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[Naturegirl1999]

I have the basics of an idea for a magic system. I might run a dungeon delve RTD with it.

Wizards have three resource pools they cast from. They can design any spell they want at the time of casting, using as many or as few points as desired. Every point used as a 50% chance to be depleted until the end of the floor, or a 50% chance to be refunded and remain usable.

The mana resource pools are Power, Control/Targeting, and Effect/Duration.

Power adds another damage roll to the spell, or makes other effects stronger. It also makes the spell harder to aim. I'm considering adding half a damage die to every spell, allowing players to spam Power 0 attack cantrips.

Control/Targeting affects spells relative to Power. If they're equal, a direct attack spell always hits, explosions can be somewhat controlled unless the party is scattered in with a group of enemies, summons will be stable and safe, and buffs/heals won't have unintended side-effects. Higher Control/Targeting might allow trick shots that bounce between targets to duplicate the damage, strangely-shaped explosions that won't hit friendlies, smarter minions, or buffs that have charges instead of a duration.

Effect/Duration can be used to add interesting effects to spells, or make them last longer. Napalm that damages a target or area over time, enchanting a sword, a temporary bridge, or being able to share senses with a minion.

I think I'd want summons and buffs to be allowed with Effect/Duration 0, but they'll only last for 1 turn. This might allow amusing combos like everyone channeling 0/0/0 spells to an ally who's going to cast chain lightning, duplicating the damage.
I don't know how long I'd like various duration to last for. Maybe 1 battle/2 battles/4 battles/until dispelled or end of floor, at 4 Effect/Duration points spent?
I don't like the names for the last two, any suggestions to improve them?

If I run this, I think I'd start wizards with 6 points and combat/caster hybrids with 3, all spread however the player chooses. Players would pick a class, use that to flavor their effects, and likely get penalized if they try weird things like casting a giant heal spell from pyromancy.
At the end of a floor, wizards get +1, with the option to immediately respec 2 points for free. Hybrids get +1 every second floor, with 1 free respec every floor.

I expect the system to give interesting choices like casting light/medium spells every battle, saving everything for the boss at the risk of not getting to re-use refunded mana, or starting the floor with long duration buffs and summons.

If you make this, I’d love to play.

Ditto

[Funk]

So i'm thinking of doing a Chapter Master Urist again, in short it's you are a space marine chapter master.
And we have space fantasy kitchen sink throw at the plot.

You're by the SG a Space Marine Chapter Master, head of a warhammer 40k space marine chapter an by the kitchen sink of SF, have hit a blender.
Yoda and Pilot argue, Han Solo and Jenna Stannis run the spice routes, Ka D'Argo arm wrestles Wolf...
Amd the the madness ypuare a lost 40k  Chapter Master.

[ConscriptFive]

So i'm thinking of doing a Chapter Master Urist again, in short it's you are a space marine chapter master.
And we have space fantasy kitchen sink throw at the plot.

You're by the SG a Space Marine Chapter Master, head of a warhammer 40k space marine chapter an by the kitchen sink of SF, have hit a blender.
Yoda and Pilot argue, Han Solo and Jenna Stannis run the spice routes, Ka D'Argo arm wrestles Wolf...
Amd the the madness ypuare a lost 40k  Chapter Master.

Did you have a stroke?

[Man of Paper]

I think I can translate:
An everything scifi fanfic with a focus on 40k space marines

Should still probably head to a doctor though, fam.

[Funk]

I think I can translate:
An everything scifi fanfic with a focus on 40k space marines

Should still probably head to a doctor though, fam.

Well bar the things i haven't got thou yet!
Star gates still on episode 3... and don't get me started on babylon 5, that's not been touched... yet...

No i have ideas! Mad under-spellczech ideas.!! 
(AKA pissed idea's)

What you want  a spellchecker? well that's getting ignored, red lines get one click after there once thou.

Really I'm dyslexia with spelling so its not going to be that great a level of accuracy.

But with the space fantasy kitchen sink thrown at the plot so level of accuracy are in the gutter, were not dealing with the how can the Millennium Falcon fight X but the fun of getting thing.

[Magmacube_tr]

The competitive evolution game. But harsher and harder.

[a1s]

I'd like to do a Risky Ventures type game, set in space and involving procedural exploration of space, as new tech allows further journeys. But I'm afraid it might be too much for players (and for the GM...) What are your thoughts?

