So I have been able to complete my first few rounds of play testing over the past month for my game and I am happy to say that the play-testing for the most part has been a positive experience to open up my eyes on some blindspots in my game design. 

I've been running a highly modified version of the Crossroads of Chalden. I decided to run a pre-made adventure mainly to get a baseline of where my assumptions were for math and encounters in AD&D, since that is the primary baseline that using for OSR compatibility. I liked this adventure concept because it had several opportunities for social encounters in addition to combat and some dungeon delving. 

So here are some of the initial observations and feedback that I have received from the first few play-tests so far. 

Traits and Characteristics

My system of using Traits and Characteristics seem to be generally well received and I think the players I have played with like the idea that relevant traits can be stacked to improve information or rolls in a situation. There is some negotiation that is required because the Traits are generally very ambiguous in their nature. That is by design, but I think the players did not expect to have to negotiate that in play. 

I was originally doing an exercise where characters had two scores for each of their Characteristics. One would be for their Difficulty Checks (DC) and the other would be for their Saving Throws (ST). This proved to be too confusing for players, especially when they needed to adjust the scores when they took damage, so I made a change to opt to a single score value. The players will roll under their score for their save and over for checks. This proved to be much better received over all and less confusing. 

It has made me think a bit more about the stats as health mechanic though. I was taking this concept from Into the Odd and Cairn, because I really liked the idea. The issue I am finding from the 2-3 combats we have run so far, is that players haven't really been coming out of the combat with decreased stats that would challenge them later in the adventure. More often than not they come out unscathed (taking only Breath damage) or going down completely from combat. I'm not quite sure what this means. I'm using straight 3d6 Characteristic (i.e. stat) creation and the idea is that as players adventure, the wilderness will take its toll on them, making them weary and making checks and saves harder as time passes. I'm not quite sure if I need to boost this roll to a 4d6 drop the lowest to give a bit more meat to the stat, especially because the save results in them become incapacitated if they fail? I mean a 1st level Basic and AD&D character only has between 1 and 8 hp right?

(Side note: I am quite bummed to get rid of my concept since I thought it was an elegant solution to the DC/ST problem in many games, but it just is incongruent to the idea of damage passing through to the skills. I might seriously discontinue the damage passthrough idea and think of another way to do "health".)

Combat

My combat system is also mostly received well so far. The group of players I have been testing the game with are definitely more combat type D&D players (as opposed to role-play) so I think they generally have taken to the sort of tactical nature of the combat. 

I did a major simplification of the weapons and armor to simplify the roll tables and have less confusion. I was surprised to find that some players really struggled with not having specific weapons listed out for them (i.e. sword, spear, axe, crossbow). I just have a weapon weight like light, medium, heavy, and then the damage type with the intent to allow characters the freedom to designate whatever weapon type they wanted. I thought this would be a good balance between the randomly rolled characters and creating something they could call their own. I don't think I'm gonna change anything here, but it was just an interesting observation. 

I definitely need to do some work on combat stances a bit more. I am not super happy with the "Called Shot" mechanic since it doesn't make sense from a math point of view and it also sucks to not take an action during your turn. Just doubling the dice and being able to hit a hidden enemy isn't accomplishing what I want it to do. 

I've noticed that almost everyone takes the Aggressive stance to get that +2 to their damage whenever they can. 

The Rally ability needs some tweaking, but I am not quite sure what to do with it yet. Since combat on both sides is resolving "simultaneously" does the 1d4 rolled on the Rally become a "temporary HP" if the character has full Breath at the start of the round? That makes sense mechanically, but doesn't quite sit right with me since it adds another level of stat tracking? I'm trying to keep stat tracking minimal for mental load. I need to think about that more. 

I"ve noticed that my system uses a lot of d4 rolls. Enhancements are +d4, the Rally is a d4, and some weapons are even a d4. Rolling a d4 just doesn't feel good. Do I boost it all up to a d6? That makes sense, but that will immediately increase the number scaling by a significant amount, especially when I am trying to keep all of the number totals and calculations under 20. I also wanted to avoid situations where we have stat or flat bonuses to rolls. 

I would love to get some insight from anyone willing to share. I have another play test coming up up in February with another group who has a totally different play style, much less combat and stat focused, so I am curious what I will come away with from those sessions. 

Why OSR(ish)?

If you have played any OSR based games before, then most of what you will read in the Adventuring chapter will be generally familiar. I've tried to take the general concepts and ideas that are common amongst various OSR systems and distill them down into simplified rules. 

