Dialtone TTRPG

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! ;w;bb

Unfortunately when it comes to stats and balancing that's the area I'm weakest in/that gives me THE most stress when it comes to ttrpgs; I'm a storyteller first and foremost in the games I run, and while I've been able to make tweaks to the stat blocks of other games to meet that end (World of Darkness, Shadowrun, etc), I'm full aware that a mistake on my end could turn a trivial encounter into a slog or an unwinnable scenario. Since Deltarune tends to focus on creative solutions as opposed to beatdowns in combat, I thought I could leverage that in my favor.

Combat may be disincentivized, but it's still an option; the way I worked with Dialtone's stats was by and large looking to official enemy stat values like health in Deltarune itself, and work backward. Enemies usually only get one turn while the player side has 2-3+ characters making attacks-in a perfect world depending on player stats and class/abilities you've come up with, a good attack draw from each player puts that at 30-ish damage per turn.

I know that's kinda long winded sorry, but it's the logic I went into stuff with. Dialtone's my first game, and while I've GM'd a lot of ttrpg things over the years stats and the math end thereof aren't my strong suits xwx;

No worries! Enemies also draw from the deck and use their own statblocks to augment the card value drawn- so your AT + Card is opposed by the enemy's DF + Card. If your AT+Card draw is higher than the enemy's DF+Card, then you deal your total AT+Card as damage

Aw hell yeah! I'm glad you enjoyed them both ;w;b

Aww, thank you so much! ;W;// <3

I'm glad you're enjoying it all so much, I did my best to emulate the style and feeling of Deltarune as best I could, with my own thoughts on the series in addition TwT

Ah, I apologize- I'd written the game's systems with card-drawing in mind/the fun shenanigans you can get up to with cards like ties (playing war) and having a limited set of cards to draw from as opposed to the anything-goes of dice. To make a dice-friendly version of the system would basically mean doing a full rewrite of the book and trying to math things out again, which'd take another half year for me to do 'cause I'm real slow ;;

That being said, if you're playing online there's a few options at your disposal! There do exist online card-drawing sites that a GM can stream the results of for a given game as players take actions, and apparently a few discord bots specializing in playing cards- though I can't attest to the latter 'cause I haven't used them before/mostly used a different method.

If you're willing, roll20 is free and also has deck card capabilities atop other niceties/dice functions for other games/custom asset import/etc things that're good for a theater of the mind game like dialtone; I've used it to play Shadowrun and a few other ttrpgs in the past, it's very handy in a pinch.

If tables want, they're more than welcome! My intent in including the soul chart was by and large solely for the purposes of levity in character creation, as the soul types are one to one based on the types of quarks in subatomic physics- their use or interpretation will vary from table to table, as I never intended them to give mechanical benefit and hoped players might be able to figure out quirks of their characters with their choice.

I'd also wanted the importance of the souls to be extremely variable atop that, going so far as to imply it through the rulebook art and the party depicted; Caroline is the ACTor of the party and functionally party leader, but her soul is her own. Conversely Monique has a soul more akin to the player characters in Undertale and Deltarune, in that it possesses her, but Moni and the soul itself lack the agency Caroline has. The gist being that I thought it'd be more fun narratively to play with the situation as opposed to a mechanical bonus xwx


Thank you for your feedback though!

Souls and their utility are extremely nebulous within Deltarune's setting, especially with Kris's being a stand-in for the player's agency therein- I wanted to leave that sort of stuff open ended within the ruleset as a toy for gamemasters to play with, or tables to interpret for their own games as opposed to setting down hard rules on what a top or charm soul would provide as a benefit. It speaks more to your personal preferences and tastes/character, you know?

Moreover while they're included in character generation, it's wholly up to the player/gm as to the nature of that soul. For example, the girl Monique in the ruleset's example party would be a FIGHTer class wise, yet is portrayed with what's essentially a weird player soul- Caroline on the other hand has a non-player soul, yet is the ACTor of the party and agreed leader of the bunch. If players/gm's/tables decide they'd like to elaborate on the different flavors of soul and the natures thereof for their games, I'd highly encourage it; Dialtone as a system is purposefully left open ended so that isn't hampered by strict rulesets.