Risky Ventures: Final Frontier

a.k.a. Risky Ventures In Space

For generations space exploration had been the prerogative of big national agencies. The Outer Space Treaty explicitly prohibits any nation from claiming a piece of space, however it does not deny such rights to private citizens. Welcome to the private sector, astronauts!


This games is based loosely on Kashyyk's Risky Ventures and evictedSaint's Interstellar Mercantilism but different from both of them.
A short summary of the rules:
Anyone can join. You will possess 500 credits (^).
You may bid on ships and enterprises.
Ships can be sent on journeys to a location of choice. They may do one or more missions there and conduct trade.
Ships may experience disasters of various severity during a voyage.
Resources can be bought and sold at the market. Prices fluctuate.
New locations and other actions will be unlocked as the game progresses.

I will (try to) update the thread regularly with news of returning ships, changing market prices, and other events. Each update corresponds to a year of in-game time.

Anyone may join at any time. Players are expected to keep track of their own resources, as follows:

NUKLEAR SHIPPING AND SONS INC(TM)
Assets:
^500
small warehouse (0/10)
Expertise: Navigation

NUKLEAR SHIPPING AND SONS INC(TM)
Assets:
^321
2 shares of the ship "Number one"
1 share of the Shipyard "getcher ships here"
2 units of helium-3
small warehouse (2/10)
Favor with UN: 1
Expertise: Manufacturing

Rules

Lazy Fair
I expect everyone to keep track of their own assets. That includes posting your Company Details at least once per turn (think of it as an annual report to the shareholders.)
Bounties may be given out to people who find a lot of errors in other people's assets calculations. Demerits may be given to particularly careless (or malicious) players.

Actions
Anything you do to the game-state (such as buying or selling on the market, accepting missions, bidding in auctions, etc.) must be prefaced by the string "ACTACTACT" or it doesn't happen.
Things that don't change it (such as negotiating, signing player-to-player contracts, and general shit posting) should not have the words actactact (even in lower case.)

Joining the Game
We are still open to new sign ups. When you join, you will start with 500 credits, an area of expertise and a small warehouse. You can use the following format for your company details:

Code: (Company Details) [Select]

[spoiler=<Company Name>]
Funds: ^500
Expertise: Extraction
[/spoiler]
Expertise
All companies have one thing they are better at, such as:

• Extraction: amount of goods extracted is increased by 10%  (rounded to the nearest integer)
• Investing: Any leftover credits bring in a 1% interest per turn (rounded to the nearest integer)
• Navigation: reduce the probability of a disaster during flight by 50%
• Manufacturing: ship production costs are reduced by 10% (rounded to the nearest integer)
• Research: research costs are reduced by 25%  (rounded to the nearest integer)
• Something else: pitch it to me and I will try to add it in a balanced way

Making Money
To start your journey towards owning a solid gold mansion, you need to find a revenue stream. The most traditional is to own one or more shares in a ship, which flies off into space and either completes missions or delivers cargo to Earth. You can also own shares in productive enterprises or offer financial services, such as loans and insurance.

Buying a Ship
At the beginning of the game, ships can be bough at auction. Players owning shipyards may also produce ships for sale or personal use.

Favours
Every time you do something for the benefit of the planet rather than yourself (such as sponsoring exploration, donating to the treasury and populace, etc) you will gain Favour. This is a very free form currency, that you can use to get the UN to do stuff for you. If you've got an idea for it, make the suggestion and see what the UN says.

Bankruptcy
Players may go bankrupt in two different ways.
Voluntary:  A player either no longer wishes to play or is aware of their impending involuntary bankruptcy, and declares their only action that turn as "I declare bankruptcy".
Involuntary:  Either a player owes a debt they cannot pay to the Home Market (the GM), owes a debt they cannot pay to another player and cannot reconcile their agreement, or has gone afk for more than 3 turns.

In the event of a player going Bankrupt, all of their remaining assets are seized and Auctioned off to the remaining players the following turn (see: Auctions).  The funds generated from the Auction are then used to pay off as much of their remaining debt as possible, divided equally among any and all debtors and paying out to a maximum of the amount owed to each.

Kingmaking
"Kingmaking" is the process by which a losing player throws their support to another player, thus giving them an advantage over their opponents.  Players attempting to "give away" their assets before declaring Bankruptcy in order to avoid paying their debts will be caught by the Securities and Exchange Commission, have those transactions rendered null, and go through standard Bankruptcy and Auction normally.  There's no hard-and-fast rule for triggering the Kingmaking rule: it's obvious when Kingmaking is happening, so I’ll be quite unhappy if you give me more work to do.

