The Road Ahead (2025)

As we close in on the end of 2025, I figure it's worth it to look back on what the blog has been about.

Broadly, I think it would be fair to say that the biggest focus has been on the sequel mechanics -- figuring out what the game is (and isn't) going to be. Along the way, there was also some discussion of other systems, and how they handled mechanical options; the intention with these posts was usually to make some judgment on how such things could/should work in the TNP sequel. There were a few posts here and there about "d20 TNP" but those were few and far between.

With entering into a new stage of my life, I'm finding I have less and less time for actual TTRPG playing, design work, other social activities, as well as just generally balancing out necessary life tasks. The TNP blog has become less about TNP, and more about the sequel, and I'm often using the blog to ask "what should I do?" rather than answer that question with, "here's a new update!" So, overall I'm feeling like I need to rebalance my schedule a little bit.

Barring some unexpected improvement on one of these other fronts, I think it's safe to say that I will be pausing the blog, after this post. As with other periods where the blog has been on hiatus, my hope is that I can still be doing work on the system(s) in the background. But I don't think the current posting frequency is sustainable; even if I were to stick to just sequel content, I feel like I'd want to scale back from 3 posts per month (10 months of the year) down to about 1 post per month. If I do go ahead with that idea, I'd likely start a separate blog -- since this blog is supposed to be about "The Next Project (d20)" as the title says.

5e
On the topic of mainline D&D, we're just starting to see the first splatbook for 5e 2024 with Heroes of Faerun. I would be remiss if I didn't point out how similar this naming convention is to the Essentials line of 4e D&D books. As much as I might like to talk more about D&D and its ongoing development, the reality is that both groups I currently play in are sticking with the 2014 rules, at least until the completion of their current campaigns. Having started in January of this year, we're sort of ballparking that these will take another 2 years to complete.

So, realistically, I think throwing out my opinions on other peoples' summations of new 2024 content would be a bit gauche. If I am to continue with D&D as a hobby in the future, I am sure I will pick up the new materials, but for now I don't see it as something I can/should reasonably be mining for blog content. (For what it's worth, I think D&D still continues to make baffling design choices, some of the time.) Also, nothing against the idea of playing other games -- I just don't really have time, as I mentioned off the start.

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I guess I'll close off by saying that I see a lot of potential in the sequel designs, but it's a potential that is still so very raw, and unrefined. I feel like I've hit at something, and the more I can put into it, the more I will get out of it. As I've said before, the contrast is that TNP has some loose ends, but the refinement is basically done -- it's more a matter of codifying and formalizing. The more I put into it, the less I feel like I get out of it.

That being said, I think that getting TNP done should be something to refocus on. The question of what the sequel really is still hasn't been fully answered, and that leaves the door open for TNP, in my eyes. I look back on the recent post about 'plug & play' mechanics, and it makes me think about how I didn't even really talk about the "class dice bonuses." The fact that these bonuses were able to be worked out and balanced to such a high degree (albeit within a limited d20 scope) makes me think that perhaps there might be room to port this idea into... whatever comes after TNP, and its sequel. Perhaps these mechanics not making it into the sequel could end up being a blessing in disguise, after all...?

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Anyways, I'll leave it at that for now. Check in on the Discord or other social media channels, to find out what comes next for TNP.

Plug & Play vs. Unified Mechanics (2025)

When it comes to TNP, there are two (at least) fairly distinct subsystems at play in the mechanics. The 'attributes' in the game are expressly only used for skill math; if you compare this with basically any version of D&D, the ability scores (and/or derived modifiers) are used for both skills and for combat applications. TNP combat mechanics are their own separate thing, although dice mechanics (such as mastery and advantage/disadvantage) are shared with the skill mechanics.

In a recent discussion, I had suggested that the TNP skill system could be taken out and wholesale bolted onto pre-existing combat systems (assuming that those lack an 'attribute' system of their own, otherwise it might get slightly clunky.) Sure, you'd need an understanding of how the aforementioned dice mechanics work (as well as skill rank mechanics) but there's nothing about the TNP combat system tying itself back into the skill mechanics.

What this reminded me of was 13th Age; some of the criticisms/observations about the system were how it built onto the standard "d20 system"-type of chassis, in sort of a "plug & play" manner. (I'll be explaining the mechanics from memory of what I read years ago, so please forgive me if I get any details wrong.) The background system was meant to replace much of the skills system, whereby you could have something like a +8 to split among two backgrounds; if you could reason that your background would apply to a skill check, you would add that background's bonus. I remember most people went with the +5/+3 split, and the assumption was that this would be added to an applicable ability score modifier. That's when people sort of realized, "we can just unbolt this mechanic from 13th Age, and bolt it onto any system we like [particularly if it had the same standard 6 ability scores.]"

