My initial plan for the jam is to make an expanded version of Jovia, with one of my intentions being the creation of a tali ruleset based SRD.

You can find an overview of it here (courtesy of @hessan_yongdi, who is a great person to follow!):

It's one of the example games in the jam listing, and it's CC-BY 4.0 licensed (the text itself may not say that but the store listing should), so feel free to use the tali mechanic (which, admittedly, is almost certainly in the public domain) however you want, even if you're borrowing my implementation of it word-for-word.

I also recently released Alter Data, which applies this ruleset but replaces the d4 (which replicates knucklebones) with a d6, giving somewhat more design space to work with.

Figuring Out the Game Design

Jovia was conceived as a one-page game, and that means that there were things that couldn't be included because of length limitations.

The core is simple: roll four dice, try to get four different results. 4 is bad (unless you get a straight--which is special).

Now, there are a few different variations of tali, and while they're not all recorded with great accuracy there are many that care about particular combinations.

In Alter Data, I didn't have to worry about this because it has a 1-6 space, with 1s being good and 6s being bad. But with tali, you do have fewer options to move around. Having a very simple system still worked out to having a good numerical space to work in.

Tali is a little different because you have fewer possible results, so manipulating the number of dice is less of an option.

Jovia's Existing Concepts

You go for 1, 2, 3, 4 by rolling four dice. The number of unique results is your score (e.g. 1, 1, 2, 1 gives 2 score). Higher is better.

This will likely stay the same in the expanded game.

There are two forms of character input: score manipulation and strengths/weaknesses.

Score manipulation involves simply adding a point to your score. Since the score you require is based on the difficulty of the action, you wind up with a simple scale for the GM to use.

Characters in Jovia get a Heritage, reflecting some divine descent that they claim. This is a score manipulation (+1).

They also get a virtue and two "responsibilities" (profession) that gives them a reroll each. for a maximum total of 3 rerolls.

This is very powerful, and maps onto what I'd want to do with a one-page game since there isn't room for character advancement.

4s give a mishap, which is usually a complication. When you suffer a mishap, you might mark off one of your responsibilities, which temporarily reduces your power and can lead to character death.

For a one-page game, I think this works, but it's rather limited.

Concepts to Experiment With

The obvious elephant in the room is that characters hit very high power levels when they mix their things. To turn Jovia into a longer game means working around the limitations of the d4 and figuring out a way to provide greater diversity to characters while also allowing some overlap (e.g. if you have two characters who descend from Mars they already occupy 90% of the same space).

Here are some things I'm thinking about doing.

1. Extend the score space. This would lead to a numerical scheme somewhat like Fudge, where you have a dice mechanic that provides a random number *around* a point primarily determined by static numbers.

For instance, you might have your descent provide a bonus to your score, but also your responsibilities or heroic attributes. These could be capped, or even made exclusive but given their own value.

2. Dice pool manipulation, perhaps using a static attribute. You might roll more dice in something you're good at, and fewer dice in something you're not. I probably can't go above 5 dice in any circumstance without giving a pretty good chance of straights, which could just provide 4 score and defense against a setback without causing too much trouble.

My initial idea here would be to have a small set of attributes that determine how many dice you roll.

3. Points pools. This is almost certainly the best way to handle rerolls, instead of having flat rerolls on any relevant actions.

This is also a great way to power special abilities and give options for character advancement.