u/Guilher_Wolfang

Quando uma investigação inteira depende de uma única rolagem de percepção, a falha costuma criar um problema estranho: ou o mestre esconde a informação e a sessão trava, ou entrega a pista mesmo assim e faz a rolagem parecer inútil.

Enquanto estava reescrevendo o design de uma mecânica para investigação, resolvi colocar a idéia aqui pois pode ser útil para alguns mestres:

Uma saída é separar acesso à informação de controle sobre a situação. A pista básica aparece porque os personagens procuraram no lugar certo, têm o conhecimento adequado ou conversaram com a pessoa relevante. Rolar dados decide outra coisa: quanto tempo isso levou, se a evidência permaneceu intacta, se surgiram perguntas extras ou se o grupo entendeu a importância daquilo antes do perigo avançar.

Isso não elimina o desafio. Os jogadores ainda precisam decidir onde investigar, interpretar o que encontraram e agir com informação incompleta. A diferença é que o mistério não depende de o dado autorizar a existência da próxima cena.

Também ajuda a tratar pistas em camadas. Uma informação básica mantém o caso vivo; uma boa investigação revela conexões; uma descoberta rara muda a interpretação do caso inteiro. Assim, sucesso continua valioso sem transformar uma falha isolada em beco sem saída. Pelo menos é o que estou fazendo enquanto reescrevo Occulta.

Na prática, onde vocês preferem colocar a dificuldade de um RPG investigativo: em encontrar a pista, interpretar a pista ou sobreviver às consequências de tê-la encontrado?

Passive defense makes survival part of character construction and Active defense makes survival part of turn economy. I have been playing like this with my group(when we play our system RUÍNA) for SO long, it would be useful to have outside feedback, since we got used to it.

I designed defense as an action rather than a permanent reaction everyone receives for free. A character can spend that action to build a defensive pool or temporary protection, but doing so means giving up another immediate contribution(you can only choose 2 between attack, defense and movement). The intention is not to punish defensive play. It is to make “hold the line” an actual tactical commitment.

The idea is that defense becomes relational. Protecting yourself or allies may preserve the group’s position, keep a spellcastersafe and/or force an enemy to waste a powerful attack.

I remember it took some time to get the balance "right": On the other hand, if defense is too efficient, cautious play becomes automatic; if it is too weak, players correctly conclude that attacking first is always safer.

What do you think about this implementation in games(not in exact rules/numbers, but as a design idea)? I am especially interested in games where defending changes enemy behavior, space or initiative instead of only reducing damage.

Olá gente linda! Sou um designer independente de RPG do Brasil e estou terminando G.O.A.L. — The Tactical Football RPG, um RPG de mesa sobre futebol, tática, times e as histórias que acontecem ao redor do esporte. Acabei de postar no r/futebol mas achei melhor postar aqui também.

Não é o primeiro RPG que eu faço, mas é o primeiro que pretendo publicar de forma mais “profissional”. E a ideia é disponibilizar o jogo de graça.

Para a arte do livro, eu gostaria muito de incluir desenhos de futebol feitos por crianças de verdade.

Aquele tipo de desenho que a criança faz simplesmente porque gosta de futebol: partidas, jogadores, goleiros, estádios, troféus, lances favoritos, times... qualquer coisa relacionada ao esporte.

Acho que esse tipo de arte combina muito com o jogo e consegue transmitir algo que uma ilustração profissional muitas vezes não consegue: como o futebol parece quando a gente começa a se apaixonar por ele.

Então, se seu filho gosta de desenhar futebol, eu adoraria ver os desenhos. Além do desenho, a única informação que eu gostaria de receber, se possível, é: Primeiro nome, idade e país, para colocar junto da ilustração no livro (estou incluíndo país pois também postei na comunidade internacional).

Exemplo: Lucas, 9 anos, Brasil

Envie para: velitrpgs@gmail.com

E fiquem à vontade para compartilhar com pais, professores, escolinhas de futebol, projetos esportivos ou qualquer pessoa que conheça uma criança que goste de futebol e de desenhar.

Obrigado!

Oi! Sou um designer independente de RPG do Brasil e estou terminando G.O.A.L. — The Tactical Football RPG, um RPG de mesa sobre futebol, tática, times e as histórias que acontecem ao redor do esporte.

