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[Muz]

OK, so, I'm thinking of building a RPG system and stuff. Since you guys just love this stuff, I'm hoping to get comments and ideas from you guys


Problem
Right now, RPG systems still don't allow for the gold and glory experience. Some systems overpower it, where one hero can beat up 1000 orcs without any trouble. Or a hero might take 20 solid hits and a fireball to kill. On the contrary, a hero might stab a giant in the ankle only 5 times to kill him.

What I would like to do is allow games to naturally produce the kind of stories that you get out of novels or movies. I'd like a system where the rules are flexible enough to allow you to create characters and play it out as it goes in a book, and even tell you properly whether your guy can create a fireball out of thin air or whether you can swing from a chandelier onto the shoulders of an ogre.


Objective
Primary goal here is to make a realistic RPG system. You should be able to depict any character you can imagine, any monster or situation, and they should be able to do what they want to do. 100% realism is not possible (or fun), but the game should be highly believable and flexible in player character design and actions.

If possible, I'd also want the system to be able to handle porting to other systems as well. Like it should be possible to use the same system for a fantasy swordwielding character who moves into a sci-fi world. Or a group of superheroes. Or even to translate real life baseball players into a baseball management game.

Secondary goal would be to keep it balanced and fun. There shouldn't be any single "ideal" weapon or perfect choice. Picking less useful skills should be encouraged somewhat.. if it doesn't help the character "win", it should be fun/unique/cool. Powergaming should result in your character being the equivalent of a nerd.

Also, the system would assume that computation isn't a problem. It should be kept as simple as possible to help game balance and avoid confusion. But using computers to play the system is expected. Maybe it could later be changed for pen and paper, but a computer might still be needed to calculate the skill level and stuff.


Attributes
Basically how the character is viewed. This tends to be a part of the character which is very difficult to change, increases or decreases with age, and is more racially based. I'm thinking of taking a logarithmic scale, with every 10 points meaning twice as high as the last 10 points. Average industrial age human would be around 50.

Not sure how they'd be generated yet. I'm thinking of outlining the basic stats first, then allowing them to be branched out at the Game Master's will, if he requires more detail.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strength
Physical strength. The muscular power of the character. It'd cover things like arm strength, leg, jaw, etc.

Agility
The ability of the character to move quickly. This covers reflexes and reactions, as well as acrobatics.

Dexterity
Fine movement. This is the attribute that surgeons and lock pickers rely on. Clumsy people are low in dexterity.

Willpower
This is the ability of the character to go through things that their body is resisting. I'm thinking of making this the main 'heroic' attribute. It can be random or even preset because it's the most important attribute, but it affects the character's capacity of training, including training other skills. A drawback would be that high willpower characters are prone to insanity because of the kind of things they have to endure to get their willpower that high.

Learning
Intelligence, reasoning. High learning means they able to learn mental attributes/skills faster and learn faster from their mistakes. Doesn't include knowledge itself, that's what skills does.

Charisma
Ability to convince people or make themselves appear more likeable.

Appearance
Simply looking good. Also easy to temporarily increase. It's got very few in-game bonuses, so either it'd not give bonuses allocating points int his, or it'd allow you some interesting non-gameplay options, like in Fallout. Or if you're playing a football RPG, it's a requirement to reach David Beckham-like status.

Constitution
Depicts many things about the character's health. Might be split into general toughness, resistance to damage/injury/poison/magic, recovery rate, stamina, among other things.

Skills
These depict the player's ability in things they have learned. A skill is judged separately from an attribute.. that is, the attribute isn't used to calculate the 'base skill'. It's a pure indicator of the knowledge known. I think it'd be more linear, but the rate of skill increase goes up logarithmically.

Skill checks
Skill checks are going to be tough to do. It's a balance between allowing enough randomness to be unpredictable and too much randomness where one person can pass it and another can't. For example, give it something like hacking. Not everyone with the 'same level' of skill actually knows the same things. If they can hack into one thing, doesn't mean they can hack into the next.

I propose that it just rolls some dice, and if your bonuses to the roll exceeds the difficulty of the check, you succeed. If you don't succeed, then things get interesting.

