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An RPG system I've been working on
Okay, so I've been vaguely hacking out a gaming system for tabletop RPGs. Why? Aren't there enough RPG systems in the world? What do I expect my system to do better?
Um. Nothing particularly. It's just fun to work out.
But I'm now getting to the point that I need to start bouncing ideas off of people. I mean, for one thing, it's no fun to write a system by yourself -- you have to show it to people eventually. And, anyway, I'm now getting to the point that I really need people to tell me what sucks about this.
OVERVIEW:
This is a roleplaying game system. I want it to be realistic enough to not break suspension of disbelief, but other than that, realism isn't overly important. I want it to be simple to use, with dice mechanics that are easy to learn and remember.
It's a "points-build" system, where there is no randomness in character generation. Like many points-build systems, characters will have "Statistics," "Skills", "Advantages", and "Disadvantages". Each "Skill" may also have a couple sub-skills associated with it, called "Tricks" or "Specialties", which will be little things about the skill that the character is particularly adept at.
Average people will typically be built on about 100 points; player characters will typically be built on more; 150 seems like a good number for starting characters.
STATISTICS:
There are nine Stats, in three categories of three stats each. The three categories are Body, Mind, and Spirit. In each category, there is Force, Resistance, and Agility.
Stats go from 1 to 9, but are scaled (like in FUDGE). Each scale factor up is a factor of 10. So a 2 on the next scale up from "human", would be similar to a 20 on a human scale. It costs 3 character points for a Stat point.
The average Stat is a "3" or "4". A 1 is pathetic, 2 is notably bad. 3 and 4 are average, but you'd be able to tell, among people you knew well, which ones were 3s and which were 4s. Someone with a 5 or 6 would be well-known and recognized for their ability, while a 7 or 8 would allow someone to be truly remarkable. A 9 would be the peak of human ability, someone who, if given a chance to developed his or her talents, would go down in history.
BODY
Strength (Force of Body)
Health (Resistance of Body)
Dexterity (Agility of Body)
MIND
Reason (Force of Mind)
Will (Resistance of Mind)
Wit (Agility of Mind)
SPIRIT
Passion (Force of Spirit)
Fortitude (Resistance of Spirit)
Creativity (Agility of Spirit)
"Strength" covers what you think it would: how much physical force your body can generate. "Health" covers how often you get sick, your endurance, and general physical well-being -- it therefore has some amount of effect on your appearance. "Dexterity" is how adept and accurate your body is -- your grace, accuracy of movement, and so forth.
Your "Reason" is the raw calculating power of your mind -- it covers how "smart" you are in an academic sense, how logical you are, and your ability to understand complex concepts. "Will" is your ability to resist distractions, force your mind to do things that you don't want to, resist fear. It's your general mental stability, and controls how calm you remain under stress. "Wit" is how fast your mind is -- it helps you with thinking on your feet, being clever, coming up with puns, and general mental razzle-dazzle.
Your force of personality is your "Passion". It includes things like the strength of your enthusiasms, and your drive. "Fortitude" forms a pool of calm, and can help with your mental stability, the way "Will" can. "Fortitude", however, is more closely related to faith -- not necessarily faith in any particular deity, but a sense of placing your actions in a wider context, giving your actions a sense of meaning. The more Fortitude you have, the more you can endure, because you feel that it's for a reason. "Creativity" covers several things. It is your artistic sense, your "muse", your font of ideas. It also covers how well you understand other people.
There are also a few "derived stats." Reaction speed is the AVERAGE of all Agility stats (Dexterity, Wit, Creativity). Wound Resistance is the average of all Resistance stats (Health, Will, Fortitude). Presence is average of Health, Wit, and Passion. In all cases, you round to the nearest whole number.
SKILLS
Skills are based on a stat, or an average of two or three stats (round nearest). For instance, "Swordsmanship" might be based on Dexterity, while "Oratory" might be based on an average of "Reason", "Creativity", and "Passion".
1 point gets you the Skill at the Stat level, every additional +1 costs an additional +1. Also, for every +1, you get a Trick or Technique -- some specialty you have with the skill.
