I started writing this on Brian Gleichman's thread but realized it was a little off topic, still I thought I'd post it over here.  The game is a streamlining of ICE's Lord of the Rings Adventure Game.

Character Creation
Every character starts as a template, like Dwarf Warrior or Elf Ranger.  The templates have a total of five points of stat bonuses and five points of skill bonuses with the human maximum being +2

The Stats are: Might, Agility, Resiliance, Resolve, and Awareness.

The skills are: Climb, Swim, Convince, Craft, Fight, Lore, Magic, Shoot, Sneak, and Track.

Success is determined by rolling 2d6 and adding a stat bonus and a skill bonus.  Doubles add and roll over.  For every five points total the character gains one success level.  Yes this system is weighted towards characters succeeding much of the time but particularly difficult tasks can be given a difficulty penalty.

In contests like fighting and sneaking, the successes cancel out so you need one more sucess than your foe gets to land a blow.  Of course if you've got two foes they only need one more success than you got between the two of them.

The only initiative sequence is that missile weapons and spears can attack before people who have to move to get close enough to make an attack and that surprise attacks provide a free turn of combat.

Most weapons cause three points of damage per success level with unarmed attacks causing 1, small weapons 2, and two handed weapons 4.  

A character can take 5 + Resiliance damage points before being unconscious and twice that before dying.

Armour gives a number of extra damage points in batches reflecting penetration.

For instance, "Leather Armour O O O" would mean that the suit of armour could absorb one point from up to three hits and "chain mail OO OO OO OO" could absorb two points of damage from upto four hits.  Shields always take damage before armour if you're attacked from the front.

Magic can only enhance existing capabilities.  Generally this means that you can get a skill bonus or penalty equal to the affected skill (but no greater) from a magical source.  Magic skill rolls are made to see if your character can recall an appropriate spell for the situation.  If a curse is thrown on a target, Magic + Awareness is opposed by a Resolve + Magic roll.  Magic items are made with a Craft roll followed by a magic roll at -10.

2 points

1. combat should be deadly and uncommon
2. I like the idea that the armour would deteoriate over a period of fights, forcing the character to look for sturdier or better made armour.

Combat is chosen by the players and thus its frequency is outside of the control of the rules.  The current damage system can be pretty brutal, an average roll of 7 coupled with a +2 Agility and +2 Fighting gives two successes meaning that a sword would do 6 damage.  Enough to incapacitate most unarmoured peole.  I need to think about how Strength fits into it.

Really it should probably be Strength + Fighting - Foe's Agility and Fighting to hit instead of a contest, but then I'd need a more involved initiative system.

I like your magic, it is similar to my FRPG's low magic (albeit my Low magic can add a "Lesser" trait to a character they don't have--like "Archery" or "Swift" as well.)

I think I'd prefer a different armor system. But I like ones where the player risks more for better hits.

Nah, that'd require player skill and I'm trying to keep it as lean as possible.  The reason I went with albalative armour is that I feel it keeps armour as a secondary consideration with personal skill being a larger factor.

A side note on the magic, if I developed it there would be boarderline superhuman capabilities for things that get four or five successes.  That way magic would still be magical but it would also feed on the other skills.

Quote from: David JohansenCombat is chosen by the players and thus its frequency is outside of the control of the rules.

But not outside the influence of the rules. Heavy influence by the rules. And the GM.  That said the combat rules seem to be on the right track. Though the armour might be a bit on the strong side and the surprise rule is VERY worrisome. Nothing signals to players to attack before talking like a huge surprise incentive. Especially when combat is this deadly.