The difference from failure to the level of success is how far they fail. If it's an archery contest, then the failure is by how far you miss. If it's a knowledge check, like lockpicking, hacking, or math, it's indicates how much research or experimenting they need to do to figure it out. Maybe for every point it misses by, the character needs to think a few minutes, hours, days, weeks to do so.. increasing exponentially the further it misses.

Skill increases
I think skill increases should follow the new DF system, as a sort of bell curve, but this would not be hard imposed. Instead, the rate of increase would be based on the level of another skill. The bell curve would even be simulated by basing it on itself. But if a character is already proficient in some things, it should be easier to learn other skills. Like say, if the character has a high level in House Building, he should be able to easily pick up Temple Building, and to a lesser extent, learn Ship Building, but not as fast.

For example, the character is learning how to swing a sword. The difficulty in learning sword use is partly based on their proficiency in other weapons. He doesn't have any knowledge at all in weapon fighting. So, as Swords would be the highest weapon skill.. the Swords skill would what the rate of learning is based on. The higher it is, the faster the character learns to use it, up to the point where the bonus from high skill is lower than the cost to increase the skills. Creates a bit of a bell curve.

Skill learning checks would be based on a few attributes, I guess. Learning to swing a sword is based on Dexterity, Strength, Willpower, and Learning. Algebra would be based on Willpower and Learning. The checks would be made on certain intervals, and how well the check exceeds the difficulty indicates how much the skill increases. If the check fails, then the character just doesn't learn anything - which is what happens when an uneducated person tries to learn Astrophysics; even after years of checks, they don't improve.

Also, not all skills will increase at the same rate. Some increase/reduce faster than others... learning a language would take a few years to reach "proficient" level, while something like cooking might take only a few days or even hours. Maybe a skill learning check would be taken less often.

I'm not fond of "grinding" up skills, so I'd like to make this automated. The character could perhaps set up a training program for himself to increase skills.. but how efficient this program is (i.e. if they stick to training), is based on his Willpower.

Training
One good thing from this system is that it allows training. If you train someone else in using a skill, that character uses your skill level to judge his rate of increase. This would possibly be based on a Teaching skill.

So, if you have 0 Farming and no agricultural skills, you'd have a hard time learning to farm, and would do it from scratch. If you have a teacher with 5 Farming but 0 Teach, then you'd be able to learn at as if you had 0.5 Farming. If the teacher had 100 Teach, you might be able to learn as if you had 4.6 Farming and so on.

Useless skills
Some skills are less useful. Like playing a musical instrument.. takes a long time to learn and isn't very useful in combat. I'm still unsure how to approach this, maybe by giving in-game modifiers if the rating is high.


Experience and levels
I'm thinking of just removing experience gain and levelling up completely and only have skill gain. If characters want to improve, they have to train themselves in that skill or attribute.


Race
Races are something I'd also like to focus on. I think there should be a significant effect for being a giant, ogre, hydra, over say.. being a dwarf. It shouldn't simply be an additional special move or higher attributes, a dwarf fighting an ogre should have more difficulty than D&D gives. Dragons and magical beings are truly epic battles in fantasy books, a game should reflect the difficulty of getting past their defenses to strike their heart, and not just degrade into who loses hit points the fastest.

Right now, I'm unsure how to design the system to put a lot more focus on this, but it's something to think of later.


Weapons and damage
The weapon system should allow for any and all weapons. Injuries should be possible from all kinds of things.. from bullets and axe wounds to rough rugby tackles and explosions. The hard part is allowing a lot of flexibility, but avoiding too much complexity (and exploits).

I'd still like to keep to the Hit Point system, but instead of making it reflect overall health, it'd be that each body part has different hit points. The head would have the least, limbs the most, but head and chest would have more natural armor.

Armor would either divide (absorb) damage by a certain amount. If the weapon pierces armor, then that armor would subtract a set amount instead of dividing it.

Injuries themselves would be done by calculating how damage is done to the body part vs how much HP it has. They'd probably cause certain reactions to the character based on how bad it was and some random stuff.
 - minor bleeding, a slight decrease to constitution
 - major bleeding, constitution goes down steadily.. upon failing a check, the character falls into ont
 - non-functioning body part, broken arm, leg, etc.. usage of the part (like touching it) might cause stunning, based on Willpower
 - stunning, which basically means searing pain. Character performs very poorly in anything for a while, though a successful willpower check will recover the character.
 - incapacitation - blinding pain.. the character needs checks just to stay conscious and has trouble doing anything that requires significant movement (huge penalties to all physical attributes)
 - unconsciousness
 - death, if constitution falls too low, usually from major bleeding, or hits that do excessive damage to certain body parts.

