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I can totally understand the feeling, I def. felt something of that when I first started.

It helped me to begin by designing in part - have an idea for a cool combat system, write it up, play around with it, maybe build something ontop of that, maybe leave it for later. Hack other games, play around with making content in other settings (playbooks, adventures, classes or monsters, w/e).

Another thing to keep in mind is that a game doesn't have to be "complete" in a traditional sense - it doesn't have to model *every* imaginable action or game, just making the part of the game that interests you, that you feel equipped to make, is fine, even if that's just prose.

My trouble is that I don't really know how to make systems ^^; it feels terrifying, because I don't even know what my potential options are, if that makes sense. I don't know what that specific process might look like.

For sure! I'd recommend just starting off reading and messing around with some of the easier to hack systems - Fate, Apocalypse World, etc - and just tweak them, see if you get any cool ideas about how their systems might work for this idea or that idea, then go from there. It's how basically everyone I know got started, and it can be a really fun, easy and quick way to go from idea to playable without worrying about the underlying maths.

Generally tho, my process for coming up with a system tends to start with me coming up with a list of abstract concepts that I want the system to do (Be easy to teach, rely on only one kind of dice, be based on tarot cards, etc) and then spend a lot of time thinking about how to tick those boxes while also, simultaneously, considering what I want the system to "say" and how I want to accomplish that. It's a long process, and it can be super frustrating but really rewarding. But it's not inherently better than using one of the many existent systems out there as your base!

That is very helpful, thank you! :D