Find out what the TTRPG project has been up to this spring!

This semester has seen the members of the TTRPG project working on just about every aspect of our game, with meetings centered around worldbuilding, choosing and coming up with mechanics, playtesting those mechanics, and coming up with big lists of ideas.

To start with, we finished playing Microscope, a very cool worldbuilding game. This means that we have a basic idea of the history of our setting, some locations, organizations, and a lot of Jeffs (alternatively spelled Geoff, Geoff Jr., Jefrey, Geofferson, Jeoff, or Jéfe).

We spent way too long discussing dice and initiative systems, eventually deciding to just try them out. Our leader, Sondre, cooked up a bunch of bare-bones combat systems for us to playtest, which at least helped us choose an initiative system. Each round, the players choose whether to go in the fast or the slow phase. If you pick fast, you’ll be able to act before any of the enemies, but you’ll have fewer action points to spend. Going slow means that the enemies will have an opportunity to do stuff before your turn, but you’ll also get to do more.

When we got a bit stuck just making small changes without much improvement, we instead decided to each make a hit point system, which for some turned into entire combat systems or even exploration mechanics. After trying out each system, we were able to combine many of our ideas. While Sondre was compiling everything, it occurred to him that we had some redundant mechanics, which somehow led him to changing up the dice system pretty significantly. It turned out to be a cool idea though, so we’re going with it.

Along the way, we’ve tried out other systems as well. All of our one-shots ended up taking two sessions, but we really enjoyed trying out Eureka, Old-School Essentials, and the latest version of our game. Through trying other systems and playtesting various versions of our own, we’ve learned a lot about what each of us wants from a TTRPG. Sometimes our preferences are a bit contradictory, but debating the pros and cons of various options and finding compromises is part of the fun.

Overall, we’ve had a great semester and look forward to more oneshots, brainstorming, pizza, and continuing to improve our system. Maybe eventually we’ll even have a finished game!