My RPG

A rules-light tabletop RPG by Ron Helwig

Things to Research

This page lists unresolved questions and areas that still need development. Some items have been moved to their own pages or archived if resolved.

Open Topics

Damage System Alternatives

Explore alternatives such as:

Resistance and Vulnerability Shifting Wound Tier

An alternative to halving or doubling the raw damage before comparing to thresholds would be simply reduce or increase the Wound Tier by one. This would be simpler and faster than even dividing or multiplying by 2, but leaves us with two questions:

  • Is it OK if Resistance shifts a Minor Wound down to No Damage?
  • What would happen to a Critical Wound with Vulnerability?

Status Effects & Conditions

  • Develop a standard list of conditions (e.g. frightened, slowed, exhausted)
  • Clarify how they interact with the damage/stress model
  • Should conditions stack or escalate?

Itemization & Economy

  • How modular should weapons and armor be?
  • Can weapons have thresholds, scaling damage severity?
  • How can crafting or upgrading work within this modular framework?

Resolved Topics (Now Tracked Elsewhere)

✅ Dice Pool Mechanics (Moved to: rules:dice_pool)

We’ve adopted the d4 pool system instead of a flat d20 system. It:

  • Encourages more consistent results (bell-curve-ish outcomes)
  • Makes skill investment matter more than luck
  • Integrates seamlessly with action economy (spendable d4s)
  • Replaces Action/Bonus action with diminishing dice per action

See the Rules: Dice Pool page for complete details and current implementation.

Historical note: rationale for this change, including discussion of risk dice, multi-die advantage/disadvantage, and AC subtraction can be found on the archived page: Dice Rationale.

✅ Attribute Aspect Web (Moved to: rules:aspects)

We now use 15 Aspects, derived from attribute pairings, in place of skills and saving throws.

This allows:

  • Smoother integration across all gameplay types
  • Granular character differentiation
  • A consistent mechanic for actions, saves, and concentration checks

See Rules: Aspects for the full table and skill-mapping conversion.

The original reasoning behind ditching traditional skills/saves is preserved at Aspect Web Rationale.

Games & Systems for Reference

Ideas to Explore Further

Telegraphed Actions / Called Shots

Idea: A character declares their next action at the end of their turn. If they follow through, they gain advantage (or bonus d4). If they change actions, they suffer disadvantage (or penalty).

  • Could tie into a called shot mechanic for aimed attacks or spell prep
  • May interact with enemy AI or boss-phase design

Dash Username Integration (Decentralized Curation)

Consider whether Dash usernames could function as identities for decentralized content curation.

  • Would allow creator attribution for shared rules/modules
  • Might simplify multiplayer content syncing across local copies
  • Ties into web-of-trust ideas for curated rule sets

Update (2026): SignInWithDash and DecentSite

This idea is no longer purely hypothetical. Two related projects now exist and give us concrete building blocks:

  • ✅ Sign in with Dash (SIWD) — passwordless website sign-in backed by Dash Platform identities and human-readable DPNS (Dash username) names. A site shows a QR code or link, the person approves it in the SIWD phone app, and the app signs a short-lived challenge; no password, email, or private key goes to the site. Accounts bind to the underlying identity, with the username treated as a verified but changeable handle. Status: working on testnet, not yet mainnet-ready.
  • ✅ DecentSite — decentralized websites with metadata on Dash Platform and content on pluggable storage (owner-controlled IPFS today, Filecoin replicas planned), served as simple HTML (plus a Markdown reading view) by a lightweight Stub. Contract registration and release publishing have been verified on Dash mainnet.

How this could become the lore/modification sharing layer (🔲 future)

The long-term goal is a distributed, GitHub-meets-torrent way to share campaigns, Domains, spells, house rules, and lore, with no single central gatekeeper. The stack lines up like this:

  1. Identity: a Dash username is the portable creator identity. It is the same name on every site and table, so attribution follows the author.
  2. Authentication: SIWD lets a handbook site, campaign platform, or community hub recognize that author without passwords or a central account database.
  3. Publishing: DecentSite-style releases give each creator an owner-controlled, versioned publication. Metadata on Dash says who published what and which version; the content itself lives on content-addressed storage (IPFS) that anyone can pin and re-seed, which is the torrent half.
  4. Forking and curation (still to design): a “lore pack” or rules module could reference the release it was derived from, giving a GitHub-like fork/lineage history. Players and GMs follow or endorse creators (web-of-trust) to assemble their own curated rule sets, and local copies sync from whichever peers have the content.

Open questions:

  • Pack format: Markdown pages plus a manifest (Domains, spells, conditions, version, parent release)?
  • How are conflicts between two modified rule sets shown to a GM?
  • Does this tie into the RPG Campaign Platform’s base-system import?
  • Storage costs and pinning incentives for small creators.

Notes

Archived rationale and deeper design essays are being moved to a new design_archive: namespace.

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