What Does A Swords TTRPG Need To Be, To You?

If you want a "what NOT to do" sort of guide, the Shadowrun rule book is famous for how utterly insane the layout and rules are.

It's gotta be about the swords. They are companions, co-characters, deserve their own special place in the world and the rules. I want to level my sword up, I want it to gain quirks and new abilities, I DO NOT want loot or gear upgrades. I want a relationship with the swords! Oh and hopefully it is still funny and punny

Horizontal progression, number go up is good and a crucial part of progression in a game, but getting more fun stuff to do is key for making sure even weaker player options still feel fun.

First thought? Take D&D and shove it as far out of your mind as you can, especially the notion of trying to be "better" than D&D. The market already has "D&D", "D&D for folks that hate 4th Edition", "D&D for people that hate 3rd Edition", "D&D with Matt Mercer", and "the thousand shattered corpses of every game that was supposed to replace D&D and are now a footnote at best or punchline at worst". An embarrassment of dungeon crawling riches. Instead, I'd suggest looking to games like Mork Borg and the Monty Python RPG. Games that use their mechanics to reinforce the vibe of the game and attitude they want the players to have. MB leans in hard on an aesthetic of living dirty and dying fast in a nasty fantasy world, and reinforces it by making death cheap, both for the character (it doesn't take a lot to kill them) and the player (who can use an online utility called "scumbirther" to slam out a new, disposable PC as fast as hitting refresh). MP leans into serious people trying to be serious and failing, and sets up numerous ways to make the PCs be the victims of cruel (but funny for the players) fate, and also goes hard in the paint mining as much playability out of the source material as possible, deep cuts abound. For a Swords RPG, I personally would want as much of the feeling of the comics as possible. The experience of finding a weird pun sword and finding out what it does. Meeting the creatures. Finding the Time Knife. Finding the Time Knife. Finding the Time Knife. And I all but guarantee that folks would go nuts for a campaign where you get to play a group of adventurers adopting Quest Sprout to go on adventures with them. And they'd pay double if the end of the campaign is them personally getting to help Sprout rescue their mom.

I think it needs ways for people to come up with creative ideas, like a list of sword names and a way of grabbing random inspiration like looking around the desk or prompting questions like "what was the last blue thing you can think of"

Custom sword crafting, turning curses into buffs, and easy to understand rules

I thought it would be cool if you had a system where your "character" was a sword, and whatever leveling system applied to it. You controlled its wielder (not like in a possession kind of way, although you could, but From a gameplay standpoint) and went on their quests until they died, and somebody else picks you up to go on a different quest. Your sword doesn't need to be able to talk to its wielder or even be concious, but it could become that while gaining souls. I could go on, but I think if the system would fit into any world, it would be yours. Being free online/PNP would be cool, but I personally wouldn't mind paying for a good experience. People spend hundreds if hours in these games and when the only thing you need is a $60 book, ttrpgs can be one of the most cost effective hobbies you can have, it just depends on how much you play the game after it's initial purchase. As for the dice system, I personally like multi-dice or strange systems. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with d6 systems, but after playing a few, it just loses some of the magic of getting to pick out your special set of rocks for the game. The bigger thing for me is that the bonuses you're added to the dice stay reasonable. Not every advantage in game needs to correlate to adding dice or numbers, usually this leads to a boggy high level game which is where you should be able to have the most fun using all the cool powers you've worked to get. One system I like it DCCs system of getting a bigger die as a bonus. Obviously the biggest thing if it's SWORDS is the system needs to reflect the type of adventures we see and love from the comics. It needs to be funny, not too serious (although some serious is good when the fate of the world is at stake), wacky, and magical (I could go on, you know your own world better than I could explain though).

I’ve been DM’ing D&D 5e online for about 10 years using exclusively homebrewed worlds I’ve created. I’d be happy to work with you on something like a small adventure/one-shot with a few customized pre-made hero sheets. We could start with something simple like a Fungeon one-shot or along those lines lol. Release it for free, then if people like it maybe make some more rounded out adventures that are cheap or Patreon exclusives? I’m having visions of grand quests, like picking 100 Hiltberries or collecting bags of steel wool. Or maybe other things, but those are pretty epic in and of themselves. Anyways, I’m willing to work on writing something along those lines and collabing with you on story beats, flavor, maps, etc.

I feel like it could actually be an extension to DnD. For example, in Tasha's there are already rules for playing sidekicks, which can be monsters, but that could definitely be improved on. I'm not sure if the goal is to make it an intro TTRPG, so using DnD (the most common system) would make it pretty easy to learn. It could be something like an expansion pack for DnD, with rules on how to make all the monsters swords and how to flavour stuff, but I do think something unique (like some mechanics to maybe randomly pull NPCs into the current story for maxium chaos) is a must.

Weapon customisation/scaling and playable monstrous options would be fantastic in a Swords TTRPG, and it being free and printable would be great for accessibility I think I'd also want it to be set in the same world as the comic, preferably with a map, so you could visit actual regions from the world of the comic It would also be cool if the pantheon from the comic had some effect on gameplay, though I'm not sure exactly what that effect would be, and it would depend on the rest of the system

You don’t need a full system or a unique system. You can just do a setting in D&D or PF2 or even Sword World. You'll need monsters, ancestries/species, cool swords, and anything the makes Swords a unique setting. It doesn't need a whole new system.

