So...

One project is at the point of just needing someone else's contributions to be turned in.

Another project is in the hands of a kind game designer who sounds like he is eviscerating it.

I've been thinking again about a LotFP: RPG project that would be an actual game, not a release for another game. That was the original idea behind paying for the website and everything.

The first ideas never really took off (although one manuscript advanced to the point of being sent to people for playtest).

The last idea along these lines was for a "Weird Tales" kind of game, but the mechanics I was working out really didn't really match the atmosphere I was trying to achieve.

I was looking through some old notebooks and found notes for a combat system (and some other unfinished odds and ends) designed to work for a D&D/Tolkienish fantasy game. It's a decent little system, I like it a lot... but it's hardly a game.

I thought back to this post from rpg.net.

"Someday I'm going to make a 15 level dungeons with all sorts of nasty everythings and clues about some things scattered far away and find three or four people ready to attack it and are OK with possibilities like "today's six hour session dealt with securing room 34b."

There is a game in that.

It's going to look like the "standard fantasy RPG" on the surface. Humans, dwarves, elves, halflings. Warriors, Wizards, Rogues. The idea isn't to "innovate," it's to take familiar elements and just have a narrow focus.

I'd like some feedback on my ideas.

Idea One: The Combat System

It'll be team-based. No initiative or individual actions - everyone will just distribute their combat points between offense and defense and all actions in a round happen simultaneously. While I'm sure there are other games using team-based systems, the only two I am aware of are Tunnels & Trolls and now Forward to Adventure. I haven't seen either system (I really have never opened a T&T book!) but judging from reviews, my system is different. Not that it would matter much if it was the same.

Two reasons to do it this way:

Players of battle-oriented PCs get to see their character shine and be the fight-winners without players of non-combat PCs having to sit around and feel like dweebs during fights. Mechanically they're all performing the same amount of actions, playing the game equally. This increases the viability of non-combat PCs as well as carting along NPCs of various types without assuming they're all going to get fried.

Great heroes can exist and fell mighty foes, but they don't break a setting - being outnumbered by thugs in a back alley or a squad of city guard on the street becomes a cause for concern no matter how many dragons or giants the hero has singlehandedly slain.

I think the combat system handles both issues well. I'm hoping it will work out to where the team system means conflicts can scale up to handle mass combat as well without changing a thing.

Detail for armor and weapons will be unnecessary. Three generic armor types (light, medium, heavy) and four weapon types (personal/dagger type, 1H weapon type, 2H weapon type, and missile weapon). The more generic the weapons/armor in the system, the easier it is to create whatever flavor in an individual game.

No need for miniatures or a combat map as positioning will be mechanically unimportant - combat is handled abstractly.

Idea Two: The Dungeon Crawl

The point of the game. Not that play will be limited to dungeons, but that's the style the game will support. But... what does "dungeon crawl" mean?

1- Exploration. Going into every nook and cranny and discovering all of a location's secrets is the heart of the game. Maybe there's a "get something/somebody and get out" plot going on. Maybe not. But if thorough exploration of the location isn't a priority, you're playing the wrong game. "Medieval Fantasy Archaeology: The RPG!"

2- Resource and time management. Move quickly or explore thoroughly? Each choice should have advantages and drawbacks. Do the characters have enough of x to do y? These should be the primary questions the game asks, and answers.

The idea is a single massive underground complex can be the entire campaign and it will be totally possible to spend an entire session on a few rooms. This playstyle is completely antithetical to what's popular these days, but it's not like I'll be sinking tons of dollars into this game or trying to get it into wide release. If this gets finished (big if with me, haha), and only a handful of groups play it, I'll consider it a success.

Even granting that this will only appeal to a certain mindset in the first place, gameplay shouldn't be a tedious bore, either. Here's how I'd make these two things work:

Searching an area will be a team effort, with the time taken to search determining modifying the search rolls. One roll will determine if anything was found, and who in the group found it. Same rules for "looking for traps and for checking secret doors while walking down a corridor" as ransacking an altar room. Time taken will be important because the old Wandering Monsters thing will be important. So people will have to be on the lookout instead of searching, which will either take more time to search an area, or result in a less effective search...

Since that's the main mechanic in a dungeon crawl game, there will need to be strong guidelines for actually making every location interesting. Certainly not every location will be important, but it should be interesting. Nondescript rooms will be easier to search.

Resource management is a tricky one.

There needs to be a mechanical advantage in the rules for staying in the dungeon and exploring further instead of retreating back to town to rest at every opportunity. Doing that should make the dungeon harder, and make the "one more room?" decision meaningful every time. With the team combat system, hiring NPC men-at-arms becomes an effective decision even at high levels of play.

There needs to be a simple but comprehensive encumbrance system. There's only so much loot and supplies that can be carried. Pack animals and NPC porters could become important.

Idea Three: The Realm

There will be no default setting, but there will be an implied medieval (or earlier) setting. There will be generic rules for determining appropriate characteristics for the base of operations nearest the dungeon. How many people are there? How oppressive is the government? How wealthy is the area? This will be simply formatted: "Population: 5, Government: 3, Wealth: 2"  would be the entirety of a town's stats.