Now actually finding out how much damage is done by certain weapons or how many hit points a body part has would be the hard part.

Combat
Combat itself is a complicated part. I've written like 30 pages of notes on how to do it elsewhere, and I still haven't solved the problem.

One way to approach is is just to make opposed skill checks. A person attacks with a sword and the other person makes a skill check to block or evade it. If they fail this check, the damage is calculated, based on how badly it failed. Success would still require a second check to see if the character remained on balance after the hit.


Magic
I want to put this in, as well as allow high/low/no magic usage in the system. But it's really hard to find a system that everyone agrees with. Maybe I should just leave it to the GM, but the game should have some guideline rules and stuff for it.

But if I had to establish guidelines and rules, it'd be for higher magic systems, where the GM/programmer can just pick the stuff they want if they wanted a low magic world.

[ein]

You're going to want a nice, simple mechanic that allows for easily improvised rolls and checks.
For example, in my RPG, all weapons have an accuracy rating.
You have to roll a d20 and get lower than that number to score a hit.
This applies to everything from swords, to guns, to improvised weapons (which are a little more complicated, based on weight, skill, and shape).

[Grakelin]

Careful with having an Appearance attribute. That's usually a dump stat, because very few things are ever affected by it.

[ein]

Yeah, take that out.
Merge it in with charisma.

[Muz]

You're going to want a nice, simple mechanic that allows for easily improvised rolls and checks.
For example, in my RPG, all weapons have an accuracy rating.
You have to roll a d20 and get lower than that number to score a hit.

Yeah, that was the original idea before I posted this. But now that I think of it, I'm wondering if it'll work as well, since I'm making the stats increase exponentially. Like a person with 60 strength has twice the strength of a person with 50. Even rolling a d5 would produce some odd effects. I guess I'll try to convert it to a linear style for calculation before the d20 check and stuff

Careful with having an Appearance attribute. That's usually a dump stat, because very few things are ever affected by it.

I realized that, but merging it with charisma doesn't give the right effect. I'm thinking of either factoring it out (nobody can put/remove points from it) or making it just random, then putting make-up/fashion as a skill used to buff it if needed. Or if it'd be point-based, it should be very cheap to increase appearance, since it doesn't really do anything, like 5 points of appearance = 1 point of strength, but it becomes very expensive at very high levels and actually has an effect at very low levels.


Anyway, the whole post seems a bit too long to read, so I'll toss you guys something to discuss.. I want to really allow some extra detail into how monsters and other non-human races are depicted, so as to give them a different feel, rather than just different stats and bonus skills. I'm skeptical of the DF approach, because of the whole "one arrow by a drafted cheesemaker can kill a dragon" thing. I'd like someone to be able to kill a dragon with an arrow to its heart, but it should be incredibly difficult to get that arrow there, and facing the dragon (or even a troll) should give you a sense of dread, even at high levels.

Any suggestions how to approach the creature detail issue?

[MrWiggles]

OK, so, I'm thinking of building a RPG system and stuff. Since you guys just love this stuff, I'm hoping to get comments and ideas from you guys


Problem

What I would like to do is allow games to naturally produce the kind of stories that you get out of novels or movies. I'd like a system where the rules are flexible enough to allow you to create characters and play it out as it goes in a book, and even tell you properly whether your guy can create a fireball out of thin air or whether you can swing from a chandelier onto the shoulders of an ogre.

This paragraph contains a contradiction. The narrative found within a movie or book can't exactly be constrained through a system where the system acts a neutral arbiters for player actions. Its a mechanical focus that mutually exclusive. Either one is fine though, just pick one.

An example is that if you're going for more story narrative then you're going to with a system that helps describe how well the story is going. It not really going to set the player back due to bad rolls but instead makes him less cool. If a player in the given paragraph was under a system design for optimum narrative, then he wouldnt be rolling to see if he swung from the chandelier then onto seeing if jumped and landed onto the orge.

Instead he would roll to see how well he succeeded. The character skill in this matter wouldnt really matter. The only he would fail, is when the GM decided, in order to bring a plot point, such as needed to be capture by the orge in order to be brought face to face with the nefarious bad guy.

