Wouldn't it be Fun if I Made a TTRPG/Board Game? - ☺︎ ∙ General Interests

Speaking as someone who has made several tabletop games, yes it would be fun.

An advantage board games have over video games is that you can model them pretty easily in most cases. This is why i've made 3 fully functional tabletop games and have yet to make a playable demo of either video game i'm allegedly making. For instance, i play Batman Chess with (3d printed) Pai Sho tiles on a Shogi board because i already had those things. It never even occurred to me to use a tool like Tabletop Simulator, but that does make sense. I should look at getting a copy for testing an unreleased game that i'm having trouble making cards for.

What you're planning sounds unlike any of my games. It sounds a little like Super Fight, but that concept does not really lend itself to having a rigid set of rules. And that's why you need a game master to make rulings about conflicts.

If this is primarily a PVP game, you'll want it to be easy and quick to make new characters at the start of every round or every game. I'd do a character creation phase at the beginning of the game, where every player draws cards to determine their powers and weaknesses, probably with separate decks for those two so every character has both. Maybe while the players are doing that, the GM uses some other cards to generate a location, stakes, other circumstances, etc.

Or, better yet, the villains can choose or draw something to threaten. Civilians' lives, Fort Knox' vault, the environment (maybe they're trying to set off a volcano), etc.

Powers give each character abilities, and maybe those and a character's Weaknesses can make something like the type advantage system in Pokemon, where certain powers are really effective against others. I'd implement that by sorting powers into types, and having whole types have Rock-Paper-Scissors style interactions with each other. Weaknesses can give determine how a character holds up to attacks using powers of a given type, and if they have any special restrictions based on the setting. Maybe one power is very destructive so a hero using it in a dense, urban environment like a city will cost that team points.

So now there's a basis of a game. Players split up into heroes and villains, and generate characters by drawing cards. The GM creates or generates a setting for the conflict, and the stakes are determined either by the GM or the Villains. Characters have Powers (laser vision, invisibility, pyrokinesis, etc.) and those powers have type matchups to determine who wins a given conflict. So, maybe someone who's made of animated sand will beat someone who's great at swordplay but lose against an earthbender. If it's not clear who would win in a one on one fight, both players make their cases for how they use their powers and the GM decides how it goes.

But that doesn't include the Stakes at all. The Villains aren't usually just trying to fight the Heroes, they're trying to poison the water supply or steal nuclear launch codes or sacrifice a Hero's girlfriend to summon a volcano god. So while the two sides are fighting, the Villains are also trying to achieve that goal. Heroes win if they thwart the Villains' plans, Villains win if they carry out those plans. The fight is secondary to that. The Villains' plan will fail if they're all defeated in combat and hauled off to jail before they do their thing. The Villains' plan will succeed if they beat the Heroes and there's nobody left to stop them. The fight matters because it's hard to write down launch codes while being punched or dodging lasers. The Villains have two ways to win, the Heroes have only one, unless a group opts to settle the conflict by talking or something instead of playing the game normally.

From there i think the next step is to start writing cards. Make lists of Powers, Weaknesses, Goals (for the Villains), maybe Values (things the Heroes won't do, not even to beat the Villains), anything else you think you'll need.

Going back to Powers, i'd set it up so each one has a point cost and players have limited points to spend on their characters. Pyrokinesis is more limited than general purpose telekinesis, so it's probably cheaper. On the other side of this, some Weaknesses are going to be more impactful and debilitating than others. A fear of snakes probably won't come up as often as a vampire's sunlight allergy. Taking Weaknesses grants points that can be spent on Powers, and worse weaknesses grant more of these points. Each player draws 5 Power cards and 5 Weakness cards at the beginning of the game, and then chooses which ones to use and which to discard.

You mentioned it being a board game. Maybe there are pre-made boards for different settings, or boards are modular and the GM can build a setting out of pieces for each game. Probably there would be a set of pieces for a jungle island, a volcano, a busy city, etc. And these can all fit together like puzzle pieces. Characters have tokens on the board to determine who exactly is fighting whom, and that would make powers like teleportation and invisibility easier to use and rule. A character who turns invisible could actually sneak around an enemy base. If you want it to be more like D&D and other existing TTRPGs, you could have each player roll stats (or draw numbered cards for this) for their character to determine how good they are at things like detecting hidden characters/traps. I'd do this by just comparing someone's intelligence or perception to someone else's stealth, not by rolling dice every time.

There are some conflicting ideas here. I would recommend against doing Pokemon-style attack types and D&D-style stats, i think having both would just be too complicated.

One more thing: When you make your character, you don't have to tell anyone your powers. You can keep each ability a secret until you reveal it by using it. You can tell just your teammates. Or you can be open about it.

Shoot, i kind of wrote your whole game before you got a chance to. Oops.

Anyway, this sounds fun. I'm excited to see what you do with this idea. And if you go in a completely different direction, maybe i'll make this game instead. I want it to exist so i can play it.