This is a collection of Tabletop Role-Playing Games that I have designed for the game design course "Tales from the Table" at Northeastern University. Each TTRPG will have a journal entry reflection underneath as well, reflecting on my inspiration, design process, and more.
Experimental TTRPG 1: Two-stat game
High Rollers is the first TTRPG I've designed. My inspiration for the theme came from my partner and our shared interest in the poker-themed, roguelike, deck-building game Balatro. I also took some inspiration from the JRPG Persona 5, particularly the part where the game is set in a casino. For the mechanics and gameplay itself, I decided to do a one-pager with a simple two-stat, d6 system as to not overwhelm myself too much, with this being my first time designing a TTRPG. I started off pretty basic, with my two stats being luck and "skill" (specifically in the quotations) to go along with the casino theme. It was what we discussed in class most recently at the time, and it was something small to start with. The tables from Make Your Own One-Page Roleplaying Game also gave me some inspiration on potential mechanics I could add.
When I initially brought this idea into class the first time, it was very bare bones. I wasn't sure what direction to take it. I had interesting ideas in mind, but I didn't know how to bring them to life. One of these ideas was to use playing cards somewhere in the game since it would be pretty thematic. At that point, I had never played a TTRPG that utilized playing cards before, so I had zero idea of how to incorporate that into High Rollers. In class, when I shared my idea, I was able to receive some good feedback from my fellow classmates. My classmate, Brooke, gave me the idea to incorporate playing cards into character creation. I liked the idea and decided to roll with it and see where it goes.
I made a table and added a column of all the different possible poker hands, and then two more columns for occupations and special traits. I decided that player characters' occupations and traits will be determined when a player draws a hand of 8 cards and chooses a possible poker hand to select their character's occupation and trait. I also altered my theme a bit to fit this idea better. Initially, the story in my TTRPG was pretty unstructured, with people just being gamblers with individual goals. I instead gave the characters roles working in the casino, who share a common goal to pull off a heist to take down the casino they work for. While characters can still have individual goals, having a direction made it feel more cohesive.
While my TTRPG is not quite fully playable at the moment and would still need some significant work if I were to move forward with it, I'm pretty satisfied with this being my first TTRPG design. While I've been exposed to TTRPGs for a pretty long time, I'd still consider myself a newbie for the most part. This class is my first big push into TTRPGs that aren't D&D, and I'm learning that TTRPGs can take on so many forms and have so many different and unique mechanics and themes. As of writing this, I've played A Quiet Year, a map-making RPG, and it was very different from my past TTRPG experiences. It was really fun and eye-opening, and I'm glad that I was able to play something out of the scope of what I thought was a "normal" TTRPG. I hope that with my future experiments, I can incorporate some more unique mechanics and branch out a bit into something new.
Experimental TTRPG 2: Receipt Keepsake Game
When making Bizarre Bazaar, I was heavily inspired by the unit we were discussing at the time about keepsake games. When ideating in class, I came up with the idea of using collected receipts in a TTRPG. I decided to stick with this idea and come up with a game that utilizes receipts from various stores. After some thinking, I came up with the idea of players being eccentric shopkeepers who sell all kinds of goods, and they want to pitch their "item of the day" (a random item on a collected receipt) to a customer that's in a particular mood.
The idea for having different moods came from a solo journaling game I played called Last Tea Shop, where you are the owner of a tea shop between the world of the living and the dead, and make tea for guests that pass by to improve their moods and gain some insight into their lives. This game was also initially intended to have a journaling aspect like Last Tea Shop, but I later removed it as it interrupts the flow of the game.
The feedback that I got during class was quite useful. At the time of playtesting, my game still had its journaling elements, and whether players make sales as the shopkeeper or buy things as a customer was pretty arbitrary, and there wasn't really a concise win or loss condition. There wasn't very much structure to the game, as it was mostly roleplaying. Players found themselves a bit lost, and some of the customer moods and personalities I had in my table conflicted with both the interest of the shopkeeper and customer roles. The players also didn't feel too strongly about winning or losing, as there was no condition. I intended for this game to be an experience when I made it, but after watching the playtest, it felt more like a party game than a TTRPG.
I think if I were to change this further, I would consider adding a way to track successes and failures on both the parts of the shopkeeper and the customer, to make it feel more gamified, but still retaining the freedom that a TTRPG offers. I think this game would definitely benefit from having more structure and a clearer goal to be met by players. Other than that though, players had fun with the light and silly experience that Bizarre Bazaar offers. They also really liked the idea of repurposing simple store receipts into a fun game, and the novelty of the idea.
