Hello all, newcomer here.

I was directed here by a friend after asking around for a good RPG forum to showcase a new system I have been working on. I'm a fairly experienced DM and RPG'er in general and a few months ago some friends asked me to design a campaign around an idea they had. However several problems stood out and I told them straight up that D&D (my groups game of choice) was not a good fit for their campaign.

So on a whim mostly inspired by boredom I started pondering what kind of system would be needed to run the campaign. Which lead me to tinkering with possible mechanics. Which lead me to having most of a core system put together within a few weeks. As the months have ticked by the original idea that sparked the creation of the system has died on the vine. But the game system it inspired lives on.

Play tests of the new system with freinds proved to be enjoyable, and helped iron out the kinks. Enough of them liked the new game that I was inspired to keep puttering away at the fledgling rules. But now I've reached the point that I'm wondering what others outside my small circle of gaming companions would make of my game.

So I have wrote up the rough outline, posted below for you all to look over and perhaps give the new guy your opinion.

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

NOTE: The outline below is quite rough and basic. It is only meant to present the basic concepts and style of the system.

FFF utilizes a Core mechanic that involves rolling pools of dice (always d6's) to complete tasks. Each natural 6 scored counts as a success. The more successes are scored, the more successful the action. Difficult tasks will typically require multiple successes. When two characters are competing in some fashion, then whoever rolls the most successes wins.


Each FFF character has 9 abilities scores, scaled from 2-12. The human average in any given ability score is 6. The ability scores are as follows:

   - Strength (Physical Power)
- Constitution (Health and Endurance)
- Dexterity (Reflex's and Speed)

- Intelligence (Mental Power and breadth of Knowledge)
- Sanity (Mental resilience)
- Wits (Reaction Time and mental flexibility)

- Charm (Interpersonal skill)
- Spirit (Vitality of soul and spirit, innate magical talent)
- Courage (Strength of belief and force of will)



For most tasks, 2 ability scores are added together to determine how many dice comprise a characters dice pool.

      Example: Allan the bard with Charm 9 and Wits 7 rolls 16 dice to use his natural way    with words in an attempt to smooth talk his way past the palace guards.

Characters increase in power through the mastering of Skills. Skills increase in level through use, and grant Skill pools of dice. Skill pools recover themselves over time and characters can add dice to improve rolls that relate to the skill.

      Example: Allan from the example above fails to roll any successes with his 16 dice. But,    the skilled bard has 4 levels of diplomacy and rolls 9 additional dice in an attempt to    avoid the negative repercussions of his failed roll. A lucky 2 successes prevents the    suspicious guards from calling for his arrest and Allan takes the opportunity to slip    away unmolested.


Each Level advanced in a skill grants a set number of skill points, which are added to the ongoing total.

   Level = Total # of Skill points
1 = 12
2 = 24
3 = 36
4 = 46
5 = 56
6 = 66
7 = 74
8 = 82
9 = 90
10 = 96
11 = 102
12 = 108
13 = 112
14 = 116
15 = 120
# = each level after 15 grants an addition 2 skill points to the pool


The number of skill dice a character can use from a single skill is equal to a mental or spiritual ability score that correlates to that skill. Most physical skills utilize Courage, or Wits. Mental skills utilize Intelligence, or Wits. People skills utilize various skills, but most commonly Wits, Charm, or Courage. At levels 5, 10, and 15 the base number of skill points you can spend per turn is doubled, tripled and quadrupled.
   
   Example: Allan the bard with his 9 Charm can spend an extra 9 dice per turn from his diplomacy skill pool at level 4. If his diplomacy were level 5 instead, he would be able to spend 18 extra points per turn instead.



Combat uses the same Universal System. Each Character has a dodge pool, and an attack pool. If a character is using a vary heavy weapon then his attack pool is Strength + Constitution. A vary light weapon such as a dagger uses Dexterity + Wits. However, most weapons fall into the middle ground and utilize Strength + Dexterity. Dodge Pools are always Dexterity + Wits.

To resolve a melee combat, the attacker rolls his Attack pool, while the defender rolls his Dodge pool as competing checks. The attacker subtracts the defenders successes and rolls damage dice (determined by the weapon being wielded) for each success remaining if any.

In FFF damage is dealt directly to ability scores, which results in characters becoming increasingly poor at various tasks as injuries stack up. Eventually death or other serious consequences result if no healing is received. Ability scores also heal naturally over time.