Likewise, your "one unique thing" was meant to be mechanically agnostic -- so, take that idea and add it onto your cyberpunk dystopian RPG if that suits your tastes. Even the icon relationship system (albeit the icons were specific to the setting) was a mechanic that had its own resource pool (such as it was) and had no real connection into any other numbers on your character sheet. You could (and people did) homebrew their own icons, so bolting this mechanic onto pre-existing pantheons was the next logical conclusion that people came to. By contrast, I've seen examples, such as in Blades in the Dark, where party members' mechanics are meant to have small tie-ins to "crew" mechanics or "home-turf" mechanics -- all of which seem designed to tighten the seams, and make the whole system one unit.

To bring the conversation back around, it ultimately points to the question of whether unified mechanics or purpose-built mechanics are the best fit, for any given system. As is often said on Forgotten Weapons, the answer to "what kind of gun should I get?" tends to be "it depends what you want to use it for."

If you look at a system like 5th Edition D&D, the mechanics always fall back onto ability scores, by and large; roll a d20, determine whether none/half/all/double your proficiency bonus applies, prescribe one of the 6 ability modifiers... That's basically every action in the game, in or out of combat. Likewise, Apocalypse World (or any derivative thereof) basically runs off the engine of 2d6+stat. Oddly enough, I'd say D&D is a good system for combat but bad for non-combat, just as much as I would say that Apoc World is a good system outside of combat but bad when it's used in combat. In either case, the selling point is the universality of the mechanic -- regardless of whether the mechanic is really suited to the task.

When we look at "d20" TNP, there's a very clear divide between the (d20-based) combat system and the (d10-based) skill system. Although they share certain things in common mechanically, there's nothing connecting them together. Indeed, early on in the design process, I made the decision to exclude "class dice" mechanics from anything having to do with skills, in order to keep the math more simple. By contrast, the entirety of the combat system is purposefully built around all of the mechanics being derived from class dice. If you can bolt the TNP skills "grid" onto another game (or create a grid of your own) there's nothing stopping you from using this mechanic, without the TNP combat system. Likewise, I think you could also take a combat system (at least with a comparable variety of monster types) and use it with TNP's card mechanic for random campaign generation. How the monsters actually function has no relation to which cards you deal out. This is also why it might be possible to bolt this system wholesale onto the "d6 TNP sequel."

That is kind of the point of the sequel mechanics (among a handful of other things I could point to.) The general idea of "ability scores, done right" as a guiding principle of the designs was to integrate the math into both combat and non-combat applications, and have it all make sense. If executed properly, this has the potential to more successfully fuse those two halves of the game engine together; part of the motivation is to make it so that the system can't be broken down and stripped for parts -- as in the examples with 13th Age. The other reason is the goal of creating an elegant system, that executes on the simplicity implied in the 5e or Apoc World mechanics -- but which hopefully works well for both combat and non-combat. Ultimately, that should always be the goal when building a system off of the "unified mechanic" paradigm.

This sort of highlights the conundrum of 13th Age; if the TNP skill system and combat system don't really interact with each other, what's stopping anyone from taking either of those halves and bolting it onto a system they already use/are familiar with/enjoy? As a designer, the challenge when not making a unified mechanical system is to design things in such a way that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Essentially, having a purpose-built combat system and a purpose-built non-combat system should synergize in a way that makes the overall experience better -- but it does make it difficult to argue that "this thing can only exist with this other thing," if/when there's nothing substantive tying them together.

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Nearing the end of blogging season! Apologies for the delay in getting this 2nd post out.
I'll look to get one more post out to wrap up the year, either on November 29th or 30th.

Building out Class Features (2025)

At the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I think the solution to the "cantrip problem" is to pivot the design space off of attribute mechanics. I started to think about it more as, "I use a spell, therefore I add 1d6 to the pool, for this attack." Now, as has been stated clearly before, not all classes/subclasses will get access to cantrips -- so what if we make having that specific class feature be the source of the 1d6 that we add to the pool? This lets us more easily differentiate Clerics from Paladins, and Druids from Rangers. (Another big distinction between spellcasters in 5e is ritual casting; this class feature is what I would argue is the main thing separating Sorcerers and Warlocks from being as high on my list as Druids or Wizards, in particular.)

