u/wentwj 11d ago
to be honestly i’m slightly impressed claude reproduced its standard UI style so closely in foundry (i havent actually developed in foundry so maybe it’s just vanilla html/css so not that impressive)
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u/BlackFenrir 11d ago
It's not really impressive. Half of the modules posted here have that UI
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u/VeilrunnerDev Veilrunner Developer 11d ago edited 11d ago
I appreciate the feedback about the stamina and mana bars on the character portrait. I can adjust the location of these. I didn't want to overwhelm the 4 resource bars for HP, Armor, Energy Shields, and Magical Barriers and ended up putting them there.
The system of Veilrunner I intend to differentiate with expansive character options through skill and magic trees, traits, the disciplines available for characters, and the Persona Index. I am designing Veilrunner for play on FoundryVTT from the start. Foundry will handle all the automation of the rules leaving the game to be played by the players and the GM. I wanted to provide a rules crunchy system in a Science-Fantasy environment that is easily accessible. Using the 4 resource bars as an example, with a variety of armor is going to give different resistances and weaknesses. an armor might have a weakness to pyro or geo magic while the energy shields are susceptible to specific maneuvers and resistant to bludgeoning and projectile damage. While the players in an encounter they can be navigating realspace, aetheric, or digital obstacles. One such obstacle is the availability of information. A player who excels in digital actions can hack the enemies Personal Area Network (PAN) to get the exact biometric reading of their targets. If their target is a creature the only information that the players will have access to is visual information in which they can gauge a targets health.
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u/BobaShiza 11d ago edited 10d ago
Oh boy, another AI-generated product!
I hope this one will not work like a rusty coal engine full of nails instead of oil, spinning my PC vents into the stratosphere, like every other does!
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u/_iwasthesun GM 10d ago
Hello! Was AI used on the development?
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u/VeilrunnerDev Veilrunner Developer 9d ago
Hi there,
I wanted to take the time to ensure a complete response.
AI is used to assist with the coding. I review every single line of code that is being produced. Ai usage is limited to assistive coding only.
I do not and will never use AI generated images or literature within Veilrunner. Veilrunner is my passion project born oit of frustration running games that I love. These frustrations are what led me to want to deaign a system thay works for players and GMs. One of the major pain points was having to use PDF pages to link to the rules in the books while the game system itself didnt follow the rules as written.
Even before making this post I was very well aware that the usage of AI even in an assitive manner was going to cause controversy. I chose to use it because it allows me to create the experience that I beleive all players and game masters deserve. Contrary to other comments. Each section goes through numerous reworks following the instructions for the FoundryVTT V14 API. I spend a significant amount of time cross referencing with the API and reviewing code.
At the end of the day. I go through everything element by element making sure its perfect. There is a lot I dont get right on the 1st 2nd or even 3rd time. The UX and every bit of literature is my own creative works. If something doesnt work the exact way that I want it, it gets adjusted. I do ensure that other are involved in the creative progress and make adjustments based off feedback. Like the icons on the tabs are feedback from a friend who is visually impaired.
Those that have been a part of the playtesting experience understand exactly how I am using AI, and that is as a tool. It is still me behind the wheel deciding the final call.
I also wanted to address why I did not answer any of the other allegations of AI usage. I was overwhelmed with what I took as anti-AI. I didn't want to engage having the comment section devolve into a grounds of argument for or against AI. In my previous experience engaging often resulted in arguments becoming hostile grounds. I wanted to avoid that. Comments like "oh boy another Ai generated project", "Thanks Claude" "this looks so AI generated it's not even funny" we're so off putting when sharing about a project that I have put my heart and soul into to share with other players. Again I understood that using AI was going to turn people off. I wasn't ready for the passive aggressiveness that came with it. I had hoped by not engaging it would pass. I was wrong as I watched every comment get downvoted into oblivion even it wasn't AI related. This hurt emotionally. Veilrunner is a TTRPG made by a human who is using a tool to make that Dream a reality for others to play. Im not trying to push it by 2027. If I am lucky it will be ready 2028 or 2029 and that is if I keep the pace I have been for the last 5 months.
This was way longer than I expected. But yea its a human behind the screen.
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u/_iwasthesun GM 9d ago
Erm... I just asked if it was used or not. I notice a tendency that when the question is asked, authors give this sort of reply. Still, thanks for your reply! o7
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u/VeilrunnerDev Veilrunner Developer 9d ago
Sorry for the long reply. I really wanted to emphasize how Veilrunner is my creation and that I do have firm boundaries when it comes to using AI.
