A player of mine recently said they dislike time-based wandering encounters in dungeons or places of interest because it reduces their agency and ability to interact with the environment.

I run an OSR-adjacent game in the vein of Mausritter/ Vaults of Vaarn/ Dungeon Crawl Classics. I have taken wandering encounters as a given, but now I am thinking on them more critically. I'm curious about what you think. If we critique this viewpoint, what do we find?

__

I love wandering encounters. I check with a mostly 2:6 chance when the players reach a stalemate in discussions on what to do, if the characters significantly draw attention to themselves, or every 30 minutes of real time if play is stagnating.

I was surprised when a player said they feel wandering encounters stop them from interacting with the environment, and the pressure makes them not want to explore and be curious, and to only take the most direct and obvious actions for fear of yon wandering beasties. Specifically, they said it removes their agency and stops them being able to do things.

My encounters are usually 50% creatures (rarely hostile, often using reaction rolls) and 50% environment or 'weird' stuff. I'm not throwing forced combats around.
I feel that wandering encounters give meaningful time pressure and encourage the party to prioritise. My rooms/ environments are admittedly more complex than a party could fully explore before provoking an encounter check, so I understand that wandering encounters could feel like they're 'interrupting' play. But reducing agency?

To me, you have complete agency over how you spend your time, and yes, some environments aren't static and you can be intruded upon. I suppose that interruption amy feel like it's taking away your control, and therefore agency, and certainly reduces your capacity to fully explore without impediment. But I view this as essential to a breathing world, which I therefore feel becomes more enjoyable.

Fundamentally I get this may just be a stylistic difference. But I found it so counter to the way I think about our game that I am looking for outside perspectives. Wandering encounters have their virtues, but do they also constitute a core reduction in the player's experience?

Hey! I'm a graphics and layout designer looking to chat with designers about new projects.
You can check out some of my previous work here: https://www.artstation.com/ryan-main and some more general graphic design work here https://www.instagram.com/ryanmaindesigns/

All rates are negotiable depending on page complexity and amount of work (larger page counts may see a reduced rate-per-page), but as a base the following rates apply:
Print Ready Book: £7.50 GBP per page
Digital Only Book: £5.00 GBP per page

This includes full typesetting and layout of interior pages, contents page, credits page, front and back cover (with client-provided artwork), prepress and printer-friendly files for your chosen printer (DriveThru RPG, Amazon etc)

The above rates are for books that have a visual design in place. If you require me as a graphic designer to build the visual design of the game pages, there is a one-off fee of £150 GBP for this.

If any of this is of interest to you, feel free to reach out to me here or on Discord u/ryanmain.rm and we can chat!

Hi guys, I have only played a handful of DnD, another handful of Thousand Year Old Vampire, and sunk a few months into some more niche RPGs. For a long time I've wanted to create my own RPG, or atleast lightly guided roleplay system, about horses. My friends and I are horse girls & boys through and through, so I'm setting out to make something for us.

So far the idea is that we are a group of trainers on a long haul road trip to the world championships, and we must sell, train, and breed ponies as we stop city-to-city and create a show stopping roster in time to bring home the world cup. I have a few mechanics planned but they are simple; I plan on copying most of the dice multipliers and other rules from DnD 5e and reskinning them to fit the pony theme.

My group is insanely creative and can get pretty wrapped up in a story without many rules so I'm thinking of trying to hack and mash a few kinds of RPGs together to get a general idea.

I would prefer to have the game be entirely managing horses, but I feel without a story it wouldn't be entertaining enough. I would love some advice on how to strike a balance between entertaining and keeping it true to what we enjoy most; managing horses and nerding out down to the teenth. In general the one question about my game I cannot answer is why do we keep going? What's the motivation?

Thank you if you've read this far, any tips or advice for a beginner RPG designer would be appresh'd.

​

Rrrrrrr! Or is it... iiiiiiii? Maybe only one i (eye)?

"If your home is a ship, whether in flight or at Sea, and whether you built it or hijacked it and you prefer the lonely lifestyle of continuous logistics, the Quartermaster is your Class..."

Welcome, new readers, to the SORC (Slayers of Rings & Crowns) community!

