Just wondering what ideas other people might have been playing around with, that you eventually just gave up on because it was too difficult?

For me: I'm at that point with trying to get stats that simply modify rolls (i.e. without needing some sort of modifiers table), and that also work to absorb damage  
Lots of systems sort of do it, but not 100% to my satisfaction.

For my forthcoming RPG Soul's Calling, in the first draft playtest I had numerical stats for Vice, Virtue, Principle and Passion. They represented the strength of your links to the cosmic forces of holy magic (virtue), unholy magic (vice), pagan/primeval magic (passion) and, basically, psi-type stuff (principle).

It required the ref to have a half-page prompter box in front of him during the game, it cluttered up the character sheet, I concluded that it detracted from immersion and in the end, with a heavy heart, I dropped it.

My game does, however, use stats as straight bonuses to rolls, including for resisting injury. The trick is that injury is not measured in points. Your success category for your dice-roll for inflicting injury determines the level of injury caused, and this may be a fatality, no matter how weak you are and how tough your opponent is, if you get an auto-critical (best natural rolls of the dice possible).

this will sound a bit odd....
I went through a boardgame design phase and it was inspired by dreams. I don't mean I had a weird dream and I made up a game because it was so psycadelic. I mean I had dreams where i was playing a game and when I woke up I knew the rules and all the peices and shit.
So I tried to make them as you would.

One was called Unity and it was a 3 way chess like game in which you defended a homestone with an army. A hex board with 3 segments. you got to pick your army units from a pool at the start of the game and deployment was all part of it the strategy and the pieces nature was hidden like in stratego nutil they were engages or exposed by a scout peice. when they were turned upside down to reveal their type symbol
Anyway you could join the pieces togehter beacuase they were magnetic to make Unities - thus the game name.
So I remeber still playing this game and it being great so when i woke up I wrote it down and started making it the board was easy but the peices were a disaster tried wood, no good tried using miliputty *the peices were triangular based prisms and when United woudl eventually form a hexagon the size of the play grid.....

Anyway I gave up after my cat wee'd all over the game box which I kept under the coffee table in teh lounge.

I also dreamt of Swashbuckers Quest, Evolution and Kabal and only Kabal ever turned into a playable game and it took 12 years and the ccg revolution to get it to that point.

Anyway my bizaare offering was trying to turn my dream games (litterally) into working games.
go figure ......

A hack of Space Hulk : Death Angel to turn it into more of a dungeon crawl. I've got some ideas on how it would work, but lack the time to really put anything together.

My "Shadowrun but with less bullshit" concept is coming together well, the core engine looks solid, but it needs testing and then all the extra bits added. All the hooks are there for the extra bits to latch on to, without adding bullshit or deviating from the core mechanics.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;635058Just wondering what ideas other people might have been playing around with, that you eventually just gave up on because it was too difficult?

A tactically interesting man-to-man dueling system (for single opponent vs. single opponent) that isn't at some level just another type of rock-scissors-paper or abstract dice game.

In the end, it's a foolish goal. Even if I succeeded it would be useless as RPGs are group activities and such a system wouldn't scale to multiple players at all. So I gave up on it and won't return to the concept

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;635058Just wondering what ideas other people might have been playing around with, that you eventually just gave up on because it was too difficult?

Writing a new rules system.

Tinkering with existing rules systems to get them to my satisfaction.

I will go with finding a name for a retro clone.

Probably a sign there are too many. But it started off as house rules for Blood & Treasure (basically like B&T but based on 1e, not OD&D and with ascending saves, and pretty much all class abilities are now feats), but the more I wrote, the more I realized it would simply be easier for me to write the whole thing up and get it printed at Lulu than just use the B&T book and a bunch of notes taped to it.

I was going to call it "Fortune & Glory" then I realized what the initials were.

So then I went with Treasure & Glory, then I realized I probably shouldn't step on the B&T name like that.

So I just called it "My Retro Clone" as a working name.

Then I got the idea to use words with the same initials MRC. I was going to call it Monsters, Ruins, & Castles.

Then I realized there was a game, Castles and Crusades. So I scratched off Castles and just called it Monsters & Ruins.

Which I settled on...only to see there is another one coming out called "Monsters & Magic"

Ugh.

Writing up a sci-fi hexcrawl setting with a lot of detail for each hex (not just numerical strings), put waaaaaay on the back burner since my fantasy version of that is taking up too much time as it is.

Quote from: JeremyR;635988I will go with finding a name for a retro clone.

Probably a sign there are too many. But it started off as house rules for Blood & Treasure (basically like B&T but based on 1e, not OD&D and with ascending saves, and pretty much all class abilities are now feats), but the more I wrote, the more I realized it would simply be easier for me to write the whole thing up and get it printed at Lulu than just use the B&T book and a bunch of notes taped to it.

I was going to call it "Fortune & Glory" then I realized what the initials were.

I have decided on the name for my project.
Swords & Gods.

JG

Thanks everyone for answers so far. Some interesting ones.

Quote from: JeremyR;635988Iit started off as house rules for Blood & Treasure (basically like B&T but based on 1e, not OD&D and with ascending saves, and pretty much all class abilities are now feats), but the more I wrote, the more I realized it would simply be easier for me to write the whole thing up and get it printed at Lulu than just use the B&T book and a bunch of notes taped to it.

I was going to call it "Fortune & Glory" then I realized what the initials were.

Hmm...Glory and Fortune? Fortune or Glory?
Releasing this elsewhere? Sounds interesting.

Oh yes. A deathmatch-based card / board game. The first incarnation was rubbish (Far too slow, too many health / damage tokens), but I've got a better concept now, even with a relatively elegant item spawning system.

It will still require a board, cards and tokens, though, which is maybe a bit much. I need to actually put together some cards, for testing with...

I tried to create a 'reactive matrix' which would help the GMs of sandboxes to plot how their setting would react to the various shenanigans PCs got up to. Wherein I learned that you can simplify certain things but entire worlds aren't among them.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;635058Just wondering what ideas other people might have been playing around with, that you eventually just gave up on because it was too difficult?

For me: I'm at that point with trying to get stats that simply modify rolls (i.e. without needing some sort of modifiers table), and that also work to absorb damage  
Lots of systems sort of do it, but not 100% to my satisfaction.

A more in depth melee combat system. I couldn't devise any that didn't slow the game down to unplayable speeds and/or simply not translate into a turn based environment. And given that I can run things with a very high degree of tactical complexity quickly, if it's that slow for me I can only imagine what it's like for most anyone else.

Rules for using existing magic and spells for a Inventer class in older D&D games. How many uses, size, effects, blah, blah, blah.

It can be done, I've seen it done, but I lost interest and just dropped it.

Obtaining happiness.

I mean - I actually hit a similar wall as gleichmann. I tried to create a combat system that'd feel cool and easy, while being somewhat realistic, brutal, and put an emphasis on player actions, and just kind of gave up at some point, since it was either going to be too clunky, or too random.