A single skill will generally be something like "Athletics", "Swordsmanship", "Military Science", "Oratory", or "Conversation." I've not come up with a complete skill list yet, and wouldn't mind help doing so.
Perhaps an example will help: let's say that Oratory is based on Reason, Creativity, and Passion. Bartholomew has Reason 4, Creativity 6, and Passion 6. (4+6+6)/3, rounded to the nearest is 5, so his base skill with Oratory is 5. For 1 point, that's the skill level he gets it at. However, he spends 3 points on it -- base, and then +2, so his Oratory is 7.
He also gets two Tricks or Specialties with it. He talks it over with the GM, and decide that he has Good Projection -- he can be heard in noisy environments, even without a microphone, and Rabble-Rousing -- he gets a +1 if he's trying to incite a riot. Tricks and Specialties ALWAYS must be discussed with the GM, and just because one GM said it's okay doesn't mean you can just take the same Specialties to another GM. . .
TASK RESOLUTION
Task resolution: every task has an Active number and a Passive number. Active and Passive both roll 2d6 and add to their base; if the Active is higher than the Passive, the roll is a success. Ties generally go to the Passive.
The Active number is usually a skill or a stat. The Passive number may be a skill or stat, or may simply be a "task difficulty" number.
When rolling 2d6, a 2 always fails, even if the number would have otherwise been higher than the Passive. If the Active and Passive BOTH roll a 2, Something Interesting And Generally Bad happens. The GM gets to be creative, and choose some appropriate negative consequence that impacts both parties.
If a 12 is rolled, the party who rolled the 12 -- player or GM -- may choose to roll again and add the result on, in an open-ended manner. However, if any of those rolls is a 2, it's a failure, so you may choose to stop rolling even if you could otherwise go on.
If the Active number is higher than the Passive, that is a Success. If the Active is higher than TWICE the Passive, that is TWO successes, three times, three successes, and so forth. Some long tasks may take multiple successes to achieve, which would normally mean taking several turns and several attempts. In other cases, multiple successes may just mean a really impressive success, or a success so great that it has other beneficial side effects.
Multiple successes on a single roll will generally be rare -- except for Damage Calculations.
DAMAGE CALCULATION
There are three forms of Damage -- Physical, Mental, and Spiritual/Social, although it is quite likely that all three will not be used in all games.
The most common will likely be Physical Damage.
Every weapon or attack will have a Damage Factor. The Damage Factor is used as an Active number, while the Wound Resistance is a Passive number -- Damage Factor+2d6 is compared to Wound Resistance+2d6. Every success the Damage Factor scores moves the victim one line down on the Physical Injury table.
To calculate Physical Damage, you use the attack's damage+2d6 as the Active roll, and the target's Wound Resistance+2d6 as the Passive. If the Attack Damage roll is a 2, the target got lucky -- the bullet was stopped by her lucky medallion, the pistol misfired, or something like that, and there is no damage. If the Injury Resistance roll is a 2, the target got unlucky -- it's some sort of Critical Damage thingy. The GM should roll 2d6, and, the higher the roll (open-ended), the more serious it should be. As a rule of thumb -- if it's over 7, it should probably end the fight, and if it's over 12, it should probably have lasting damage. Something over 24 is a career-ender -- limb loss, brain damage . . . the character is still a character, but is significantly less competent in combat.
Attack Damage for weapons can be very high -- 20 or more for some weapons, so multiple successes will be common. Each success increases the injury level on the injury table by 1. So four successes would Seriously Injure someone, while eight will kill them.
Physical Injury table:
0 Healthy
1 Scratched
2 Flesh wound
3 Hurt
4 Seriously Injured
5 Crippled
6 Incapacitated
7 Critical
N/A Dead
The number next to the description -- from 0 to 7 -- is the minus they have to every physical action they take from then on. I haven't decided if Wound Resistance is included in that -- if so, it would make the "Death Spiral" (once you start losing, you lose faster and faster) even worse, but, since it WOULD reduce your ability to attack back, the "Death Spiral" is already there. . .