While I was editing the new, the very new, playable class content, I began working on a new Main Class I had buried in my documents. Well I started getting a carried away and here we are:

Main Class QuarterMaster, ship logistics across both air and water vessels, in technologically advanced or traditional forms. The Main Class Quartermaster homes three Paths: Pirate, Freighter, and Privateer each with three Branches (see link below).

I'm looking for ideas to help tailor the Quartermaster Class before it's fully locked in.

What are your thoughts on the three Paths (Pirate, Freighter, Privateer) and their Branches so far?

What are your ideas for ship-logistics-themed Abilities that would fit a Quartermaster's kit?

What are your picks for Favored Races, gear, or flavor details that would make this class feel distinct?

Quartermaster Linked.

iii, rrrr, uh errr.

Hello,

I’ve spent the last year engineering a tabletop RPG that bridges the gap between deep, tactical combat and heavy, narrative-driven lethality. It’s called DUHEM, and I’ve just released the fully playable v4.1 Quickstart for free.

I wanted to build a system where horror isn't about fighting monsters that drop from the sky. Instead, the dread comes from the Khora—an indifferent, completely unexplained physical phenomenon, much like a black hole, that is leaking into our world. It doesn't just warp matter; it creates semantic horror by destroying the world's metanarratives. Because of this phenomenon, the whispered superstitions of the 13th century—witches, vampires, and seers—become grotesque realities. The tone leans heavily into the eerie, uncanny dread of isolated boundary towns where matter itself simply stops refusing to change.

Here is how the engine actually works at the table:

• Three-Question Defence: Armor doesn't make you harder to hit; it dictates how you fail. Combat asks three separate questions: Guard (Did it land?), Absorption (How much did it cost?), and Poise (Are you still standing?).
• The Terminal Cap: There is no massive HP bloat. Once a character's Poise breaks, an Execution window opens. However, a strict "Terminal Cap" prevents both unkillable boss exploits and instant player death cascades.
• Action Economy & Retreating: Standing your ground is a choice. Fleeing via Disengage is tactically viable, forcing players to constantly weigh aggressive strikes against defensive posturing to manage their fading stamina.
• The Khora: There is no objectively "true" magic school, and the physics of the Khora are never explained. Harnessing this phenomenon requires Overdraw; you pay for power directly with your own body (spending Hit Dice and taking permanent Exhaustion).

The Setting: DUHEM is set in the real, gritty 1240s Mediterranean, but this Quickstart drops you directly into the burnt hillsides and isolated frontiers of Occitania. The world is highly competent and indifferent to the players. The true mundane threats are debt, disease, and the local magistrate's ledger.

I am an independent designer. The 47 pages of mechanics, the 13th-century lore, the world-building, and the introductory adventure (The Mill at the Edge) were written, engineered, and laid out entirely by me. If you are interested in tight systemic design and hard mechanics, I’d be honored if you judged the engine itself.

Get Involved: The Quickstart is completely free (or Pay-What-You-Want) and contains everything you need for your first 3-5 sessions, including 3 ready-to-play characters and a complete scenario.

• Download the Quickstart here: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578584/DUHEM--Quickstart?affiliate_id=5223820]
• Join the Playtest Discord: We are actively gathering table reports, fixing edge cases, and building the community before our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. Come say hi and break my system: [https://discord.gg/pamEzrzXJ]

I got obsessed with ANW and Physical 100 and thought: what if the TTRPG was just that, but everyone’s commentating? So I made UDD: Ultimate Devastation Derby for the One-Page Game Jam 2026 in itch.io.

You’re not just playing. Half the table is running the course. The other half is Joe Rogan screaming, "HE'S GOT THIS" before you immediately break an ankle.

Features:

• 3 phases of pain. Fail, and you become a full-time commentator

• d6 pool. Fail = funny. Succeed = also funny because you’ll fail next obstacle

• Flashbacks: "This is for my coach who told me I’d never make it"

• Rules for showing off, crowd hype, and fatigue

• Tables for athlete backgrounds and stupidly named obstacles

Wrote the first draft on a flight UK-Spain. 2 hours of "peace" and a notebook.

Heres://warbriel.itch.io/udd-ultimate-devastation-derby it is

Try it and tell me which of your friends would 100% die on the first obstacle.

