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[MaximumZero]

Note: I am currently not beta-testing, and I will let you guys know when I am.

Okay, so I just want to run some things by you fine folks to gauge some reactions among people who may potentially be part of my player base (or who may be people like those people.)

I'm writing a High Fantasy Pen and Paper RPG with a unique setting, and am including the following things:

Setting: A diverse world locked into pre-Renaissance technology, where magic is commonplace, gods are tangible (and like to cut deals,) monsters are dangerous, and education may be the key to survival. Glory can be won, like just about every RPG on the market, through adventuring, but there are a ton of other options. You can raise an army and conquer the local countryside. You can craft all of your own equipment out of over 100 alchemy enhanceable materials from scratch, mining and harvesting materials by hand, then smelting, refining, and shaping the materials into exactly what you want, no longer a slave to the shopkeepers and treasure chests of the world. You can go so far as to enchant, engrave, and bless it all, from swords and armor to clothes and jewelry. You can brew all of your own potions, elixirs, tinctures, and salves, as well as cook your own food. You can build castles and ships by hand (or have your army do it for you.) You can build a trade empire, or take a ship pirating. You can explore and colonize uncharted islands. You can tame and heal animals, farm, fish, and hunt. You can fight in arenas, engage in a verbal duel with diplomats and nobles, tell fortunes, perform for cash in the street, gamble in back alleys and black markets, paint and sculpt, draw tattoos, or steal your way to riches. You can preach in the streets or in the highest temples across the land for favor with the gods that you can cash in for miracles in your favor. You can explore the underground technological ruins left by the first age of man and find out what caused the Great Cataclysm that destroyed humanity in the First Age. You can go to school to refine your skills within the safety of high walls, or duel with dragons and demons in the vast untamed wilds of Avarsiin.

This is Neo Dreams: Chronicles of Avarsiin.

+16 Playable Lineages,
+48 Proficiencies that your character can master, each gaining power as you use them,
+130 Spells, 100 Blessings and 100 Curses,
+The ability to create all your own equipment from scratch in game, including the ability to start from raw materials and enchant your own items,
+100 unique weapon types, and over 100 wearable item types. This makes for a huge number of possible combinations with which to craft items...and then you can further customize them,
+On top of being able to make thousands and thousands of different items, the ability to create custom ships and buildings from the ground up,
+35 Different types of Metal, 19 types of Stone, 21 types of Wood, 13 types of Glass and Stoneware, 13 types of Cloth, 14 types of Leather, and 74 types of Natural Materials (Shells, Bone, Claws, etc,)
+100 Different Monsters,
+100 Different Humanoid Enemy Types,
+10 Gods/Goddesses with a deep system for Favor and Gifts from your chosen Deity, as well as Favor with local and regional nobility,
+100 Different animals to train, fight and work with,
+Several ways to evolve your character mid-game,
+Modes of play include: Standard (Party Dungeon Crawl), Military, Naval, Management, and Political, all merged into one playstyle,
+All done using one type of die (no more algebra!), which will hopefully come prepackaged with the game (d10s),
+All in one book! No expansions to buy unless I get really successful and there's a huge outcry for them!
+All for a very tentative price point of about $25-$30! Possibly in PDF Format for $5!
+Hopefully, if I can ever get around to learning to code a little, a CD with a one player campaign on it for use with a computer.

What I hoped to do with this post was to get reactions from people as far as whether or not I should bother continuing my writing. I just can't keep second guessing myself. Been working on this monster for a little over a decade now, and I just want to make sure I'm not wasting time. I hope to have it done by Origins 2014 someday, but then, I've been telling myself that I'll complete it soon for the last five years. Thoughts? Suggestions? Flames?

[Heron TSG]

It's nice, but the formatting of your post leaves much to be desired. You don't have to indent that much.

[Sean Mirrsen]

He forgot to close half of the listitem tags. Must've written two and copypasted the format.

Well, as for the game itself... how should we know? The numbers look large and menacing, the features are nice, but we can't give you any real feedback unless you feed us some details. For all we know, you're making another FATAL.

[MaximumZero]

Yar, that is the case. Once again, I suck at HTML BBCode.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Bump for edit of above post.

[MaximumZero]

Oh, no. I'm trying to make everything that FATAL isn't. What kind of details do you need? I'll happily feed them to you, with a spoon, even!

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, I don't really know. An example character sheet could work to show what kind of details you're putting in (lack of orifice circumference parameters would be one way to distinguish it from FATAL ), maybe some kind of description of the combat process and skill/spell systems?

