First Look: The Wyverns & Warrens Fantasy RPG (Concept and Core Mechanic) (Patreon)

(This article is not part of the content of this blog that is covered by the OGL 1.0a.)

Wyverns & Warrens (WyvWar) is my current ongoing attempt to design a short, easy, fantasy ttRPG that still had a depth of options.

(Cover art by Eric Pommer. Cover graphics by Lj Stephens) 

This is specifically *different* from the other from-scratch ttRPG I'm working on, Warbrand, for a lot of reasons. Not the least of those is I hope to keep the core rules of WyvWar to 64 pages or less. I wouldn't be sad if it rose to 72, but I really want it under 96. I adore Pathfinder 1st and 2nd edition and Starfinder, but 400-600 page rulebooks will never come across to me as both "fast" and "easy." 

But most importantly, WyvWar is my nostalgia-driven fantasy heartbreaker ttRPG design. Every choice I make for WyvWar is driven by the effort to recapture how it felt when I played Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures, or D&D games that use the original booklets, Basic, a Boxed set, Dragon articles, and stuff we graphed on from Boot Hill, Gamma World, Gangbusters, and anything else that seemed to use a d20 or percentile.

Which isn't to say I want to recreate any of those game mechanics. What I want is to have the same reaction to playing WyvWar as I did playing those. But of course, I am older now, and significantly more sophisticated in my understanding of probability, game theory, narrative structure, the limits of human endurance, and a lot of other things that generally make me a better writer, but don't always increase my enjoyment as a player.

So, the goal here is not specifically to go for any given target audience, or to be amazingly innovative, or even necessary to create a commercially viable ttRPG (though I'm proceeding on the assumption I'll make it a commercial product). Instead, I just want a game that suits exactly the mix of fast, easy, flexible, and able to surprise that I crave when I am in a nostalgic mood.

And all that begins with a core mechanic.  

CORE MECHANIC

For the WyvWar core mechanic, I'm going for 2d10 + bonuses, trying to meet or beat a Target Number, which I'll present as Target # in rules. So, it would be "Now that Marc has grabbed Ian, to force an Oreo into his mouth he must succeed at an Athletics check (Target 14)." I don't think I save nearly enough room turning that into a 2- or 3-letter acronym, be that as universal as Target Number (TN), specific as Difficulty Class (DC), or as cute as Hopeful Integer Target (HIT). We'll just list the target number you want to hit with the word Target, then the number.

So, why 2d10? Because flat curves are too unpredictable for me, and bell curves too unlikely to ever present the extremes of their range. So, I want a pyramid distribution.

Taken from anydice.com (which is in my list of game design links I keep on my desktop), here's a table showing the chance that a roll of 2d10 will product a value of at least the total listed tp the left.

This is the starting point for all my math. For example, if I want a single 2d10 die roll to have a roughly 70% chance of success, then I want the Target # to be 9. That also means if the Target # is 9, someone with a +2 bonus will succeed in one roll 85% of the time (since that's the odds of rolling a 7 or higher). 

This directly impacts the size bonuses will be. For example, a +5 bonus to 1d20 with a target number system gives a +25% bonus at any level when the d20 range matters. But 2d10 changes the value of the bonus depending on the Target #. With a Target 9, +5 gives a +25% chance of success, but against Target 20 it gives only a +20%. On the one hand, that limits the impact of bonuses at extremes, but not by so much players won't generally know how good a +2, +3, or +4 bonus is.

That base math means I can start building structures that calculate Target #s, and what systems give characters bonuses... or penalties.

But that'll be for another week.

Feedback: Like the sound of any of that? Hate it? have specific questions? Let me know!