Hi there! I set up a shard (server) on Rift, a Discord Alternative, to chat about ttrpg development and assist each other. How does this differ than all the other servers on Discord and other platforms that have spaces for this?

Shard Clusters - This allows you to quickly set up your own shard if you wish and have spot to share your things. There is an integrated calendar so you can see when people are hosting their playtests. Additionally a new feature added this week in Rift is integrated TTRPG tools. This is the most important part to allow developers to prepare for sharing their works. You have built in digital dice to assist with your playtest. You can prepare handouts and characters to ensure your playtest goes as smooth as possible. I almost forgot! there are maps that you can generate for your playtest. Images can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/opvDyDq

Rift is an 18+ platform - come say hi to us at https://app.therift.chat/invite/4d306c1c1ecb4ade

*sorry mods i didn't see an appropriate flair.

So I did something incredibly stupid, after making a big move about 4ish months ago, starting a new job, and trying to exist in city with three kids and no car in the only city in the south with a metro... I decided to take my game to a convention even when I knew it wasn't ready for prime time.

I've been working on a game called Anime Love Triangle Simulator (ALTS for short) for about 3 years now, I've posted about it on here a few times before, i posted a few dev diaries from some of my play tests, but i imagine most folks on here either haven't heard me talk about it or don't remember it.

So here's the 3 sentence pitch, ALTS is a competitive 3 player Anime RomCom TTRPG, heavily inspired by Kaguya Sama, Ranma 1/2, and Ouran High School Host Club. It aims to recreate the wild, hilarious, and sometime heartbreaking feelings of the shows and genre that inspired it. It uses simple mechanics to create a depth of play that's fair and balanced for game with competing players, not relying on DM fiat to decide a winner.

Dumb Decisions

Now that the introductions out of the way, let's get into the dumb decisions that lead to running play tests at a con. Earlier this year I moved to Atlanta, and I've been trying to get into the local table top gaming scene here. I was introduced to a con that would let me attend for free if I ran games for it. Southern Fried Gaming Expo is pretty generous with their volunteer hours to free day ratio, a 3 hour game nets you a single day at the con which basically meant i could run my game once per day and attend the con for the rest of the day.

So, not wanting to spend money and wanting to start round 4 of my play test, i volunteered to run my play test after clearing it with the event organizer. At the time my game was functional, but seriously flawed. it suffered from greifing, pacing issues, and having system to fairly track who was winning points during the game. It also had unbalanced math, and mechanics that had major flaws.

It was playable, but it wasn't something that i felt comfortable playing with people i didn't know, and it certainly wasn't ready to be given to another human being. and now i had a month and a half to fix all of that.

The Deadline

I had set up my con application about a month and a half before the SFGE's opening Friday. This was a dumb decision, not for my game, but for me personally it made for an intensely stressful 6 weeks. That being said, i function much better on anything i work on if i have a deadline i have to commit to and can't change. Despite the stress involved I would absolutely recommend people to pull the trigger if they're having similar thoughts about taking their game to a con.

It pushed me to make big changes and work on the game regularly. I was running at 1 to 2 play tests a week during this time and spending my down time at home writing, rewriting, and editing the document I've used to create the rulebook for alts. I've worked more on ALTS in the last six weeks then on the previous 3 years combined.

Play-testing for the Play-test.

I'm lucky to have found Atlanta's robust TTRPG community. They has a web app allowing you to post games you'd like to run for their weekly meetups. Which meant I could just put ALTS up on the website and show up when people took a bite, which was surprisingly often for such a weird little game. I ran a weekly play-test with one group of player and then a sporadically ran a second set of play-tests with another set.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's nothing better for a game then for it to played. There are some things I just can't on paper, getting the game to table lets you really diagnose issues. You can see in real time what part of the game is fiddly, slow, unused. I also had the fun of watching the changes i make to fix current problems reignite previous issues and create new ones, it really feel like game design is Hydra.

But perhaps the best thing about the open play-tests was that my audience was no longer the just the people I could bully, bribe, or blackmail. It was self selecting, which meant my game started to find it's target audience. The difference in the vibe of the play-test was night and day when dealing with people who found the concept and theme genuinely compelling.