Have you played Burning Wheel? Not sure it is "simple" in the way you are looking for (Simple Combat is nice and simple, but the game has a much wider Skill selection than you give) so it probably isn't a substitute for this. However it hits Middle Earth vibe better than anything else I've seen. It doesn't implement a complete Middle Earth setting and there is non-Tolkien stuff mixed into the default that you'd have to choose to not use, so I don't think it strickly counts as a MERP game in that sense. For example the pre-made sentient wolves race are 'good' protectors of the forest, which runs totally counter to Middle Earth. But the Dwarf, Elf, and Orc races are pure distilled Tolkien. They each have their on inherent "magic" that differs from each other and that of Man, and really gets to the core of what drives the members of the race.

You might want to take a look at that to see if you can draw any inspiration out of it?

Ah, but I'm not planning to develop this any further.  It's just a short take on what I think would be best for the job.  Hmmm...I may not have been clear enough.  This is a response to a question on another thread that I felt was enough of a tangent to separate.

To the best of my knowledge Burning Wheel is a dice pool system, which loses my interest right there.  I'm interested in narrative through simulation.  Not dice games tacked onto narrative.

I'm busy enough with 100%SF and Advanced Men & Magic, not to mention sculpting 15mm fantasy, building the world for my ongoing Rolemaster campaign from scratch, painting Space Ork Hard Boys, and building an integrated modular terrain system (and that's the short but immediate list) to take on another project right now.

Doublemint post

QuoteI'm interested in narrative through simulation.  Not dice games tacked onto narrative.

Dude, that's some seriously meaningless gibberish. Especially about something you aren't sure is dice pool based or not.  

Fair enough, though you wouldn't want to hear my opinions on using Connect Four or Jenga towers for resolution.

My understanding of Burning Wheel is that it's a tolkienesqe fantasy game that makes a real effort to build the tropes into the mechanics and is quite tactical in an abstract fashion (I read that as meaning there are metagame dice rolling strategies involved)  It covers a lot of things I like such as mass combat and realm building in a similar fashion.  Combat involves dice pools which I dislike (dice pools devolving into dice rolling strategies instead of evolving into simulation).  I like d20 better than any dice pool and I'm not a noted fan of d20.

I know it features a detailed life path system and I love those but I don't think they have any place in a game designed to be faster to learn than Monopoly.

Really, I should pick up the Burning Wheel and give it a read through.  Maybe I'll try Burning Empires instead, I get bored quickly when reading fantasy.

Im not so sure about using Jenga myself, and from your comments understand why it would bother you. You'll see no defense from me as Ive not played those games. Read my sig and understand that though some of the games I've played exist at the Forge I don't frequent there nor subscibe to a lot of its infamous rhetoric. Truth is a most of that talk just has me rolling my eyes.

BE likely would be more to your liking not just for the non-fantasy level since in BE the GM is more constained in a sim way as he has to roll just like players.  The meta game stuff does come in sort of with relatively abstract Artha to influence rolls. But frankly ANY dice rolls tends to undermine true simulation. BW/BE is pool based but the skill level and mitigating factors are strong indicators of what will suceed so in that way it tends to be less random so better on a sim sense.

Though in my experience when people say they want simulation they often aren't looking for simulation in a true sense, usually accuracy isn't the goal. Instead precision, even at the cost of accuracy is what is desired. Basically complexity parading as simulation. So I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for.

Edit: BTW BW is really a fairly generic game engine/toolkit that is ment to be used to evoke a wide range of genes, even extending past fantasy. A lot of its Shadowrun roots sow in places. The Tolkienesque stuff is just and part of the example use of the system. BE is another though it adds a lot more system that it is a separate game instead of just a setting.

But I think I've more than overstepped thread hijack bounds and so Ill move on.

Quote from: David JohansenThe skills are: Climb, Swim, Convince, Craft, Fight, Lore, Magic, Shoot, Sneak, and Track.

This is a great skill list. Very complete and concise. The only change I'd suggest is maybe Swim should be called Seafaring, and cover sailing as well?

Thanks

I think I'd just plug it in as another skill as needed.  Swim and Track aren't very broad.  It's really more of a case of restricting the skill list to what adventurer's need than covering all eventuallities.

If you need a skill plug it in, they all work the same anyhow.