Flavoresque
Main Mechanic Book
Designing a video game or card game is tough. But designing a tabletop RPG, much like Dungeons and Dragons, means designing multiple game systems that work together harmoniously, but keeping it simple enough that players do not overwhelm themselves with math or so that combat does not last multiple sessions. Without the luxury of automatic calculations, cleanup, and behind-the-scenes work, a game designer has to take extreme care not to overcomplicate the amount of work required to have fun.
Since the document for the game is so long, I will cut out the fluff and explain only the parts involving true game design, rather than just general design and narrative.
Core Mechanics
In designing the heart of Flavoresque, I kept both my audience and my intention in mind. My intention was to make a game that felt magical, fun, and narrative in nature, but still strategic. Of course, this already existed in D&D and many others, but I felt the magic of D&D died out in its complexity after years of playing it; I sought out to simplify and enhance that experience. Additionally, with the colorful nature of my theme and game, I could see Flavoresque finding an audience in younger people and children. Thus, my core mechanic should be versatile, but easy to understand, and open-ended in its interpretation. After all, with a game like this, the mechanics should serve more as guidelines than strict rules.
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After a lot of deliberation and brainstorming, I decided my core mechanic would share the common idea of Ability Scores. In this case, they were assigned to Vigor, Grit, Agility, Resolve, Smarts, and Functionality. 3 for Body, 3 for Mind/Spirit.
These scores are reflected by checkboxes that players fill out, one by one, every time they leveled up. Each checkbox pertained to a modifier that the player would add to or subtract from a roll when it was appropriate.
For example, one pip or mark in Agility raised a player's modifier from -5 to -3. These negative modifiers arose out of a need to balance the game's difficulty on the player end, and to make the curve towards a powerful character that much more satisfying.
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Additionally, I found the checkbox made leveling up a relatively simple process. When a character levels up, they mark one empty box from their Ability Scores, and that's it! No hassle or worry about numbers reaching up to 20 and translating that to modifiers, just simple growth in the form of a checkmark in a box. I'll talk more about leveling up later on.
Finally, I had to assess how players could commit an action. Again, I wanted to create something simple to interpret, but with a lot of versatility for the storyteller. When playing D&D as a Dungeon Master, I often found a disbalance between combat and out-of-combat play. Outside of combat, the DM has little influence over how a roll is made. That is usually up to the player and their character's stats. I aimed at giving the storyteller a bit more influence over the success of a roll, at least mechanically, thinking it could create interesting narrative situations.
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My solution was to give both parties a chance to roll. Looking at the visuals below, one can see how success and failure is measured against both a Difficulty Class roll, which is assigned to the difficulty of a player's action, and an Environment Roll, which depends on the danger of the current environment. Rolling higher than a DC is always a success, but I added in Partial Successes as a permanent rule, too, so rolling lower than a DC would still allow a Game Master to create an interesting narrative in relation to the action. However, rolling lower than the Game Master would always result in failure, as if simulating a reason as to why the player failed.
Races & Classes
Keeping this section simple, I just want to show off how I created game systems that worked harmoniously with my unique races and classes.
In order to keep Flavoresque open-ended and easily editable by players and game masters alike, I looked towards games that gave different races boons and debuffs. Games like Starbound and Skyrim do this, and I aimed to make a similar system. This way, players could "mod" new Races or Subraces using existing traits.
Here is an example of the Ghoulian, a race of ghost-like creatures that thrive in the moonlight.
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Every introduction to a race shows its Base Racial Traits: passive effects that can be found in a glossary at the bottom of the document. Each subrace then differentiates from the base Race by adding and removing traits, shown in either blue or red respectively.
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These traits change the gameplay dramatically.
Classes in their basic form each have a Passive Ability and an Active Ability. The Passive Ability gives them an added boon that has to do more with a character's spirit rather than their physical being, while the Active Ability gives them something to do, usually in combat. But the special thing about classes comes in their Upgrade Paths.
Example of a Class page
Upgrades, People, Upgrades!
The biggest way I wanted to differentiate my game from other TTRPG's was through a unique level-up and upgrade system. I worked around with a few different ideas, starting with a system that allowed a player to buy upgrades using EXP. These upgrades were originally about player efficiency: faster actions, rolls with advantage, etc. Later I realized that not only was it difficult to keep track of players' levels, but these simple upgrades were boring and not very useful. So instead I opted in to a new system: the Experience Points - Upgrade Points Synergy System.
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In this system, players gain Upgrade Points alongside Experience Points. These Upgrade Points (UP) can be spent on Upgrades, which are specific to a character class and come in two paths each.
As seen above, each class gets two upgrade paths, with 10 upgrades each. When a player levels up, they can use the UP they get to purchase new upgrades on any path, giving their characters new passive or active abilities. Each path gets an ultrapowerful final upgrade that costs 70 UP.
However, these upgrades were far too combat-oriented, and I wanted to create a similar set of upgrades for out-of-combat experiences, such as roleplaying or narrative. To do this, I added a new element to character creation that gave that character access to roleplay-based upgrades: Personalities.
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With 5 personalities, players would choose two for their character and could spend UP to purchase Personality Upgrades.
The chart to the right is an example of the Evil personality. Other personalities include:
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Heartfelt,
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Cool,
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Analyst,
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and Guile.
Since two personalities can be mixed together, this can give players ideas on interesting characters. For example, a Heartfelt/Evil character could truly believe that their evil motives or goals are good for everyone, or a Cool/Analyst character could predict others' moves while keeping a cool head.
Considering how big this project was, this does not show my entire process, nor my game in its entirety. I also created and workshopped through a huge number of Spells, added a bunch of small mechanics such as Style Points and Hunger, and a good bit of narrative. If you are at all compelled to read more about this game, I implore you to look at the game here:
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This was a huge project I undertook as an independent game creator, so I thank you greatly for reading this!