Não é o primeiro RPG que eu faço, mas é o primeiro que pretendo publicar de forma mais “profissional”. E a ideia é disponibilizar o jogo de graça.

Para a arte do livro, eu gostaria muito de incluir desenhos de futebol feitos por crianças de verdade.

Aquele tipo de desenho que a criança faz simplesmente porque gosta de futebol: partidas, jogadores, goleiros, estádios, troféus, lances favoritos, times... qualquer coisa relacionada ao esporte.

Acho que esse tipo de arte combina muito com o jogo e consegue transmitir algo que uma ilustração profissional muitas vezes não consegue: como o futebol parece quando a gente começa a se apaixonar por ele.

Então, se seu filho gosta de desenhar futebol, eu adoraria ver os desenhos. Além do desenho, a única informação que eu gostaria de receber, se possível, é: Primeiro nome, idade e país, para colocar junto da ilustração no livro (estou incluíndo país pois também postei na comunidade internacional).

Exemplo: Lucas, 9 anos, Brasil

Envie para: velitrpgs@gmail.com

E fiquem à vontade para compartilhar com pais, professores, escolinhas de futebol, projetos esportivos ou qualquer pessoa que conheça uma criança que goste de futebol e de desenhar.

Obrigado!

Hello, beautiful people!

I've been experimenting with removing coins entirely from game. The system is "old"(I've been playing and refining the same rules for more than a decade), but this wealth mechanic is completely new and still being tested.

Instead of tracking gold, silver, and individual prices, characters have a Riches rating (1+).

When preparing an adventure, I think about its primary reward. It usually does one or more of the following:

-Advances the main plot.
-Progresses a character's personal story.
-Increases the party's treasure (from now own called Riches).
-Grants a magical artifact (a Relic, as they are called in my game).

When a character wants to buy something significant, they roll a number of d6 equal to their Riches rating. The roll doesn't represent how much money they have, it represents whether they can comfortably afford the purchase without becoming noticeably poorer.
-The highest die is compared to the item's price tier.
-Every extra 6 after the first increases the result by 1 (Example: 6, 6, 6 = 8).
-If you want something beyond your means, you can permanently reduce your Riches by 1 to roll one additional die. You can do this multiple times, representing spending your savings, selling valuables, calling in favors, and so on. Edit: it is only reduced IF you actually manage buy it.

Some example price tiers:
-Horse: 4
-Hiring mercenaries or a guild: 5 (RUÍNA is just a little less brutal than OSR style lethality, so it might be necessary)
-Ship: 7–8
-Small fortress: 10 (requiring an exceptional roll of five 6s)

The goal is to preserve the feeling of becoming wealthier while removing bookkeeping and the "I have 512 gold pieces" style of accounting. Everyday purchases like food, lodging, arrows, or rope are generally ignored unless they're important to the situation.

What do you think about abstract wealth systems? Have you played games that handle money this way?

https://preview.redd.it/xzhmec3w0sfh1.png?width=1086&format=png&auto=webp&s=e5f7bc63da8c78dcf6fd12a122cc523187c643bd

https://preview.redd.it/ee4gf7511sfh1.png?width=1055&format=png&auto=webp&s=0f225dd643df476c2ec1ebd47cdfcb5ba8278b87

https://preview.redd.it/nob8h7511sfh1.png?width=1122&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a60d922f5cd5a1ba9aa14f14c9420090f9bcd1c

Edit: this post is not about the whole RPG, just about the simulator I programmed comparing data to real world.

Hello Beautiful People!

I have been away for some time, tinkering with rules simulators(with Python) for my games. Tweaking the rules and behavior of the simulator trying to get it to be equal to rules as written. I did it for 2 games so far, but one of them gave me a question. I'm doin

How close should the data compare to real life?

I'm finishing my football(soccer) game, and statistics were close, but goals seems lower than real life. Here is the avarage results of my silumator after 100.000 tests compared to real world data(from what i could gather):

Statistic	G.O.A.L. v8.4	Real football (typical)
Shots per team	9.1	10–14
Shots per match	18.2	20–28
Dangerous chances (Goal Attempts inside Goal area)	1.9/team	2–4 big chances/team
Goals per team	0.91	1.2–1.6
Goals per match	1.83	2.4–3.2
Goal conversion	48%	~40–60% for true one-on-ones
Overall shot conversion	10%	9–12%

I'm satisfied with the results, EXCEPT goals per match. This might be a behavior problem with the "decision tree", not rules, but seems low. I wanted it to be equal or slightly higher than real life(for more exciting moments). Of course teams with equal "budgets" were tested, but in game, teams have different budgets and therefore some teams have a looot more goals on avarage against weaker teams, but that was not what I was testing.