Mental Injury and Social Injury will work in a similar way, although I've not worked out details. The Mental Injury table will probably be used for dealing with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and the Social Injury table for games in which jockeying for social position is vital. The minuses would be for mental or social actions, instead of physical actions, and I've not decided how you'd calculate Mental and Social Injury Resistance.
Mental Injury Table
0 Stable
1 Puzzled
2 Confused
3 Baffled
4 Dazed
5 Lost
6 Incoherent
7 Unhinged
N/A Catatonic
Social Injury Table
0 Accepted
1 Discomfited
2 Chagrined
3 Embarrassed
4 Humiliated
5 Shamed
6 Hated
7 Pariah
N/A Outcast
-0 / -1 / -2 = Mild
-3 / -4 / -5 = Serious
-6 / -7 / N/A = Catastrophic
Um. Nothing particularly. It's just fun to work out.
But I'm now getting to the point that I need to start bouncing ideas off of people. I mean, for one thing, it's no fun to write a system by yourself -- you have to show it to people eventually. And, anyway, I'm now getting to the point that I really need people to tell me what sucks about this.
OVERVIEW:
This is a roleplaying game system. I want it to be realistic enough to not break suspension of disbelief, but other than that, realism isn't overly important. I want it to be simple to use, with dice mechanics that are easy to learn and remember.
It's a "points-build" system, where there is no randomness in character generation. Like many points-build systems, characters will have "Statistics," "Skills", "Advantages", and "Disadvantages". Each "Skill" may also have a couple sub-skills associated with it, called "Tricks" or "Specialties", which will be little things about the skill that the character is particularly adept at.
Average people will typically be built on about 100 points; player characters will typically be built on more; 150 seems like a good number for starting characters.
STATISTICS:
There are nine Stats, in three categories of three stats each. The three categories are Body, Mind, and Spirit. In each category, there is Force, Resistance, and Agility.
Stats go from 1 to 9, but are scaled (like in FUDGE). Each scale factor up is a factor of 10. So a 2 on the next scale up from "human", would be similar to a 20 on a human scale. It costs 3 character points for a Stat point.
The average Stat is a "3" or "4". A 1 is pathetic, 2 is notably bad. 3 and 4 are average, but you'd be able to tell, among people you knew well, which ones were 3s and which were 4s. Someone with a 5 or 6 would be well-known and recognized for their ability, while a 7 or 8 would allow someone to be truly remarkable. A 9 would be the peak of human ability, someone who, if given a chance to developed his or her talents, would go down in history.
BODY
Strength (Force of Body)
Health (Resistance of Body)
Dexterity (Agility of Body)
MIND
Reason (Force of Mind)
Will (Resistance of Mind)
Wit (Agility of Mind)
SPIRIT
Passion (Force of Spirit)
Fortitude (Resistance of Spirit)
Creativity (Agility of Spirit)
"Strength" covers what you think it would: how much physical force your body can generate. "Health" covers how often you get sick, your endurance, and general physical well-being -- it therefore has some amount of effect on your appearance. "Dexterity" is how adept and accurate your body is -- your grace, accuracy of movement, and so forth.
Your "Reason" is the raw calculating power of your mind -- it covers how "smart" you are in an academic sense, how logical you are, and your ability to understand complex concepts. "Will" is your ability to resist distractions, force your mind to do things that you don't want to, resist fear. It's your general mental stability, and controls how calm you remain under stress. "Wit" is how fast your mind is -- it helps you with thinking on your feet, being clever, coming up with puns, and general mental razzle-dazzle.
Your force of personality is your "Passion". It includes things like the strength of your enthusiasms, and your drive. "Fortitude" forms a pool of calm, and can help with your mental stability, the way "Will" can. "Fortitude", however, is more closely related to faith -- not necessarily faith in any particular deity, but a sense of placing your actions in a wider context, giving your actions a sense of meaning. The more Fortitude you have, the more you can endure, because you feel that it's for a reason. "Creativity" covers several things. It is your artistic sense, your "muse", your font of ideas. It also covers how well you understand other people.