Now in a more challenge focus system, like most other RPGs on the market, he would roll to see if he got onto the chandelier then rolled to see if could have got onto the orgre. That may be several actions depending on the system. He could fail to reach the chandelier and fall short, or fail to grab hold onto it and fall off, he could miss the orgre, the orgre could catch him, he could manage to leap tot he orgre  but slip off. The options for failing far exceed the options for success. This type of system also offers it own narrative high and low, they are however different from a narrative of a book or movie.

One more example. So let say, you are a spy trying to get proof of some nefarious government person. You need to find paper X, to fulfill your assignment. You get into the office.

Now in a challenge base RP, you'd state an action the dice would be to tell if you succeeded, though it wont tell you beyond this. Like for instance you try to break into the desk safe for the paper, and you succeed however, the paper werent in the safe. Now in a narrative focus system, you would roll to find the paper  and even though they were not in the safe, you would notice on your way out that you find them on the desk.

Objective
Primary goal here is to make a realistic RPG system. You should be able to depict any character you can imagine, any monster or situation, and they should be able to do what they want to do. 100% realism is not possible (or fun), but the game should be highly believable and flexible in player character design and actions.

If possible, I'd also want the system to be able to handle porting to other systems as well. Like it should be possible to use the same system for a fantasy swordwielding character who moves into a sci-fi world. Or a group of superheroes. Or even to translate real life baseball players into a baseball management game.

its doable to make a reality simulator. As the mechanic of the system serve to simulate the world you want. The mechanics however also give a tone for the game, and a feel for the game. You can make a system that can reflect a lot of different genre, but you'll be stuck in some respects. Such the amount of action you can betray. If you make a system meant handle reality grim action, then it wouldnt be able to handle supers with their ostentatious power that supersede the reality.

GURPS does manage to get a fairly good world in terms of feeling like Earth, and handling Supers, but it does so with additions to the rules to supplement the genre changes. Its not bad, it just a lot of rolling.

It much easier on the mechanics to focus on a narrower aspect with similar tones and themes.

Secondary goal would be to keep it balanced and fun. There shouldn't be any single "ideal" weapon or perfect choice. Picking less useful skills should be encouraged somewhat.. if it doesn't help the character "win", it should be fun/unique/cool. Powergaming should result in your character being the equivalent of a nerd.

For a narrative focus system, this works well. As for skills that are less used it would depend on they are less used. Are they less used due to GM running the game or are they less used through the mechanics itself. If it the latter, then exploration into expanding the skill should be done, or exploration into cutting the skill all together.

Skills in this case are actions which the character has focus in to be better at. Stats are the physical make up the character.

They have different importance depending focus of the mechanics. If its narrative, then it focus what the player can do, IE the skills, as it assume he physically apt to preform those skills if it challenge focus then its based on both them more or less equally. Though the skill determine how well the player can do the action. Where as in a narrative focus, they serve to show that that the character is exceedingly competent to be cool in the skill.

Also, the system would assume that computation isn't a problem. It should be kept as simple as possible to help game balance and avoid confusion. But using computers to play the system is expected. Maybe it could later be changed for pen and paper, but a computer might still be needed to calculate the skill level and stuff.

How do you see the computer aid being done with this system? If five of you plus the GM, how would it look like? In a flat guess, how much of the system would be handle by the computer? What aspect would it handle?

If it the system can be done with pen and paper, and some dice, then it probably should be. Dice and character checking a are huge time sink for table top games, and adding a nother layer of distracting from actions could break pacing and allow the session to take longer. If computer aid is going to be a major aspect, then it should encompass as much as possible and you wont need to worry about complex mechanics as they wont be dealt with by the player and cant slow down the game play.

I'm also working a rp system for a mush, where the game mechanics arent concern for the player, and these are the attributes needed to compose a combat action.

Spoiler: Long! (click to show/hide)

The formatting sucks on the forum, as I am shit at formatting using forum tag things. I am also not looking for comments, but they are welcome. I am sharing this to show how verbose mechanics can be if they are never going to be used directly by the player. This verbose list could never be used in a table top game. The example their in are also meant towards my partner, they make sense to us.

