I'm soliciting ideas for mechanics that would be desirable for a hex-crawl RPG I'm messing around with making.The concept is the party is an expedition sent to a mysterious new fantasy land and you're ordered to explore it and claim what you can, loot and land. The game uses a dice-pool (target 4+) made up of your Attribute + Skill dice (sizes starting from 1d4 to 1d12) plus additional dice from a communal pool called the Lads. The Lads are the loyal companions for the expedition and follow orders give to them by the players. Shooting at a horde of goblins? Agility + Small Arms + a few Lads thrown in for a volley. Lads can get injured or promoted (level up their die size or specialize and get a differently colored die) as play continues.Experience points and money are tied to the same concept, Fame, which is fully realized when the expedition returns to civilization. Fame is gained by besting monsters, looting ruins, conquering native tribes, etc.Players can establish settlements using resources and Ladsto manage them and negotiate integration of locals to form a sort of control web that allows for easier resupply and safer resting. The land is supposed to be a pulp-fantasy world filled with dragons and ogres but also cannibal tribes and trap-infested temples. Pic related was some slop I genned while writing the idea. Any suggestions?
>>98881647The redshirts as dicepool is your best part, run with that. Its a bit more boardgame like but that's alright. The gm having different pools of things like >bad weather >disease might be fun to work in. Sorting out how abstract or how zoomed in you want the gameplay to be so you can adjust hex size, movement and how long a turn is, that sort of thing will be important. Same for resource tracking. Which at the moment being dice pool and size based makes it easy. A boardgame style tableau or character sheet mixture for the expedition seems necessary. Are the lads shared between the party or are there separate expeditions?
>AI thread
>>98881647>be desirable>dice poollol
>>98881731I lack the artistic skills to draw what is in the picture and certainly will not pay some hipster $150 for a commission with a return date of next August. The OP is what I (me, non-clanker) wrote.>>98881723I planned to have a sort of Character Sheet for the Expedition supplies/Lads. Each time a Lad gets promoted, he'd get an entry (to help save progress between sessions and to add attachment). The entry would get a name, die size, specialty (if anything), and any perks selected for him. It would also mark his status (injured, healthy) and location (present, at a settlement, dead)The lads would be shared, a max number added per roll scaled to Character level. Any risky roll that uses Lads might injure them (roll of a 1). A Lad who is injured is just as effective (same die size), but if he rolls another 1 on his die before getting healed, he dies and is permanently removed.I felt might be fun for a group. It's one thing to just sling dice, another to ask Charlie, the 1d8 Medic who's been with you through thick and thin, to help dislocate a giant gemstone from a precariously set statue. He's already injured, do you risk his demise for a little extra fame?
>>98882089Nobody cares about your excuses, faggot. You can just find a picture you want to use on the internet, like we've all been doing since the beginning of time.
>>98882505Who cares? It's not like I'd use AI art in something published, no need to be a fag about it.
>Sloptard can't come up with his own ideasWater is wet, news at 11.
>>98883097Are you pretending that you would have contributed to the thread if I'd used pic related as the OP?
>>98883097Wet means covered, soaked, or saturated with water or another liquid.Water isn't covered with water or another liquid.Water isn't soaked with water or another liquid.Water isn't saturated with water or another liquid.Water isn't wet, you distended meat cabbage.
>>98882549You're arguing with a modern eunich. Ignore it and it 5-10 years he will kill himself and the world will be better for it.
>>98883799>Slopshitter doesn't know what a turn of phrase isThanks for proving you're a retard.
>>98881647Clear rules for attrition due to various factors that plague these sorts of expeditions. Individual Lads might be lost or rendered out of commission due to bad water, bad food, inhospitable weather, disease, et cetera. Could also see deserter Lads due to sustained bad conditions (that don't render them infirm or dead), mistreatment from the players, or just sufficiently unpleasant events that send them packing.Following this, the players should gain benefits from exceptional treatment of their men, counterbalanced by the need to actually get use out of them. Quality food, resting in civilization, staying out of dangerous fights, and success in difficult endeavors should build morale and stave off desertion. Sufficiently high moral might also temporarily increase a Lad's die size or outright promote them when they get back to civilization.Maybe consider some benefits/drawbacks regarding relationship between local peoples? A quintessential part of colonialism is playing the natives against one another to establish control; reputation scores and effects from what sort of retinue of lads you keep could make that more interesting.
