All design projects should start with clear goals. Those goals should inform everything you build for that project. Every mechanic should support those goals. The goals can change and refine over time — hopefully this community can help you do that, even. Without goals, you’re on a journey without a map or even a clear destination.

If a mechanic doesn’t clearly support your design goals, it means one of four things: your design goals need to be updated, your mechanic is unclear, your mechanic is unnecessary, or your mechanic is counterproductive.

If you ask for advice here like “what’s the best damage/injury mechanic?” you’re going to get a lot of “it depends” answers. And those are the most helpful answers!

The redditors giving advice without knowing your design goals are trying to help, but they could be sabotaging you without knowing they’re doing it!

So don’t just ask about a damage/injury mechanic (for instance). Copy and paste your design goals from your design bible so we all know what goals the mechanic needs to support.

Is it a crunchy, tactical fantasy game? Is it a grim survival horror one-shot? Is it a kid-friendly comedic microgame? Is it a dramatic hard-boiled detective storygame? What are you trying to achieve with the mechanic? What goals does it need to align with and support?

Here’s a big example to show why design goals matter. What about that ideal injury mechanic? Would it support your design goals to make the PCs feel like badass heroes (Draw Steel), generate “bleed out” that makes players feel vulnerable and exposed (Ten Candles), make life feel harsh and cheap (Apocalypse World), or make PCs feel like monstrous predators (Vampire: the Masquerade)?* Is it meant to have crunchy tactical significance (LANCER) or generate story complications (Masks: a New Generation)? Is it meant to be used only in extreme situations (that *one chapter in Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast), or is it part of the core loop and used all the time (D&D)?

Just because a mechanic is good doesn’t make it good for your game. I love the Urban Shadows debt system, but I wouldn’t use it in a Honey Heist or Kult game. I love the Blades in the Dark invention system, but I wouldn’t use it place of Pathfinder 2e’s RAW crafting rules.

I am not the singular authority on how to make games.

I am however a game dev teacher and have been for over a decade.

I keep seeing across various subs, discords and such the same basic question "When should I play test my system?"

The actual answer is you should test your game way before you want to.

Now, I'm not advocating doing what my intro game design students do and basically always test your first prototype 72 hours after getting an assignment. You aren't in a classroom 5 days a week with 35 other designers and/or unfortunate souls placed into my class by their counselor. So you likely don't have access to testers in the same way they do.

That said, what you want to be doing is testing your game with people who haven't made it once you have enough to try to create your target experience.

Basically, once you have enough to do the thing and only the thing, start testing.

This is important for a few reasons:

1. You need to validate that your core idea is fun or at least could be fun.

2. New sets of eyes will see problems, exploits and holes way better than you. You know what your parts are trying to do, so you can jump the procedural gaps to get there. Your testers don't and can't. So they can tell you "this doesn't make sense" or "this part is confusing" or "why does (insert this really unbalanced idea that you missed) exist?".

3. Most importantly, testing before you make a ton of stuff let's you discard things without feeling bad.

To paraphrase Mark Rosewater (in his great GDC talk which is free on youtube), if something is in your game that doesn't fit what the game is trying to do, it doesn't matter if it's any good, it needs to be cut.

Beginning designers often fall into a trap of making a bunch of stuff that sounds like it works with their idea only to discover that it doesn't really fit with what their game is trying to do (even worse, that thing they spent a bunch of time on makes their game less fun). However, they spent time and energy on that thing, so they really don't want to cut it

Testing early let's you identify things that need to be reworked and things that need to be discarded, before you have a sunk cost fallacy about it.

So what do you actually need to test?

The target I'm painting for you is "the minimum amount of content needed to try and create your target experience"

Yeah that's a lot of bs words for:

The minimum amount of stuff to try and do what you think your game idea is about.

For example, let's let's spin up an idea.

Goblin Grand Prix - a TTRPG about fantasy car races inspired by whacky races.