Auctions
In order to participate in an Auction, players will post the AMOUNT they are willing to purchase and the PRICE they will pay per each unit.  The HIGHEST PRICE posted in an unedited post will receive first pass at the available shares, followed by the NEXT HIGHEST and so on.  EDITED POSTS are INVALID for posting bids.  In the event of two equally priced bids, priority will go to whoever posted the bid earlier.  Players may only ever have 1 active bid on a specific auction item at a time, which will always be their highest priced bid – with secondary priority on the share amount. Players may have multiple bids on different items at once.

Missions
Missions are exactly what it says on the tin: tasks you can do to earn some credits. Usually this will require you to deliver cargo/people to places. Missions operate like reverse auctions- whoever offers to do the mission for the least money will get the job. Be aware that some missions are time sensitive or involve unique cargo- failing them may incur a penalty (stated in the mission brief.)

Contracts
Players may enter into contracts with one another.  These contracts may stipulate shares of a ship, executive powers, transfer of credits, or anything else players are capable of conceiving.  Players are trusted to honor contracts between themselves, but should the need arise the GM may be asked to arbitrate and enforce contractual obligations.

In order for a contract to be valid (from a GM’s perspective), it must have:

• A unique title.
• Some action or agreement.
• The signature of all parties involved.

Ships stats
Ships have:

• Upkeep: the sum of money that must be paid each turn to keep the ship running, even if it's chilling on Earth.
• Tonnage: the weight of the ship. This is informational, for the next stat,
• Fuel use by destination: ships expend varying amounts of fuel per ton to reach destinations in the solar system. This is expressed in credits and includes cargo tonnage + ship tonnage.
• Flight time by destination: This is expressed in turns (years).
• Max. Fuel: the maximum amount of fuel you can put in a ship (effectively cargo capacity)
• Max. Life support: how many crew/passengers a ship can carry

Ship Building
Ships are built in Shipyards. Each shipyard has a maximum tonnage of ships it can build. Shipyards cost ^100*tonnage to construct and ^100*new tonnage - 90*old tonnage to upgrade (in other words you need to pay the difference plus an additional ^10 per old tonnage).
Ships cost a combination of goods (raw materials) and credits (salaries) to build. You can only build ships if you have the blueprints for them, which leads us to:

Ship Research
Ship research is carried out in the following way:
Players either choose to create a new design or refine an old one.
When creating a new design set a budget and pick 3 traits to focus on :
Either variable :

• Upkeep: grows with ship complexity, but can be lowered.
• Tonnage: grows with ship complexity but can be lowered.
• Fuel Efficiency: how much fuel per ton it takes to reach a destination.
• Fuel Capacity: how much fuel a ship can carry
• Life support: how many people a ship can carry
• Safety: reduces the probability of a disaster. Hidden, but can be improved.
• Speed: reduces the amount of time the flight takes (note: flights take a whole number of turns and can’t be faster than 1 turn)
• Production Cost: reduces the (fixed) amount of credits it takes to build a ship
• Production Materials (specify): either reduces the amount of exotic good needed (possibly to zero) or increases the amount of  specific good (reducing the need for more exotic ones)

Or special (always succeed, but might increase upkeep/tonnage):

• Single use: reduces tonnage at the expense of always being destroyed at the end of a flight
• Exploratory: can scan other planets to know what can be mined there
• Other: Want your ship to be e.g. habitable by crabs? Ask the GM!

When upgrading an old design, pick 1 trait to improve (or add in case of specials) the budget increases as a fibonacci sequence (you know, 1x initial budget, 2x initial budget, 3x initial budget, 5x initial budget, and so on.) This means generally diminishing returns, however other traits will not get worse, so there’s that.

[BlackPaladin99]

The competitive evolution game. But harsher and harder.

With magic.

[Iris]

Since my suggestion game isn't moving quickly enough to occupy all my time, I've been thinking of additional creative projects to focus on. Unfortunately, I've been having trouble focusing on a single one or refining them past the "It would be cool if..." stage. I'm putting them here to figure out which one to do and refine mechanics, or, failing either of those, inspire someone else when I inevitably decide none of them are worth pursuing.

