#vallonde

Combat is something of a sticking point in tabletop design for me because if the system is going to have combat be a significant part of the gameplay experience then it NEEDS to make sure the combat system is pulling its weight but at the same time not taking up more space than it needs to. It's a fine balance and that balance changes based on what the game is trying to achieve which throws yet another complication into the machinery because the ideal system for a highly tactical combat simulator like PF2 is going to look completely different than the ideal system for a comfy storytelling game like ryuutama. When I was designing to battle mechanics for Celestial Solstice I already had a model to base the design on since I was attempting to directly port the battle system from ogre battle 64 into paperspace, but Delvers has proven to be a different beast because it's systems are untethered to any existing property that might grant some guidance concerning what the expected end result should look and play like.

SO.

Here's some thoughts I've been mulling over concerning the design and how I want to use the design to accomplish some specific goals.

The game master doesn't roll for the things that NPCs do. The game master already knows how they want NPCs to interact with the world and whether or not they can do those things, so rolling is pointless UNLESS what the NPC is doing is opposed by a PC, in which case the player is the one doing the rolling, not the GM. For example, if an enemy attacks a player, the player makes a roll to defend themselves rather than the gm rolling for the enemy to attack. As another example, if a player casts a spell that needs to overcome the mental defenses of their target, the player will test their mental might statistic instead of the NPC rolling to resist the effect.

Having GMed for a long time using a lot of systems one of the few things I think is a constant is that it doesn't hurt to make things easier on the GM. The other is that players like self-determination and they LOVE to roll dice. These things kinda fit together nicely because I've had a lot of success in the past with off-loading dice rolling to players and I want to try to translate that into delvers. The idea is that, if dice are getting rolled, that players are most likely the ones doing it. Rolling dice is fun, but as a player you're rolling dice for one character, maybe two, MAYBE some henchmen, but as the GM you're rolling dice for EVERY SINCE MOTHER FUCKING that isn't a player and that can start to become a major distraction. If the GM is going to be rolling things, it should be for how the world is behaving, not whether a guard notices a goblin creeping just beyond the torchlight. When I say "how the world behaves" I mean for things like weather, and random encounters or, more specific, how the world behaves in response to the PCs actions, like NPC reactions to players or morale during a fight. These are significant rolls that have a major impact on the gameplay and can define a moment: they're rolls that a worth making.

This is all a very long-winded way for me to segue into my next point, which is that this will SIGNIFICANTLY simplify what constitutes an NPC. So what exactly will creating an enemy look like?

Most importantly, enemies won't have any ability scores or saving throws or anything like that since players are rolling all that stuff. This is the most important part to be because this is what enables an essentially infinite amount of variety in enemy design with VERY little effort.

The enemy will have a RM, a roll modifier, which is a % that is either added to or subtracted from rolls that target the enemy. Rolls that players make to do things in delvers are done with a d% in an attempt to roll under their statistic, and that roll is what gets modified so if they player rolls to hit an enemy with a +15% roll modifier, the player's roll result is increased by 15 making it harder to succeed. The modifier can also be negative if the enemy is supposed to be particularly easy, or it can have no modifier if it's an even challenge for the PCs.

Determine how many hits the enemy can take. You say "I want this guy to be able to withstand 10 hits" and do that for each enemy and then add together all the hits in the encounter into one pool. As hits get removed from the pool, enemies will have to make moral checks which they may fail and flee or surrender, or they'll be removed from the board as hit thresholds are reached. The standard rate for player damage is 1 hit for small weapons, 2 for medium, and 3 for large. Simple.

If you don't need anything complicated then, well, that's it. If you need five tough orcs you can say "here are five RM10 combatants with a 25 hit pool" and you've got everything you need for the encounter. The same encounter with five easy goblins might be RM-10 and 10 hits instead. Super simple, but you can add some seasoning if that's feeling a little bland.

You can choose to set the enemy apart by giving it a role. This could be a striker, supporter, leader, whatever. It'll give that enemy some static bonus that makes it a little better in some way than another version of that enemy. Using those five orcs, one might be a striker (against which players have penalties to defense rolls), two defenders (against which players have penalties to attack rolls), one a supporter (has access to some simple magic effects), and one is a leader (increases the RM of enemies in the encounter).

If you want to keep going, you can start adding special features. These can be anything, but some examples will be included such as actions that inflict statuses, or that change damage types, or give special movement types.

The final result is that enemies can be as simple or as complex as the GM wants with the goal being that the gameplay experience is smoothed because there is no longer any need to look up stats for enemies.

