@masukomi@dice.camp
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masukomi

@masukomi@dice.camp

👉 Senior Back-End Dev. Seeking Remote Position 👈

Autodidactic, Autistic, ADHD, Trans 🏳️‍⚧️, programmer who loves thinking about TTRPGs.

If you're interested in hearing my random thoughts about life, programming geekery, 3D printing, and cute pics of my dogs and cat, then follow my other account at https://connectified.com/@masukomi

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

masukomi, to random
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While my game’s story and setting are radically different it has a surprising amount of overlap with the archetypes of Mutant Year Zero - Genlab Alpha

So, I’m revisiting what Free League created, and… it’s just SO good. It’s zero percent about stats or fancy abilities and 100% about your character and how it relates to those around them.

Given the setting, and the violence inherent to it and the associated adventure, I just wasn’t expecting it.

masukomi, to random
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@evilhat keeps posting about Deathmatch Island and i'm intrigued, and i absolutely want to play, but I don't have the right... mindset / background to run it so... that's not going to happen 😿

We need more GMs yo. I don't mind running cool games, but i'm tired of being the only one in our friend group who has any interest in running anything... except one person who'll run D&D & just... please no. There are so many other cool games.

masukomi, to random
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I’m in the ambulance because we need to spend time acclimatizing the cat to it. I brought the stuff out to work on character, archetypes, but mowing took all my energy now I’m just laying here staring at the ceiling.

masukomi, to random
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My game's pretty close to public playtestability. That means I need to put together some character Archetypes. In order to do this I've put together an internal worksheet for the creation of classes to make sure I remember to include all the critical bits for each one.

I've never heard anyone talk about using this approach but I find it invaluable. Here's a blog post with lessons learned & an analysis of mine.

https://weblog.masukomi.org/2024/05/31/ttrpg-archetype-worksheets/

If you do something like this PLEASE share.

a screenshot of my current Archetype Creation Worksheet. There's a higher resolution version of it in the linked blog post as well as an explanation of the sections on it.

masukomi, to random
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Someone posted this on reddit, and I can't stop thinking about it.

For those who don't play Savage Worlds, it uses "exploding dice" so any hit can potentially produce an improbably large amount of damage. So, what's shown in this cartoon IS technically possible.

It seems ridiculous, but it is an absolutely wonderful feature of that game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/savageworlds/comments/1d3o4jl/how_to_tell_if_youre_playing_savage_worlds/
🧵1/4

masukomi, to random
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😮‍💨 this is just sad. It's like they're having to debase themselves to make enough cash to survive.

Paizo - creators of Pathfinder - have taking a pathfinder adventure path and converted it to 5e.

Also, why the eff is the pathfinder name so prominent? If that was important to me I wouldn't be buying an effing 5e version would I?!

masukomi, to random
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I have had Spectacular Settlements in my bookshelf for a while now, but didn’t have a great reason to use it until tonight. I generated a village, and I have to say that it worked really well.

my only real complaint is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to generate names for these places.

I really appreciate it the attention to the backstory of the village. Things like how long it had existed what hardships it had been through and how those affected it.

Best to use as prep, not mid-game.

masukomi, to random
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I’ve come to the end of the last adventure, performed a retrospective, and -hopefully- dramatically improved travel as a result.

  • made a tentative stab at downtime rules to encourage more character RP and provide explicit opportunity to work on projects.
  • added Fishing rules (didn’t see that coming) to address the WTF of having infinite food AND more importantly to tie back into the downtime rules

🧵1/?

masukomi, to random
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ReReading through Mothership so i can run Decagone for folks .

This is an effing golden nugget. Every game should be so self-aware and share that knowledge so concisely with players.

masukomi, (edited ) to random
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I've been working on my game for a while now. I've learned a LOT along the way, & I obviously like sharing & discussing game design.

So, I put together a 7000 word blog post with the high level things I've learned that will probably apply to anyone trying to design a Tabletop RPG.

The experienced game design folks hopefully already know this stuff, but most of us are still figuring it out.

Let me know if this helps, or if you've got a different take on any of it.

https://weblog.masukomi.org/2024/05/25/lessons-learned-while-making-my-game/

masukomi, (edited ) to random
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Looking for info & gossip re current #crowdfunding landscape for TTRPG creators:

Bunch of "larger" publishers like @mcg seem to have turned to #BackerKit & stayed there (kickstarter tools suck(ed) so it makes sense).

#GameFound got some interest when it re-launched(?) & seemed great as a backer but I almost NEVER hear about anything launched there.

Feels like Most folks are wandering back to #Kickstarter.

Can anyone explain or shed any light on what the deal with any of this is?

masukomi, to random
@masukomi@dice.camp avatar

FATE continues to be something of a Holy Guide for me in developing my game. There are SO many aspects‡ of it I love.

