Crosspost from Reddit RPGdesign

Today I planned on writing about the cost of unique design (my game is pretty unintuitive in a lot of ways, because it’s different) but figured out I couldn’t really talk about how I made all those weird decisions until I talked about where/why I ended up with the core resolution mechanic I did. That is how I ended up with a very unique and therefore not very intuitive game.

Chronomutants has been many years in the making. Started with me hacking the hell out of Gamma World 7e back in 2010, circling back around to that system in 2018 and producing a lot of homebrew for it, becoming fully disillusioned with DnD (and other d20 games) by 2020, failing at hacking Gamma World into other systems from up until 2021, building a Forged in the Dark version, and then giving that up for a unique system based on me not remembering correctly how Warhammer Fantasy worked.

Here is the blog where I talk about my dissatisfaction with hacking leading me to a custom system locked behind proprietary dice (bad for sharing the game).

What the blog is kind of secretly about is about my choice to make the best playing game that meets my goals/needs being at odds with making something that I can share with strangers. My idiosyncratic design is one thing, actual hurdles are probably a bridge too far. It’s a really big ask to get anyone to play a homemade game, it’s a much bigger ask to get someone to use custom dice to do so.

Unfortunate, because it plays great, and is really weird and funny.

This kind of stuff gets into art for arts sake vs marketability (I’m not even selling anything). Anybody here have any stories or experience with choosing the best playing mechanics over more popular ones?