Type: This is the descriptive nature of the action, denoting intended action and distance. Two types may be selected. They are as follows:

Melee, Ranged, Block, Dodge, Parry, Area of Affect, Noncombative

• Melee are actions in personal reach of the characters with conflicting actions.
  Punch to the face!
  Ranged are actions meant to be taken outside of personal reach of the two characters with conflicting actions.
  Gun to the Face!
  Block are actions which attempt to nullify conflicting actions through opposing force.
  Shield to the Punch! Bullets to the vest!
  Parry  are actions which attempt to nullify other conflicting actions through redirectin said action.
  Defect the Fireball! Paint the Fence to the Punch!
  Dodge are actions which attempt to nullify conflicting actions through moving out of the way.
  QUADDRUPEL BACK FLIP DODGE!
  Area of Affect are actions taken that are meant to affect more then just caster of the action.
  EAT HELL ZONE GRENADE! Face the awesome might of my Barrier of Force!

Core: This where the skill group that the action uses. There can be any number of skills. For Contemporary Action Adventure Fantasy Universe they are as follows (not a finalized list):

• Pryomancy
  Let it burn baby!
  Pnumancy
  Gales of winds!
  Holomancy
  Illusionary images, can be moving.
  Nuromancy
  Messing with the Brain Magic (Mind Reading, Jedi Mind Trick, Mental Suggestion to Complusion)
  Invitomancy
  I summon thee, Hockus Pokus to do thine bidding!
  Compellomancy
  Magic Missile, Bigsby Grasping Hands
  Thermomancy
  Thermostat magic
  Cryomancy
  Freezer Burn
  Turpismancy
  Affecting another character perceptions. Invisability, or producing a haziness. Can affect all senses.
  Guns
  Shot stuff!
  Fists
  Hit stuff!
  Melee Weapons
  Sworded! Polearmed! Hammered!
  First Aid
  Band Aids and Duct Tape
  More as the Players Need
  I dont know. Other actions that can affect the stats of players that are not of a combat nature. Or ones that can make use of a skill level.
  Hacking?
  Bluffing?
  Fraud?

Stats: These are the stats that the action uses in conjunction with the core.

Consummation:  This which energy pool that the action takes from. Most actions will take from at least two. This where it also denoted how much of the energy pool they take. They are follows:

• Stamina
  Energy
  Health
  Action Points

Consummation Cost: The cost for the action on the energy pool.


Multiaction Cost: The cost for the action to be used more then once in succession.
 
Condition:  This is here if the action is capable of canceling a conflicting action or being canceled by a conflicting action.

• An action capable of not being dodged, such as an area affect action. Thusly a conflicting action that is of the Dodge Type will be ignored.
  I cant think of an example where an action can be cancelled by another conflicting action.

Composition: This is more or less the damage type, and what the action is made from.  There are generally two items listed here.

• Blunt
  Sharp
  Electrcity
  Metal
  Earth
  Fire
  Wind
  Water
  Energy
  Poison

Strong: If the action has a strength against a particular Type, Core or Composition then this action receives a bonus. Optional.

    Strong Bonus: Lister on how the bonus affects this action.

Weak: If the has a weakness against a particular Type, Core, or Composition then this action receives a penalty. Optional.

    Weak Penalty:  List on how the penalty affects this action.

Affect: What this action if successful affects the target. This can be, any of the energy pools, stats and cores.

Dealt: How the action affects the target. This is where the damage formula would be placed in.

Duration: This how many rounds the action may persist.

    Duration Cost Source: This is the where the cost of the Duration is stored. This will probably be the same as the Consummation of the action.
   
    Duration Cost: This is the secondary cost of the of action paid every round the action persists.
And one of the formulas I am using.


        1             2           3        4       5     6      7

• This is the stamina derived energy pool.
  This number is currently arbitrary. It there to keep the action point at a manageable number.
  Dex Stat
  Speed Stat
  To get the average of the dex and speed stat. This is the reaction derived stat, that will be called upon a lot.
  This number is ensure that some actions may always be taken, and to prevent large negative numbers.
  This is for additional affects from traits, or alterations.

I'm also working on a system where the game is totally played through smart phones or computers. Its an all encompassing scale war game. Dealing with huge space faring capitol ships and snub fighters, with being player controlled. It function closer to a play be email game, but allowing for everyone to get together and play if they so choose in a weird looking lan party. Mechanics and paperwork, and figurine tracking is all done by system, cutting down on the paper work time and allowing more time devoting towards playing the game itself. It handles the time ratio difference between the snub and capitol ship too.

