Designing a Table-Top RPG: Combat, Wounds, HP, etc.
Conflict!
You’ve got your system of resolution down. Your character creation rules are complete. Your equipment and gear is figured out. What’s left?
I’m probably doing things out of order because it’s likely you’ll figure out combat as you figure out your resolution system, as conflict is an inherent part of TTRPGs, whether social, physical or the like. When you determine how characters DO things, you will then need to figure out how characters DO things to other beings in the world. A very abstract game may use a simple ‘combat’ stat and roll once to see what happens, while other dense games, (such as a favorite of mine, Warhammer 40k) add on a ton of additional rules to make combat exciting, brutal and crunchy. What works for your game is going to depend on what you want to focus on. Crunchy, combat-focused games are going to have lots of equipment, lots of enemies, lots of tactics, and lots of character options that have to do with combat. It’s why writing these articles in these separate chunks is a bit of a fallacy. Every aspect you work on is going to depend on, affect, and change every other aspect of the game. It’s why developing a TTRPG is so….involved, I guess? Each piece makes you rethink a previously developed piece, and so on, and so on. Combat makes you think about your resolution, your equipment, resources, character creation options, etc. It’s all tied together.
So you have to focus on what you want with regards to combat. Is it a focus of the game? Do you want it to be deadly, crunchy or simple and quick? Do you want to use an abstract number like HP to track damage, or a wound system? Do you want critical hits to be a thing, which can add excitement and danger to the game? Is it more narrative-focused and combat is just another challenge you roll once to overcome? Some designers don’t like HP or see it as too ‘easy’ or ‘simple’, that it’s only used because it’s tradition and there’s better ways to track damage and wounds. It depends on what you want out of a combat system. HP is a simple setting that doesn’t require any extra thinking, so you can focus on other things.
Some games like to also structure social conflict with more rules, seeing it as unfair that physical combat gets so many crunchy rules, while social conflict is generally resolved with a single roll. Again, where’s your focus? If your game is about intrigue, politics and manipulation, you may want extra rules around social conflict.
After writing these articles and seeing all these questions, I can see how overwhelming it can feel to write your own TTRPG. There’s so many aspects to consider and decisions to make. You are constantly wondering if you’re making the right decisions and each decision can change a different piece of the overall puzzle that is your game.
Any advice I can offer is you simply have to start somewhere. Remember your Why. Why are you making this game? What feelings are you going for? What themes? If you have a solid Why, you can return to it when you need to make decisions. “I want this game to be gritty and deadly, so I’m going to have critical hits, random hit locations, and damaging weapons” vs “This game is more about traveling and exploring than combat, I’ll just have one ‘fight’ stat that players use, with strong explanations of what happens on successes, partial success and failures.”
Start with your Why, and then move onto the next piece of the puzzle. Find what you’re interested in. Writing character options? Do that next. Making cool combat tactics? Do that. Writing random tables of gear/equipment? Start whoever you’re most interested in as that will help keep you motivated to keep going. Then as you move onto the next piece, you’ll return to previous areas to adapt, change, and improve. A TTRPG is a living thing until you publish (and even after, depending…) constantly being modified, changed and updated as you learn more and more.
You also don’t have to start from scratch. I sure as hell didn’t. I saw what a great system Kal Arath was, saw the bones of something that could fit well for what I was thinking, and incorporated it into my own thing. It helped me make decisions on some of these questions, since I wanted the game to play somewhat similarly to Kal Arath, I could follow similar rules for resolution and combat. It’s fairly simple while being gritty and deadly. It has a wounds table if you hit 0 that’s even deadlier than Kal Arath (perhaps too deadly…). But that’s also part of designing. Trying something out and seeing what happens. Maybe it starts off too fiddly, too deadly, or too simple, so you playtest it, and rework it, and rewrite it, and playtest it, and rework it, and rewrite it…
You get the idea.
I’m trying to stick to an early June release for Niv Lova. At first, it will only be a 8.5 x 11 pdf but am looking into A4, A5 formats and such. Will also be working on a text-only release to ensure accessibility. I know basically nothing about layout and formatting so it’s been a bit of a grind.
If you’d like to dive into Niv Lova, you can check out the Playtest Document. If you’d like, you can join my discord to provide feedback, thoughts and comments on any and all things PWM, including Niv Lova. Otherwise, you can always comment here or message me through Substack. (If the discord link is down, just message me!)
Thanks to Andrew Wylde, BuddhaRandom, and Eric, for being paid subscribers. A reminder paid subscribers will receive the final version of Niv Lova, free of charge, when it’s available.
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Check out the Table of Contents for previous games I’ve played as well as other stuff I’ve written. Recently updated!
Why you're making a game is so important, and too many people overlook it.
Well said!