If it were YOU playing, would you be satisfied?

ps: If someone wants to test the simulator or check programming, I can send you.
ps2: I'm in the process of testing different team strenghts against each other and I'm gonna post here later

I thought this might be useful for other designers aiming for a similar style of progression. (No rules here, just design goals and the mathematical outcome.)

For context, I've been playing and iterating on this RPG (RUÍNA and others with similar core mechanics for sci-fi and horror) with my group for over 10 years, but only now putting it all together as a professional document for the internet. Obviously, a home group isn't the same as broad public playtesting, but I wanted to see whether the math actually matched the experience we had at the table.

My design objectives:
1-Make characters more competent/consistent with progression (more horizontal progression than vertical): Avarage numbers increase while ceiling almost doesn't.

2- Stay within "human range" of survivability: A Character should not survive more in the end campaign than at the beginning if they are hit without defending.

3- Being outnumbered should remain dangerous even at later stages of the campaign.

To see if the numbers matched those goals(and my experience at the table), I wrote a simulation in Python.

I compared an archer at character creation (relevant Attribute 2) with the same archer later in the campaign (relevant Attribute 4). Their opponents were ordinary human bandits with Attribute 1.

How many consecutive opponents can they defeat?

Opponents --- Archer 2 --- Archer 4

One at a time ---- 2.96 ---- 12.17

Two at a time ---- 1.08 ---- 4.25

Three at a time ---- 0.56 ---- 2.23

You can see 2 main things in the simulation:
a) The Veteran Archer can deal with many opponents one by one... but when fighting against 3 opponents at the same time, he survives as much as the "Beginner" Archer one at a time (less than 3).
b) Also, character competency makes a BIG impact, but being outnumbered makes an even BIGGER impact.

Extra: Test against my "horde" mechanic (for those moments when players should feel powerful defeating many similar opponents):
Archer --- Average Hordes defeated --- Equivalent Horde members

Archer 2 ----1.43 ---- 8.6 members

Archer 4 ---- 4.56 ---- 27.3 members

I also tested for warriors and the numbers were different(surviving longer) but the overall progression showed a similar pattern.

Of course this doesn't take into account maneuvers, talents, spells, etc... This is just a baseline to check whether the underlying math of balance and progression matched my design goals.

For the kind of grounded fantasy I'm aiming for, this is a decent progression in power through the campaign, without increasing survivability. Closer to OSR survival than epic fantasy.

Do you agree? I'm curious about how others deal with this.
How much stronger do you think a low fantasy RPG character should become over the course of a campaign?

Hello beautiful people!

I'm almost finished writing my RPG (not my first one, but my first bigger, more serious project), and I just realized I never included a section explaining things like "What is a tabletop RPG?", "What does the Game Master do?", or other beginner basics. I wrote "What is RUÍNA/OCCULTA?"(The 2 games i'm writing) to explain about the specific tone and experience the game is designed to provide, but not: "What do you need to play?" / "The Game Master's role" / "The Players' role", etc.

Part of me feels it's unnecessary. Most people probably won't have an unknown indie RPG as their very first contact with the hobby.

On the other hand, maybe every RPG could unexpectedly be someone's first, and including a couple of pages for new players doesn't really hurt.

What do you usually do? Do you include an introduction for complete beginners, or do you assume readers already know the basics?

Brief explanation: I'm gonna use this as a newspaper for possibly unexplained events and open police cases. Doesnt necessarily mean that all news is about occultism/paranormal/horror etc... it can be, but since these should be rare, most would be a bit strange but maybe explainable events.

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Hello Beautiful people!

I'm having trouble deciding. Right now i'm using A4 size, so anyone could print at home. Should I keep doing this? What is normally done?

Also margins and font size. I did a research and found 10.5 is good enough for many fonts. Any tips?

If you discover that a name in your setting already exists in the real world (it might be an almost unknown person in history or the name of a small city in a smaller country) what do you do? keep the name? invent a new one?

I recently ran a little poll while trying to choose a name for my RPG.

