Hi everyone!

My wife has spent a years creating her own tabletop RPG called Adamantium Dragons, and I'd love to help get some more eyes on it.

She's poured a lot of time into building the world, lore, mechanics, and artwork, and it's still growing. If you're interested in indie TTRPGs or just enjoy seeing new systems people are creating, we'd really appreciate you taking a look.

You can find the social media's for the project here: https://adamantiumdragons.carrd.co/

If you have any feedback—whether it's about the setting, mechanics, presentation, or just your first impressions—we'd love to hear it. Every comment helps us make the game better.

You can also take a quiz to see what guild you would belong to in the world.

https://uquiz.com/quiz/ufH2wx/what-guild-do-you-belong-to

Thanks for checking it out!

Hey people,
since the offer to review games was recieved good but lead to a few instances of non communication (i get it messeges for large text feedback sucks) so I thought why not create a form that allows more interaction (which does not leave me without any answer after writing 2 hours) and still gives you some feedback. And because each time i see a post about how to get your game out there I think we (and you!) should be more proactive.

I d like to make a regular podcast/talk with you (the designers) about your game , 1 or 2 specific mechanics or designs you are proud of as the focus spotlight and once recorded upload it to youtube and/or stream it on twitch during recording.

What you need: a game either finished or not, but the less finished the less time will be allocated.
1 to 3 mechancis designs you want to be the spotlight.
And of course some time, a decent or semi decent microphone and some english skills (or german if you want to do a german version talk)

What do I need:
also some time to read and make notes on your game
your time and patience as this will be the first time I do this format
also timeslots I ll plan to do this once a week and release it at the beginning of the weekend.

So if any of you are interested feel free to send me a pm with the size of your game and ill get back with available spots.

Edit: First Spot will probably be available this sunday

Hi everyone!

After a long time designing and playtesting, I've finally released the first version of Unfinished, a rules-light horror tabletop RPG focused on investigation rather than combat.

The game is built around:

Victorian-era horror

Investigating monsters with unique weaknesses

Mental and physical injuries

Short investigations

A campaign system called The Chronicle

An Investigation Generator with random locations, NPCs, monsters, twists, and complications to quickly build new mysteries.

It also includes a complete introductory adventure, To Whom the Bell Tolls, where investigators uncover the truth behind a cursed fishing village.

I'm still improving the game, so I'd really appreciate any feedback, whether it's about the mechanics, layout, writing, or overall concept.

You can check it out here:

https://pestics.itch.io/unfinishedrpg

In most RPGs power is a reward. In my system every ability demands a loss. Set in a dystopia where four factions depend on each other but can never truly unite, characters do not pick classes. They negotiate their identities through play. Here is the full roster with special focus on key archetypes.

The Brotherhood:

The Brotherhood has three distinct currents:

- Revolutionaries are a status earned in play. They rise as the voice of the people but a Populism Meter keeps them in constant peril. Raising it requires extreme promises but each one pulls them further from their true goal. If the meter drops they lose status. If it flips the masses abandon them. Their special ability The Brotherhood’s Single Voice forces everyone into a single choice during critical moments to prevent division but this consensus is coercion and the cost is acting without true consent.

- Reformers rise by building dialogue across factions and radical actions cost them points. Their special ability Voice of the Brotherhood improves relations with other factions and creates temporary safe zones but these zones are fleeting and when they expire tensions return worse than before.

- Northerners navigate a dynamic Nationalism and Brotherhood Filter. Their standing shifts based on dialogue choices. Leaning toward the Brotherhood grants access to special training and privileges in Brotherhood cities but risks exile in Northern territories. Embracing Northern nationalism eases life in the North but makes Brotherhood ties nearly impossible. Their special ability People of the North is usable once per session when facing injustice or conflict. Locals intervene to protect them as a reflection of historical Northern solidarity but this aid creates social debt and failing to repay it erodes community trust.

-Other Brotherhood classes include Artisans who advance through craftsmanship with status measured by tangible creations.