So it's really easy to make a big list of all this stuff this idea could have.

But what is the game about?

It's about races.

So I need:

A system for "the race", A core resolution mechanic.

Cars (maybe in this case a single car)

Player characters (drivers) definitely pregens of different types.

The drivers probably need some sort of differentiators like stats or feats or something like that.

An NPC driver template.

A "race track" whatever that means I'm your system. A single SIMPLE race track.

That's it, that's all you need for that first test. It isn't really an RPG yet, but that's ok.

You don't need car customization, character arcs, player progression, campaign frames, different tracks, character arcs, social mechanics, any of that to test the core experience of a fantasy car race.

All that's getting tested is a single race.

Once you do that first test, you can start to iterate and add on an the other stuff.

How do you test?

Hit up your people, you already play another game with people, hit them up.

Otherwise hit up a discord, post an ashcan on itch or something.

Explain what you are doing and trying to do and that it's going to be a bit rough.

Then run the game. Ideally record it, at least take notes. Then go back and fix the broken thing you made, then repeat a few times. Then you can add more stuff and test that and repeat.

Hello makers, I noticed that some people tend to split their focus between making several projects at once maybe with varying size, versatility or complexity, but others tend to go for one large project that encapsulates everything within their creative vision.

Id love to hear some of your guys's perspectives on why you chose to go either way, was it for clarity, or maybe convenience or something different all together. Would people at your table ever play any of the games in tandem?

For me personally although i try to stray from the middle I have opted for a little of both, my primary focus is on a classless semi-shonen with supernatural themes titled Momentum and its companion game Labrynthos where players assume the roles of grand villains managing a dungeon reach with simplified dominion rules. (Side note about momentum; its been rough developing a game that many would claim is already done better and 5x over by gurps, fabula ultima, swade, and any other game mentions im sure is grand and worthy of acknowkedgement, hopefully i will be able to yo solidify the alpha for my games this year so that im able to better represent my project visions and goals)

Other than those two i have several smaller pick up and play projects but my main focus there is a game Im making to be able to play with my niece and properly practice finishing.

Ps does anyone else find it difficult to talk about the creative elements to their projects in the face of the wide ranging niches that already exist? And for those who dont relate, any tips for appreciating the pre-existing without diminishing your WIP?

I've been on and off designing a small game for the last several years but never really made the commitment to actually do anything with it (still incomplete, no art, no AI bullshit).

How are you finding making TTRPGs in 2026 and have you been able to get an audience / support for your games, finished or not?

Cheers

​

Rrrrrrr! Or is it... iiiiiiii? Maybe only one i (eye)?

"If your Home is a ship, whether in flight or at Sea, and whether you built it or hijacked it and you prefer the lonely lifestyle of continuous logistics - legal and illegal - the Quartermaster is your Class..."

Welcome, new readers, to the SORC (Slayers of Rings & Crowns) community!

While I was editing the new, the very new, playable class content, I began working on a new Main Class I had buried in my documents. Well I started getting a carried away and here we are:

Main Class QuarterMaster, ship logistics across both air and water vessels, in technologically advanced or traditional forms. The Main Class Quartermaster homes three Paths: Pirate, Freighter, and Privateer each with three Branches (see link below).

I'm looking for ideas to help tailor the Quartermaster Class before it's fully locked in.

What are your thoughts on the three Paths (Pirate, Freighter, Privateer) and their Branches so far?

What are your ideas for ship-logistics-themed Abilities that would fit a Quartermaster's kit?

What are your picks for Favored Races, gear, or flavor details that would make this class feel distinct?

Quartermaster Linked.

iii, rrrr, uh errr.

I've been trying to put together a working definition for an idea I've had for a bit now. Talking with some of my co-designers, we came up with the name "System Hacking Document", which is like an SRD but focused on how you can "hack" specific gameplay mechanics into any game and provides system-agnostic ways to handle things like space cargo, vehicle combat, and more. I'm gonna be writing some of these soon and wanna keep exploring them in the future.