There are also a few "derived stats." Reaction speed is the AVERAGE of all Agility stats (Dexterity, Wit, Creativity). Wound Resistance is the average of all Resistance stats (Health, Will, Fortitude). Presence is average of Health, Wit, and Passion. In all cases, you round to the nearest whole number.
SKILLS
Skills are based on a stat, or an average of two or three stats (round nearest). For instance, "Swordsmanship" might be based on Dexterity, while "Oratory" might be based on an average of "Reason", "Creativity", and "Passion".
1 point gets you the Skill at the Stat level, every additional +1 costs an additional +1. Also, for every +1, you get a Trick or Technique -- some specialty you have with the skill.
A single skill will generally be something like "Athletics", "Swordsmanship", "Military Science", "Oratory", or "Conversation." I've not come up with a complete skill list yet, and wouldn't mind help doing so.
Perhaps an example will help: let's say that Oratory is based on Reason, Creativity, and Passion. Bartholomew has Reason 4, Creativity 6, and Passion 6. (4+6+6)/3, rounded to the nearest is 5, so his base skill with Oratory is 5. For 1 point, that's the skill level he gets it at. However, he spends 3 points on it -- base, and then +2, so his Oratory is 7.
He also gets two Tricks or Specialties with it. He talks it over with the GM, and decide that he has Good Projection -- he can be heard in noisy environments, even without a microphone, and Rabble-Rousing -- he gets a +1 if he's trying to incite a riot. Tricks and Specialties ALWAYS must be discussed with the GM, and just because one GM said it's okay doesn't mean you can just take the same Specialties to another GM. . .
TASK RESOLUTION
Task resolution: every task has an Active number and a Passive number. Active and Passive both roll 2d6 and add to their base; if the Active is higher than the Passive, the roll is a success. Ties generally go to the Passive.
The Active number is usually a skill or a stat. The Passive number may be a skill or stat, or may simply be a "task difficulty" number.
When rolling 2d6, a 2 always fails, even if the number would have otherwise been higher than the Passive. If the Active and Passive BOTH roll a 2, Something Interesting And Generally Bad happens. The GM gets to be creative, and choose some appropriate negative consequence that impacts both parties.
If a 12 is rolled, the party who rolled the 12 -- player or GM -- may choose to roll again and add the result on, in an open-ended manner. However, if any of those rolls is a 2, it's a failure, so you may choose to stop rolling even if you could otherwise go on.
If the Active number is higher than the Passive, that is a Success. If the Active is higher than TWICE the Passive, that is TWO successes, three times, three successes, and so forth. Some long tasks may take multiple successes to achieve, which would normally mean taking several turns and several attempts. In other cases, multiple successes may just mean a really impressive success, or a success so great that it has other beneficial side effects.
Multiple successes on a single roll will generally be rare -- except for Damage Calculations.
DAMAGE CALCULATION
There are three forms of Damage -- Physical, Mental, and Spiritual/Social, although it is quite likely that all three will not be used in all games.
The most common will likely be Physical Damage.
Every weapon or attack will have a Damage Factor. The Damage Factor is used as an Active number, while the Wound Resistance is a Passive number -- Damage Factor+2d6 is compared to Wound Resistance+2d6. Every success the Damage Factor scores moves the victim one line down on the Physical Injury table.
To calculate Physical Damage, you use the attack's damage+2d6 as the Active roll, and the target's Wound Resistance+2d6 as the Passive. If the Attack Damage roll is a 2, the target got lucky -- the bullet was stopped by her lucky medallion, the pistol misfired, or something like that, and there is no damage. If the Injury Resistance roll is a 2, the target got unlucky -- it's some sort of Critical Damage thingy. The GM should roll 2d6, and, the higher the roll (open-ended), the more serious it should be. As a rule of thumb -- if it's over 7, it should probably end the fight, and if it's over 12, it should probably have lasting damage. Something over 24 is a career-ender -- limb loss, brain damage . . . the character is still a character, but is significantly less competent in combat.
Attack Damage for weapons can be very high -- 20 or more for some weapons, so multiple successes will be common. Each success increases the injury level on the injury table by 1. So four successes would Seriously Injure someone, while eight will kill them.