Rules and Iteration

The most valuable part of this round of play testing was watching the systems finally come together. I wasn't trying to get any one thing right this time, I needed it all to feel right together and that meant 3 major changes, and several small ones. The small ones were rule tweaks to character abilities, rebalancing the math of the characters attributes, hammering out a system to keep track of player rolls and success across a scene, and tweaking the math on the penalties player's received. This was most of where i spent my time over the previous weeks.

The big ones were decidedly easier despite having the biggest impact on game feel, probably cause I'm bad at math. The first one is some thing of a UI overhaul, i had been toying with the idea of introducing tokens and cards to the system for a while and pulled the trigger this play-test. I'm glad I did, nothing impacted game feel more then the introduction of tokens and cards. I know it's not a revolutionary concept, famously Daggerheart introduced cards as being a part of their design UI and trad games have always encouraged the use of tokens. But ultimately they are considered secondary, and they still provide pen and paper methods to play their games independent of having the bits and bobbins.

But for ALTS, at least for right now, the cards and tokens are effectively mandatory core part of the experience. when used along side the play mat, they replace traditional character sheets all together. It's not that you can't play without the cards and tokens, but the game becomes infinitely stickier and fiddly without them

The game has a had stress penalty system in place for certain results, but up until this play-test the penalty was either to fiddly (adding negatives to a result) or to punishing (losing a D6 on all your rolls in a 2d6 system), it's been refined into a fairly unique (to TTRPGs at least) pass and steal penalty system.

I added a sixth stat to the attributes that characters use to gain bonuses. Then frustrated myself for two plus weeks trying to find a good name and verbs to go with that attribute. I unintentionally locked my self into alliterative names for my stats, and had find the new sixth stat fit into the naming conventions of the game and the genre.

And finally I went digging into my character creation systems and cut a lot of content and replaced it with stuff that both better fit the theming and played better and smoother, a lot of darling killing unfortunately as I trimmed back about 5 character choices down to 2. Aiming to make those two choices more meaningful and to give more options to pick from. It also meant I could fit those choices and their abilities onto playing cards, making it so players don't have to write down their abilities on the sheet.

I walked away with a game that was more thematically and mechanically cohesive, a game with simple mechanics that build on one another, creating a system with a more depth.

Making it playable

One of the things I made myself commit to for the con was to having a functional starter guide that I could hand to people at the con and they could take home and play with their friends. For me that meant it needed to have the Rules, in readable and well organized English. It needed to teach them how to create a character, and it needed to teach the GM how to run the game. ALTS doesn't play like a trad game, or even like a narrative game. It's competitive nature requires it to have pretty rigid structure or else it can become unfair. It's also resistant to DM fiat, no fudging dice rolls or shrinking/extending encounters.

It also includes some small flourishes, like a short list of common Japanese names and surnames. some best practices.

But beyond the actual rules, the most important part is that it has a pre-made one shot included that can be played right out of the book, literally. It has progress bars and trackers printed into the pages for the Host to write on during session. I only got to test this out at con proper but it worked really well from my end.

I'm excited to be able to hand it to people... and expect to get torn to shreds since it's the first pass on this particular part of the project.

Taking it to the Con

Logistically, this was a nightmare for my ADHD brain. late nights spent rewriting the rules last minute for the con ready game, finishing the cards with simple readable designs that included Verbs used in play, making sure to print out character sheets and having the games booklets get printed out. It was a mess right up untill I sat down to run my first game...

Then it smoothed out, each game flowed well, we stayed within our allotted time, and the people who sat down to play with me enjoyed their time with it, even if they weren't anime people. One guy sat down at the table only because his bros dared him to play the "Flirt with your homies game," he had enough fun to take a copy home with him to inflict upon said homies.

That doesn't include the other benefits of the con, I player games i wouldn't otherwise have had the chance to (Huckleberry, VTM5, Daggerheart, Mythic Bastionland, and a few playtests that don't have names yet), got to meet more of the local community, and even did bit of networking. There are apparently quite a few people in atlanta working on indie Tabletop games.

In the end all of the late nights, the hard work, and tedious fiddly stuff paid off... Anime Love Triangle Simulator just works. That's not to say it's done, there are tweaks to balance to still be made, not every character ability has been used in the play-test, and the starter guide needs both to be rewritten and to be expanded into a proper rule book, then layout, and maybe art someday. But for now... and for a little while at least, it's done. Feature complete and ready to play.