Armor also behaves realistically in that it hampers the characters physical abilities to a limited extent in exchange for resistance to all incoming damage.


While too complicated to explain in full detail here, magic also utilizes the core mechanic. In place of cumbersome and extensive spell lists that most fantasy RPG's boast, FFF players describe their intended spells affect and the GM assigns a spell type and difficulty. The type and difficulty of a spell determines how many successes are required for the wizard to cast it, and the minimum number of successes per turn the wizard must achieve to prevent a miscast. The Wizard then rolls his or her magic pool (Typically Spirit + Intelligence) until the spell is successfully cast or he fails to roll enough successes in a given turn causing a potentially catastrophic miscast.

What is the condition for death?

Death (of character if not physical death) occurs when any ability score is reduced to a negative value equal to its normal max value. So if a fighter has 8 constitution he wont die until his constitution is reduced to -8.

To simulate blood loss the PC finds how many points of constitution damage he can take before death and rolls that as a pool. Single successes prevent farther blood loss for that round. Scoring a number of successes equal to the current value of your ability score stabilizes the character.

   Example: The 8 constitution fighter above is at -2 Con after taking some serious wounds. He can roll 6 dice as a pool to prevent blood loss. If he scores 2 or more successes he has stabilized. Rolling zero successes means the fighter takes 1 point of con damage (reducing him to -3) and the process repeats in the following round with 5 dice.

Any sort of magical healing automatically stabilizes the character, and a successful first aid check will do the same.

Only physical attacks have the potential to cause blood loss. An offensive spell that reduces a characters intelligence to -2 will not typically require repeated rolls to maintain. The character will simple be rendered effectively brain dead until healing is applied or he recovers naturally.

So for something like negative max intelligence, it would mean the character is a "vegetable"?

Yup. Pretty much permanently (depending on what kind of campaign is running). While it depends on what affect caused the intelligence loss, a character reduced to below zero would be knocked senseless or struck with a complete form of amnesia (loosing the capability of speech and reduced to basic animal urges). But someone "Killed" though intelligence loss has had there brain pretty much reduced to jelly, and the character will be useful for nothing other then drooling on themselves.


Just to throw a few other details into the thread the combat system was built with the intention of provoking a swashbuckling Swords & Sorcery feel to the combat. As such it is dangerous even at high levels for characters to simple try and stand around and duke it out with multiple opponents. But use of terrain and high level skills and abilities allow skilled characters to run circles around their opponents. Even then however, it is often best for a character to avoid combat through tricks and cunning as a lucky blow can be devastating.  

Even more so then in other systems I have played I find foolish players can (and do) quickly find themselves dead on some random mooks sword. But an intelligent player and resources manager can slay dragons or any other foe you care to name.

PS: I will add the importance of armor in this system. While light armored duelist types are quite feasible, against an equally skilled foe in full plate the contest will be extremely one sided barring luck or external factors.

Any botches in the dice pool mechanic?

As in crit fail mechanic? None is needed I found. Failing to roll any successes on a large/important dice pool was more then punishment enough in almost every case.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that in the case of spell casting and item creation or skill tasks that require multiple dice rolls, rolling a pool of dice and achieving no successes at all indicates some sort of failure has occurred and the accumulated successes are lost. In the case of magic, a miscast does occur in such a situation.

Quote from: StoryMasterV;527075   Example: Allan the bard with Charm 9 and Wits 7 rolls 16 dice to use his natural way    with words in an attempt to smooth talk his way past the palace guards.

What is the "DC" (using d20 terminology) for a success?

In this example, what is the minimum number of 6s required for a success to smooth talk his way past the palace guards?

What is the effect of rolling more 6s, than the minimum number?

In the case of talking past the palace guards the DM would roll their Wit + Int as a contested roll to see if they caught on. If there is nothing opposing a check (such as climbing or breaking down a door) the DM sets a target number.

For single ability score rolls a single success is normally sufficient unless the check is of high difficulty.

For skill checks where two ability's are used and skill points are added, the "DC" should be minimally 2. This would be considered an Easy skill task. Difficult skill tasks would be DC 4, and Hard Tasks DC 6+. Anything More then 10 or so is entering the realm of Super human actions.