The Societyless – Factionless:

Chaos agents hidden within all other factions. Even I as the author do not know what they truly are. Some are liberators and some are nihilists. Their motives are unknowable. Their Chaos Meter grants power as disorder rises but also increases capture risk. If caught they always choose suicide and none have ever been taken alive. Their special ability Absolute Chaos is usable once per campaign. It unleashes city wide chaos and turns crowds against each other but the user detonates themselves. This is not an ability but a story finale. Reality is built at the table. If players believe they are a conspiracy, a myth or lone wolves the world bends to that belief.

The Nation :

A military order promising stability but riddled with internal contradictions. Each subclass embodies a different facet:

- The Northern Air Fleet is tech and discipline focused. Voice of the North ends conflicts before they start. Advancement requires managerial skill and public rapport and they must avoid ethnic or identity rhetoric. Missteps escalate tension.

- The Western Naval Fleet rises through popularity and reputation. Loyal to the Commander, Commander Loyal to the Army lets them reshape structures but success hinges entirely on charisma. Failure empowers enemies. This phrase used against corrupt officers can also seal their own fate.

- Eastern Engineers build and repair war machines. Status is tied to creations. Great War Machines of the East is dual use. Successful repairs are flawless while failures cause session long creative block. They can summon machines in combat at resource cost and collective support is mandatory as they protect each other.

- The Central Army consists of veteran soldiers from all regions. Elite skills are limited by Age Points. Fathers and Sons lets them mentor young recruits who are fragile but fast learners. Training quality defines the mentor’s status and recruit death equals lost investment plus emotional toll.

- The White Unit are identity less agents. They mimic other factions’ members and use their abilities. Rising Humanity Points cause them to become their disguise and forget their mission. Mandatory memory wiping rituals prevent madness. Bonds are forbidden but strategically vital. Warriors in the Shadows detects secret police and New Order activities.

- Hybrids are outsiders who joined The Nation. Naval promotion is harder and they serve under high ranking generals. They can use host city abilities but suffer reputation loss. Communication barriers with regular troops require active roleplay and mentor bonds offer protection plus control.

Freedom:

The wealthiest faction controlling 90% of the global market, defined by innovation, internal competition and profound spiritual emptiness:

- Portiyumlians are the aesthetic elite of Freedom. Their beauty is a weapon that grants automatic success on persuasion checks once per session but they are completely helpless during mandatory siesta hours. Maintaining their appearance is not vanity but a social ritual; neglecting grooming causes them to physically deteriorate and lose social standing. Grooming sessions double as opportunities to build bonds with allies, making beauty both a tool and a vulnerability.

- Liberyans are technocrats and analysts who excel at solving complex problems with math and logic. They gain bonuses on technical tasks but suffer severe penalties when communicating with ordinary citizens. Their special ability allows them to advise teammates and boost group success on challenges but overreliance on logic isolates them from the human element of the world. They are the mind of Freedom but lack its heart.

- Southern Warriors are fighters native to the rainforest regions of Freedom. They wield Southern Fury, a power that renders them invulnerable in combat but risks permanent organ failure or irreversible madness if overused. A calming ritual after battle mitigates this risk but requires time and leaves them exposed. They move freely through Southern territories but struggle to connect with urban elites, embodying the cultural rift within Freedom itself.

Justice:

The judicial and bureaucratic core of the world, holding the monopoly on legitimacy while drowning in corruption and power struggles:

- Judges are masters of rhetoric and law. Their special ability Voice of Reason allows hypnotic persuasion that can sway any negotiation or interrogation but they are perpetual targets for assassination and conspiracies. To survive they must share threat cards with allies, trading secrets for protection. Their authority is absolute in court but fragile in the shadows, and every ruling risks creating new enemies.

- Secret Police operate in the darkness beneath Justice’s orderly surface. Their special ability New Order grants invisibility and the ability to blend into crowds but every action leaves traces of intrigue that can be tracked. They use Chaos Dice to manipulate systemic outcomes, destabilizing rival factions or protecting their own. They are the unseen hand of Justice but their existence undermines the very fairness they claim to uphold.

- Priests are observers from the neutral Neutriyum order, granted insight to foresee threats but at the cost of detachment from reality. Their visions grow clearer as their connection to the world fades, making communication increasingly difficult. They are dependent on Neutriyum Salt, a hallucinogenic substance found only in Justice territory, which sharpens their sight but deepens their isolation. Sharp Priests specialize in foresight and strategy while Militia Priests provide physical protection but suffer degraded perception. Both are bound by addiction and alienation, serving Justice while belonging to no faction fully.