Now that we've established what attributes won't do, we need to figure out what they will do, with regards to cantrips. If two-handed weapons are assumed to be getting a +8 damage mod, and two-weapon fighting will get +3 damage to each attack (assuming our standard array of +4/+3/+2/+1/+0) then we probably need to figure out something comparable to that, for cantrip attacks.

Would a single-target attack simply add both mental stats, as damage? Is there an easy way to balance out a "number of attacks" stat with the assumption that a "cantrip damage" stat will now likely be your highest stat? The problem is that if the only thing that "cantrip casters" care about is their mental stats, then suddenly everyone's got a +4 in one and a +3 in the other, and there's no variety. Maybe we still need to encourage spellcasters to have a +2 finger-waggling stat, after all. Do we simply treat (ranged) cantrip attacks the same way as (melee) two-handed weapon attacks, and add double the damage mod? How many attacks does an archer need to make, in order to be able to compete with that? This will take a bit more thought in order to flesh out, it seems. 

The other aspect of class features that I wanted to bring to the fore was the idea of "exceptions-based design." I touched on it a little bit (albeit ham-fistedly) in a recent post, where there are general rules, but then there are exceptions made to those rules. One example with the sequel mechanics is that the general rule (so far) is that we assume TWF will use the lower damage mod between STR and DEX. This would encourage a class like a Fighter to put high stats into both, in order to be good at TWF; it would also make it more expensive for spellcasting classes (who rely more on investment in mental stats) to also be good at TWF.

However, as an exception, we might allow the Ranger subclass to simply always use the higher of these two stats, meaning they don't have to invest in both -- or to simply override this rule and use a different stat, such as AGIL. If the assumption within the "lore" of the Ranger is that they are always scouting ahead and need to be able to react quickly, then incentivizing them to have a higher AGIL would reflect that in the mechanics, via having a higher initiative score. AGIL also being tied to stealth would likewise tie in to the presumption of Rangers as hunters and ambushers, stalking their prey from the shadows.

This also makes me ask, how should the Monk/Rogue class be designed? If the starting point is that Monks will probably get an INT bonus to their AC, my immediate thought actually isn't to slant Rogues towards CHA. Monk generally lends itself to being the multi-attack class, whereas Rogue is more of an "alpha strike" class, using sneak attack. If the general rule is that DEX (or AGIL?) is the "number of ranged weapon attacks" stat, the obvious exception to build in for Monks would be to allow them to also use this number for melee attacks (perhaps using their lowest physical stat as the damage modifier?) Or maybe it makes more sense to go with "highest physical stat" as number of attacks and "lowest physical stat" as their melee damage mod.

Likewise, if the Rogue's preferred damage mod stat is DEX, would it make more sense for their dice pool stat to also be DEX, or should it be AGIL? We definitely want Rogues to be the best at things like lockpicking, so leaning more towards DEX seems like the obvious move... but it really is a question of how to balance the two. Much like in 5e, this gives the Rogue the versatility to put any remaining stat points into whichever mental stat they choose, making it more of a decision around which skills to focus on, than purely a combat consideration.

Dovetailing into the Rogue idea, the mechanic of "finesse" weapons from 5e is something that I think could make an appearance, allowing either STR or DEX to be used for damage, when attacking with a one-handed weapon (and not doing TWF). To tie this back into the conceit of class features, perhaps the "one-handed weapon stat" could be a function of classes, rather than having a general rule. Or, say, the general rule is that STR is the default, but characters with "finesse weapon proficiency" can instead use DEX. So we would expect classes like Rogues or maybe Rangers to have this proficiency, but Barbarians likely would not. Maybe a benefit of being a Barbarian is that you could always use STR, when doing two-weapon fighting.

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Slightly off topic, but bringing things back to Eldritch Horror... One of my complaints with the game is how some characters are more about their items than their intrinsic abilities. While this is also a complaint I've had about D&D, it's significantly worse in a game where world-events regularly cause you to lose possessions at random. I do appreciate the conceit of reusing existing in-game items as a way to equip the starting class features for characters, but this style of game in particularly causes the weakness of item-dependent characters to be laid bare. The classic D&D comparable is when the party is captured and stripped of their belongings, imprisoned, etc. This is why TNP and the sequel generally focus on treating everything as a class feature -- even things that could reasonably be represented as items. In this way, they are part of the character at all times, and not something that can be taken away from them; they are just always assumed to be part of what the characters can do.

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This post is a little bit ahead of schedule (or "on time," as far as our most optimistic forecasting is concerned...) Next post will likely be up by November 19th, at the latest -- but possibly even by the end of next week, depending on how things go.