I posted the same poll in several RPG communities, collecting 752 votes in total. What surprised me wasn't the winner—it was the difference between the votes and the comments.

Results:

RUÍNA – 399 votes (61.9%)

Relics of Ruin – 197 votes (30.6%)

Ruina: Relics & Ruin – 80 votes (12.4%)

Ruin & Relics – 76 votes (11.8%)

Although RUÍNA won by a laaaaarge margin, it received relatively few comments. Most of the discussion focused on Relics of Ruin.

That made me realize that votes and comments measure different things.

A poll captures people's immediate reaction, the name that catches their attention or simply feels right. A comment usually comes from someone who has stopped to analyze their choice and explain it.

Many people who preferred Relics of Ruin said they liked it because they immediately understood what the game was about. Meanwhile, RUÍNA seemed to attract people instinctively, it won emotionally, so no need to explain WHY.

The comments also taught me a few unexpected lessons.

1. Repetition is worse than similarity.

I expected names with repeated words to reinforce the theme, but the opposite happened. Ruina: Relics & Ruin was mocked in 2 communities because it repeated essentially the same word three times. Interestingly, names with two similar sounds (Relics of Ruin, Ruin & Relics) were generally seen as pleasant and memorable. Three was simply too much.

2. A strong title and a descriptive subtitle might be the sweet spot.

The poll suggests that a short, distinctive title grabs attention, while the comments suggest that some readers want the title to immediately communicate what the game is about.

That made me think the best solution may not be choosing between the two approaches, but combining them: a short, memorable title like RUÍNA, paired with a descriptive English subtitle that quickly tells new readers what kind of game they're looking at.

3. Fantasy may be saturated, but people still seem to want it.

Several comments dismissed names like Ruin & Relics because they sounded like "generic fantasy." At first, that made me wonder if fantasy had simply become too saturated.

But during the same week I also posted about two very different RPGs I designed: one is a comedy/parody one-page RPG about pickup artistry, and another is an experimental RPG where your entire character sheet is a single sentence.

Those games received amazing feedback and encouragement, but they generated far less attention than the fantasy game.

So now I'm wondering if saturation isn't the whole story. Maybe fantasy is saturated because it's where the audience's interest is highest. Being in a crowded genre doesn't necessarily mean people are tired of it—it may simply mean that's what they're most excited to click on.

Overall, this experiment reminded me that the loudest feedback isn't always the most representative. The people who comment are often the most analytical, while the majority simply vote and move on. As designers, we probably need both.

Por causa de um desafio em outra comunidade, passei uma noite tentando criar o RPG de comédia social mais absurdo possível. Os jogadores inventam cantadas terríveis e rolam dados para descobrir se, por algum milagre, conseguem encantar alguém ou acabam provocando um desastre social completo.

Gostaria muito de ouvir a opinião de vocês sobre isso.

jogo nos comentários.

Por causa de um desafio em outra comunidade, passei uma noite tentando criar o RPG de comédia social mais absurdo possível. Os jogadores inventam cantadas terríveis e rolam dados para descobrir se, por algum milagre, conseguem encantar alguém ou acabam provocando um desastre social completo.

Gostaria muito de ouvir a opinião de vocês sobre isso.

jogo nos comentários.

Por causa de um desafio em outra comunidade, passei uma noite tentando criar o RPG de comédia social mais absurdo possível. Os jogadores inventam cantadas terríveis e rolam dados para descobrir se, por algum milagre, conseguem encantar alguém ou acabam provocando um desastre social completo.

Gostaria muito de ouvir a opinião de vocês sobre isso.

jogo nos comentários.

Preciso de uma ajudinha para decidir o nome do rpg que estou terminando de escrever(vai ser o terceiro que vou publicar yay!).

Se eu tivesse que resumir o cenário em poucas palavras seria algo so tipo: "Um rpg de fantasia sombria focada em exploração, onde aventureiros desbravam ruínas antigas deixadas por uma civilização esquecida em um novo continente. Relíquias são criadas a partir da corrupção da magia, criando novas criaturas, artefatos amaldiçoados e cicatrizes na própria realidade."

Qual deles combina melhor com a descrição?

Qual faria você clicar para saber mais sobre o jogo?

E qual parece mais memorável e interessante pra você?

Sintam-se à vontade para fazer perguntas sobre o cenário ou jogo antes de votar.

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