Daughters & Dragons — Making an easy but awesome tabletop RPG! (Part 1)
About D&D, and why I’m “reinventing the wheel” with a new game
Maybe yours isn’t, but my slice of the internet is abuzz about Dungeons & Dragons, and the uprising of its community against owner Hasbro.
If you don’t know about Dungeons & Dragons, then you probably don’t know about Stranger Things, and you’re someone who has spent much less time on entertainment than myself in the last 6–7 years…
Basically it’s the most famous and popular tabletop role-playing game, allowing kids of an average age of 30 (not joking) to impersonate Wizards, Rogues, Rangers, and basically any fantasy character they can think of, to play out stories with nothing more than pen and paper, or the occasional miniatures and scenery thrown in. It’s what inspired Game Of Thrones and countless other franchises, while being inspired by Lord Of The Rings itself.
Today’s buzz about the game started with “leaks”, showing Hasbro wanted to revoke the permissive “Open Gaming License” (OGL) that has allowed people to create and sell content based on Dungeons & Dragons for decades, in favor of a new restrictive and far more monetizable license.
They learned quickly that the community surrounding D&D (or DnD) is nothing short of ferocious, when you go after their creativity. And money.
After a MASSIVE boycott, which apparently included 40,000 cancellations of their most popular paid subscription service, D&D Beyond, the company backtracked TWICE.
First it was sort of half-baked, then it got real: they didn’t only retract, they even announced they’re going to use the Creative Commons license, meaning nobody should be able to mess with D&D creators, ever again.
I was watching in amusement as many third-party publishers (before the latter retraction made the news) announced they were going to make their own systems, their own licenses, and more. It looked like everyone and their mother would start making brand new RPGs, and I was absolutely delighted about it, because I LOVE game design, and was always trying to design my own games as a kid. New systems meant new inspiration!
But the thing is, even if I am a devoted fan of D&D since I was 8 (which is dangerously close to being 30 years ago), I had already stopped liking the game in its current form since long before all this mess happened.
So when this all happened, I got all the inspiration I needed, and decided not to wait for new systems, instead making a new one myself, right now!
And not by using any of the new or old licenses, mind you: what I want is too different to use them anyway, and while the topic was inspiring, the best motivation is that since I’m now a proud father, I would love nothing more than playing with my daughter a game I designed myself. 🥰
What I love and hate about D&D, and RPGs in general
When creating a new game, or a new… Anything, I guess it always starts with this self-questioning: what do I love about this type of thing, and what do I hate about what’s already out there?
Turns out I’m extremely opinionated on this stuff, so it will all roll off the keyboard easily:
WHAT I LOVE:
- The type of experience. I love the concept of getting around a table and sharing a story that you gradually learn more about. It’s like being inside a movie together, and not being able to know how it will end!
- Pen, paper, and dice is all you need. While many people use miniatures and scenery to play (and that’s actually how the game was born), I like when nothing is used, and everything is imagined, or at most drawn.
- The settings and stories. While these are in theory completely detached from the game itself, I think the point is when you have separate people playing out characters in a story, then the setting and stories will always be of a certain kind: the crazy unpredictable kind!
WHAT I HATE
- Characters end up feeling all the same. While stories are definitely as unique as the people inventing them, the rules of the game tend to homogenize all characters and the way they’re played, so experiences that should be widely different end up feeling the same in practice.
- New rules throw believability out of the window. While older editions of the game went to great lengths (often too far) to have rules that would make characters’ interactions with the imaginary world believable, nowadays rules are arbitrary and abstract for the sake of simplicity. Some point the absurdity of wanting a world of magic and dragons to be believable, but think about it: would you have liked The Lord Of The Rings if Frodo would have killed all the orcs, plus Saruman, and Sauron single-handedly? No. And here’s the importance of believability.
- It’s a ton of text to read for everything. Granted, this was never a problem for me specifically, as you might guess by how much I write, but it does make the game impossible for pre-scholar kids, in a way that in my opinion is unnecessary. Or maybe it’s just that my daughter is 3, and I can’t wait to play this with her… It’s still a valid point! 😂
My crazy solution: more realistic rules, but all written with emojis!!
Ok that’s reductive, but in short, this is what I set out to do!
I want a game that can do the following:
- Present many choices and opportunities to customize one’s character, without being overwhelming, making most choices dual in nature.
- Represent as much as humanly possible in the rules with emojis: even a 3 year old can suddenly get very complex concepts, if they’re laid out with cute faces and drawings, and there are enough emojis nowadays to describe complex actions with just about 3 emojis in a row.
- Be more fun and dynamic than D&D’s 20-sided dice rolling, to which you add a bunch of bonuses to meet a target number. I want a game where one throws multiple different dice, and where these dice have meaning and interactions with one another that are easy to grasp.
- Have believable characters, even when magic is involved: they are still human(oid) and can get tired, distracted, or just down, and it will affect them. Training a lot in something will make characters very good at that, but possibly mediocre at something else, so choices matter.
I would also like to do all this by reducing the amount of rules, but I’m not too crazy about it: kids have impressive memories, and will learn rules quickly if they are explained right. More than less rules, it should be rules that make more sense, and that are easily visualized.
So at first it will look like I’m adding stuff to the game, but after a while you will see less rules than D&D’s, just more “in your face”.
