Some ideas for the next Extra Material!
Game Design Log #56
We’ve hit the fourth goal for Runner of the Wastelands!
So first of all, thanks to all of you who have joined Runner of the Wastelands in some way or another—by sharing it, playing it, reviewing it, or buying it.
For me, it has been super interesting to have a “never-ending” project at hand, where I can display some of the ideas I have about solo playing while trying to maintain cohesion with the previous material and the vibe, setting, and initial intention of the game. So, thanks again for helping me explore this creative space.
Now, I have been juggling some ideas for what to do next with the new extra material (extra material number 4), so I just want to share these still-in-progress ideas.
Actions outside of what is written
I really love the loop of Runner of the Wastelands (RW), and I built all the resource management and actions around this main loop—expressed through the actions you can take in the wastes, in town, or in combat. However, I think that at times, if you want to interact with things outside of this loop, you can only rely on the footnote advice I gave in the core rules:
While this works, it introduces two fundamental problems:
There is no “trying”: The core engine of RW relies on spending Energy to perform tasks, which works well for the specific actions defined in the game (both in the core rules and the extra material). This is because every action is binary: you either do it or you don’t. There is no concept of “trying”—at least not in a general sense. Only a few actions involve a random element, which, if it goes against you, can be interpreted as a failure while trying (such as when you “travel stealthily”).
And this can be a problem. If you want to interact with something outside of the written actions, you could just spend 1E—but does that mean you can achieve anything with 1E?
The way I have managed this in my own sessions of RW is that if I feel spending 1E isn’t enough to achieve something, I roll on the Oracle.
And this works great and keeps the momentum going, but it gives every “difficult” task a flat 50/50 chance of success. This can be “fixed” by adding a third die to the Oracle: if a success is more or less probable, you roll two answer dice. If at least one of them shows an even or odd number, the answer is yes or no, respectively.
There is no “growth”: The other potential problem with the RW core rules is that there isn’t room to improve your character’s skills. Your runner is always fighting against the depletion of energy, and that’s it. I actually like this feature, but I can imagine other players wanting a way to progress by increasing their chances of success for certain actions—something you can’t achieve using just the Oracle.
So, how do we build a framework to add gamable pieces to RW—one that allows players to take actions outside of what is written in the core rules and extended material?
This is something I have been thinking about, and I have an idea for it: to take the structure of the “travel stealthily” action and extend it into a generalised mechanic.
Action/Skill level X = You try to do the action. Roll d8, in a (8-X) or higher you suceed.
This means that “Travel Stealthily” essentially becomes a Level 4 skill. By swapping the d4 it currently uses for a d8 and shifting the target number to 4 or higher, we keep the exact same probability of success.
It also means that at Level 0, you have a 12.5% chance of success; at Level 1, it’s 25%; at Level 2, it’s 37.5%; and at Level 3, you arrive at the flat 50/50 chance you would normally get from the Oracle.
So, the next big question is: how do you learn these skills? Perhaps through a tracker you must fill to earn a level, where each box on the tracker is filled by spending 1E?
In combat: triggers and instinct
Another idea I want to explore is the addition of triggers and instincts to combat. This is a concept I borrowed from The Burning Wheel, which introduces “instincts” as actions your character automatically performs whenever a specific situation arises. In The Burning Wheel, this serves as a safeguard. It ensures your character maintains a certain behaviour even if you, the player, forget to declare it. It also acts as a shield against a Game Master’s gotcha moments—proving your character was actually prepared. For example, an instinct could be: “I always travel through dangerous territory with an arrow nocked.” If you are ambushed in the wilds, even if you hadn’t explicitly told the GM you were ready, you can invoke your instinct to show you were prepared and shoot that arrow right away.
When I first read this in The Burning Wheel, I thought it was ingenious and made me think about how to include something like this in my games. However, for a solo, GM-less game like Runner of the Wastelands, in which combat is played on a hex-combat-map —where you have just a few types of actions and where every extra thing you do costs you Energy, the core resource of the game— this idea morphed into something else: a way of “coding” your runner’s behavioural patterns during combat.
My plan is to introduce a list of conditional triggers and instincts (reactions). Whenever a trigger condition is met, the corresponding instinct activates. A very obvious example would be: Trigger: Lose Energy during an attack → Instinct: Move one hex away.
I think this system can expand into a cascading sequence of trigger-instinct pairs. This would allow players to build tactical “combos” that activate dynamically during an encounter. Of course, a cascading chain of automatic reactions could easily break or hack the game’s balance. To counter this, transitioning from one trigger-instinct pair to the next in a combo chain should cost 1E
This will allow your runner to react in moments of danger, triggering actions outside of their turn, or in reaction to their turn`s action. This gives them a new way to survive the wastelands, while allowing players to express their runner's peculiarities through how they react to danger.
So the next step is to write a list of triggers and instincts, and then, of course, a ton of playtesting!
Card-based combat?
A few weeks ago, we had a long weekend, and it was amazing. We travelled through the north of Chile, but in the moments of leisure —when my friends were taking a nap, reading, scrolling, or just relaxing— I found myself wishing I had brought a copy of RW. But then I thought about it, and travelling with all the miniatures and terrain pieces (obstacle) can be a bit impractical.
With this in mind, I started thinking about creating a travel-friendly version of the game. This essentially translates into designing an alternative combat system that removes the need to carry miniatures.
This idea, much like the ones before it, is still in its early stages. However, I have identified at least three core pillars of RW's combat that I must translate into this new system if I want to maintain the same vibe:
A getaway mechanic: A system that allows you to flee from combat while still feeling like a tense competition of speed and positioning.
Interacting with obstacles: A way to navigate or run over obstacles, allowing players to use the terrain to their tactical advantage (preserving the "feeling of terrain").
Energy depletion as the core engine: Keeping resource management at the heart of the conflict.
I’ve been experimenting with different mechanics and components to pack these three pillars into a portable format. At the moment, I’ve had some success using a standard deck of playing cards to bring these ideas to life. So now, just like with the previous concepts, the next steps are to refine the mechanics and dive into a lot of playtesting!
What to do next?
These are just three ideas I’m working on, but I still have some others cooking up, like making more backdrop images for the different biomes, making a system for factions, and creating new actions. So, if you find any of these ideas more interesting than the others, or you have an idea of your own about something you are missing in your session when playing RW, leave a comment!
This is it for today. If you want to see more extra material for “Runner of the Wastelands”, remember that you can help by buying it, sharing it with your friends, or commenting/reviewing it on itch.io, DriveThruRPG, Wargame Vault, or RPG trader. For every 20, let’s make 1 extra new thing!
Also, I have been working on new designs for the character artquetypes of “No Peace for the Heathen”, so probably in the next weeks I will be sharing some of them.
See you in two weeks!