Why am I focusing on this OSR concept though? Well, this is my first game design, and I am new to this. I might as well start from a solid foundation, but it is mainly because there is a breadth of content out there for these system and play settings already. This is a passion project for me and I can fully recognize that I am not going to be able to write dozens of adventures, supplements, and random generation tables. Those are already being made and have been made for nearly fifty years. I'm aiming for general OSR compatibility to leverage that content that is already out there. 

The OSR (and NSR) communities have really caught my attention over the past year or two since the OGL debacle. I find the approach to play in those games is really appealing to me and I appreciate how the math is structured, and how general play is approached. The emphasis in many of those systems on resource management, compromise, "low number" math, and "rulings over rules" really appeals to me and I think it is really conducive to a West Marches style game. 

Now, I don't think what I have below is inherently a "rulings over rules" approach, as there are plenty of rules here, but I wanted to break things down into what I felt were the most logical terms and conditions that relate generally back to our own world when trying to develop rules. I wanted to create enough rules to make sure everyone could easily understand the game, but at the same time, not need to go back and look something up back in the book. 

This is perhaps most clearly represented in the adventuring phases in a day. 

Phases

Phases of the adventuring day is something that is very common in many OSR systems. Some systems use hours, some use varying phases. I broke this down into the four most common terms that we use in our natural world:  Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night. 

I also wanted to make sure that I do not reference time in any more specific detail than those four phases. I've found in most cases getting into any finer detail (for traveling)  just adds unnecessary complexity that bogs down the gameplay at the table. 

Refuges

One idea that I am developing to my game is the concept of a "Refuge", a set of secure supplies and a safe place in the wilderness where players can rest and recuperate. As I mentioned in the Principles and Concepts post, the world is dangerous and managing risk and reward is a strong component of this game. It is hard to heal and players in fact won't be able to heal when they are in the wilderness adventuring, unless they can find a safe harbor that has a bed (i.e. a town) or a refuge. A Refuge is an expendable resource that players can setups a key strategic points in the world that might be the different between life and death. 

It costs a lot of time and resources to setup a Refuge so characters will have to determine how to best deploy one.

Player Roles

Finally, another idea I am trying to play around with is the Player Roles. This is not a new concept for many classic games. Many will designate a player at the table to draw the dungeon map or to summarize the adventure. The more administrative work I can offload from the GM to the players I think is good, as it will incentivize players to remain engaged with the game even if their character is not active. This is a problem that I have seen across game tables, so I am hoping i can "kill two birds with one stone" here to offload some responsibility from the GM and also give something to the players. 

I want to bring this into the game world though as well, to possibly incentivize players who may not want to do something like that. The preliminary set of roles I have defined can also apply to the characters as well as the players. It is the hope that this will provide a small bonus in the game that will encourage players to want to take on these roles at the table. 

Google Docs - v0.1 - Adventuring

GitHub - v0.1 - Adventuring 

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I'm getting close to my first draft of the character creation mechanics and I think it is worth outlining some of my ideas around "health", skills and traits in my system. 

Breath (Health)

The characters in BTTL won't have a hit point or health counter as you might see in other rpg system. A player's overall "health" is instead tied to a stat called Breath and their Characteristics. 

Breath is  your character's  ability to act during intense situations. Damage taken by the character is first applied to their Breath before it is subtracted from the appropriate Characteristic. Characters may choose to spend their breath to take more drastic actions during combat, use combat abilities, or to cast spells. 

Once a player reaches zero (0) breath, any additional damage is applied to the appropriate characteristics. 

At the conclusion of combat or a strenuous activity, characters may rest for ten minutes to "Catch their breath" and restore their points.

Characteristics

Characteristics represent a character's innate abilities, their physical capability, and mental acuteness. Characteristics are comprised of two numbers, which when added will total 20. If you are familiar with games like Call of Cthulhu or D&D, then this would be the closets representation to a Skill in one of those systems. 

The purpose of the two number system is to be able to establish a Difficulty Check (DC) score for characters to roll against yours as well as a Saving Through score for a character to roll against themselves. Characters will only roll dice if they are the ones taking an action. They will either roll to beat another character’s DC or roll a ST roll if there is a risk to themselves.

