Design

One Roll Only

Nov 25, 2023 · 3 min read · Design BIND

RPGs should avoid asking people to roll dice more than once for any result. Aesthetically, multiple rolls don't feel right. Rolling dice should feel like casting rune-inscribed bones across a table. Multiple Rolls Guarantee Success The door is locked, but can be picked with a roll of 18 or higher. This sounds like a …

Subraces Should be Cultures

Nov 5, 2023 · 3 min read · Design BIND

Referring to elves as a 'race' makes perfect sense. They're clearly different from the other humanoids, have their own features, and biological properties and oddities.1 But 'sylvan elves'? The elves who live in forests, but generally act like any other elf? They're clearly just elves living in a different climate. …

On the Necessity of the Four Classical Elements

Jul 27, 2023 · 3 min read · Design

I wanted to make an elemental magic system, and tried to deviate from the four classical elements. It's a lot more challenging than I thought. If you go with random stuff, like trees, birds, and rivers as your basic elements, then you end up with a multitude of items. We could divide the world into larger pieces of …

Writing for the GM

Jun 26, 2023 · 3 min read · BIND Design

I don't have the reading time for RPGs I once did (or for anything). I'd like to chalk if up to being an adult with a job now, but perhaps the truth is just 'internet'. Whatever the reason, I want to write better for GMs. Here are the principles I've picked up from reading/ writing (no credits given - I can't even …

Minified vs Minimalist Rules

Mar 19, 2023 · 8 min read · BIND Design

Tiny rulebooks are all the rage, and it's great. The game of go has (arguably) 3 rules. Chess has a dozen rules. Monopoly has that little booklet-thing which nobody reads. RPGs often have 400 pages of rules without counting an adventure module, and often lack proper indexing. This hobby is mad, and the backlash against …

Drinking Game Design

Feb 9, 2023 · 2 min read · Prattle Design

Standard drinking games are badly designed; if someone does badly, they get drunk, then do worse on the next game, which prompts more drinking. The only people who play drinking games want to drink, but when you lose, you drink, so the incentives don't track anyone's goals. A better drinking game would have a drink as …

Spreadsheets are Great

Jan 27, 2023 · 3 min read · Theory Design BIND

Whenever I'm unsure about a rule, I pull out a basic spreadsheet, and start populating numbers. The image I had for the ghoul spell began with a mage who could raise small things from the dead, like a cat, or dog. Slowly, the dark sorcerer would learn to raise gnomes, then humans, and finally raise undead ogres or …

Ordinal Fallbacks

Jan 1, 2023 · 1 min read · Design

Game designers often lecture (or bemoan) that nobody can possibly make a realistic game. But in the words of Queen Victoria, I am not interested in the possibility of failure. Instead of looking at 'is this showing what would happen if you really mounted a dragon while wearing armour', I prefer to look simply at the …

Word Game: Ghost

Dec 21, 2022 · 1 min read · Design

My favourite word-game is Ghost. You go round in a circle, each person stating a letter, which builds to a word. If someone completes a word of four or more letters, they lose. If someone receives a set of letters which cannot complete a word, they can challenge the person before them. If the person before states a …

An Automatic Dungeon Generator

Oct 2, 2022 · 2 min read · Design

Automatic dungeon generators are rubbish. Some are pretty, but all of them are completely unusable. You enter a room, it has a goblin, or treasure, or nothing. Next room. It makes no sense. Why was the goblin sitting there? Why was there treasure in the next room, and why didn't the goblin take it? Everything looks …