BUT every time i think of playing it I think about this graph, & the implication that the dice are only barely introducing any variance. 60% of the time you will roll whatever your stat is. 80% of the time you'll roll your skill +/- 1.

I feel like why are we even bothering to roll?

And then I think about stunts.

‡ 🤭
🧵1/8

masukomi, to random
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@daniel commented that they prefer running games that don't require tons of VTT prep.

I have thoughts, specifically around the value of VTTs (or table equivalent), even in games that are GREAT for Theatre-of-the-Mind style play.
🧵1/8

masukomi, to random
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Question: Why does it seem that there is an inverse ratio between how fancy a VTTs web site is, and how easy it is to actually find out what games it supports?

Like holy shit trying to get a list of systems that Alchemy or Let's Role supports? Good luck. ugh.

You'd think they'd be like "Hey look! You can play all these awesome games!" but no. They're like "look! Pretty pictures & MAYBE whatever game we're promoting today"

masukomi, to random
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In 2 days 9th Level Games is launching a crowdfunding campaign for "City of Skull"

short version: Mazes (RPG) meets West Marches in a quest to retrieve magical items in a last-ditch attempt to save the last city… your city.

➕ assorted new shiny things for Mazes itself.

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/af6922b9-ca96-4a40-8855-9bfa70e7b968/landing

The problem is, I WANT IT NOW!!!!

Mazes is just a wonderful rules-light dungeon crawler with truckloads of personality that I love.

masukomi, to random
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I was able to replace my core mechanic with Spiral dice fairly easily, but I've spent hours working on the follow-on effects & it opens some cool options, but also requires changing my game in ways I don't want.

i really REALLY want to use them, but I don't think this is the right game for them.

So, back to my heavily modded Year Zero Engine that - overall - has been working really well.

masukomi, to random
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My brain is abuzz with ideas for my game & after analyzing rolls from my solo playtesting I had an important revelation. I feel like it's one of those "should be obvious" things that you don't realize until someone says it out loud.

Depending on the story you're telling, different character builds will have less they can do, & thus their players too.

Or to put it another way, an "inappropriate" build can remove character & player agency.

Example & thoughts on implications in thread.
🧵1/8

masukomi, to random
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This is going to make rolling difficult.

masukomi, to random
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One of my biggest gripes with trad games is that they're constantly having players break into the homes of sentient tool building creatures with families and communities (like Goblins) and then slaughtering them because they have things the PCs want or are between them and things they want. 🤦‍♀️

How do people not see how ridiculously racist that is? Why are people ok with perpetuating it?

masukomi, to random
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I have a love/hate relationship with Narrative Dice.

I desperately WANT to use them, but most implementations result in one of two scenarios. Either the GM is needing to come up with some ancillary positive or negative effect on essentially every roll OR they can be used for some simple mechanical effect like +1 damage / harm and everyone just ends up using that because it's HARD to come up with narrative "yes but/and" on EVERY roll.
🧵1/7

masukomi, to random
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Discovered that in Me Myself & Die Season 4 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDvunq75UfH8DBmsn76dOzI0js0lhKRuV

Trevor is playing a game he created. Intrigued, I started listening despite being behind.

Initial thought: I LOVE the combination of d100 roll-under system with a "blackjack mechanic".

You need to roll under your skill but also a high as possible without going over.

When you successfully roll to attack one of the dice you already rolled indicates hit location!

🧵 (short)

masukomi, to random
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After that long 🧵 about flow-charts I realized that after having recently consolidated & cleaned up all the rules for MY game, it was actually in a state where it was ready for this treatment.

I'm not done & it's already significantly improved one rule.

🧵1/3

masukomi, (edited ) to random
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@Taskerland commented that my #Dragonbane flow-chart looked "Fiendish". They're not wrong, and I wanted to talk about that. More specifically about the hidden complexity in games & how designers need to think about things differently than players.

Here's a cleaned up version. Don't worry about reading the individual nodes, they're not important to this discussion.

Side note: I'd love to make these for your unreleased game in exchange for money. 😉
🧵1/16

masukomi, to random
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I flowcharted all the stuff related to a player rolling a check (attacking / defending / whatever) in #DragonBane

It looks complicated but I swear to you that this is nothing compared to D&D and most other "trad" games.

masukomi, to random
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I keep coming across mentions of the 13th age Kickstarter & I feel like I’m missing something. I have 13th age & one of the adventures for it. BUT despite the fact that it was created by game developers with highly respected skills, and definitely has some interesting and noteworthy ideas in it, nothing about it made me say “ooh i wanna play this!”

🧵1/?

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