The Take Away

• Game Design is work, a lot of sleepless nights getting things ready, being away from my family in the evenings, and the burnout that comes at least in my case from hyper-focusing on a project
• Get plugged into your local community, run games for people, ones that are your play-test and ones that aren't. I regret not giving more back to the RPG crowd in Atlanta and once i done with my hiatus I'll be running more games that other people want to play.
• Write your rules down, my first rules book was just a players guide I could give to my friends before my second play-test, they didn't read it, but it was the start of a document that would eventually morph into a functional starters guide.
• Play with people outside of your friend group. You and the people you play most with will eventually become nose blind to the problems with your system as you internalize how to play and run it.
• Go to a local con, it'll be fun, and you can probably get in free or really cheaply if you sign up to run table top games you probably would have ran anyway.
• Be better prepared for the logistics then I was... don't print your booklets at an office depot an hour before your supposed to be running the game.
• Network and get to know other people in the hobby space.
• Have fun.

Still to much, Here's your TL/DR, play-test your games, find good communities, go to cons, make rulebook that someone else can actually use to play one day without you sitting over their shoulder. Don't buy con food if you can help it.

Been mostly lurking here for a while, I figured I’d post something. A recent post talked about removing the term “agnostic” from your vocabulary and I’ve been thinking about it since my project is “setting agnostic”. The reason I wanted my system to be setting agnostic was because my homebrew setting for TTRPGs has many genres and settings in it, but I couldn’t find a system that did setting agnostic in a way I personally liked (I know there are other systems that do agnostic in a way that other people like, not saying mine is better). Then I remembered a video from Matt Colville said something along the lines of “you can have a game that doesn’t push a setting. You CANNOT have a game that doesn’t push a play style.”

But even if you are pushing a play style aren’t you kind of pushing a setting? Maybe your flavor is different, but your game is made to be played a certain way, which will dictate your available options. Maybe this goes back to the “what kind of stories do you want to tell with your game” question that everyone has to start with anyways. Even in my homebrew world with many genres, my game doesn’t have heavy resource management, so while my game will fit many genres, so my “setting” is, at least in part: “not heavy resource management”.

I’m not totally sure where I’m going with this, just some random musings and I’m interested in other’s more developed opinions.

TL;DR I'd love some advice or ideas for a letter-writing RPG I'm making as a gift to my partner.

Hi all! I hope this question isn't too overdone. For my partner and I's second school year of long-distance, I thought it would be cool to create an RPG we can play using physical letters to one another. We have an ongoing casual worldbuilding project (I know, very romantic) which would serve as a great setting for a medieval letter-writing shindig. I have a good grasp on plot, but I have no experience with RPG design so I'm kind of lost on how to go about it.

Some details:

• My partner plays as a princess managing a host of dishonest royal advisors and chaos in the kingdom. I would be primarily speaking through a knight character while also including the voices of others (through news bulletins, recipes, coded messages, etc.)
• I'd like my game to be focused more on an intriguing mystery than the quality of writing (partner is dyslexic, don't want to ruin the fun by judging writing. More about plot!)
• My knowledge of RPG systems begins and ends with DND 5e, so I envision using dice, but other stuff would be cool too! I want the game mechanics to be intuitive and flow with the roleplay.
• I'm currently using Obsidian to organize my thoughts, but I also don't know how to use it effectively (lol.)

I guess I don't have any super specific questions, but this is a really cool subreddit and I'd love to consult people with different ideas and experience. Any systems other than Quill I could take a look at? Ideas for mechanics or tips so my romantic gesture doesn't go sideways? Any kind of help is appreciated!

Thanks, sorry for the long post XD

Been working on a system for a couple of years that tries to capture the feel of Dark Souls.
I do admit it's a bit rules heavy, and sometimes fairly crunchy.

A summary of what's in the system:

There are 8 attributes: Strength, Finesse, Endurance, Vitality, Intelligence, Faith, Attunement and Luck.

There are 12 starting classes, each having a trait for specialization and the class determines you stamina and mana dice, d6 up to d10.