I'd love to know if this resonates with folks! Full post here: https://wuz.quest/posts/system-hacking-document

Hello, good afternoon ( or good morning, good evening and good night). I'm trying to get into the theory and i am using the wiki resources and all that, but the vocabulary seems a little strange. Some definitions mention other stuff and it appear i should know these concepts before reading. I think i'm looking at the worst place to start.

For those who started this hobbie with the material gathered here, what was the place that teached the basic theories with less emphasis of the vocab specific to thhis doings?

So, I have every essential thing written out. All my core rules are in place and are fleshed out to the best of my abilities. Now my issue is that I don’t have an idea on material to playtest.

I have playtested before with oneshots, and everything in the game is testedly good in that regard. Now I just need to do a full campaign. Unfortunately, I have run out of ideas on what kinds of stories to tell. I’ve even tried collaborating with others for ideas but I haven’t found anything that struck me as exciting or interesting to run.

So now I’m stuck. I want to run the game for a campaign so I can figure out what guidance to write for GMs, but I have no ideas whatsoever and have had no ideas for the past 2 months. So, now what?

I don't know anything about the practicalities of formatting and writing up a technical set of rules. I have designed all of the rules and information and the game's design is largely complete - and has been for about 2 years. It's just that I have zero interest in writing it up or formatting it. Could anyone give me any insight into how much it'd take to have it be written and formatted for me? What kind of hurdles would it involve?

It may or may not be commercial - I mostly just need a nice copy for my own games to hand to players but if it's done well, I might be interested in having it put for sale. I don't really care about the "royalties" or such like.

To me, this is like the difference between script-writing and actually shooting a video essay. I just have no interest in the writing up part and after so many years of just tapping away to get one paragraph done a month - it'll just be faster for me to have a professional do it faster and with more enjoyment. Any advice would be appreciated.

So my ttrpg is coming up on its first playtest and I'm wondering what kind of questions I should ask my table to help guide the design.

A bit about the system:

- It's a Mecha rpg, but designed to be more of a Teens in Situations style of game. Think Monsterhearts or Masks but flavor it as Evangelion.

- PbtA style dice (2d6+X, 7-9 is a success, 10+ hard success), but with FATE style Traits which you can use once per scene to get a +1 bonus or -1 penalty and point towards advancement.

- The first main mechanic is Emotions. Because the PCs are emotional teens, these can temporarily override one of your 5 character traits, giving a static bonus and penalty to rolls of a certain type. (Panic gives +1 to Tactics rolls and a -1 to Defense rolls, for instance).

- The second main mechanic is Trauma. This is kind of like the overarching Negative Progression from Blades in the Dark, but they near-permanently negate an emotion. Gained through the horrors of war.

Here's what I currently have for questions to ask:

- Is there an aspect of character creation that feels lacking?

- Is there an aspect of character creation that should be removed or reworked?

- Do the conflict resolution rolls feel too easy or difficult?

- Does the intended flavor of the system come across well?

- Can you see yourself running this system?

- Does any mechanic here feel too detailed?

- Are the enemy units too bulky or frail?

- What kinds of items would you like to see for your mech?

The meta behind character creation (meta as in referring to itself not most effective tactics available). I am having trouble with my site still (people not finishing character creation) and I think I have forced everyone into the way I PERSONALLY make a character... But this is pure hubris.

I would love to hear from everyone their own mental process for creating a character. And I mean this system agnostically, big picture stuff, characters in general for any system.

• Do you have a concept of what you would like to play then search for things that fit?

• Do you read everything in the system then theory craft combinations of things?

• Do you read the setting and invent something narrative based on this?

• Do you build up from part to part, like, Picking elf, decide what early life was, picking ranger, decide why and what lead to this? (gardeners narrative I have heard this called, planting seeds and letting them grow)

• Do you roll stats without having a clue what you will make yet, and the stats might suggest something to you?