Physical Injury table:
0 Healthy
1 Scratched
2 Flesh wound
3 Hurt
4 Seriously Injured
5 Crippled
6 Incapacitated
7 Critical
N/A Dead
The number next to the description -- from 0 to 7 -- is the minus they have to every physical action they take from then on. I haven't decided if Wound Resistance is included in that -- if so, it would make the "Death Spiral" (once you start losing, you lose faster and faster) even worse, but, since it WOULD reduce your ability to attack back, the "Death Spiral" is already there. . .
Mental Injury and Social Injury will work in a similar way, although I've not worked out details. The Mental Injury table will probably be used for dealing with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and the Social Injury table for games in which jockeying for social position is vital. The minuses would be for mental or social actions, instead of physical actions, and I've not decided how you'd calculate Mental and Social Injury Resistance.
Mental Injury Table
0 Stable
1 Puzzled
2 Confused
3 Baffled
4 Dazed
5 Lost
6 Incoherent
7 Unhinged
N/A Catatonic
Social Injury Table
0 Accepted
1 Discomfited
2 Chagrined
3 Embarrassed
4 Humiliated
5 Shamed
6 Hated
7 Pariah
N/A Outcast
-0 / -1 / -2 = Mild
-3 / -4 / -5 = Serious
-6 / -7 / N/A = Catastrophic
no subject
down the side:
strength
agility
durability
across the top
physical
mental
emotional
spiritual
So, identical to yours, with the addition of the three 'emotional' stats. These pertain to interpersonal things: emotional durability is probably the easiest to understand, and has something to do with sanity; emotional agility pertains to empathy, and emotional strength is about charisma and leadership.
Spirit was actually reserved for creative-type things (spirit a la "inspiration" rather than "ghost"). I think your spirit is closer to my emotion, really.
...will react to the rest later...
no subject
Why did I go for three types of things instead of four, as you did? Um, because this whole thing is me playing with the number three.
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I remember the idea about specialties from back when. :)
Have you playtested the action resolution mechanic yet? How well does it work in play?
Social injury is very context-dependent. Someone who is hated at work may be accepted at church, or insert social circle here. How is that mechanicked?
Overall, I'd be interested to hear more about the reasoning behind your various design decisions. What are your goals in this system? Realism, ease of play, mood evoking, etc? Why this set of stats? Why this granularity level? Why this character generation system? Why this action rsolution system?
no subject
Basically, I'm playing with the number 3. That's all. I'm just seeing what falls out if I make a design system based around 3s and 9s, and see if I can't make something playable.
I haven't playtested any of this yet. But I did some number-crunching. If ties go to the defender, an Active and Passive number which are the same will go to the Active about 45% of the time. If Active is +1 over Passive, Active wins about 55%. +2, Active wins about 66%, +3, 76%, +4, 84%, +5, 90%, 94%, 97%, 98% . . .
This, of course, ignores the 2.8% chance of rolling a 2, and the open-ended rolling on 12s, but since each of those is less than 3%, I figured that I can mostly ignore it in figuring odds. It only starts making a real difference around the +4 or +5 level.
I'm reasonably happy with that kind of spread. Your "bell curve" is really based around 4d6, which gives a curve I'm comfortable with for gaming purposes.
The mental and social injury tables are, at this point, conceptual. I was imagining the social injury table to really only be used in Jane Austin-genre based games, or other societies with highly formalized social structures. I could see it used in a Norse game, for instance -- in some societies, I could see physical combat always including a social combat, as well. And the winner of one might not be the winner of the other.
I started thinking about that in a panel at Farthingcon about "Fantasy of Manners" -- a poorly-defined and developing subgenre of fantasy. One person came up with the suggestion that a fantasy was a "fantasy of manners" if you could use social tools to defeat the Big Bad, and if shaming the villian was a reasonable method of neutralizing him or her.
no subject
They way they seem to have constructed their system was to say, "What do we want this system to do better than any other system?" They seem to have answered with brawling, shootouts, panning for gold, convincing juries in trials, cattle rustling, and accurately portraying damage from bullet wounds. With all of these little parts—all of which are modular, with more advanced optional rules, they seem to have been spot on and unique.