In fact, another important objective of mine is that the character sheet used to describe characters in this game, should basically contain all the rules within it, and almost explain them, too. Kinda like the game’s playing mat.
So if it will be looking more “full” than a D&D sheet, it’s because it’s sheet and manual at the same time, so it’s trying to save hundreds of pages… I won’t manage to do that on a single paper sheet, but on two I might!
The basics: a reimagining/regrouping of a character’s abilities.
While I was always a fan of the canonical six ability scores of D&D characters, I find them quite hard to describe to the “un-initiated”.
Especially the differences between Intelligence and Wisdom, or Strength and Constitution. Common objections are:
- “How come I’m a big guy with high Constitution, but I’m not strong?”
- “How come I’m so Intelligent and I didn’t see this situation coming?”
To be honest, they’re valid objections, and the answer is always a variant of “D&D is like this, those aspects are controlled by another ability.” But why?
I’m not a native English speaker, but it seems to me that no accepted meaning of the word “wise” or “wisdom” has anything to do with what the ability is used for in D&D, which is a lot of perception through the senses.
Another objection, which I hear less, but personally make myself a lot, is that the amount of times per day that characters can do some actions in D&D makes absolutely no sense.
The intention is clear: trying to simulate the fact that characters get tired, and limit “big plays” in number, but then why tracking all these usages separately? In D&D you could be tired of doing action A, but perfectly fresh for action B. It makes no sense: it’s just a simplification, that doesn’t even simplify anything, since you have to track multiple numbers.
In my opinion, it’s almost trivial to solve this issue: just have shared pools of resources instead of each ability being usable X times per day! But D&D has an issue of legacy: since for almost 50 years it used this concept only for “hit points”, they won’t use it more not to risk comparisons with videogames.
I don’t have such concerns, so here is how I re-imagined the classical six abilities, with names that I think more clearly distinguish what they’re about, are easily represented with emojis (although I’m still working on them), and seamlessly tie to shared pools of resources/energy!
The geometric shapes next to each icon might be confusing, but they’re just representing the type of die associated with each thing, by approximating the generic shape of the die: triangle for the 4-sided, square for the classic 6-sided, rhomboid for the tetrahedric 8-sided, and diamond for the vaguely diamond-shaped 10-sided dice.
As you see, there are various groupings, and the “energies” in the middle column are determined in different ways by the Internal and External abilities for each grouping.
So we have Stamina determined by the highest (🔝) number of the worst (🅱️) between Vitality (🩸) and Force (💪).
Then we have Focus, equal to half the maximum (➗) of the best (🅰️) between Mind (🧠) and Dexterity (🖐️).
And finally the very generic “Spirit”, determined by the full sum of both Senses (👁️) and Charisma (💖).
Admittedly, I could have used the same formula for all, but then I would have needed to have very arbitrary costs in the actions that use each resource, because the point is having some resources easier, and some harder to replenish.
Focus (🎯) is the matter of seconds, but those are usually precious seconds in the heat of a fight or tough situation. It’s used for stuff requiring thought or steady hands, and it makes sense as a low number, not allowing many such actions in a row, but also easy to regain with a “refocus” moment.
Stamina (💦) is usually more plentiful, but requires rest and food to replenish (useful to teach kids something…)
And finally Spirit (✨) is usually a lot, but is also the slowest to replenish, requiring a good night’s sleep, and is the resource usually used for magic.
Seems like a lot of numbers, but I associated these energies to the coin emoji (🪙) not for nothing: playing with kids, they would have different coins for each, that they could spend. Much easier to get when you’re running low or not on something, this way!
A game less random is actually more fun: coupling abilities!
Another big departure from the D&D rules is that I want every possible action to be connected to two abilities, not just one.
As you saw, the abilities I devised are less inclusive than those of D&D: they are less abstract in nature. But they still covering a lot of ground. So I figured that to have more meaning, they should always be used in couples.
But while symmetry is tempting, I didn’t want each ability coupled with all others. Only couplings that make sense. And I wanted to stop at a relatively low number of results. So I came up with 8 couples, divided into 4 passive (in light bluish background), and 4 active (light orange background.)
As you can see, the way the system is, there are only three of these that use abilities from the same grouping, thus using only one of the energy resources. The rest are hybrid, which usually means more difficult to use.
Each of the active “aspects” (the way I’m calling these now) is also very connected to the passive counterpart: Movement to Endurance, Technique to Instinct, Brilliance to Wisdom (here comes the old Wisdom, finally an explicit union of Mind and Senses), and Power to Awareness.
Power is a very powerful word for something that usually encompasses social skills, but that’s the thing: here it’s more explicit than in D&D that with Vitality and Charisma you can actually do magic, other than sway the minds and actions of others. A nice parallel with the real world, I think…
So for now I’ll let these concepts sink in, but will give a sneak peak of what’s next, which will make even bigger departures from the D&D model!
Coming next: The Legend Of The 4 Animals…
No, I’m not going to write a story next (although I might, another time!)
Instead, I’m playing on the title of another niche game called The Legend Of The 5 Rings, which inspired the game mechanic I will talk about.
I’ll leave you with a teaser: how do we ensure that characters are more than just the sum and distribution of their ability scores? What else makes a believable character, other than his/her abilities?
Legend has it than in this world we’ll be diving in, everyone has a special connection with one or more of 4 spirit animals…
🦅🦁🦄🐲
How will this matter? And why will it be good? You’ll see soon enough!