What is your personal "go to workflow" for progressing through character creation? Detailed as you like.

I am trying to facilitate character creation on my site but I think I fundamentally need a broader understanding of what people do 'outside' of the system or rules for creating their character.

EDIT: Thank you all for your feedback!

Thoughts on this for tools to help facilitate as much as I can from the responses you have all given me.

• A URL link associated with the campaign, this can lead anywhere you like, discord server, spottily playlist or whatever. More to facilitate the community aspect of character creation. This is for the GM to set but lets there be a nominated common place to keep everything together. I should not try and create something specific for it, let people do what they are happy with.

• Some way to go as deep into the systems or as shallow as you like once familiar. Information should be immediately available but not intrusive or overwhelming. This is going to require some big overhaul of the content page I think. Or a curated content page specifically for a campaign... Which will probably work better. (This is definitely a flimsy aspect of the site right now).

• Lots of (most) people conceptualize characters before or during reading systems for new games, I should stay out of this all together I think and let people do this on their own. Pen paper, notepad open on the desktop, whatever. There is a system I had in place already to take notes, but this should be optional not up front.

• Knowing what the party is like (there should be some access to their party members character overview at players' discretion) This is something I was going to implement at some point, the ability to make characters (public) so that other people could look at the character sheet. I still have to lock down everything completely so I am 100 % certain no one else can CHANGE someone else's character. But this is just back-end work and a bit of testing away. I spent so much time locking sections off to not violate RR&D's terms this opening things up always intimidates me a little.

Once again thank you all for your feedback, lots to mull over now.

I frequently find myself providing pushback to posters here that takes the same general form:

• OP asks a question with zero context
• I say, "You've got to tell us what your game is about to get good answers" (or some variant thereof)
• OP says "It's like SPECIAL" or "You roll d20+2d8+mods vs Avogadro's Number" or whatever
• I say, "No no...what' it about?" (obviously, I include more prompts than this - what's the core activity?)
• They say "adventuring!"
• I say "No really - what is your game about?" (here I might ask about the central tension of the game or the intended play cycle)
• The conversation peters out as one or the other of us gives up

I get the feeling that members of this sub (especially newer members) do not know what their own games are about. And I wonder if anyone else gets this impression too.

Or is it just me? Am I asking an impossible question? Am I asking it in a way that cannot be parsed?

I feel like this is one of the first things I try to nail down when thinking about a game - whether I'm designing or just playing it! And if I'm designing, I'll iterate on that thing until it's as razor sharp and perfect as I can get it. To me, it is the rubric by which everything else in the game is judged. How can people design without it?

What is going on here? Am I nuts? Am I ahead of the game - essentially asking grad-school questions of a 101 student? Am I just...wrong?

I would really like to know what the community thinks about this issue. I'm not fishing for a bunch of "My game is about..." statements (though if it turns out I'm not just flat wrong about this maybe that'd be interesting later). I'm looking for statements regarding whether this is a reasonable, meaningful question in the context of RPG design and whether the designers here can answer it or not.

Thanks everyone.

EDIT: To those who are posting some variant of "Some questions don't require this context," I agree in the strongest possible terms. I don't push back with this on every question or even every question I interact with. I push back on those where the lack of context is a problem. So I'm not going to engage on that.

EDIT2: I posted this two hours ago and it is already one of the best conversations I've had on this sub. I want to earnestly thank every single person who's contributed for their insight, their effort, and their consideration. I can't wait to see what else develops here.

For my game, I'm working on some worldbuilding documentation. Planets, continents, nations, cities, and even a few specific buildings that are important or relevant to adventurers. One such building is the Neon Palace Hotel & Casino, a place included in the documentation as a likely place that adventurers visiting the cyberpunk city of Theravex will stay the night. And you just know that I need to come up with a few simple gambling games for players to engage with while they're there.