My suggestion for this system is to ask yourself that same question: What do you think you could do better than an existing system? Right now, there's a shell, but I think the shell should fit the functions rather than the other way around.
no subject
no subject
(PS: I arrived here via Gilmoure)
no subject
Just a stylistic thing, I guess. There's no real advantage to one or the other, I don't think, but I just prefer the flavor of the one to the other.
"Hit-point systems" tend to not have as much of a Death Spiral thing -- where, as you begin to lose, you become weaker, therefore making you lose more and more -- once you fall behind, you fall more and more behind. I happen to LIKE the "Death Spiral" thing, but other people don't -- again, it's a stylistic choice.
no subject
I recently wrote rules to cover muscle-powered and early black-powder weapons.. I was interested in incorporating armor penetration into the equation more. Instead of injuries I have a continuum from hits: stun-minor-injury-major injury-death, modified by skill, strength, weapon type and range, armor, and defender's constitution. Con also gives you a chance to avoid shock from injuries.
Ever play Champions (Hero Games)? I liked their Stamina/Body v. killing/non-killing attack setup.
no subject
2) Every game needs a way to deal with Perception, so the players can ask the GM what they see, search for clues, and so the GM has a way to determine whether or not the PCs notice things (like an ambush) that are not immediately obvious.
I can think of three ways to deal with this. My favorite is to use the Mental Agility stat, calling it Perception instead of Wits. You can also build a derived stat (like reaction speed) or use a skill, or set of skills.
One reason I like renaming the mental agility stat is that I think Reason and Wits are too similar to each other. You may know exactly how you want to distinguish between the two; that won't necessarily carry to every player/GM who comes in contact with the game... but I've seen other games do this without getting too much complaint (I think White Wolf does in fact), so it's probably survivable.
3) Given the number theory involved in the game, why does the injury scale go to 8 and not 9?
4) Conflating social functions with both the spiritual and mental set is a bad idea.
I have to go.
Kiralee
no subject
The wound scale actually DOES go to 9 -- it's just that 9 is Dead. . . (and I wrote it down as 0 to 8 instead of 1 to 9, because I was writing down what the minuses were for each level.)
I was really trying more to conflate social functions with the spiritual set, and leave the mental set separate. But it's quite possible that even THAT is too much conflation.
no subject
2) Yes, there are 9 steps, but the first one (the 0 step) doesn't count.
This time I have to go because it's dinner time... I'll get back to you on the last point.
Kiralee
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Have you thought about how you are going to handle healing; you said a little bit about how much damage someone can heal, but nothing about how quickly. I had some ideas about that in terms of mental and social functions.
Kiralee
no subject
no subject
Conflating the social functions with and mental set really bothers me. It bothers me even more that you don't realize what you are doing.
Kiralee
no subject
But, for me, it seems that the initial impression people get of someone is based on their force of personality, their physical presence, and their mental quickness. And I believe that convincing people of things involves a certain amount of logical argument -- although more involved with the spiritual ability to understand people, which is why it could be based on Creativity, to understand where people are, Reason, to work out a route from where they are to where you want them to be, and Passion, to drag them along your route with you.
no subject
The word you're using, reason, is sensitive to context. So are associated words (e.g. reasonable, reasoning, etc. ), synonyms (e.g. logic), antonyms (e.g. irrational) and even words, like "valid" that are just commonly used with it.
All of these words are used one way, for one behavior set, when talking about mental disciplines (science, scholarship, law, accounting) and another way, for a different behavior set, when speaking casually in a social setting.
Put it this way... the "reasoning" I use to convince my friends is not the same "reasoning" I use to persuade an auditor at work.
Or, the "logical" argument I use to convince my friends is not the same as the "logical" argument I use in a mathematical proof.
I used to use "mental" reasoning in social settings, long before I knew you... I learned that it didn't work.
So when an RPG mechanic rewards "mental" reasoning with social success it breaks my suspension of disbelief.
Kiralee