Recent content by attevil

Sure weight could categorize weapons, light and heavy weapons, which could have game mechanics for weapon speeds or required strength of a character to wield a heavy weapon. These categorizes are simply what I found in common with the weapons I've come across, there were other categories I...

Recently, I’ve been working on designing futuristic weapons for Cyber Run, a tabletop trans-dimensional RPG. I’ve found that most tabletop RPGs don’t offer interesting weapons choices. Many games contain a list of swords or guns, with the only major difference being their damage capability...

I’ve always liked stories with other dimensions. I mostly enjoyed the comic book Excalibur, written by Chris Claremont, because of its trans-dimensional adventures; the combination of the serious-minded characters finding themselves in strange and sometimes humorous situations was done well. My...

All tabletop RPG systems approach combat in a different way. This article takes a look at several dimensions of RPG combat systems and how bits of each system influenced the creation of Cyber Run. I did notice that, in general, players are happy to see a move away from tactical combat with...

For Cyber Run we use character goals to determine results, but we use Moral which serves as mental energy. If bad things happen in combat, a character looses an argument or many other things his or her moral will lower. In the case of social actions against the character, the character can...

It's nice to boil the structure down to 16 rules, whcih covers everything.

If I was making a video game, then I would create a mini-game just for lock picking, but making the skill more complicated in table top might annoy the players, but that really depends on the game. A more story based non-action game could have lock picking as a big deal or a cat burglar game...

You Bring up a good point, its easier for new players to learn a game, if each game mechanic is similar, rolling a D20 for a skill check is same as rolling a D20 for an attack. But is rolling a die in both these cases actually fun or why is it fun? That question can be it's own article, so I...

I agree, a few articles back http://grumpogames.com/blog/table-top-games-the-d20/ I went through several game systems to determine the best rolling mechanic. I finally decided that the D20 was the best for me, because the D20 is basically a percentile broken into 5% parts. I felt 5% is the...

Thanks for reading! I think some designers begin with hacking, but then create a new system after they have changed the rules to an existing one and found that wasn't enough. That is why I called it bottom up, but whatever its called, its an approach to game design. I've read the rules for...

I agree, even with Christian values as a norm, which the alignment system seems to be trying to reflect, there is a lot open to interpretation. To me this is an indication that a game system is bad. I think D&D should have actually written up a list of things that are good, evil, chaotic...

Every month, as I’ve been redesigning Cyber Run, a futuristic table top RPG, I’ve also been writing an article based on subject I was redesigning. This month I was going to write about skill systems, but after overhauling our attribute system, I thought it might be more helpful to other game...

Attribute scores are the foundations of every RPG character. Attributes determine the character’s epic qualities and their tragic flaws. In many video and table-top role-playing games, there has been a standardization of these basic attributes with a little variance determined by the focus of...