Are skill points a finite resource?

ie.  Once they're spent, they're gone for good.

lol, nope. You recover skill points equal to your skill level/5 per round of rest (rounding up). Out of combat it is assumed that all skill points are recovered after a 5 minute rest.

For the purpose of magic item creation, crafting skills and other long term projects requiring multiple rolls over time, you may not spend more points on a given project then you have points in your pool.

So a blacksmith character spending an hour each day in the forge cannot spend his entire pool of skill points on a single item, rest overnight and do so again on the same item the next day.

If I'm reading things correctly, then the probability of success of rolling n d6's against an "easy DC" of 2 is:

1 - (5/6)^n - n*(1/6) * (5/6)^(n-1)

For n = 1 to 15, the probabilities are:

1 - 0
2 - 0.0277778
3 - 0.0740741
4 - 0.131944
5 - 0.196245
6 - 0.263224
7 - 0.330204
8 - 0.395323
9 - 0.457341
10 - 0.515483
11 - 0.569318
12 - 0.618667
13 - 0.66353
14 - 0.704031
15 - 0.740378


The probability of success of rolling n d6's against a "difficult DC" of 4 is:

1 - (5/6)^n - n (1/6) (5/6)^(n-1) - [n(n-1)/2] (1/6)^2 (5/6)^(n-2) - [n(n-1)(n-2)/6] (1/6)^3 (5/6)^(n-3)

For n = 1 to 15, the probabilities are:

1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - 0.000771605
5 - 0.00334362
6 - 0.00870199
7 - 0.0176326
8 - 0.0306564
9 - 0.0480215
10 - 0.0697278
11 - 0.0955687
12 - 0.125178
13 - 0.158077
14 - 0.193718
15 - 0.231519

Quote from: StoryMasterV;527075Each Level advanced in a skill grants a set number of skill points, which are added to the ongoing total.
   Level = Total # of Skill points
1 = 12
2 = 24
3 = 36
4 = 46
5 = 56
6 = 66
7 = 74
8 = 82
9 = 90
10 = 96
11 = 102
12 = 108
13 = 112
14 = 116
15 = 120
# = each level after 15 grants an addition 2 skill points to the pool
 

I completely couldn't follow this bit, sorry, though admittedly I only scanned your system fairly quickly. How do the "points" relate to the dice?
 
Other than that, whoa too many dice for me. Good luck, though.

It's a solid concept, dice pools work well enough, but I think it could be improved.

Quote from: StoryMasterV;527075Each FFF character has 9 abilities scores, scaled from 2-12. The human average in any given ability score is 6. The ability scores are as follows:

So the average person, at the average roll, is expected to roll 12 dice and score 2 successes?

I don't know. I think you could get the same result using half the amount of dice and scaling it so the average person making an average roll is expected to get 1 success. Rolling 12+ dice is uncomfortable in the hand (Go and grab 12 12mm dice, right now, and try it), hard to roll (Because they take up so much hand space, unless you roll multiple batches which is another problem - it slows down resolution), and are inconvenient to deal with (Both due to counting mistakes putting together the dice pool, which could be entirely honest or a vector for cheating, and in reading it). These problems only increase the more dice you have to deal with.

I think 12d6 are a functional maximum for comfortable non-assisted rolling. Dice cups are fine, yeah, but not everyone owns or uses one.

QuoteCharacters increase in power through the mastering of Skills. Skills increase in level through use, and grant Skill pools of dice. Skill pools recover themselves over time and characters can add dice to improve rolls that relate to the skill.

This isn't a bad mechanic, but it's adding more dice to what are already sizeable pools. I'd go with the skill rating letting you just take (Skill rating) dice as successes (Don't roll them, put them to one side and count them as 6's), or just steal V6's "skill rating is a pool of points you can use to bump die rolls up" mechanic. These keep the pool size manageable, and your range of possible success results small and easy to design around.

Your example, redux - Allan the Bard puts together a "Oh fuck the guards saw me" pool. He grabs 9 Charm dice and 7 Wits dice. He has Diplomacy 4, so he just puts four dice down. He now rolls a pool of 12 dice and has four automatic successes.

I'd also suggest getting hold of dice of two different colours, so players can see where their successes came from.

QuoteEach Level advanced in a skill grants a set number of skill points, which are added to the ongoing total.

How does this mechanic work? How do you advance in skill levels?