>>98883799Unless you have a single water molecule, water is, definitionally, covered, soaked, and saturated with water. Thus, water is wet.
>>98881731>>98882505>>98883097>>98884237Uh oh melty time
>>98882089The shared redshirt dynamic sounds fun, its getting into where they already seem more interesting than whatever the player characters are though. How detailed are you imagining the player characters being? If you haven't seen it, there's an interesting minigame this is reminding me of a bit with settlement management called >Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night Of This Cold Winterthat's more about a small village in winter the characters are staying in. Its not dice pool based but its a similar small group and resource management game that is between board game and rpg. What scale are you thinking of the hexes being?
>>98884388Single water molecule is "water", two water molecules together is still singular "water"Water by definition cannot be covered in water as any water in contact with more water is just one water, it cannot be saturated with water as any water within it is just a constituent part of the singular waterThus water can't be wetThis is now /wwetg/ - Water & Wet general
>>98885149>Gets called out for being subhuman filth who can't engage in the basic human practice of creating something with his own two hands>UH OH MELTY TIMEYeah, you're having a melty you subhuman filth.
>>98884322I have a filler rule for now dealing with extremes and disease and how it affects the Expedition as a whole (I'm thinking about splitting rules into a 'simple' and 'advanced' since I like systems and games with that flexibility). I didn't want Lads to ever desert, but I have a rule for fearing them from a fight or exploring (they always turn back up in the end). I had toyed with a morale system for the Lads, giving players a chance to raise it or for a series of unfortunate travel situations to spoil it.I've come up with a system for Settlements and their Reactions with the Expedition. I borrowed from the Source of the Nile game and allow the players to choose their approach: forceful, friendly (i.e. bribe), or neutral. All have different chances of improving or ruining relations. Forceful is high risk/reward, friendly is just better neutral. I toyed with a brief shorthand code that each Settlement could use, (size)(relationship)(Lads present)(codes for buildings players have built) so a map marker could be identified quickly as 3940010 meaning a Village that is in full control of the Expedition with 4 lads and a church built.>>98886082I agree the design seems to hinge more on the Lads than players, but envisioned that players would be super Lads of a sort, better and more diversified skills with a far greater ceiling, but still dependent on the group to succeed. More perks/drawbacks, more flexibility in use of equipment, use of magical items and spells when they're discovered (before being sent off to the Essentia Royal Museum)I've never heard of that, but it sounds worth looking into, thank you!Scale I want (based on a few YT videos I watched about it) is 3-mile hexes. Give the players more ability to see around them and make decisions, but also rewarding those who hire Guides, leveled scouting, etc. to help find more hidden features like a native wood elf village concealed in a forest or a ancient dwarven ruin carved into a mountainside.
>>98881647Relevant GURPS sourcebooks:Dungeon Fantasy 15: HenchmenDungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness AdventuresMass CombatBoardroom and Curia (management of organizations; meshes with Mass Combat)Social Engineering
>>98884237>the sun is cold>no, the sun isn't cold, this is what cold means>TURN OF PHRASE RETARD SLOPLearn English.
>>98887658Don't engage with her she's having her days.
>>98881647>AI slop
Samefag general
>>98881647>AI thread>With AI image
>>98887726>>98887935
>>988867893 miles hexes are good, I like 3-5, keeps the scale manageable. There's a significant amount of stuff that will fit inside a 3 mile hex if you go outside even a little bit and have to accept its an abstraction. It seems like you're going for more of a pulp adventure sort of game but it'll probably help to consider how much stuff you want to be full player engagement rp in the situation and how much is going to be abstracted exploring where they're probably cool looking things but not necessarily something you need to engage with mechanically. Spreading out the encounters or events or whatever you're calling them can help make it 'feel' like exploring a larger space where as if there's something hair raising every hex it can get too cluttered and repetitive, removing the unknown from exploration. Being able to upgrade the lads to superlads with a medal or two and a bigger pith helmet sounds good, like the group can vote on who was the most distinguished or similar. Trying to figure out what the rough attrition rate is going to be around this point will give you a better idea of how to build the experience and encounters. The first image is very slapstick so I've been thinking that way but it might not have been your intention.