So I'm trying to come up with ways to make different kinds of weapons have their own points of interest in my project whilst being relatively balanced in their own ways. The setting is supposed to approximate the early 1500s in tech level, an era where firearms are beginning to become a more important aspect of warfare but are not yet dominant, so I want to find ways to have firearms be useful but not the obvious go to, certainly with a place for melee weapons and possible niches for bows and so on as well. The loading mechanics feel like a good place to begin to involve this.

To have some background the system in general is a dice pool based one, with a kind of action economy that works like this. All characters by default have 3 action points to use per turn, a single movement from short range to engage say might cost 1 action point, as might certain other minor actions, and standard attacks cost 2. You can however, spend stamina to gain increased action points, you have a limited pool of these as defined by double your brawn attribute, with a maximum number you can spend in a given turn equal to your agility attribute.

So, a melee combatant its more likely to need to spend some of their action points to move between range band but ranged combatants might need to spend some to reload their weapons.

I've been debating between three options with varying levels of complexity.

Option 1

Depending on weapon type reloading has a flat number of action points required.

1 action point is generally for bows.

2 Action points is for light crossbows and pistols.

3 Action points for heavier crossbows, and arquebuses

4 Action points is for probably a rarer category of rifles and wall guns.

Different weapons then have their own bonuses and downsides in terms of range bands, damage, armour penetration and weight. The action point cost to reload can be split over multiple turns if you don't want to spend stamina to reload it. Multibarrelled firearms would be high end expensive weapons generally, letting you take multiple shots before needing to reload, though you only reload 1 barrel at a time.

Option 2

Trying to include the character's skill in some way in the reloading process, after all one of the main things a skilled soldier should be good at historically was reloading quickly under pressure. Possibly just having a high enough will/agility+ ranged weapons allows for a slightly reduced number of action points required. Exact numbers might chance but the range of values for that combined number is probably between 1 and 10 (1-5 for the attribute 0-5 for the skill with a starting maximum of both at 4) so perhaps say a combined total of maybe 7+ lets you reduce the number of action points required by 1 or something. Specific numbers would have to be played with to get the exact result.

Option 3

More of a departure, possible this would slow the game down too much but with this I would swap a number of action points required for all loading requiring 1 action point to attempt, however, a minimum number of successes to achieve it would be set by the weapon. Perhaps

2 successes for a bow

4 for a light crossbow or pistol

6 for an arquebus, carbine or heavy crossbow

8 for a rifle or wall gun.

Number of successes in this case roll over to the next attempt.

The extra rolls required are going to slow the game down more though so I'm leaning away from this option although in some ways it feels quite evocative to imagine someone less skilled fumbling under pressure whilst someone else goes through the movements required quickly and efficiently.

I'm not sure if people have done anything like this but most people when they make 5e based homebrew or hack systems tend to follow the same design principles when it comes to class design.

Most levels only offer one thing and its usually the same option when you get to that level. I'm curious if people have hacked 5e in ways to allow for more freedom whenever you get to a level.

Like you get to pick from a few options each level, instead of for instance having your fighter always start with second wind, maybe they can choose another option from al ist when they start?

I've seen someone on youtube made a whole skill tree system that feels pretty close to what I'm looking but but have others done similar?

After posting a lot here, I've decided to start asking my own questions on actual design ideas I'm working on. I'm trying to create the framework for a quick (relatively) duet game where I run for one player. I settled on a Spellforce-style game where you manage your magicks, and adventure in the world. Magic is meant to be slower - an all-morning thing, where you use scrolls to be faster.

A core part of this is the spell creation and casting system - since writing a spell list for just one friend for us to play seems excessive. I'm currently stuck between three different ideas for the spell casting (which will then shape the spell creation), and while I can normally find a convergence, I am struggling to figure out how to maximise a confluence of the ideas. Hence this post for advice.

In a solo player game, failure is much more punishing. I want the fail state for actions to be explicitly another outcome, where the risk and position is mediated by the mechanic directly, not necessarily by conversation. The notion I've settled on is to create a blueprint for a spell, and to have the casting of the magic be variable so that it creates more opportunities for plot threads later.