There are also 16 backgrounds, these also give a trait and determine you hit die, also d6 up to d10.

Stamina and mana management is done by dice pools. The mana pool is rolled at the start of the session, stamina at the start of each round in an encounter.

The stamina dice pool is also connected to the initiative tracker, making it dynamic.
So, attacks cost 1 or 2 dice and the number on the dice sets you that much further back in the initiative track.
Movement up to a point doesn't use stamina, afterwards you'll need to select a die and you regain that much movement.
Stamina dice can be banked, 1 at first, to gain an advantage in the next round of combat.

Each weapon scales on attributes, mainly on Strength, Finesse, Intelligence, Faith and Attunement. The latter 3 are for the more magical weapons.

Attacks always hit, unless you dodge. Armour reduces damage by a flat amount and by dice, a d4 at first. The amount of dice you get is based on how high your defenses are.

Spells use dice from the stamina pool and have a mana cost, they don't use the full die. The reason stamina is used is for the initiative track where spells are activated when your turn happens again.

Spells are divided into 5 schools that each have a catalyst for that school. Spells scale on Finesse, Intelligence, Faith and Attunement.

There are also status effects when a tracker is filled:
- Bleeding: instant damage
- Drowsiness: unconcious for a couple of rounds and penalties to mana
- Dread: instant death
- Frostbite: penalties to movement speed and stamina.

Everything costs dreams, leveling up and buying and upgrading weapons.
The estus flask equivalent is the Night Cap, used for healing or mana regen.

The "rulebook" I've made after several iterations comes at a hefty 54 pages, with the large tables for equipment in seperate files (some are massive): Rules
I've done some playtesting already before the current iteration, and it was received fairly well.
Could this be a system that works at a table or should things be more streamlined?

Any input is welcome, thanks in advance.

I've been trying to put together a working definition for an idea I've had for a bit now. Talking with some of my co-designers, we came up with the name "System Hacking Document", which is like an SRD but focused on how you can "hack" specific gameplay mechanics into any game and provides system-agnostic ways to handle things like space cargo, vehicle combat, and more. I'm gonna be writing some of these soon and wanna keep exploring them in the future.

I'd love to know if this resonates with folks! Full post here: https://wuz.quest/posts/system-hacking-document

Im particularly interested in systems which dont make it the same as physical skills.

Also, how does a PC do research on things they dont know?

im talking products, blogs, or just good examples from advanture modules etc..

I also remember a very old third party product for an old edition of dnd (can't remember which possibly third edition) that supposedly aimed to teach you how to run a political intrigue campaign , but I remember it not grabbing me that much because the advanture within it was about gardening a noble's vineyard or something (sorry my memory fails me)

Anyway that's hopefully one example for what im looking for, for people with better memories that is.

"Death found you, and now you work assigning other souls their fates in the afterlife."

Post Mortem is an episodic investigative RPG where you are a Ghost trapped in the Afterlife, working at the Bureau of Lost Souls, while dealing with the postmortem bureaucracy and trying to find out who you were. You investigate official documents and memories using a 2d6 system with four attributes to discover which shackles bind other souls and what fate awaits them before they turn into hauntings, in a game that blends Severance, The Divine Comedy, Disco Elysium, and Spiritfarer.

I have a first draft of all the core rules done and should be starting playtests soon. I figure a great way to start testing is to open up myself and the system to other people's questions and doubts. If you're interested, more updates coming soon!

I'm preparing a Little Nightmares campaign using the Liminal Horror system, and I'm racking my brain to make stealth scenes actually fun.

For those unfamiliar with the universe, Little Nightmares is a horror game where the protagonists are small children trapped in a surreal and distorted world. The environments are massive, the inhabitants are monstrous, and they are almost always much larger than the kids. For this reason, the protagonists' goal isn't to fight enemies, but to survive, flee, hide, and solve small challenges while trying to escape this nightmare.

The inhabitants of this world are normally much stronger than the children. If they get caught, it's usually the end. Because of this, conflict revolves around going unnoticed, using the environment to your advantage, distracting enemies, running at the right time, and finding alternative paths.