I meant to get everthing in one go, but I need some sleep. I'll be back after a few hours.

[ein]

You got a tl;dr for that?

[MrWiggles]

You got a tl;dr for that?

Uh. decide if you want the system to be narrative focus or challenge focus. Its possible to make an all encompassing system but its better on the mechanics if it has a narrower focus. The computer aid should either be 100% or nothing. If it computer aided, then you can make a much more complex mechanic set up with no worry towards simplicity for players. Example provided on that.

[Muz]

Lol, Wiggles, and I was worried about my post being too long

It's a simulator first, narrative second. I'd like to go for both, but just the order of priority, since as you've said, they'd conflict. It doesn't narrate by making the character appear cool. It narrates by giving you a believable character... so you can make a character like yourself and see how well he'd do against a bunch of orcs. Even a skilled samurai would have a lot of trouble actually beating more than 5 orcs realistically, and the system reflects that. But it makes the story more interesting when he actually pulls off the difficult task of beating two of them at once... similar to how Mount and Blade is.

Yeah, it's definitely going to be computer aided. Designed initially for computer games, but along the way, I'd like to make it possible for someone to play tabletop.

Storage would be in computer (so it's not literally pen & paper), calculations would be in computer, but the GM should be able to reference it to use it to tell a story. Any kind of table top play would be chopped down so that the GM can make skill checks, decide on skill improvements, etc, just by pressing a button on the computer. So, yeah, game mechanics would be handled by the comp, but should be enough for players to understand.

[MrWiggles]

Attributes
Basically how the character is viewed. This tends to be a part of the character which is very difficult to change, increases or decreases with age, and is more racially based. I'm thinking of taking a logarithmic scale, with every 10 points meaning twice as high as the last 10 points. Average industrial age human would be around 50.

Not sure how they'd be generated yet. I'm thinking of outlining the basic stats first, then allowing them to be branched out at the Game Master's will, if he requires more detail.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strength
Physical strength. The muscular power of the character. It'd cover things like arm strength, leg, jaw, etc.

Agility
The ability of the character to move quickly. This covers reflexes and reactions, as well as acrobatics.

Dexterity
Fine movement. This is the attribute that surgeons and lock pickers rely on. Clumsy people are low in dexterity.

Willpower
This is the ability of the character to go through things that their body is resisting. I'm thinking of making this the main 'heroic' attribute. It can be random or even preset because it's the most important attribute, but it affects the character's capacity of training, including training other skills. A drawback would be that high willpower characters are prone to insanity because of the kind of things they have to endure to get their willpower that high.

Learning
Intelligence, reasoning. High learning means they able to learn mental attributes/skills faster and learn faster from their mistakes. Doesn't include knowledge itself, that's what skills does.

Charisma
Ability to convince people or make themselves appear more likeable.

Appearance
Simply looking good. Also easy to temporarily increase. It's got very few in-game bonuses, so either it'd not give bonuses allocating points int his, or it'd allow you some interesting non-gameplay options, like in Fallout. Or if you're playing a football RPG, it's a requirement to reach David Beckham-like status.

Constitution
Depicts many things about the character's health. Might be split into general toughness, resistance to damage/injury/poison/magic, recovery rate, stamina, among other things.

A lot of games take the approach of stats being the master neutral action arbiter modifier. They trickle down their affect through the entire system. And most games make them the important physical makeup of the character. The stats should reflect the emphasis of the game world. These stats are kinda of all over the place. I also dont see how proposed progression increment will work with all these stats. For stats to have a basis in an RP game they need a scale that players can reference so they can understand what their stats mean. Interesting approach.

Skills
These depict the player's ability in things they have learned. A skill is judged separately from an attribute.. that is, the attribute isn't used to calculate the 'base skill'. It's a pure indicator of the knowledge known. I think it'd be more linear, but the rate of skill increase goes up logarithmically.

I was speaking before about the stats being the master modifier. Stats give a mechanical tool of allowing for unpredicted actions or actions which players are trained in to roll off of something, instead of the solely the neutral action arbiter. By separating stats away from skills you're handicapping the system from easy to implement action resolutions.