"What about the battlefield?" You might ask, obliging as you are. Well, what I'm NOT doing is making a tactical strategy game. As much fun as that can be, that kind of combat eats up a LOT of design space and I don't want combat to be a central focus of the game, I just want it to be another part of it. Instead I'm experimenting with something a bit more elementary...SHAPES!

I love prototyping physreps, and these shapes represent engagement zones. An engagement zone is any area in which creatures can reasonably engage in battle with each other, such as a room, or a hallway. Larger spaces, such as a dining hall or outdoor area, or engagement areas that include multiple spaces, like a hallway that leads to a room, will use multiple engagement zones to represent those areas. He's a little set-up I threw together to demonstrate.

1.) #1 is unengaged. There is an enemy in their zone, but that enemy is already engaged so it cannot engage them. A character cannot attack in melee without engaging with their target first. Each turn a character can use one action, of which attacking is an example.

2.) #2 shows two foes engaged with one another. Unless otherwise stated a character cannot engage multiple characters at once so unless one of them breaks off neither can engage another enemy.

3.) #3 shows two enemies engaged with a single enemy. While a single character cannot engage multiple characters, multiple characters can engage a single character. For each additional enemy engaging a character beyond the first, all rolls against that character get a % bonus.

4.) #4 is unengaged but in danger from...

5.) #5, who wields a ranged weapon. Ranged weapons can target foes in another zone but suffer a % penalty when firing across multiple zones or at an engaged target.

6.) #6 is not in the same zone as an enemy and doesn't have a ranged weapon, so they can't interact with the combat unless they move. Each turn a character can use their move to move to an adjacent zone or to engage an enemy in the zone they currently occupy.

There are no spaces within a zone so positioning within a zone is largely unimportant. My hope is that players will be less obsessive about specific positioning like this and can focus on moving the game along instead of agonizing over the huge variety of options they have available to them.

This is all still very much in the theory crafting stage and just represents my first crack at attempting to assemble my initial thoughts into a cohesive system. Like I said at the outset of this post, this is largely just an excuse for me to get to talk about one of my projects. My players don't care about the design process and trying to bounce ideas off them is like throwing water into a lake, I just get nothing back lol.

How about we begin with arcane casting? Arcane spellcasting in fantasy is pretty weird if you look at it from the outside because it has been so heavily influenced by D&D and its adaptation of jack vance's magic system, and I feel like trying to utilize that system of spell slots and spell memorization just doesn't work outside of the framework that D&D has built for itself. The question becomes then how would you go about trying to be creative while still adhering to a framework that players will understand and, more importantly, be able to adopt without too much effort? I've never liked the idea of spell slots so that's out of the question, but there needs to be some limitation so sticking with the concept of spells being gone once they're cast works pretty well. The compromise? Spell scrolls. Instead of spell scrolls being a little diversion for the arcane spellcaster, how about making it so ALL arcane casting is done using scrolls? For me this solves a lot of the problems I have with the stereotypical arcane caster in D&D while keeping the framework that people are used to. You're not memorizing spells, you're scribing the scrolls you'll be using to cast spells later. You're not for some reason forgetting the spells you memorized earlier in the day, the scrolls are being consumed in arcane fire or whatever as the magic stored within them is released. At least for me, this set up makes more sense and gives the player a reason to be carrying ink and parchment and to be constantly scribing which is gameplay I want to encourage in a class like this.

As far as class abilities go, these mostly just give you everything you need for spellcasting. You get the ability to scribe scrolls, the ability to learn new spells and master spells you already know, and then a specialty knowledge roll you can make to get specific arcane knowledge only the initiated would have access to. The thing to look at here are the methodologies because they'll really be flavoring the gameplay experience. Since I'm going for a much more narrative focus in Delvers I'm leaving the specifics of warlock patrons and wizard schools up the the player and GM to determine. There is too much variation in what players and GMs want to get out of their games so I think encouraging them to tailor something personalized to the player and the game is probably a better idea than trying to guess the one solution that will work best for everyone. MOVING ON BECAUSE I'M TIRED FROM WORK.

Divine casting is...very different in Vallonde. Basically, there are no gods and divine casters do their thing by channeling universal concepts. The D&D cleric was never a great vehicle for what I wanted my divine casters to be, so this has been a good chance for me to explore the space I want them to occupy.

I want arcane and divine casting in Delvers to feel very different from one another because they're supposed to be two very distinct sources of power. I haven't shared the specifics yet, but pains have been taken to make them both unique gameplay experiences which I hope plays well with players.

In Vallonde, a vast majority of the world's civilizations trade at least partially in Imperial gold, and Imperial gold is *C*ursed, with a capital CURSE. The story goes that part of what launched their imperialistic project was the discovery of this vast hoard of coinage deep underground, but the truth of the matter is much more sinister, involves the lower planes, and will be extrapolated upon throughout the text since I like the idea of a reader slowly discovering the hidden truths of the world during their reading of the rules. The nature of the curse is thus:

The coins, deemed glimmers by the empire, are unnaturally alluring. Any creature, whether monster or man, that sees them becomes curious about them if not downright covetous.