[MaximumZero]

Proficiencies (Skills) work as follows: Each Proficiency (like Smithing or Enchanting or Fortune Telling, etc.) lets you build skill through use. If you use a Proficiency 100 times, you get a bonus to using it. Each 100, you get another bonus, up to 1000 whereupon you get Mastery, which is a very large bonus.

Spells work on a tier based system. 3 Basic, 3 Intermediate, 3 Advanced and one Master spell. 10 Elemental Schools of magic (Elements play Rock, Paper, Scissors with one another,) and 10 Ritual (read: Non-elemental) Schools. Spells are cast from Mana.

Combat is very simple: Each player figures out combat order using an extrapolated stat called Velocity. Combat order happens, and each player takes a turn. Assuming you would just attack your opponent, you would check Accuracy against your opponent's Dodge. If you score higher, you hit. You calculate damage by adding your Attack Score (extrapolated by weapon type: Unarmed, Melee or Ranged) to your weapon and subtract it from the opponent's defense score (once again: Unarmed, Melee or Ranged) and their armor.

While I don't think I'm ready to break out my character sheet, I assure you that there is no method of keeping track of orifices.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Sounds nice. Well, if you want to know whether or not to keep going - keep at it, of course! Disregarding the fact that stopping now would devalue the "little over a decade" you've spent on it, a good new system is always welcome. With, uh, one tiny point. How high is the possibility of there being location-based damage? I'm personally quite tired of the "overall hitpoints" concept.

Oh, and before I forget - there's no HTML here, there's just BBCode.

[Armok]

Sounds rather generic. Except for the different play modes, I'd like to hear more about that.

[ed boy]

Ultimately, we can only give you approximate answers on how good it looks. It may be that the system is inherently broken, or too complicated to understand, or turns take too long/too short. Ultimately, the only way to find out if it works is to play it.

I would reccomend that you do the following:
-Try to run a few games with some experienced RPers. Try to get a wide variety of game types, levels, playstyles, experience, etc. Get feedback.
-Get some of these people to try designing their own campaign/setting/game. You would have a deep and intimate knowledge of the system, so you could do it. These people would not, so it is important to know if they would be able to. Get feedback.
-Find some people who have never played any games like this before. See how easy it is for them to understand and pick it up
-Send a few munchkins a copy of the game rules. Tell them to try to break it in as many ways as they can. Fix these methods, if possible. If not, make a note in the ruleset for the GMs to watch out for.

Also, a few things to watch out for:
-Try to avoid sudden shifts in character progression. Although there will be a definite point where a character learns a new ability, try to make the growth of this ability gradual and smooth. After all, characters don't go from being five foot and weedy to seven foot and stacked in the blink of an eye.
-Try to work out the economy of the system, and think about price levels and currency. If you don't think about the price levels, you'll get something like FATAL, where a slave costs the same as two loaves of bread. Make sure the currency works, too - You're going to get prices varying a lot for different items. The currency system should allow one to buy a loaf of bread and a +999sword of doom. If the currency system is too inflexible, then you're going to end up with no unit of currency small enough to pay for bread, and having to cart around a thousand tons of gold to pay for the sword.

[Pathos]

-Try to avoid sudden shifts in character progression. Although there will be a definite point where a character learns a new ability, try to make the growth of this ability gradual and smooth. After all, characters don't go from being five foot and weedy to seven foot and stacked in the blink of an eye.

I think ed's lying, because this is the complete opposite of what the internet tells me I can do. As long as I buy the correct things, of course.

[MaximumZero]

@Armok: The different play styles are meant to be played seamlessly. For example, if you wanted to take a dungeon crawling crew, and start them out in a small pile of debt to run a shop while they develop skills to make really cool equipment and extra cash before they head out, then go exploring and find a bunch of treasure, and then buy a bunch of mercenaries and conquer the hometown, then use those mercenaries to build a huge ship and go conquering islands...you can totally do that seamlessly.

@ed boy: It's been thoroughly alpha'd, with munchkins, newbs and experienced RPers alike. The munchkins enjoy the customization, the RPers like the change of scenery and the ease of worldbuilding, and the newbs enjoy the lack of complicated math. Learning curve is about 20 minutes after character creation, and that takes about as long.

Currency works rather well. Three types of coin: one cheap, one median and one expensive. Just about all of my friends ran for the dictionary when I used the word Scrimshaw for the first time.

@pathos: I don't think that the internet is talking about that with all of those "growth formulas". It seems mighty obsessed with a certain body part or another.

[ed boy]

If it's as good as you say it is, then I don't know what adivce to give you, other than publish.

[MaximumZero]

I'm just having a hard time sitting down and actually getting writing done. It's...overwhelming, putting that much in one place.