Skill checks
Skill checks are going to be tough to do. It's a balance between allowing enough randomness to be unpredictable and too much randomness where one person can pass it and another can't. For example, give it something like hacking. Not everyone with the 'same level' of skill actually knows the same things. If they can hack into one thing, doesn't mean they can hack into the next.

I propose that it just rolls some dice, and if your bonuses to the roll exceeds the difficulty of the check, you succeed. If you don't succeed, then things get interesting.

The difference from failure to the level of success is how far they fail. If it's an archery contest, then the failure is by how far you miss. If it's a knowledge check, like lockpicking, hacking, or math, it's indicates how much research or experimenting they need to do to figure it out. Maybe for every point it misses by, the character needs to think a few minutes, hours, days, weeks to do so.. increasing exponentially the further it misses.

Skill application is a large abstraction for simplicity. As you noted just because two characters are similarly skilled, they may have different basis for the skills. It however largely doesn't matter. Failure and success abstract weather the character had the ability and knowledge base to preform the skill. Another aspect for skill application that you seem to have missed is the assumed time constraint. Its assumed in most rp games that skills actions are being done in a similar time length and represent the ability to preform the skill in said length of time. 

Inviting different time allocation into the completion of the skill may create awkwardness when satisfy game action time lines. If Player A, B D and C preform 4 difference skills each which take their own time to complete, and started at different times its becomes a paperwork issue of unfun time wasting book keeping. Yes, there may be instances when this doesn't matter, but it will express its ugly head it does matter.

Skill increases
I think skill increases should follow the new DF system, as a sort of bell curve, but this would not be hard imposed. Instead, the rate of increase would be based on the level of another skill. The bell curve would even be simulated by basing it on itself. But if a character is already proficient in some things, it should be easier to learn other skills. Like say, if the character has a high level in House Building, he should be able to easily pick up Temple Building, and to a lesser extent, learn Ship Building, but not as fast.

For example, the character is learning how to swing a sword. The difficulty in learning sword use is partly based on their proficiency in other weapons. He doesn't have any knowledge at all in weapon fighting. So, as Swords would be the highest weapon skill.. the Swords skill would what the rate of learning is based on. The higher it is, the faster the character learns to use it, up to the point where the bonus from high skill is lower than the cost to increase the skills. Creates a bit of a bell curve.

This was rather hard to digest. From I gather you want to have a series of synergies between skills which not affect its base level other skills but also modify the rate of advancement other skills.

Nothing wrong with this. A lot of games do this, through abstraction of skill groups or weapon groups ect. The issue I see with this proposed plan is relating the information to the player in a digestible fashion. A lot of players likes to see how to improve their characters, and set goal.

Skill learning checks would be based on a few attributes, I guess. Learning to swing a sword is based on Dexterity, Strength, Willpower, and Learning. Algebra would be based on Willpower and Learning. The checks would be made on certain intervals, and how well the check exceeds the difficulty indicates how much the skill increases. If the check fails, then the character just doesn't learn anything - which is what happens when an uneducated person tries to learn Astrophysics; even after years of checks, they don't improve.

Also, not all skills will increase at the same rate. Some increase/reduce faster than others... learning a language would take a few years to reach "proficient" level, while something like cooking might take only a few days or even hours. Maybe a skill learning check would be taken less often.

Notes about relating the information to the players apply here.

On top of that, the skills listed should narrowed to actions used within the game. You spoke of encouraging useless skills ealier, if you make the skill list overaly large there will be swaths of skills under used, and no amount of encouragement would illict their use. Even though its possible to BS a skill use in every sistution, will just slow down game play and make it a murky fog for players to understand how to resolve presented obstacles. There is a thing as information overload, and that also applies to possible actions.

I'm not fond of "grinding" up skills, so I'd like to make this automated. The character could perhaps set up a training program for himself to increase skills.. but how efficient this program is (i.e. if they stick to training), is based on his Willpower.

From time to time, it goes from rp to the Sims. Those are different things. How much paperwork will there be with managing this second persons life? What kinda of time length are you proposing to use for this system? Most games stick to months-five years in IC world, but your systems seems to require multiple decades. In some aspect the it makes character improvement almost moot, unless the IC years just roll by, and you have periods of time where its a life management game instead of a role playing game.