Once a creature has acquired glimmers they want more of them. No amount is ever enough. Even if they are a monster that has no need for money, they have an urge to collect more glimmers.

My primary goal in introducing ideas such as these cursed coins or malevolent darkness is to account for some of the inexplicable situations you wind up in when playing classic medieval fantasy games, such as unintelligent monsters with hoards of gold. Why would that hook horror have a chest of gold? Why did the gelatinous cube specifically bring all of this gold back to one place after scouring the dungeon? Its because the gold's curse told them to. The ogre is driven to attack the merchant caravan to steal their gold, the adventurers are driven to slay the ogre to steal its stolen gold, the adventurers use the gold to buy from the merchants, and the cycle goes on.

So I was talking about merchants in a dungeon, right? I was playing elden ring and noticed that there are several areas where you can find merchants in very dangerous areas being completely ignored by enemies. I also remember a lot of similar situations in other souls games and it got me thinking about why they may be there. Souls games generally put a lot of effort into justifying aspects of the game world, so I was thinking about how I would justify something like that tin my own setting. Now for the hear me out I mentioned earlier: So, we've established that monsters like gold because they're also affected by the curse, right? Maybe they realize that, if they bring stuff to this specific person, that person gives them gold. The monster kills an adventurer, drags its stuff to the merchant, and gets gold they can take back to their lairs to add to their personal hoard. Adventurers roll through and pay the merchant gold for things they've been given by monsters. Monsters bring more stuff for the gold. Another cycle. Wouldn't it be dangerous for the merchant? Perhaps, but over time the monsters would learn that if they kill these people they can't get more gold from them. If they attack a merchant the other monsters come after them because the other monsters want to protect their source of gold. It essentially becomes this weird curse-born monster economy driven by largely by instinct.

Main talking points incoming!

These are dragon lads through-and-through. Having a choice of which draconic bloodline they descend from is their main gimmick and gives them a lot of flexibility.

Kobolds as trap-smiths is a classic trope that I just can't get enough of, so much so that I made a RANGER SUB-CLASS inspired by the idea for 5e back in the day. In this incarnation of that particular theme, they get an open-ended bonus that lets them set traps faster and makes them less likely to spring traps they happen to miss because I like the idea of them being smart enough to know they're small and that preparation is as much a weapon as a sword.

Less important to the species itself, but you can see here how I'm approaching creature classification. Rather than D&D's singular types (undead, humanoid, fiend, etc.) I'm taking a page from the book of one of their other popular properties, namely magic the gathering and giving creatures as many types as they need to properly describe what they are. I'll definitely have mechanics that affect specific creature types in specific ways, so I need the system to be a little more granular than a single creature type allows for.

The other gestalt lifepath posts I've made have been less than aesthetically pleasing because I was posting the parent lifepaths in their entirety alongside the gestalt, so this time I'm gonna just link to their original posts instead (I'm still using the scroll though, it's cute AND informative)

Parent #1: Outlander

Parent #2: Artisan

I hate to make a character option reliant on the GM's playstyle, but in this case the efficacy of this lifepath is really dependent on GM buy-in. If the GM isn't using traps, your intuition is gonna be useless. GMs that are more competitive or antagonistic may be less than inclined to have their NPCs bumble into trapped locations. In either case your game experience is going to be negatively impacted but I'm not sure that there is really any getting around this issue of GM cooperation. Maybe that's why traps just aren't all that popular as far as player options tend to go. Who knows.

Lets hit the important parts, mmkay?

The original lore stays, but I've given it a different conclusion. Once their sire had been banished, their connection to the abyss was severed and that abyssal energy eventually drained away and left a void that was replaced by the energy of the material plane. I'm still grappling with whether I want them to be demons, which is the creature type tied to the abyss, or beasts which is the creature type tied to the material.

While this is technically only a power of high-ranking demons, the ability to reform on your home plane if killed away from it is such an iconic "demon" thing that I just had to nick it for characterization purposes. While it will probably rarely ever actually be relevant, the concept is evocative enough that I wanted to place it front and center.

Because of their innate connection to the material plane, gnolls are kind of natural mediums for interacting with it. To me, the iconic Vallondian gnoll is a shaman using their connection to the material plane to uncover secret truths and help guide others to such knowledge.

Bonus image this time shows where Kajak Kor exists on Vallonde's world map.