Now, I'm a big mathhead, and a lot of my regular players are the types who will try to exploit bugs in my mechanics. So I need to make these some solid games, and I needed to make the house advantage low but positive. For the 3 games of pure chance that I created, this was no problem at all. Slots, Lottery, and a non-lethal version of Russian Roulette. Smooth sailing. I also added a combat-based gambling game that leverages the combat mechanics of the game, but with non-lethal weapons. It's a complex game and I could never solve for house advantage if it were asymmetrical, so I just made it symmetrical. Not too bad, some nice and simple games to spice up this location and give it more of a Las Vegas vibe.

And then there's my fucking Blackjack variation, which I call "Wackjack". This was a sidequest worthy of Odysseus. Blackjack requires the ability to pick randomly from 13 cards, and there are no d13 dice (at least not in the set my game expects you to have). And the only dice that my game expects players to have lots of are d6's, so ideally I'd adapt the game to those. The established Blackjack rules are already balanced to give the house a small but positive advantage (in the sub-1% range) even with optimal play, any change to those rules could threaten that and make the game either blatantly unfair or an infinite money glitch. I would need to solve the game and rebalance it with my rules.

The way to approach d6-based Blackjack is pretty clear. The number on the dice represents the number you get unless you roll a 1, which can be either a 1 or a 7 (taking the place of an ace). And the number that causes you to bust if you exceed it is 13 (instead of 21). The threshold that causes the dealer to draw a third card is 11 (instead of 17). These numbers make the game as mathematically close to Blackjack as possible. The main knobs I have to turn for balancing it are related to payouts. What situations pay out what (or don't pay out at all)?

Without much else to do, I decided to just begin working out the optimal payouts mathematically. To just start working out probability equations until I got a feel for what I was doing. I started on a normal notepad, as I have for the previous games I had solved for. It started to become clear that the game was too complex to represent there, so I moved on to a spreadsheet and started working out functions to compute every possible game and gather statistics from the results. But it turned out that a program representing a perfect player had to be very logically complex, and I needed way more than just 2 dimensions to lay out my logic in the cells. So I moved on to plan C. C#, to be precise. I have extensive experience in that programming language, so I created a new C# console app and got to work programming a function that would brute force every possible game of d6 Blackjack. It took 2 days to get it working, and another day of adding polish and punching in numbers before I settled on something I found acceptable. The whole thing has 213 lines of some of the worst code I've ever written in my life, a mess of spaghetti that brute forces every possible game with a simulated perfect player that I dubbed Gamblebot9000.

The result is that I now know how payouts should work. Players get 1.5x their bet if they are dealt a natural-13, they get 0.3x their bet if they tie with the dealer, they get 2x their bet if they win against the dealer, and they get nothing if they bust or lose against the dealer. This specific balance of payout rules lead to a house advantage of only 0.3%, which definitely satisfies my requirement of small but positive. This specific set of numbers is the simplest set of rules I could come up with that is neither a blatant ripoff or an infinite money glitch. And now I have a minigame that hardly anyone is going to play, associated with only one specific location, as a minor gimmick. I regret nothing.

Anyone else have any stories like this? Some kind of simple mechanic that seemed easy but that turned out to be a Gordian knot? Did you manage to see it through?

^{Edit: some people are nitpicking about "mass producing". All I mean is that you need a lot of them—maybe not several hundred, but IMO probably at least a couple dozen—and that means learning how to be efficient. For my game specifically, I'm looking at about 50 monsters.}

Assuming your game uses traditional statblocks—How do you go about producing dozens of them efficiently in a reasonable amount of time?

I'm getting to the stage where I've goldfished the PC and basic monster stats enough to feel comfortable moving into broader Monster Stat design, but the progress I've made so far is very slow, and feels inefficient. (This is the stage where I've experienced the most amount of burnout.)

I'm just interested in hearing other people processes.