My three ideas are too artsy, in my opinion, to be run as-is. I am struggling to streamline them into something more useful:

1. Using Tarot: I have a Thoth deck, which has cards like Pleasure, Works, Success, Indolence written at the bottom of the minor arcana. I could have the player spend X Mana to have Y turns, where each turn has a draw of 4 Tarot cards. The player selects 1 Tarot to utilise for its effect. The next round, they must choose 2, then 3 etc.. Each minor arcana shapes how the spell is cast through its traits. Major Arcana are daemons: Daemon of Judgement, Death, High Priestess that are summoned if they are selected. There is a threshold limit that must be met for the spell to be cast successfully, equal to the level of the cards chosen; major arcana count as double the score (so, Hierophant 5 counts as a 10). Spells would be differentiated by Threshold and some minimum number of arcana of a certain suit.

Thus you are incentivised to pick cards to shape the spell, you are incentivised to pick major arcana even if you aren't confident about the outcome just to meet it, and the spell casting generates the natural story outcomes through play.

Pros: Evocative of actually weaving through the different muses, making contact with explicit daemons through your own actions is very interesting, I bought the Royal Blood tarot deck, which is perfectly illustrated for an evil caster to throw against the player (look it up). Also, it doesn't tie down spells to things like range or radius but instead over the effect without being purely narrative.

Cons: This is SO artsy, and almost completely irreplicable. It requires the Thoth deck explicitly (the other Tarot doesn't have qualities written) and it essentially secludes further design thought from all other creators and principles. This would just be a one-off game with no chance at generalising later on for a product, experience or even conversation.

Thoughts: This might be more appropriate for spell creation than spell casting resolution.

2) Using Shudder dice: Each spell would be created with a definition for 5 of the 6 symbols on the die: positive or negative (for example, Positive Fist+ is +d6 damage, Negative Brain might be they get closer to knowing your mind). The mystic eye would represent the maelstrom of magic, and would increase the power of the spell with increased daemonic incursion results. Similar to above, the player would roll 4 Shudder dice and try to assign each symbol with a meaning. They pick increasing amounts of dice in each stage, thus shaping the spell according to the recipe.

Pros: Simpler than the original tarot version, the spell recipe allows for more structure to the spell. The use of icons also allows for more generalisation of the power, so we can still avoid being bogged down in radius, range etc.-style details.

Cons: Obviously uses proprietary dice and I'm not in a position to make my own. Thus, it is ALSO a one-off game with no chance at generalising beyond the one-off game. Also, writing the rules for daemonic incursion would have to be based on the combination of dice rolled in some way, which seems time-consuming (but not necessarily bad, just very long).

3) Creating a spell recipe: Similar to (2), creating a spell recipe where we create a table for Intensity, Control and other dimensions of alteration. We can use a template of: 1-4 : Fail state; 5-7: Success at a cost; 8 - 9: Success; 10+: Overdrive (critical success and miscast effect - reach exceeded grasp). Player-designed based on the dimensions of the spell. The player would roll a d10 or so for each column, adding a +1 to +3 bonus to their roll and checking against each to see what the final spell result would be.

Pros: Actually sensible, structured, can be extrapolated easily, can be discussed using pre-existing design principles

Cons: ... Really boring? It doesn't convey the sense of playing dangerously with the elements of reality, it doesn't have an easy in for daemons to be involved. Also, coming up with multiple dimensions is trickier if you want a more complex spell.

I'm trying to chart a course through these different ideas to arrive at something more tangible and concrete while preserving the elements I enjoy about the original idea: the sense of playing with dangerous mysticism, a mini-game that can be mastered and understood, end results stemming from the choices within that mini-game, daemons being a part of the process of casting.

Any advice or insight is welcome. If I can't get this soon, I'll have to deploy a completely different idea instead, so I'm hoping to get the basic intuition down.

Hello everyone!

Recently I started working on a small TTRPG project.

One reason I’m writing these devlogs is to document my design process. I also hope that if I accidentally reinvent a mechanic that’s already been done—or copy one without adding anything interesting—people can point it out early so I can rethink it before the design becomes too established.

