Osr Ttrpg

Q: What happened to Iron Throne?
A: Life got in the way, wanted to focus on other stuff.
Q: What happened to Pupper?
A: It’s sitting on my shelf of half-formed ideas - I’ll get back to it one day.
Q: Are you just gonna drop the current thing every time the new thing appears?
A: Quite possibly, yes.

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There’s a well known mantra in game development: “Fail Faster”. The idea is, if you fail at something early, you can learn the lessons and move onto the next big task. For me, this effectively means trying out ideas at a rapid pace to see what sticks.

Sometimes, you’ll keep coming back to a certain idea because you feel like there’s something special just under the surface. Other times, if the idea can’t even hold your attention, how will it hold the attention of the audience?

That’s the theory, anyway, and it’s worked well enough for me so far. So, today’s random idea is a tabletop role playing game derived from the old school revival movement. This game doesn’t exist yet, so I can’t play it, even though I kind of want to. That’s a good enough reason to at least sketch out the basic design pillars.

Game Idea: TTRPG, very OSR-ish.

4 base classes: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief.

Only 4 levels in each base class, after which you choose a prestige style higher class until level 10 (the level cap).

You only gain XP by wasting money; that is, buying drinks at the tavern, donating to the church, etc. - this means you’re effectively choosing between higher gear or higher levels.

Critical hits are a thing, but each weapon has a different effect on a natural 20. Most simple weapons could maintain the double damage effect, but others could cause various special bonuses based on their types.

So, it’s not much to go on - It’s effectively just reworking the class structure, as well as how you level up within those classes.

The alternate critical hit effects are neat, but it’s still not much - if you’re rolling a d20, then you at least need some base stats, some hit points, etc.

I think part of the base-prestige thing is actually coming from a roguelike game I’ve played recently called Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It’s kind of awesome, but interestingly your class only goes up a certain number of levels, after which, you need to choose a subclass to continue.

I’m also fond of the minimal number of classes - the fewer classes, the more distinct they feel, in theory. It’s also possible that I’m just wishing that the existing D&D 5e classes were easier to manage - D&D is, to put it bluntly, too damn complex for me to keep up.

(I thought I’d have more thoughts for this post - I guess I’ll work on this over the next week or so.)