I've been asking this question to myself about my system since my last post. I'm making Born Without Talent, a mid-fantasy ttrpg where players start as lowly characters and progress their way up to heroes from session to session. In Born Without Talent, there are character classes, and characters are meant to get stronger incrementally with the Talent System, where they gain spendable talent points after each session. They can spend these points on their class abilities, spells, skills, and other things.

I know what kind of game I'm making, but then I wondered what my actual core pillars were? I looked at the famous D&D core design pillars which are combat, exploration, and social interaction. But what does this mean? These design pillars seem so generic, and while I don't want to bash on D&D for the easy pickings, I wonder how my design pillars differ. But my last quest is, how many design pillars is enough? Here are my core design pillars:

Character Identity

Character identity is important because it spotlights moments for players. Players are trying to fulfill a specific fantasy when they create their character, usually. While Born Without Talent cannot fulfill every type of fantasy, it does its best to reach the broad character archetypes. When character archetypes bleed into each other, you have players competing for attention, and noticing that their spotlight was stolen. It's always annoying when the rogue says "I can pick this lock if you give me 10 minutes!" and then the warrior says, "I'm crushing this door down in 1 minute!" and then the wizard says "My spell will open this door in 10 seconds!" The rogue expects to be the one who opens doors, but their moment is stolen because characters have too many all-purpose tools to solve their problems. When characters become more dependent on one another, character identity and roleplaying rise.

Incremental Progression

This is probably the most defining feature of my system. Incremental progression is seen not just in the talent system, but also in the item system, where items give small benefits, such as a +1 to fire saving throws and +2 to poison saving throws. This allows the GM to reward players with items that scale up their character during each session, so there's a constant feeling of progression. Players often use treasure as symbolic aesthetics for their character identity. A valuable treasure represents the trials and tribulations that the character went through, and serve as a lasting memory of those adventures.

Tradeoffs

Tradeoffs are needed to fulfill both character identity and incremental progression. When a character ends a session with 1 Talent Point, they can only put it in one place, or maybe save it for a bigger purchase. This is only possible with system that doesn't allow characters to "fully" progress a character. Each class in Born Without Talent has depth, ways to specialize their character. The design goal is that a player cannot fulfill the entire class talent tree, and so two players playing the same class can make very different characters. Each character must trade some power of the kit, to delve deeper into a different part of the kit, or abandon it altogether and multi-class for interesting class combinations. Similarly, characters must decide how pick their equipment before combat. With the incremental progression, characters should have some options to outfit their characters, especially as the campaign draws on longer.

All 3 design pillars not only support the foundation of the game, but support each other. Tradeoffs are necessary for character identity, since each character will have their strengths and weaknesses. Some character trade power for utility, utility for independence, independence for versatility, versatility for support, support for safety, or safety for power. Character identity is necessary for incremental progression and vice versa because there is nothing to increment towards without identity and identity is enhanced with the incremental progression.

Conclusion

I'm not really sure if I'm doing my design pillars right. It's hard to decide because while I care about exploration, for me it's a means to fulfill the pillars of 1) and 2). I love social interaction, but as a designer I don't want to build too many rules around roleplaying because I believe that disrupts immersion, but that's a whole topic for another time. So what do you think of these design pillars? What are your design pillars?

I'm working on a game that uses playing cards instead of dice. I know many games have tried this with mixed results but I think I've got a good mechanism in mind and I wonder what you guys think of it.

The Basic Skill Check

Flip up the top 2 cards of your deck (each player has their own), and add the numbers together! Compare the number to the DC. Aces are 1. If one of the two cards is a face card, you double the value of the other card. If both are face cards, the check fails.

Training

If you have training on the skill check, flip up 3 instead, and set one of them aside. Then add up the best 2 like a normal skill check.

The Hand

After the skill check is done, any face cards involve (including any set aside) go into your hand (numbered cards go into the discard pile). At the start of the session you draw a hand of 4 cards. After adding cards to your hand, discard down to 4.

You can spend a meta-currency (right now the metacurrency is based on fabula points) to swap a card in a check for one of the cards in your hand. If you swap a face card in, it is discarded at the end of the check instead of going back into your hand.

Hitpoints and Abilities

At the start of a session, put 4 cards from the top of your deck into a hitpoint pile. When you lose hitpoints, take cards from the hitpoint pile and put them into your hand.

Classes will improve the number of hitpoints you have, and your maximum hand size, and will give you abilities that you can spend cards from your hand to activate. One ability might simply require you to show a club card from your hand to use. Another might require you to discard a jack and a spade to use (so either: one jack and one spade, or the jack of spades).

Monsters will have abilities that force you to discard. Like: discard all heart cards. The second use of the metacurrency lets you draw cards (invoke a bond: reflect on how your connection to some other character gives you strength or inspires you in this moment, then draw cards equal to the strength of the bond, max 3).

What do you think?

I wrote an article reflecting on design and playtesting process and the role that conventions had in that for God-Killer Prophecy. The full article is up on Rascal, but here's some highlights.

One of the challenges of playtesting RPGs is that the right group can have fun with anything*. The important questions are therefor: did this specific piece produce the type of result you designed it too? Can that piece be improved? Can it be made more reliable across play groups? Do the pieces combine into the intended experience?
Doing the above requires playing with multiple groups and active listening.

Moreover:
a) Playtest early and focus on whether a specific mechanic or procedure produces the kind of experience you desired (and communicated).

b) Consider creating an Ashcan version; something you can show off and hone your skills of how you present, write and talk about your game.

c) Leverage local roleplaying games and conventions to let you run games for a mix of experience levels and preferred rpg play paradigms.

d) Revise, improve, and as some point let it rest. Work on something else and come back to it. Like all the best food games take time to mature, time to reach the perfect flavour pallet.

e) With luck you’ll find people along the way who love your game and will help it to succeed. Cultivate these folks if you can.

What would you add as advice?
God-Killer Prophecy: Oracle Edition is up on kickstarter (ends Oct 31). It's a GM-full one-shot game that merges story-game world creation with tense strategic playing of cards as you try to get all the best cards to the chosen one for the final battle against the dark god.
You can snag a variant game called Star-Killer Rebellion there too.

*Quoting Ben Robbins: This is called "the magic carpet ride", where the game just flows along wonderfully, but if you look back you realize it wasn't the system, it was just those people getting along great and liking the same idea.

Hay everyone so I'm a DM for a small group at the moment in creating a TTRPG system and am asking if any of you have any recommendations for it.

At the moment it has

\-full character creation system

\-DM interface

\- player interface

\- full integrated map/ travail/ wether interface

\- campaign creation interface

\- sound system interface

\- push system for information

\- integrated item/ equipment system

\- combat system

\- dice system with both physical and auto rolls

Can anyone think of anything else I should add