The first would be centred around a system for building spaceships. I'm not sure of the specific system yet, or what the ships would be used for - although it would probably end up as a space combat game, I'm open to considering different ideas. At first, I thought of adapting the Battleships Lite or Battleships IN SPACE rules for the task, but later I also started looking at the rules in GURPS Spaceships and the ship creation rules of 2300 AD's Star Cruiser.

The second idea is much more tentative, if such a thing is possible. I've been thinking of a game (or, perhaps, a story) set in an original High Middle Ages-inspired setting with very strictly-controlled magic and a focus on grand works. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to worldbuild very effectively and the setting fails to be compelling, and I am unsure what kind of game to run.

[RoseHeart]

I don't usually play forum games and just host them. My question is for those that lean far more towards making than playing, what games will you actually make an effort to play?

[MeimieFan88]

I don't usually play forum games and just host them. My question is for those that lean far more towards making than playing, what games will you actually make an effort to play?

I'm more of a maker/host myself too (or at least have been) but I'm almost always up to play RTD-esque games that don't require too much reading of rules. I also like guessing games like Who Am I. Some games like suggestion games I would be into but require a lot of pre-reading to do, which makes it hard to jump into especially if they have been ongoing for a while. If there were suggestion games where you could just jump in without needing to know what was going on, I'd definitely be interested. So yeah basically I like a lot of things but stuff where you need to backread a lot or have a ton of rules are hard to get into.

[RoseHeart]

I don't usually play forum games and just host them. My question is for those that lean far more towards making than playing, what games will you actually make an effort to play?

I'm more of a maker/host myself too (or at least have been) but I'm almost always up to play RTD-esque games that don't require too much reading of rules. I also like guessing games like Who Am I. Some games like suggestion games I would be into but require a lot of pre-reading to do, which makes it hard to jump into especially if they have been ongoing for a while. If there were suggestion games where you could just jump in without needing to know what was going on, I'd definitely be interested. So yeah basically I like a lot of things but stuff where you need to backread a lot or have a ton of rules are hard to get into.

Note to self: Notify new players of Gladiator Manager that you don't need to read the story at all to hop in and fight.

For me, games I had to play were often things simple, they have to be for me as I need to understand how things work to enjoy them, at least on a basic level. If the GM has a 'magic formula' that happens behind the scene for odds I don't mind. But I guess other than that, I am just a pollen collector, trying this or that, once I got a solid grasp on it I would rather host something using what I learned (and apply other things I liked to it) than find more of the same.

[MeimieFan88]

Yeah tbh backreading is the biggest deterrent for me, I don't want to have to read through a bunch of pages before being able to play. I definitely agree with you on simpler games having more appeal. Games with complex/large rulesets make it difficult to know what the game is about - kinda similar to having to backread, I don't want to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to play the game before being able to play. Imagine sitting there reading rules for 20 minutes and then deciding that the game isn't for me. I don't have the time/patience for that! I want to be able to understand how to play hopefully within minutes or even seconds of looking at the thread. So I try to do the same with games I host (though I've been kind of MIA from GMing lately) which is to make them easy to understand what to do / how to play and not require much reading of rules / previous updates in order to join in. I should mention that I'm not trying to tear down games that do these things, these are just my personal preferences so I apologize if I sound overly opinionated. I'm just not much of a reader and large amounts of it drain me pretty quickly (yes I know, the irony of it after writing a wall of text like this).

[RoseHeart]

Imagine sitting there reading rules for 20 minutes and then deciding that the game isn't for me. I don't have the time/patience for that!

This made me lol, considering what game forum we're on ;p

My tactic is to sneak the rules in over time. Well not really a tactic cus those are improvised games and half of those decisions are a direct response to the players.

[MeimieFan88]

My tactic is to sneak the rules in over time. Well not really a tactic cus those are improvised games and half of those decisions are a direct response to the players.

Yeah that's totally fine and different because that's taking place as the game is progressing and a result of the gameplay going on. It's kind of a part of the current update and relevant to game play that's already happening. It's when you have to read a bunch of set rules / past updates before joining that deters me.

Also I wanted to say that it would be extremely helpful if games did mention somewhere that new players didn't need to read previous updates in order to join in, or otherwise some simple set of instructions in guiding new players to join - because it is sometimes hard to tell whether that is the case and I will likely just skip joining if it looked dubious to me whether catching up was required.