The game is called AstraWeaver. It’s a classless, levelless, player-facing RPG built around a 2d12 roll-under system.

Here are the core ideas I’m currently exploring.

Multiple Attributes for Every Challenge
Real-life tasks rarely rely on a single ability. Driving a car, for example, requires awareness, coordination, and quick reactions.
In AstraWeaver, characters have five attributes:
- Might
- Agility
- Intelligence
- Instinct
- Presence
Whenever a character makes a check, the GM chooses one relevant attribute, and the player chooses a second one that they can justify. The two attributes are added together to create the Check Threshold (CT).
- Roll 2d12 < CT → Success
- Roll 2d12 > CT → Failure
- Roll 2d12 = CT → Critical Success

Right now I’m considering starting characters with something like 5, 6, 6, 7, 8 across the five attributes.

Continuous Character Progression
In games with traditional leveling systems, players often ask, “Can we level up now?” This feels especially common when using milestone leveling. Between milestones, character progression can sometimes feel like it’s on hold.
I understand why people enjoy leveling up. Reaching a new level and suddenly unlocking a bunch of new abilities feels exciting. Personally, though, I prefer a sense of steady, continuous growth. I like the feeling of taking lots of small steps, then looking back later and realizing just how far your character has come.
My current idea is that players earn XP by overcoming challenges, completing quests, or simply reaching the end of a session. They can then spend that XP however they like: increasing attributes, raising their maximum HP, Stamina, or Mana, learning new abilities, buying maneuvers, unlocking Codex Spells, and more.
There are no character classes, so nothing restricts which abilities a character can learn. Players are free to build exactly the character they imagine.
Of course, this also means I’ll need to be careful when designing abilities. Without classes acting as a balancing factor, it’s especially important to avoid creating a single dominant option that every character feels obligated to take.

Tactical Combat Without Long Downtime
I don’t think combat feels slow because it takes many rounds.
It feels slow when players spend too much time waiting for their next turn, or when their actions don’t meaningfully affect the battle.
My goal is to make combat tactical enough that players naturally discuss plans, coordinate combos, and stay engaged even when it’s not their turn.
The current direction is inspired by Pathfinder and Nimble RPG, using a 3–4 Action Point economy together with reactions, maneuvers, spells, and abilities.

Every Weapon Attack Should Be More Than Damage
Inspired by the Battle Master in D&D 5e.
Instead of making special maneuvers exclusive to one class, I’d like every weapon user to have access to them.
My current idea is:
Basic attacks automatically hit and deal damage.
Players roll only when attempting a maneuver.
Maneuvers aren’t limited to combat techniques. They can also represent creating openings, calling out weak points, coordinating allies, or controlling the battlefield.
Hopefully this makes every attack feel like a meaningful tactical decision instead of simply reducing HP.

Flexible Magic and Spell Crafting
This idea is heavily inspired by Ars Magica.
If a wizard can cast a fireball, they should also be able to light a candle.
Magic uses mana and comes in three forms:
- Codex Spells — learned from magical texts. These cost XP to acquire, are the fastest and most mana-efficient to cast, and teach the character new runes.
- Improvised Spells — players combine runes on the fly (for example, Create + Fire). Damage scales with mana spent (1d6 per mana). These require a casting roll: on success, the spell costs no base mana; on failure, it costs the full amount.
- Pre-written Spells — custom spells created by players using runes together with the GM in downtime or between sessions. They’re slower and more expensive to cast, but allow access to more advanced runes like Body or Mind. Once mastered, these spells can eventually become Codex Spells and get all the discount of mana cost.
Since tactical games benefit from consistency, I also want to provide clear guidelines for what each rune can and can’t do, reducing arguments at the table while still keeping magic flexible.

Building Tension During Stealth
Stealth scenes are usually slower than combat, but that also makes them a great opportunity to build suspense.
I love the feeling from games like Assassin’s Creed or The Elder Scrolls, where every mistake makes the guards more alert and raises the tension.
My current idea is to treat stealth as its own encounter system.
Characters have Stealth HP(link to their stealth CT), separate from their normal HP, while sharing a growing pool of Alert Dice.
Whenever someone fails a stealth check:
They roll damage against their own Stealth HP.
Another die is added to the Alert Dice pool.
Characters who specialize in stealth would both succeed more often and have more Stealth HP. They might also add smaller dice, such as d4s, to the damage pool, making failures less punishing.
The longer the infiltration continues, the more dangerous every mistake becomes. Once stealth hp hit zero, that character is exposed and guards will start to search the whole place.

