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Dialtone is a small TTRPG system intended to emulate the atmosphere, tone, and ridiculousness of Deltarune, Undertale, or homebrewed settings. With flexible mechanics, character creation and variety of enemies can be tailored to a table's needs- and rules lite, personalized to an even greater degree.

My goal in this was to make a system both entertaining on its own, and rules light enough that it both paved the way and actively encouraged roleplay among potential players beyond only outside of combat- I hope you enjoy.

Based on Toby Fox's Deltarune- Art, rules, system, and characters for Dialtone by Inkbeanjo

StatusReleased
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(7 total ratings)
AuthorInkbeanJo
TagsComedy, deltarune, Fantasy, Tabletop role-playing game, Undertale

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Dialtone- A Mini Deltarune Tabletop RPG system.pdf 43 MB

Development log

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(+1)

I love this system so much!! I have yet to run a game but am currently in the process of woking on a small one-shot to run and I only had one small question to make sure I full understood. Under FIGHTing, where it says "If your AT+Card is higher, deal the total result as damage." and I was just confused what it meant by "Is higher"? Like compared to an enemy also doing a card pull + their AT? Or like just their flat AT? Apologies if this is a very simple question and I just overcomplicated things in my head

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

(+1)

I just finished reading through both this and Heartbreaker and now I REALLY wanna play it! Phenomenal job on this!

(also I translated the Wingdings on both because I'm normal)

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

(1 edit) (+1)

I love the style of this and the art and stuff so much!! Are there any communities that are linked to this? like discord or w/e

I think there's a few groups on the deltarune subreddit who've checked out the system before, but I'm honestly not too sure! I've not heard a ton since putting it out, mostly just due to being busy and also not being sure where people'd even start something like that up xwx

also, if it's ok to ask, why is the core free but heartbreaker costs money?

AH- I work on projects like this solo, and the Heartbreaker content is mostly optional for play as opposed to required or necessary. I work a dayjob that eats up a lot of my spare time, and both Heartbreaker and the core Dialtone books took about a year each to fully flesh out, format, and create art for- all atop my other responsibilities such as taking care of friends and my partner, and the webcomic I put the majority of my time into. It's a lot of labor, and at present I don't make very much money for my artwork that'd let me do it full time, even though I'd really like to-charging for the optional content/artwork in Heartbreaker helps me get there a bit! 'w'b

(+1)

I've been having so much fun reading this from time to time, especially with Heartbreaker!! While I've yet to play it yet, I'm so excited to run a campaign someday! Reading the rules and everything added to my inspiration to make my own rulesets sometimes! I've always wanted something like this, a TTRPG of Deltarune and this is really awesome! 

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

Is there by any chance that we could have a version that allows dice to come into play? Some people online that want to play this system will not always have a deck of cards 

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.

(2 edits)

Does anyone have a video or something of the game, like gameplay or just overall explanation. As I would like some real examples of gameplay for ideas/inspiration. Also I really love the game, thank you for making a deltarune ttrpg and also making it well! 100/10

;w;b <3

I'm actually not sure if anyone's done a live play or anything similar- I've only really heard from a few people asking questions out of curiosity/recommending it, though I'm not sure how it's received overall xwx;

Alright, thanks!

It's really great but I have a suggestion for you, you can link the soul type with card seed affinity maybe you have a +1 one on the check if you draw a card with your affinity. I thought of something like this (bringing back soul colors from Undertale):


Red(Determination): hearts (+2)

Orange(Bravery): Diamonds and spades

Yellow(Justice): spades and hearts

Blue(Integrity): diamonds and hearts.

Green(Kindness): Clubs and hearts.

Cyan(Patience): Diamonds and Clubs.

Purple(Perseverance): Spades and Clubs.

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!

Soul stuff?

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.