QuoteLevel = Total # of Skill points
1 = 12
2 = 24
3 = 36
4 = 46
5 = 56
6 = 66
7 = 74
8 = 82
9 = 90
10 = 96
11 = 102
12 = 108
13 = 112
14 = 116
15 = 120
# = each level after 15 grants an addition 2 skill points to the pool

Frankly, these are ridiculous numbers, given how you describe this mechanic as working.

I like rolling lots of dice, it's fun, I used to play Warhammer FB ffs. But you can have far too much of a good thing.

It also doesn't hurt to design around the most common ways people will get hold of necessary components. D6's tend to be sold in 12- or 36-packs.

QuoteCombat uses the same Universal System. Each Character has a dodge pool, and an attack pool. If a character is using a vary heavy weapon then his attack pool is Strength + Constitution. A vary light weapon such as a dagger uses Dexterity + Wits. However, most weapons fall into the middle ground and utilize Strength + Dexterity. Dodge Pools are always Dexterity + Wits.

Not bad, but I'd add a couple of other defence pool options (Perhaps "Soak" and "Parry"?) and strongly avoid making Dex a god-stat in combat.

QuoteTo resolve a melee combat, the attacker rolls his Attack pool, while the defender rolls his Dodge pool as competing checks. The attacker subtracts the defenders successes and rolls damage dice (determined by the weapon being wielded) for each success remaining if any.

Aaaaaaargh, so many dice rolls!

QuoteIn FFF damage is dealt directly to ability scores, which results in characters becoming increasingly poor at various tasks as injuries stack up. Eventually death or other serious consequences result if no healing is received. Ability scores also heal naturally over time.

A solid mechanic. Love it. May I suggest the maximum values for stats falling if injuries aren't healed quickly enough? So if you take a severe hit of Str damage and fail your "critical injuries" save, your cap goes from 12 to 11. And then downward, ever downward.

QuoteArmor also behaves realistically in that it hampers the characters physical abilities to a limited extent in exchange for resistance to all incoming damage.

Except, realistically, it didn't really - sure, someone not trained in it would be slowed down, but someone untrained wouldn't be wearing it in a combat situation. It's a fine mechanic to have, because it feels right, but I'd add some sort of "armour use" skill to counteract it for experienced characters.

QuoteIn place of cumbersome and extensive spell lists that most fantasy RPG's boast, FFF players describe their intended spells affect and the GM assigns a spell type and difficulty. The type and difficulty of a spell determines how many successes are required for the wizard to cast it

This is okay, but Ars Magica has done this mechanic better than anyone. Get hold of it and study that magic section.

Quote from: StoryMasterV;527084Even then however, it is often best for a character to avoid combat through tricks and cunning as a lucky blow can be devastating.

Good!

QuotePS: I will add the importance of armor in this system. While light armored duelist types are quite feasible, against an equally skilled foe in full plate the contest will be extremely one sided barring luck or external factors.

Also good! I like this!

Quote from: StoryMasterV;527093As in crit fail mechanic? None is needed I found. Failing to roll any successes on a large/important dice pool was more then punishment enough in almost every case.

Also good!

QuoteEDIT: I forgot to mention that in the case of spell casting and item creation or skill tasks that require multiple dice rolls, rolling a pool of dice and achieving no successes at all indicates some sort of failure has occurred and the accumulated successes are lost. In the case of magic, a miscast does occur in such a situation.

Also good! It's the simplest way of handling it.

Quote from: StoryMasterV;527259In the case of talking past the palace guards the DM would roll their Wit + Int as a contested roll to see if they caught on. If there is nothing opposing a check (such as climbing or breaking down a door) the DM sets a target number.

Also good, although I'd explicitly include the option of the GM just taking the average result of a die pool.

QuoteFor single ability score rolls a single success is normally sufficient unless the check is of high difficulty.

I'd remove "single attribute" rolls, and instead replace them with double-attribute rolls. So if there was something that purely depended on being big and strong, I'd make the dice poll Strength + Strength, frex. It keeps your mechanics consistent.

QuoteFor skill checks where two ability's are used and skill points are added, the "DC" should be minimally 2. This would be considered an Easy skill task. Difficult skill tasks would be DC 4, and Hard Tasks DC 6+. Anything More then 10 or so is entering the realm of Super human actions.

Like I pointed out above, 2 isn't easy under your current rules, it's the average.

Anyway, it's certainly not a bad start, and could develop into something nice. Thanks for sharing it here!