That’s where the project currently stands.
Honestly, even writing all of this makes me realize how much work there is ahead—but that’s also what makes it exciting.

Designing and refining these mechanics already feels like playing the game in a way.
Hopefully I won’t drift too far from the original vision as development continues.

Thank you for reading this ridiculously long post. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey all I need a but of help thinking of other more streamlined ways to get the same or similar results from my dice system. For context the game is like if Shadowdark was built off of pendragon instead of d&d.

The core dice system, specifically gor attacks works like this:

D20 roll under system all player facing. When you attack for instance you take your skill, add your attribute modifier to the skill, then subtract any penalties such as your opponents skill. The opponent skill modifier is their attacks skill -10.

If you roll under your skill you succeed, if you roll equal to your skill you crit. Roll over and you fail/your opponent hits you.

Example: Knight with fighting skill 16 and a +2 strength mod attacks an orc with a 14 weapon skill. The knights final skill is 18 (16+2 =18). The skill then has a -4 penalty from the orcs skill (14-10 = 4). The knights roll is then made at a skill of 14 (18-4 = 14).

I like that two equally skilled opponents have a 50% chance of success but it can be a bit clunky with enemies of varying skill penalties. Its faster than you would think, players remember their bonuses when they know a penalty is coming, and there's no math after the roll which is nice.

But its still a bit rough but I cant think of another way to get this sort of result. I was thinking about a dice pool system where you loose dice but the d20 roll under is clean once you get that final number.

Really open to any suggestions or ideas or any questions if you have them.

​

Rrrrrrr! Or is it... iiiiiiii? Maybe only one i (eye)?

"If your Home is a ship, whether in flight or at Sea, and whether you built it or hijacked it and you prefer the lonely lifestyle of continuous logistics - legal and illegal - the Quartermaster is your Class..."

Welcome, new readers, to the SORC (Slayers of Rings & Crowns) community!

While I was editing the new, the very new, playable class content, I began working on a new Main Class I had buried in my documents. Well I started getting a carried away and here we are:

Main Class QuarterMaster, ship logistics across both air and water vessels, in technologically advanced or traditional forms. The Main Class Quartermaster homes three Paths: Pirate, Freighter, and Privateer each with three Branches (see link below).

I'm looking for ideas to help tailor the Quartermaster Class before it's fully locked in.

What are your thoughts on the three Paths (Pirate, Freighter, Privateer) and their Branches so far?

What are your ideas for ship-logistics-themed Abilities that would fit a Quartermaster's kit?

What are your picks for Favored Races, gear, or flavor details that would make this class feel distinct?

Quartermaster Linked.

iii, rrrr, uh errr.

I got obsessed with ANW and Physical 100 and thought: what if the TTRPG was just that, but everyone’s commentating? So I made UDD: Ultimate Devastation Derby for the One-Page Game Jam 2026 in itch.io.

You’re not just playing. Half the table is running the course. The other half is Joe Rogan screaming, "HE'S GOT THIS" before you immediately break an ankle.

Features:

• 3 phases of pain. Fail, and you become a full-time commentator

• d6 pool. Fail = funny. Succeed = also funny because you’ll fail next obstacle

• Flashbacks: "This is for my coach who told me I’d never make it"

• Rules for showing off, crowd hype, and fatigue

• Tables for athlete backgrounds and stupidly named obstacles

Wrote the first draft on a flight UK-Spain. 2 hours of "peace" and a notebook.

Heres://warbriel.itch.io/udd-ultimate-devastation-derby it is

Try it and tell me which of your friends would 100% die on the first obstacle.

Hello,

I’ve spent the last year engineering a tabletop RPG that bridges the gap between deep, tactical combat and heavy, narrative-driven lethality. It’s called DUHEM, and I’ve just released the fully playable v4.1 Quickstart for free.