Much has been said about the ability to fly in D&D. In the most recent game of 5e I played in, my aarakocra had to wait until 5th level before he could use his flight because the DM was afraid it would somehow break something. As a DM myself I can definitely understand where the reflex to not allow flying comes from; a lot of the challenges we present to our players come from our own perspective, and that perspective is ground-bound so things like traps and enemies and environmental hazards are often meant for characters that are as beholden to gravity as we are.

I think the main issue I have with this line of thinking is that it's too adversarial. So what if the flying PC can fly over a gap or avoid having to climb a perilous cliff face or whatever? That's what their character is meant to do, so let them circumvent those challenges. You don't ban rogues for being able to pick all those locked doors that were supposed to stop people, right? Clerics can just return dead characters to life, and yet that's somehow less egregious than having wings? I suppose I just don't see the issue because I personally like giving players tools that change the way they look at and interact with the world. By giving your players unique and interesting tools you can create unique and interesting gameplay experiences without having to put the work in because you've placed the ball in their court by default.

I'm no exception in this regard and have taken the lego blocks that are the planes of the D&D cosmology and organized them in a way that I find compelling and interesting. I've also made plenty of changes to the specifics, but their core identities remain intact and recognizable which is the most crucial thing because I want players to hear "The Abyss" or "Mechanus" and immediately be on the same page as everyone else. I feel like SOME kind of change is necessary because, personally, I dislike the way that the planes of the forgotten realms have been organized. I find it to be pointlessly convoluted and feel like it only exists in the form that it does because many years of development and the preconceptions of a rabid fanbase have trapped them into it. It's familiar, but I haven't in my 25 years of playing this game ever once been satisfied with its implementation.

A common theme I've found myself leaning into more and more over the years is one of consolidation and minimalism. As much fun as I had approaching world building and design from a more maximalist approach in the past, I've since found that it is hard to achieve a strong sense of identity in a setting when it lacks focus. The cosmology of Vallonde, called the convergent multiverse, is a big part of the setting and I want it to be coherent enough that the players can get a good sense for how it functions, so I've spent a lot of time tweaking the model and making it more approachable. The wheel is dead. Now is the time of the funnel.

Let's get some good old bullet points going to cut this information into smaller, easier to digest bites.

In the convergent multiverse, everything filters downward. Energy and matter, physical and metaphysical, is finite: As energy filters out of the conceptual planes, they are slowly emptied until, some day, nothing will remain. This process of all matter and energy filtering downward toward a singular destination is called Convergence.

The conceptual planes are pure thought and energy that has yet to be given a physical form. These are the remnants of the thoughts, emotions, and knowledge of a primogenitor god, Aeon Genesis, that rent itself to its constituent parts to create the multiverse.

Pure concepts filter into Mechanus where they are given form. This is where the machinery of the multiverse is found and is the engine that keeps the whole thing chugging along.

Arcadia is like an idealized material and works as a heaven analogue. As energy from the conceptual planes makes its way deeper into the funnel it becomes less pure, more diluted, and more altered by the influence of other concepts, and in arcadia is where these concepts manifest in their most pure and ordered form. Souls on the material that lose their physical anchor are drawn here if they are aligned with order and good.

The Fey, Material, and Shadow exist much like they do in the published material. In my conception of their relationship, the fey and shadow planes are the way that regular people make their way to and from the upper and lower planes. You can't accidentally stumble from the material into hell, but find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and you may wind up in the plane of shadow and from there hell is a more possible destination.

Hell is the bottom of the cosmic funnel. In my conception of the nine hells, the plane is essentially one impossibly massive, open, inverted cone with tiers where each tier is so cartoonishly large that it is basically it's own ring-shaped plane. It can be essentially conceptualized as shaped like Dante's hell. Souls on the material that lose their physical anchor are drawn here if they are aligned with chaos and evil.

Once you've descended the nine great tiers to the very bottom of Hell, a simple cave mouth welcomes you to end of the multiverse. Hell may be the bottom of the funnel, but the Abyss is what the funnel empties into. Everything in the multiverse eventually finds its way to the Abyss: Material, energy, souls, thought...everything. The Abyss is similar to its published incarnation in the sense that it is many layers of progressively more nightmarish places, but its functionality is different. This is the bottom of the multiverse and acts almost like a stomach, taking everything that finds its way here and breaking it down on its way to the convergence. Keeping one's mind from eroding into irreversible madness is just as much a concern as any of the terrible things that somehow live here.

Convergence is the ultimate fate of everything. Once something is worn down by the terrors of the Abyss, it sinks into infinity and is added to the singularity that represents the slowly reforming overgod mentioned earlier. Once everything is one and the god is whole again, it will rend itself once more, beginning a new aeon and restarting the cycle.