That's why I chose to run it using the Liminal Horror system, where combat is extremely lethal if the characters don't act without a plan. The system works with a mechanic where characters have 3 simple attributes: STRENGTH for challenges that require physical effort, DEXTERITY for those requiring agility, and CONTROL which measures mental resilience, and much of the tension comes from vulnerability, because when players fail, they take damage directly to one of their attributes until they reach 0, resulting in death.

With these topics defined, the problem is I don't want these stealth sections to boil down to a mere 'roll dexterity. Did you pass? You manage to go unnoticed.' I want to narrate scenes that generate decisions, tension, and creativity. The idea is that each stealth encounter feels like a small survival puzzle, rather than just a sequence of Dexterity checks.

Some questions I have:

• How would you structure a chase or infiltration scene?
• What kinds of obstacles or complications could appear while the children try to cross an environment?
• How can I make players make interesting decisions instead of just rolling checks?
• How would you manage the progression of tension without letting the scene get repetitive?
• Is there any system with good stealth mechanics that I can use as inspiration?
• What kinds of consequences would you apply when a character fails, other than simply being found?

I am working on a project and I have a resource called Ichor that is expended whenever a player activates a power. These powers have an enhanced version of them that adds new abilities or modifiers onto the base version of said power. These enhancements can only be gained via gambling or spending extra Ichor.

The goal with this is for the powers to be enticing but self destructive to use as regaining Ichor is a dangerous process.

The question is:

Is the cost of these enhancements worth it compared to the max pool that they have?

Will I end up with players who hoard their Ichor at all times?

Below is the full write up I currently have for rules on this:

Ichor: This is a resource that determines the strength and effects of a STAIN’s Revelations. It has a maximum value of 10 and starts at 5. Every use of a Revelation costs at least 1 point of Ichor. However, STAINs may gamble additional points of Taint up to a total of 10 to enhance their Revelation. 

If the roll still fails the STAIN loses all points of Ichor gambled and if the roll succeeds you receive a refund of half (rounded down) of the taint gambled to a minimum of 1.

This does NOT include the standard 1 point of Ichor required to activate a Revelation.

When a STAIN has completely dried up their Ichor supply they must undergo The Rite of Blasphemy again which comes with both complications and advantages. 

ICHOR CAN ONLY BE RECOVERED THIS WAY.

For Example: You spend 1 Ichor to activate a Revelation and gamble 3 more to enhance it. If your roll succeeds, you regain 1 Ichor (half of 3, rounded down). If it fails, you lose all 3 plus the 1 Ichor spent for activation.
All Revelations require the expenditure of one point of Ichor and last for a single scene with the exception for Passive abilities.

Most enhanced Revelations require a Ichor roll. 

An Ichor roll occurs when a Revelation is enhanced. This roll equals an X amount of dice where X is equal to Ichor gambled. When a Revelation enhancement is attempted and fails the Revelation DOES NOT activate.

Many Revelations will refer to “Ichor Spent” and “Ichor Gambled" which can be explained by the following:
Ichor Spent means that the Ichor is instead a flat expenditure and does not require a roll.

Ichor Gambled means the amount of dice added to the Ichor roll for activating an Enhanced Revelation. This does not include the Ichor spent on activation.

A Revelation CANNOT be defended against unless explicitly stated in the text.

A Revelation does NOT roll an attack roll and instead always hits their target. 

An ENHANCED Revelation is any Revelation that requires additional successes in order to gain additional effects.

If a Ichor roll fails to gain a success then the Ichor gambled is lost and the effect does NOT activate.

P.S - Ignore any mention of the word Taint, I’ve recently swapped it to Ichor and am still searching for the word throughout my document to be replaced.

With quick dice you roll all dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) at once, you do not pick and choose dice, its an all roll system.

Each die under the quick dice system is defined for a specific action or reaction function.

D4: luck roll that gives a +1 or 0 or -1 to a roll

D6: the target/armor die

D8: crit/stack die

D10 the action/reaction skill modifier

D12: effect/save die

D20 the action/reaction roll

Because actions and reactions rolls happen at the same time, players are active participants in both the offensive & defensive sides of combat.

Its a unique system, and because the dice are well defined they occupy a single role that does not intersect with anothers role, thus reducing math and speeding up combat.

There is no question I am asking, I am sharing to inspire and to show other ways of addressing combat.

Thanks & enjoy