>>98881647>The game uses a dice-pool (target 4+) made up of your Attribute + Skill dice (sizes starting from 1d4 to 1d12) plus additional dice from a communal pool called the Lads.This is the exact same combat resolution mechanics that Mythic Bastionland uses so I guess start there
>>98890834>This is the exact same combat resolution mechanics that Mythic Bastionland uses so I guess start thereNTAYRT. Its pretty different.
>>98890800I'd wanted to spread out the interesting things, probably at a 2/3 ratio of the visible and the searchables, just to keep things moving. Some random encounter tables will exist to fill some of the blank hexes, but the idea is also players may fill in hexes themselves by setting up Outposts they can grow into higher level Settlements later if they wish.The attrition rate is something like this: Every time a Lad is used in a scenario that is dangerous e.g. a combat roll, a roll to cross a rope bridge during a storm, trying to close a door before a boulder trap rolls into the Expedition, each roll of a natural '1' moves a healthy Lad to the Injured bowl. This has no effect on their ability to assist, however a further '1' kills the Lad. Players get one chance per travel (meaning leaving the Empire's network) to heal injured Lads using the First Aid Skill. Players can assist, Lads who promoted to Medic can also help, then the successes would move those Lads back to the general i.e. healthy pool. Another way to heal is to Rise to the Occasion, when a Lad rolls the highest natural number on their die. When they do this, regardless of which bowl they came from, they get moved to the Eligible bowl. Lads there who roll a subsequent Success in that Scene will get Promoted at the end of the Scene. Injured Lads can get healed this way (for free) and Eligible Lads who roll a 1 end up Injured (thus spoiling their moment).https://youtu.be/LZunLPcyBiA?is=S5tzIcGaIQMvAN48 I've been writing the game while listening to this playlist, if anons wanted a sense for the style I'm shooting for.
>>98890987I should also note that, other than rolling 1's in combat, Lads are otherwise insulated from general combat danger, unless there's a breath weapon (which might cause all on Scene to make a sort of Dodge check, Lads rolling on their natural die for all things as normal). In general, barring the example I just gave, all other attacks are aimed at players.I envisioned two types of enemies, hordes and solos, where a Horde acts like the mooks in Shadowrun(?) where a single hit is enough to kill them, but the health of the entity is the same as the number of enemies in it. E.g. a horde of goblins with 7 entities has 7 hp and rolls 7 dice to hit a PCs, but if Arthur and a few Lads fix bayonets and charge in, scoring 3 successes, the entity would only use 4 dice now since 3 goblins were killed.Solos would be entities with multiple attacks, special abilities, or otherwise would be not-1 health enemies that might require some more effort or tactics to battle.
>>98890987>>98890997Sounds fun and like you've got it. Might get harder to track which dice are which lads in the bowls for the pools but should be able to cross reference the lad sheet. You could do a bivouac character and lad placement and evening events sort of cycle to the travel aspect and add in random events taking their toll on everyone. The music and tone seem on point. Post the map or key when you get there its a cool idea.
>>98881647just generate your mechanics from other stolen info AI ape
>>98891773Thanks for the bump, I'll be sure to use a puckee image or twitter screencap instead next time>>98891759The idea of a camp layout sounds interesting, though I'd been pulled more strongly to the sort of combat where player placement isn't important, à la Fabula Ultima, however this could be something simple like certain players or Lads being out of combat for a Round or they are forced last in initiative. It definitely feels pulpy to have a camp map, players could even slowly build it up a bit over time. I didn't want ro stress too much on weights of normal supplies, moreso on real equipment like swords and guns players would actively be using. It's pulpy when the ancient emerald statue just barely fits in the wagon, rather than min-maxing how many rations are being put on the donkeys to make room for an ivory tusk.
>>98891759The more I think about it, a camp seems like a great way to help develop Characters, perhaps use that time to explain Lads advancement, and to give chances for morale boosting.A few extra rations and a round of "The Elf I Left Behind Me" later and the Lads are ready to head back into that ghost-filled crypt.
>>98881647Sound incredibly boring