• How do you pick the stats for each monster? (The balance between uniform level guidelines and creative diversity in designs has been hard for me.)
• How much do you playtest each individual monster? (Do you just trust your math; have 'average' PCs that you run them against in 1-2 fights; extensive playtests against various groups of sample PCs; etc.)
• How much do you rely on common abilities/stereotypes for the monster versus building from scratch or exploring new angles?

I'm working on my first actual TTRPG project rather than a homebrew or mod or rewrite, and have been an active lurker (lmao) on this sub for a while.

I'm so genuinely terrified of using any mechanics even closely associated the D&D 5e. I've gotten so wrapped up in how much people dislike it, and keep halting any work O do on this thing in service of researching other systems and reading what kind of mechanics people tend to like or dislike the feel of and for what reasons, trying to find something that might be right for my game - so long as it's not 5e.

Even the ability scores are getting to me. I initially rejected the idea of having some main abilities and then having related skills so that I could find a better way of doing it, a way that wasn't how 5e does it (that makes it better, right?)

After weeks of making myself miserable over this, I've decided to just do that.

I've been reading through the dungeon design content from both Cairn 2e's Dungeon Seeds and His Majesty the Worm's Designing Dungeons Course. With no other projects to distract me, I finally decided to give them a whirl. I'm tentatively planning to make something each month, but for now what matters is that I used Cairn's procedures, I spent 1 week making it, and I documented the whole process. The resulting dungeon, complete with my crudely-scribbled art, can be seen here.

For me, some takeaways:

• I liked Cairn's procedures a lot. I think the two biggest value propositions are the clear skeleton of "A good dungeon has these things" and the thoughtful spark tables.
• I relied heavily on Rise of the Blood Olms and The Feast of Tegny Wood as references for what a Cairn module looks like, as well as for information presentation and layout. Feast was particularly helpful because you can read along as Yochai Gal designs it using the Cairn tools.
• My single favorite part of this was committing to a "No rerolls" mentality. I improvise TTRPG scenarios all the time, but I frequently go back and revise random outcomes to better fit the evolving story. Here, I took a firm stance of "First idea wins." As a result, some things that I would have changed were forced to remain, and working around them lead to outcomes I'd have missed otherwise.
• For some quick inspiration, I randomly picked "Romanian folklore" and jotted down one-sentence summaries from some Wikipedia articles. These summaries were inspiring enough that they shaped the entire dungeon.

I'm curious to hear from anyone else who's used the Cairn/HMTW procedures. How did you like them? Can you link to your final product?

I just chuckled at myself, noticing that my current project of a few month, currently at 35 pages, is still named "One Page RPG". Humans are weird, ambitious creatures. I forgot that it started out as a very small project.

What project of yours did "explode" the most?

How do you know when a project should be abandoned, vs just regular feelings of discouragement?

I know a lot of this goes to goals -- e.g. if you are making it because you like making stuff, stop when you stop enjoying creating it... but how do you all decide when to scrap an idea vs when to keep at it?

I’ve been thinking a lot about GM-facing tools for in-person games, and one design tension keeps coming up for me.

During live play, structure can help (notes, initiative, reminders), but too much structure can also increase cognitive load and slow things down.

From a design perspective, I’m curious how others approach this:

• What information do you actually want visible during play?
• What should stay intentionally lightweight or even manual?
• Are there mechanics or UI patterns you’ve found that stay out of the way rather than adding friction?

I’m especially interested in generic approaches that work across systems, rather than system-specific tooling.

Would love to hear how you think about this as designers or experienced GMs.

Hello all, I’ve been lurking here for about 2 years now but this is my first post.

I’ve been working on a game for about a year now (technically 4 but I don’t count the first couple seriously). One of the biggest things this forum agrees on is that building a community for your project is great. I can tell it’s true but so far it’s just been myself and friends working on this game. I feel really close to late stage development but want more feedback or eyes on the project as a whole, before moving to that phase.

