Dragon Daughter

Lessons Learned Writing a TTRPG

I mentioned in "Oops"  that I've been working on writing a tabletop rpg (ttrpg). This is what I have learned.


1. the internet is messy

As you might expect from any personal experience trying to find guidance on writing anything, advice for writing a ttrpg is fuzzy. It can be contradictory, vague, and discouraging. Fortunately I got a good ways into writing my ttrpg before I started looking for guidance and I know what I'm trying to achieve.


2. don't ask forums for advice without a highly specific question

People are bad at answering questions. Some people don't seem to understand how questions work. It's very common to find a reddit thread or a forum thread where most of the comments are advice (or unhelpfully judgemental) instead of answers. This is worse when the poster asks multiple questions or a poorly defined question.

Admittedly, part of my day job is about writing specific questions, but in order to get the answer you want, you have to write the right question, and then throw away at least half the replies.


3. people are peculiar

Turns out, there are in fact people who want to write their own ttrpg just for the sake of it. People who don't have a genre, mechanics, or really any idea of what the game is before they start. I find this baffling. It's like saying "I want to write a book" with no ideas beyond thinking publishing a book would be cool. Like, no genre, no characters, no seed at all. Very odd.

Other people play one rpg and then try to write a new one for a different kind of game without researching whether there is a game that already does that. This makes sense if you have a specific idea in mind about how you want the game to work. But if you're just working off of "I want to play scifi mercenaries like in Aliens" or "I want to play D&D but in space", it's a lot of work to come up with something broken, when there are systems that can fill that need.


4. trying to find logic holes or predict confusion is work

I've been back over the text I have so far a couple of times trying to simplify the language and make the rules as readable as possible. This includes a larger font size than I would normally use for myself, short sentences with active verbs, addressing players instead abstract phrasing, and short paragraphs with clean breaks between.

Periodically, I will suddenly realise a small detail I haven't explained yet, or remember something a player might ask to do that should be addressed. This includes explicitly stating that "you can do both x and y on your turn" or "equipment has no affect on your roll, it's just useful to know what you hero has on them". Things you forgot to say because you thought they were obvious.

It's also very important to use consistent terminology. Not just calling something by the same name, but specific phrasing. My ttrpg never says "control points", it always refers to the control pool; like "add points to your control pool" or "spend a point from your control pool". This provides total clarity - you're not left guessing whether aa and ab are the same thing - and helps to reinforce ideas.

On top of that are layout considerations. What is the best place to put a particular piece of information? Where do I think someone will look for it? I've tried to avoid repeating information, because that creates opportunities for contradiction. I also think I've done fairly well at choosing what order information goes in.


5. exceptions = complexity

My goal with Heroes LIVE! is for the system to be simple to run. The control pool mechanic is a bit involved, but it's the most involved part of the system. Everything else is simpler.

The key to simplicity is consistency, or minimal exceptions. The dice rolls work one way regardless of what you are rolling for. There are very few rules which change how you use and read the dice - and you only use one type of dice, just lots of them.

Talking to My Darling and reading comments on other games, it seems like some people conflate customisation with exceptions. Having too many different mechanics or calculations makes a game harder to run at the table. You don't want to spend time at the table flicking through a rule book trying to find that one page. You want to spend time playing.


6. art and layout matter

Illustrating chapter headings and adding a cover using AI generated art drastically changed the way my rpg group views the document. Suddenly it's exciting. Suddenly it looks professional (if minimalist).

I've challenged My Darling to draw some line art that I can put at the start of each chapter. I might look into replacing the cover with something more accurate to the themes and tone of the game - although I would probably have to commission it. Which I know is deserved, but I'm hesitant to invest any money into something I'm planning to distribute free. Similarly I should look for an editor, at least a copy editor, but I'm not sure if I can recruit one willing to work for free on a passion project, or whether one willing to do that would do a good job.


7. I am awesome

I forget this often. I feel like I'm being silly or a nuisance. I feel like my sister and My Darling are humouring me. But my sister has set up a channel on her Discord server for this game and sounded to excited when she was explaining it to the rest our group last Thursday. She has also passed the live draft to a friend of her who is a fan of superhero games to try and get some feedback from him.

I don't expect Heroes LIVE! will end up with any real level of circulation. I'm not writing it with the intention of making any money from it. I just think that if I'm going to write a ttrpg, I should write a whole ttrpg; and if I write a whole ttrpg, I should put it on the internet somewhere so it's available to anyone who might enjoy it.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
entry 5 of 10 for The Bard's Hall Contest  June 2022