Overall, it was pretty fun to branch out and try to design something new and break outside of the bounds that I thought a TTRPG needed to be. Learning about and playing new TTRPGs has definitely inspired new and novel ideas that aren't just rolling a die for a stat (although there's nothing wrong with that). I think learning and playing has led me to think about TTRPGs more creatively and be more loose with making them, and giving players agency and full creative freedom.
Experimental TTRPG 3: Map-Making Game
Guess who's been watching Bridgerton on Netflix? Me. The theme of this TTRPG was inspired by the over-the-top displays of courtship, glitzy balls, and endless drama present in the show. As I was ideating a mechanic to tell an interesting story in Regency era England, my partner suggested making a map-making game. I thought it was a fascinating idea, so I rolled with it. In A Night to Remember, players take on the role of all-seeing matchmakers at a fancy ball who want a particular couple to get together, but scandals, rumors, and accidents might happen and get in the way.
My game takes some inspiration from two map-making games I've played before, A Quiet Year and Navigator. In this game, players start by each creating 2 "main characters" that will be a "match" that players want to get together. Matches are then created randomly and players will assign themselves a pair to root for. Players will then draw cards that then connect to prompts on a table that guide their storytelling process and what additions they would make to the map, which starts out as a simple ballroom that has a dancefloor and some tables. As the game goes on and the night unfolds, more drama and gossip are revealed and can get in the way of a pair getting together.
The feedback from my game was pretty positive. People really liked the theme of the game and creating silly situations in the ballroom the game takes place, which is how I intended for the game to be played. One of the drawbacks, however, is that it was difficult to convey something like a scandal or a rumor as a drawing on the map, so it was difficult for players to remember who said what to who, and so on. To help this, I added an additional step for players to track scandals with tokens and keep notes on the characters they contributed. Players would "journal" the details of their scandals, rumors, feelings, etc. There was also no definitive way to track if a pair's relationship is successful enough to win the game, so a way of visually tracking scandals and feelings of affection would be something I would consider, should I move forward with this game.
To contrast the point about scandals being hard to track, a point was also brought up that I could possibly mechanize the idea of gossip, scandals, and rumors being ephemeral and temporary, and play into the fact that people don't know everything. This could also be another thing I think about, should I develop this further. I think giving the game's system more structure would create a clearer goal for players to meet.
Overall, I had a lot of fun making this game and watching it be playtested, especially seeing what kind of crazy situations are introduced. I very much enjoy creating chaos in map-making games, and this game provides a lot of opportunities for silly chaos. I like this idea a lot, and I think it has a lot of potential.
Experimental TTRPG 4: Solo Journaling Game
For this experiment, I took inspiration from being a pet owner. Over the spring break, I was at home and had been spending a lot of time with my dog, Ollie. Over the five years my family has had Ollie, since he was a puppy, he’s grown a distinct personality; clingy, demanding, playful, yet lazy. I would sometimes think, “what is he thinking? What does he think about the things we do?”
Encountering other people’s pets, I get to know their unique personalities as well. My partner’s cat, Biscuit, is independent, aloof yet friendly and affectionate sometimes. From the scraps of a somewhat failed attempt at making a journaling game for my second experiment, I decided to dive into making a solo journaling game for my last experiment, about seeing through the eyes of your pet and thinking about their daily experience in a unique way.
I decided to go with a simple mechanic of rolling a die to get a prompt. In this game, players write about the experience of their pet in their day-to-day life over the course of a week. Each day is a new prompt that provides an overarching new scenario and specific questions pertaining to the main scenario that players roll for.
The biggest challenge when making this game was coming up with questions for each of the 7 days. I wanted to make sure that any pet owner could play this game, and not necessarily just dog and cat owners, so I kept the questions relatively vague that any pet owner can answer. I thought about including questions pertaining to specific pets, but for this experiment, I wasn’t too sure about getting into the nitty gritty with different scenarios for different kinds of pets.
I playtested this game with my partner, who played through the eyes of his cat, Biscuit. The simple nature of the questions made the responses pretty short, but my game was still overall meeting its goal of being an interesting writing experience. My partner gave his responses largely in 1st person, giving Biscuit a distinct personality and voice through his responses. Biscuit’s personality of being an independent, aloof, and sassy cat came across, and my partner had fun thinking about what Biscuit would think about certain things.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the concept of my game. If I were to continue, I would try to further gamify the rolls to affect certain prompts. Like in Last Tea Shop, rolling certain characters can affect your roll for the next day, altering the number you’d get. In that game, there is also a mechanic of collecting items, which I feel would be interesting in my game and seeing what kind of items different pets would have. Would a dog have a favorite squeaky toy, or a cat a favorite kind of catnip or place to rest? I think this game could provide a lot more fascinating of a thought exercise if I considered more aspects about pets. I think this experiment has a lot of potential moving forward if I were to.