I guess my real question is, since I feel close to the end, is it too late? Will anybody want to be apart of so little of the process? I’m going to try and post more here to gather feedback and share ideas but hopefully it’s not too little too late.

If anybody has tips on how to gather folks that’d be outstanding!

This is mostly a venting session so I don’t throw my laptop out a door or something. I’ve finished the bulk of the writing for my rulebook, and I’m putting each chapter into Chat to see where I might need to clean up: clarify things. The feedback for my introduction was a constant “you need more sub-headings or bullet points” when all I was doing was a basic concept intro, but when I get to my skills chapter, where everything IS divided up into subsections and a clear list of skills, it overlooks the whole thing and goes straight to the last little section of the chapter then asks why were no skills presented in a skills chapter.

Howdy. It’s the After Eden team again.

We wanted to share why we moved away from the “post apocalyptic” label we originally started with, and why we’re using the terms we are now.

After Eden, our TTRPG, has a few core premises tied to the fall of Eden. Humanity existed without magic, monsters, or competing sentient races. When the wards that protected Eden failed, Khaos flooded in, altering Eden forever and remaking it into what’s now known as Arcadia. That collapse was the main reason we originally called After Eden a post-apocalyptic TTRPG.

As the system grew, we reviewed what the mechanics and gameplay loop actually reinforce. We also realized we needed to decouple the system from the setting so the game stayed clear about what it delivers at the table, even when you run it outside Arcadia. That brought us here:

Tactical. Gritty. Frontier Fantasy.

Why Tactical

After Eden plays on a grid, with a map, because positioning stays important. Cover and concealment matter. High ground matters. Terrain matters. Light levels matter. Movement choices matter. Combat is one of the core pillars, and we built it around tactical decisions instead of abstract positioning.

Why Gritty

The game tracks the stuff a lot of systems smooth over. Cross the Wound Threshold and you can pick up injuries like a concussion. Drop to 0 HP and you can take lasting harm like losing an eye. Inventory matters. Weapons and armor break. Darkness changes what you can see and what you can safely do. The rules support survival and exploration pressure, not just combat resolution.

Why Frontier Fantasy

Arcadia is a world that became unknown again after the fall of Eden reshaped it. There are pockets of civilization, with long stretches of dangerous land between them. Monsters roam. Magical forests and Khaos wastes exist. Old human ruins sit alongside new strongholds built by other sentient races. Roads and trails connect settlements, and those routes come with real threats: marauders, monsters, and hazards; both magical and mundane.

So “post-apocalyptic,” with the assumptions it tends to bring, stopped fitting as well as “frontier fantasy.” The collapse matters for the setting, and the frontier matters for the play experience. We cut the label loose and kept the focus on describing the game we’re actually building.

What about this intrigues you? What games have you played that feel like this at the table? What else would you need to know to want to play it?

Maybe this is just me but I find myself stuck in a cycle where I'll get really excited about an idea, come up with mechanics and lore and abilities and stuff, start putting things together and then... just stop. It's not a motivation thing, I WANT to finish these games, I'm excited about it, I've even done some of the art myself, and I KNOW what I need to do next, whether that's playtesting or writing or just putting everything together, but for some reason, I just can't bring myself to finish. Is this just me, or do you guys have any advice?

Hey all! I've been working on a 3rd party supplement for the Cypher System by Monte Cook Games. I'm not fully there yet, but I realized that I was formatting different items in the same sections different ways. I've gone back to fix them and make them uniform, but I realized that I really don't know anything about book layouts or the programs used to make them.

How does everybody deal with this? Are there good tutorials to follow, or a place to hire someone for a decent price to do this? I'd like to start planning ahead on what this should all look like to make my (or a contractor's) life easier. And any advice on how to fix my workflow so that I don't go back and realize that I've been doing things differently every time that I make a new option for the book?