You might be asking why, for these two numbers? The reason is to maintain a "roll above" system while maintaining some sort of target number that is directly tied to the character in the challenge. I could have kept the math simpler by having players roll under for one type of stat and roll above for another, but while doing a quick survey with my personal play groups, my players just didn't like roll under systems. They wanted to "roll 20" for success. 

The example below will exaplain a common example of how the system is expected to work. 

Example

Player 1 rolls 3d6 for their character Elsa's Strength, Dexterity and Fortitude with the following results: 11, 13 and 5. 

A thief is trying to pickpocket Elsa, but Elsa is pretty dextrous meaning that she has a high chance of detecting the thief trying to pickpocket her. The thief will roll 1d20 and must beat Elsa’s DC of 13 in order to be successful. The thief rolls a 9 and is caught by Elsa. The thief turns and makes a run for it sprinting across a roof top and jumping to the next building. 

Elsa pursues the thief and makes a jump across the gap between the buildings. This is a dangerous jump so Elsa will need to make a Saving Throw to see if she makes it. She needs to roll a 7 or higher on her Dex to successfully make the jump. She rolls an 11 and successfully jumps over the gap.

Over the winter holiday I had a chance to sit-down and really crank through some of the ideas I had in my head and complete my first draft of the combat system. 

You can find the complete v0.1 document over on Github and Google Drive, but I'll try to summarize some of the concepts and what I am trying to do with combat. 

General Concept: The Battle Grid

One of the things that will immediately jump out to you when you read through the design document is the Combat Grid. I have been pondering on this concept for a few months, trying to figure out how to combine a few different ideas into a single system. 

I knew from the outset that I didn't want to use the common battle-mat and map layout that you see in D&D. This is partially attributed to the fact that I very frequently play those games so I am personally just sick of that mechanic. I also wanted to explore another way to represent the characters in combat. I have played "theater of the mind" in several RPG systems and more often than not, I have found that my players never are able to full grasp the concept. They always lose track of whom is engaged with whom, and the distances characters are from each other.

How could I find some way to get in-between both systems? How could I have something that is simple and streamlined at the table but at the same time could give some sort of visual representation of where characters are in relation to each other? 

The solution actually came from chess, which several of my regular players are really involved in. I knew from the outset that my combat was going to have players all take their actions at once and then have enemies all take their actions at once. This provided for a common mechanic similar to chess that just seemed to "click" for me. Once I had that idea down, I was able to expand from there to allow for a fairly tactical system that doesn't get bogged down in measuring combat distances in feet. 

Characters can act in combat lanes and can have their "stance" represented by the column they are in. I think there is enough information provided her to give people an idea of where and what they are doing in combat without having to spend five minutes on each of their turns trying to measure out 60 feet of movement. Playtesting I suppose will see if my assumptions play out as much as I hope. 

I would love to get some feedback from anyone who would like to provide a comment either on Github or on the Google Doc linked above. 

I'm taking some heavy influence with this statement from the OSR (Old School Renaissance) community and the concept of "Your Sheet Has No Answers". The idea of specific skills revolves around the discussion about where is the line drawn between the character and the player. If you look at some modern game designs such as 5e, Pathfinder, or even Call of Cthulhu, the character sheets are filled with skills and abilities. In my experience players will often approach a situation, assess it, and then ask their GM if they can roll some dice to gather information or do a task. 

Let's open our conversation for "Beyond the Torchlight" by walking through some of the design concepts that I am using as my basis for this project. I have not designed an RPG system before, but as with any project I believe you have to start out answering the question, "What problem am I trying to solve"?

1. It creates an unreasonable unbalance between the players and the DM. If you have both experienced and unexperienced players at the table, you will inevitably have a situation where the unexperienced players feel frustration because they are not "effective". Worse, they will not understand why they aren't effective.
2. The optimization mindset also tends to reward combat focused character creation. There are entire feats or classes in D&D that don't get used because they are not "optimal", and you are once again left with an imbalance in the gameplay. Generally I feel that combat and roleplay should be equally represented in a TTRPG.

Welcome to this blog. I don't know exactly how you found your way here, but I hope you have come to this place to find out a little bit more about this little RPG project.

What Will Beyond the Torchlight Be? 

Design Concepts

• Simple rulebook and fast character creation.
• Designed for a West Marches style of play.
• Compatible with a variety of game systems with quick conversion guidelines.
• A "magic" system that can be applied to various settings, including futuristic settings.
• Invest in a roleplay.
• Classless.
• Single currency.
• Downtime/non-adventuring rules for growth and character development.