I agree with Kevin Just. From Swords you can do 1 of 2 things in my mind. 1. Make a SWORDS adventure featuring mechanics like special sword crafting or d100 magical sword tables and whatever else you may think of like subclasses and stuff 2. Do something like Skate Wizards where it is very rules light and you could focus on just being people that have creative and cool swords with a either random name tables or make your own names with a template of "The _adjective_ _Sword Type_ Sword of _verb_-ing" or something madlibs like that. Both have different amounts of time and energy needed to complete them. Again, personally I'd love a full dnd book that adds on with cool Swords, how to make your own magical cool sword, subclasses, ancestries, backgrounds, random tables to roll on, etc. But would take a lot of time and energy not including possible arts you might add yourself.

For my family after my mom got cancer treatment she can’t imagine stuff nearly as well as before so DnD and that is off the table for her since she can’t imagine what’s going on or what to do? Idk maybe a easy mode that’s on rails and like “your first TTrpg” I think humor is a must from swords since it just is so humorous and great already if it didn’t have some of the humor I would be sad!

I actually don't need "yet another ttrpg" 🤔 As someone that just loves playing d&d I'd love to have a d&d swords book 🙆😬 Probably containing monsters, items and quests inspired by your comics 🤔 Maybe even subclasses, although those wouldn't immediately stick out to me 🤔

I think the whole comic is really lighthearted and a bit random. Maybe some of that randomness could show through.

Perhaps there could be an joke NPC called the "Um Actuakly" sword that is the embodiment of rules lawyers.

Swords would be great as a humorous option for experienced players or a simple intro for newbs. Rules like from Toon where being dumb can be very useful (failed your intelligence check? OK, turns out you *can* swim through sand...) would be cool and would make the Bread Knight work. Humour Value should definitely be a thing and sneaking in Shadowrun's Karma idea would make the extreme events more possible too.

Rules light, printable at home or usable on a tablet, and able to work with ad&d 2e monsters.

Simple basic instructions that you can use to play with people who find D&D too intimidating to try out.

I think a SWORDS RPG would need to be like the comic, you read a comic and go "that doesn't make much sense but boy do I love it!" I love DnD but it's pretty rigid a lot of the time, even with the "rule of cool", I like the idea of RPGs with a currency spent between Players & DM. You can do "OP" stuff as a player, but by doing so you give the DM room to do OP stuff back.

I want to play as a sword, the sword is the player character, and you get heroes that wield you along the way, but really just treat them as an extension of you, and something you can upgrade. "Oh, this quest rewarded a way better hero, I'll switch off to that one." 😆 With 'races' of swords (cutlass, broadsword, fencing etc etc), and then classes. But they'd be super chaotic classes. And rather than spells, maybe there's gem slots, and the gems are different abilities that can be swapped out. Maybe different coloured gems could be different rareties and better ones (ad you go through the story and collect them) will let you use abilities more often or be way cooler effects wise. And then a table where you roll to use your ability but there's a chance it could conflict with another one and backfire or create a new effect or amplify or work normal (like the dnd5e table of what happens when you take 2 potions at the same time). So yeah, we play as swords lol, heroes are something that we wear or use

Maybe a set of tables you could use to roll up a dungeon or quest framework (rooms, treasures, monsters, fetch quests, etc) on the spot so it could feel a little different every time without hours of prep?

To me there needs to be a version that is printable, maybe two versions and the printable one has less pictures to make it easier to print. While it doesn't have to be light weight and depth is nice but the initial learning should be easy. Having something like the swords growing seems really fun. Maybe some of the stats for the character is linked to the sword instead of the character so even when leveling up the characters are still more like everyday people. That would make the world building and the bad guys interesting since you could have enemies that are regular people who just happened on a powerful sword or someone powerful that lost their sword and has the experience but a beginner sword.

I'd love something that I could break out for a group that has little-no experience with "regular" TTRPGs that we could just play for lighthearted laughs around the dining room or coffee table. I love the idea of a "Rule of Funny". Minimal pieces, like a few pencils, some paper, and a couple of dice, that could even be passed around (the chessboard idea is kind of neat too). Something low-stakes and silly that could be whipped out at a birthday party, or picnic with minimal background knowledge/prep from players and doesn't take two hours to explain before you can start to play.

Honestly all of these sound like great ideas that could work in tandem with each other. Personally I would like the combat rolling to have some of that offbeat goofy x factor going for it, because D&D can miss the mark with being just bland math of limited options when what I really care about is story and entertainment and a challenging puzzle to solve. I don't care how many dice can deal how much damage when some of the most fun I've had in tabletop has been memories and unlikely events and repeatedly tricking the same bandits out of a confrontation in creative ways until the DM forced my party to fight them. The best of it is when you laugh and get invested, if you ask me. Maybe this is long winded and aimless because I don't entirely know what I want, but it sounds like you're on the proper path to give it a standout and unique identity, and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

A Swords TTRPG has got to be both silly and meta, for my money. I’d like to see it be over the top, unpredictable, imbalanced in power but balanced in Effect on the World (ie. people with insane abilities falling flat, people with a letter opener beating dragons, etc). How you accomplish that, not sure - maybe by having laughter, as you say, as the core mechanic.