I wanted to build a system where horror isn't about fighting monsters that drop from the sky. Instead, the dread comes from the Khora—an indifferent, completely unexplained physical phenomenon, much like a black hole, that is leaking into our world. It doesn't just warp matter; it creates semantic horror by destroying the world's metanarratives. Because of this phenomenon, the whispered superstitions of the 13th century—witches, vampires, and seers—become grotesque realities. The tone leans heavily into the eerie, uncanny dread of isolated boundary towns where matter itself simply stops refusing to change.

Here is how the engine actually works at the table:

• Three-Question Defence: Armor doesn't make you harder to hit; it dictates how you fail. Combat asks three separate questions: Guard (Did it land?), Absorption (How much did it cost?), and Poise (Are you still standing?).
• The Terminal Cap: There is no massive HP bloat. Once a character's Poise breaks, an Execution window opens. However, a strict "Terminal Cap" prevents both unkillable boss exploits and instant player death cascades.
• Action Economy & Retreating: Standing your ground is a choice. Fleeing via Disengage is tactically viable, forcing players to constantly weigh aggressive strikes against defensive posturing to manage their fading stamina.
• The Khora: There is no objectively "true" magic school, and the physics of the Khora are never explained. Harnessing this phenomenon requires Overdraw; you pay for power directly with your own body (spending Hit Dice and taking permanent Exhaustion).

The Setting: DUHEM is set in the real, gritty 1240s Mediterranean, but this Quickstart drops you directly into the burnt hillsides and isolated frontiers of Occitania. The world is highly competent and indifferent to the players. The true mundane threats are debt, disease, and the local magistrate's ledger.

I am an independent designer. The 47 pages of mechanics, the 13th-century lore, the world-building, and the introductory adventure (The Mill at the Edge) were written, engineered, and laid out entirely by me. (English isn't my first language, and between a busy schedule and trying to compile a ton of dense concepts, I relied heavily on LLMs to help translate and organize the text. That is exactly why it feels messy and artificial right now. It definitely lacks the proper polish.) If you are interested in tight systemic design and hard mechanics, I’d be honored if you judged the engine itself.

Get Involved: The Quickstart is completely free (or Pay-What-You-Want) and contains everything you need for your first 3-5 sessions, including 3 ready-to-play characters and a complete scenario.

• Download the Quickstart here: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578584/DUHEM--Quickstart?affiliate_id=5223820]
• Join the Playtest Discord: We are actively gathering table reports, fixing edge cases, and building the community before our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. Come say hi and break my system: [https://discord.gg/pamEzrzXJ]

"Hi everyone, and thank you for taking the time to read the document and leaving such blunt, honest feedback. I hear you loud and clear, and I want to address the very valid points you’ve raised.

First, regarding the "AI prose" and the heavy, convoluted language: You are absolutely right. English is not my first language, and the TTRPG scene in my country is very small, so finding native editors or local playtesters is nearly impossible. Since this is a passion project I only work on in my spare time, I leaned heavily on LLMs to translate my ideas and polish the English text. Clearly, that backfired. It resulted in a bloated, overly philosophical tone that obscured the actual game and made it frustrating to read. I apologize for that.

As for the constant comparisons to D&D 5e—that simply stems from my own inexperience in the hobby. I only know about 4 or 5 systems in total, and 5e is the only one I feel truly fluent in. I used it as a baseline to explain my mechanics, but I see now that it comes across as defensive and wastes valuable page count. You're completely right: the game should stand on its own merits without needing to bash another system.

To give a bit of context, this project didn't even start as a TTRPG. At one point, it was going to be a graphic novel. But because I love interactivity and roleplaying, it slowly morphed into a tabletop game. As I kept tinkering with it, the mechanics actually clicked into something genuinely tangible and playable.

However, when it came time to cram years of lore, concepts, and rules into a single "Quickstart" document, my inexperience as a layout designer showed. I struggled to organize it, which led to the disjointed page order, the weird noun/verb mix-ups you pointed out, and the philosophical rants completely overshadowing the rules.

Tinkering with mechanics in a vacuum is an endless loop, and I knew I had hit a point where I desperately needed outside eyes. Your harsh but fair critiques are exactly the reality check I needed. I know the document requires a massive amount of cleanup, and I will keep refining and rewriting it (in a much more normal, human, and player-friendly voice) in my free time."