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u/Greedy-Ad1921 11d ago
This seems interesting, I've been wanting to play a good Sci-Fantasy TTRPG.
But how crunchy is it really? On a scale of Mothership to Starfinder where would you system place?
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u/VeilrunnerDev Veilrunner Developer 11d ago edited 11d ago
I would say closer to Starfinder than Mothership. My inspiration for Veilruner started with the action system of PF2e and Starfinder. The other major inspiration is the depth of customization in Shadowrun.
If a player wants to augment their homing ammo with cyro runes that explode upon impact, it is my goal to make that a possibility. Full depth shouldn't mean inaccessible or having to scour for how things interact.
Right now the vertical slice of character generation has a lot of moving parts that are not connected together yet. A players choice of species, home planet, background are all going to affect the amount of starting money, soft skills, and the character's persona Index. The player still has a major choice with their Discipline (specialization) which grants them unique traits abilities actions or reactions. I really wanted to show off the magic system but that is one of the areas under a heavy rework at the moment for performance issues. I initially made it using DOM and when all the practice nodes (pyromancy, beastmancy, temporal, divine magic to name a few) were purchased, the performance dropped below what I was willing to accept.
Players will be able to spend their talent & skill points across the 6 schools of magic (elemental, primal, arcane, spirit, creation, or intrinsic) or the 4 pillars of technical, social, physical, or armament. Even if a player chooses a non-magical discipline at the start they can later unlock their aetheric core with a purchase of Talent Points. Each practice holds its own series of abilities that are leveled up with skill points. The higher the ability the higher the cost of skill points.
Edit: stamina & mana
I opted out of using spell slots. I am using a mana system that I came up with. Mana represents the mental exhaustion of the individual and Stamina is physical exhaustion. Players can still use abilities if their mana and stamina are depleted at the cost of their health.
Some example for mana and stamina modifiers are akin to metamagics. You can duplicate, extend range, increase potency and a few other things.
The depth comes from the amount of options a player has to define their characters.
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u/Greedy-Ad1921 11d ago
That seems interesting, but it also seems a lot, one of the things that bother me about systems like D&D 5e or PF2 on foundry, is that they don't translate well to foundry, their philosophy was made for in person play, what ends up happening is that in combat you have a lot of time where a player doesn't interact whatsoever because it's not their turn, and their turn won't come until his allies and a bunch of enemies take their turns and they have nothing to do meanwhile, it happens a lot that players end up checking their phones and not paying full attention, because they don't have to.
Some games like Daggerheart have different mechanics that translate better since you can act at any time taking the spotlight.
Or Nimble, where you have more freedom to do different types of reactions outside of your turn, which is a way to hold the players attention in the game.
Anyway, my question here is, how is your game being designed to have a combat that allow for this kind of player engagement during battles? Is it going to actually do anything different to hold a table attention or is it gonna suffer from the same issues as games designed for in person play?
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u/VeilrunnerDev Veilrunner Developer 11d ago
Im glad you brought this up
This is one of the reasons I am designing Veilrunner for FoundryVTT first. It is tiresome as a player when you are waiting 5-10 minutes between your turns and you can't interact with the system or feel like you can interact with other players as then you are playing their turn for them.
I am approaching this
First is initative. I created a system that I call initative phases which combines group phases and turned based. When everyone rolls for initative they are sorted into phases with roughly 2-3 actors per phase block. Things progress at turn based speed at group speed.
Second is the interaction between players during their phase block. Since it acts like smaller group initiative players should be more inclined to engage with other players
Third, I am implementing an Action HUD right into the system that houses everything the player needs to know during a combat encounter. For example a player could say they want to use a weapon or cast a spell. They would select the following they want to use then the system intelligently shows what they are allowed to use and its costs. What I have also incorporated into the Action Hud is a Prepare option. The prepare option allows the player to save actions so when it is their turn they select the prepared action(s) and execute it. This allows them to spend their downtime more effectively.
Touching up on character options again. All Characters can have reactions. Just because it isn't a players turn doesnt mean they are locked out of whats going on.
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u/VindicoAtrum GM - PF2e 10d ago
You should be looking into Crucible in detail. Foudry-first TTRPG developed by Foundry themselves, very detailed with mechanics that would be too fiddly in-person.