Useless skills
Some skills are less useful. Like playing a musical instrument.. takes a long time to learn and isn't very useful in combat. I'm still unsure how to approach this, maybe by giving in-game modifiers if the rating is high.


Experience and levels
I'm thinking of just removing experience gain and levelling up completely and only have skill gain. If characters want to improve, they have to train themselves in that skill or attribute.

I'd be redundant if I spoke on these. Similar issues from above.

Race
Races are something I'd also like to focus on. I think there should be a significant effect for being a giant, ogre, hydra, over say.. being a dwarf. It shouldn't simply be an additional special move or higher attributes, a dwarf fighting an ogre should have more difficulty than D&D gives. Dragons and magical beings are truly epic battles in fantasy books, a game should reflect the difficulty of getting past their defenses to strike their heart, and not just degrade into who loses hit points the fastest.

Right now, I'm unsure how to design the system to put a lot more focus on this, but it's something to think of later.

Hp systems are awesome. HP system is probably one of the most genius abstractions for table top role playing games. Yes, they are just depleting resource reserves, but they represent so much more then that. This is where an RP game demands the engagement of the imagination. There no other abstraction or mechanic that forces this.

It represents not only bodily harm, but also exertions and it also implies actions.

I face off with a dragon, and it breaths fire on me. I lose the roll and loose small amount of HP. That me raising my shield, and getting my hair signed and soot covering my shielf, being scoured and melted partially. I rush in and nick the dragon. (Hitting for low HP), but the Dragon had to swiftly move to prevent it from being much worse. The claws rushes toward my body I side step, what was going to gut me, now only gave me a gash along my upper arm (Being hit for moderate damage), I start to breath hard. The Dragon starts to really get moving. Ect...

Hit points are awesome. They encompass so much and are so expressive. They probably are most expressive mechanic there is.

As for races, there mechanic affects is what forces a different feel when using the system. Outside of RPing them out, its hard for players to ignore that Dwarfs play similarly to humans. I wouldnt besmirch mechanical bonuses. I would also be concious of racial modifiers that are culturally base.

[Grakelin]

I think M&M's damage system, where you had to roll a 'Toughness' save to stay conscious, with an increasingly negative modifier the more hits you take, is actually quite good, and less abstract and random then HP.

[MrWiggles]

I think M&M's damage system, where you had to roll a 'Toughness' save to stay conscious, with an increasingly negative modifier the more hits you take, is actually quite good, and less abstract and random then HP.

Its a good take on the old mechanic. I always found as if I was getting heavier weights placed on my character to do actions. It was weird.

[Grakelin]

Yeah, that makes sense. Imagine if somebody with super strength actually bludgeoned you around with a chair. I always thought it was weird how a dude with 1 hp (or even a dude with -9 hp and the Die Hard feat in D&D) was still as active and dangerous as the fully rested meatshield with 56 hp.

[Pathos]

A few points:-

• If you're going for a realistic system, don't use a HP system. Make it damage done to certain parts of a person's body, and don't allow them to increase that a great deal. (10-25% should do.) Armour should absorb and take damage itself, this'll also require players to repair / replace badly damaged armour.
• Every ten points should give half the benefit and take twice as long. So, from 1-10 strength gives you a 100% strength increase then 11-20 should give you a 50% strength increase. Don't make it linear. Make it reduce rapidly the higher you go. I'd suggest skills act the same, too.
• Skills and attributes should have a cap system (seperate for skills and attributes) to stop a person from becoming a borderline master in everything. It'll be similar to the levelling cap, really.

It's slightly unrealistic, but it should work.

EDIT: Oh, and appearance works if you use it as the primary determining factor to how a character starts off reacting to a person. Of course, there should be a bonus for appearance between two of the same race (unless they have a fixation on another race, of course). It should also place the upper limit on how well they react towards you.

[MrWiggles]

Yeah, that makes sense. Imagine if somebody with super strength actually bludgeoned you around with a chair. I always thought it was weird how a dude with 1 hp (or even a dude with -9 hp and the Die Hard feat in D&D) was still as active and dangerous as the fully rested meatshield with 56 hp.

M&M also almost cant make up its mind about having super durable characters or super fragile characters. I found it hard to make a character between the two extremes.
Anyway, yea with HP acting as stamina and bodily harm and actions, it represents the character is still active. Now yes, he can still do whatever actions everyone else can, they however should be describe differently.