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.
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.
Part of the major reasons to developing a new system rather than taking an old one is that I'd want it to handle fighting against very different things. Fighting someone twice or even 500 times stronger than you should be simulated accurately, without having to give the giant robot +20 unarmed skill. It's a sacrifice, but it looks like the easiest way to do it. They do pretty much the same thing.. both attributes and skills can increase with training and both affect chances, but the difference is where they start off and how they increase.
But you made a good point about it being hard to understand... I'll put some reference levels later. Maybe instead of showing a standard number like "35 INT" or "54 STR", it'll display "child-like intelligence" or "very strong".
It is going to be hard to understand, but the philosophy is that the best way to powergame is to do things as they are in real life. Dexterity and Willpower, the most important attributes are going to be very tough to increase with training.
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.
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.
Good point also. Since the display is going to be computerized, I guess I could highlight skill synergies as well.
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.
The primary focus of the system is in realism; roleplaying. I'd like them to be able to be good at anything they like, without penalizing it.. in say, D&D 2 and 3.5, if you picked Craft: Weaving instead of Tumble, it's always a dumb move, because you either get one or the other. But I guess the skill synergy and cross training should provide enough motivation for this.
Yeah, you're right, information overload will be a problem. It might need some customization, like maybe a combat heavy game will have different skills for Long swords, Scimitars, and Short Swords, but just use a single "Craft" roll. While a culture heavy system might have 20 different things to Craft, but only one "Melee weapons" skill. Perhaps I'll just toss them into preset skill groups and let the GM/game designer decide how much detail they want. And the big challenge would be developing them in such a way that they're easy to make a roll to check
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.
Computerization should make this part fairly easy. You could just say, "I want Bob to train swordsmanship for half the week and work on defense for the second half, 14 hours a day." The GM just enters in the skills and add in stuff like motivations and distractions. Against a dummy, low Willpower, high skill Bob will make few mistakes and learn nothing. Against an opponent, he'll mess up a little, computer will calculate how often and how much he learns from it. But odd situations will still be a problem to ad lib, like if the player decides to spend some training on griffon-back.
And when it comes to post-adventure stuff, the GM could just enter a bunch of data again. E.g. Sarah cast a magic missile, disarmed a trap, and healed a friend.. so the GM would just toss Magic, Mechanics, and First Aid in the skills to check. Motivation is quite high (life and death), there'd be very little procrastination, so while training only gives 10% effectiveness, using a skill in combat gives like a 70% chance to learn it and stuff.
I haven't had a chance to read all of Muz's proposal yet, but the problem with that approach - more beat up means harder to perform actions - is that in cuts the legs out from under his desire for a system that plays up dramatic heroics. There should be some kind of restitution, where after getting beat around by a chair-wielding superhero, you'd be staggering, but would have a narratively-reasonable chance of a powerful come-back. I don't know how that would work though - maybe as your cumulative penalty grows, your critical-success threshold would become more generous too?
HP/damage Stuff
Yeah, my system sort of does the staggering thing. I actually got influenced from it from the M&M system. I forgot about things like every hit giving an extra penalty, though. It's a good idea because I had all these "minor bruise/wound" stats and didn't know what to do with them, lol.
A player with 0 HP in the nose (broken nose) would be stunned, but not necessarily KO'ed, and there's a chance of recovering from the penalties from stunning, but not from the damage penalties. The higher the person's Willpower, the more likely he is to recover when the odds are against him.
But I made my narrative a little similar to what makes soccer fun. A good fighter will beat down an untrained one, easily. A very skilled, very big fighter still has a chance of being killed by a weaker one, but it's unlikely, and only with a lot of effort. Two equally skilled ones will be tied in a drawn out fight and there's always a chance of a comeback. And in the last 10 minutes, the one losing out will be more reckless and driven to get shots in. There's always a bit of anticipation of what happens next, but you're bound to not get complacent even though you've got good odds.
- 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.
Yeah, the skills and attributes certainly aren't linear. I want to keep to the "Every ten points gives
double the benefit" because it gives a scale to work with. But yeah, increases are a bell curve for both skills and attributes. It's very hard to increase say strength from 30 to 50 (average), but even harder to increase strength from 50 to 70. And an immense amount of work to push it even to 70 to 72.
Also this should mean that no cap is necessary. Yeah, you can theoretically increase a strength up to 80 if you want, but the penalties are so enormous that if you had spent that time training up skills, you'd have a much better character. And the bell curve thing should prevent anyone from mastering everything. I mean, like in real life... nobody becomes strong enough to lift a car, just because stat increases aren't linear.
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Topic: Developing a RPG system (Read 3068 times)