This will impact the availability and cost of gear, hirelings, and pack animals as well as control how loot may be transported out of the dungeon and disposed of.

It'll be possible for "town" to simply be a medieval manor, and hiring a peasant farmer to be a torchbearer might involve the local lord demanding full shares from the expedition in exchange for allowing one of his subjects to be hired off, since if he doesn't come back it'll make it that much harder to farm the fields... or the lord might consider everything around or under his lands to be his property... why would he allow you to loot it?

In more urban areas, competent help might be expensive, as a laborer can already work for crappy pay without risking his life going down a hole.

This creates an important need for the social stat, and also creates more choices for the PCs in organizing their expedition. Hire too many people and risk losing money on the whole thing if the dungeon is small or has already been picked over. Hire too few people and it'll require many trips to and from the dungeons and that'll make it more difficult to clean out.

Idea Four: Magic

Wizards don't have a spell book and don't need to choose spells... they know all of the magic available in the game and can cast whatever spell they want at any time, including spells with continuous effects.

Of course there will be penalties for casting more than one spell or casting more spells while there is already a spell or spells in effect. Screwing up these spell rolls will be bad, the degree of which will depend on the attempted power of the spell.

The implied setting will be low-magic all the way. Character creation and advancement will encourage wizards to simply max out their magic capabilities which means they'll be weak in every other area, thus encouraging a diverse party - a party full of mages would just tempt fate with bad magic rolls far too often for comfort! And out in "the world," few can afford to pursue magic to the exclusion of everything else, so they don't do it.

Magic items will need to be fully detailed - not just "gives +1 to combat rolls" or such... not that every one will be a MAJOR ARTIFACT, but enchanting any item is a BIG DEAL so there should be no "minor" magic items - and permanently enchanting something is the same thing as cursing it... so I guess the question is just whether the magic item's user likes the curse or not.

... and magical books will be well worth having. And defending. And burying deep within the earth so nobody finds it for ten thousand years...

Idea Five: Cooperation vs Competition

The theme for the game is "this... or that?" with every decision helping in one way and hurting in another. The same will be true of characters cooperating with each other or competing with each other.

The team-based combat features the players needing to decide amongst themselves who takes damage and how much. That should be fun for any GM. "Here's your damage, I'm going to go shopping while you guys argue about how to divide it amongst yourselves. Tell me what you decided when I get back... if you're done."

Character advancement will be level-based. At the end of each session, you are not awarded experience points, you are awarded chances for experience points. This is done because these chances are largely going to be based on how successful a character is compared to other characters.

The search rules will ensure that characters get to pocket stuff without the others knowing. This will be encouraged because whoever ends a session with the most loot... gets an extra experience opportunity.

The races and classes will have built-in guidelines for what triggers extra experience chances. These will conflict, so your priest and your fighter, your dwarf and your elf, aren't just arguing over what the best solution to the situation is, they're arguing for the solution that benefits them personally.

Cooperative players can manipulate this system to their benefit. But so can competitive players.

Decisions, decisions...

Idea Six: Character Definitions

Character stats are going to be easy, and character creation should take thirty seconds if you know the system. Two characters' complete stats should fit on an index card (equipment excepted). I'm still trying to figure if generation (and advancement bonuses) should be random or chosen.

Mechanically, characters won't differ from each other. Everyone has the same stats (except wizards, they have a magic stat) and they work the same way. Classes will just get free improvements to certain stats every level.

I think this too is against the trend of current successful games but it takes the focus of the game off of who the character is and places it on the actions the character makes.

Character advancement will be level based as noted, but experience values will be low. Characters start at zero experience. To get to the next level, you have to gain experience equal to your current level. Example:

1st level characters require 1 experience point to reach the next level.
5th level characters require 5 experience points to reach the next level.
25th level characters require 25 experience points to reach the next level.

And when you level up, you lost all accrued experience.

Hi, Jim,

I like a lot of what you have planned here.  I'm a big fan of the classic mega-dungeon crawl, so this all looks very cool to me.  I would suggest looking at FtA for the team combat concept...I'm keen to run it just to see how it works in practice.

The most interesting part of your post, to me, was part three: The Realm.  Very Classic Traveller-esque way of defining settlements.  I've been working on a "Fantasy Traveller" project of my own, and have been pondering how to convert the subsector design system into something applicable to fantasy kingdoms.  Sounds like your ideas are better than mine in that regard!

Have you done any more work on that aspect of the design?

Quote from: KenHRHave you done any more work on that aspect of the design?

Not really, no. It's a recent idea (as in, the past few days) while most of the rest of the system is old.

It has a lot of implications, which need to be thought through.

The encumbrance rules need to be both simple yet restrictive to create a need for extra bodies.

Dungeon creation will need some hard rules instead of "suggestions" in order to make the cost of equipment and personnel important... no "thirty minutes in you find a chest of rubies... you can pay for everything already, yay!" I'd like it to be realistic that PCs could totally overspend on preparation and end up (deep, deep) in the hole (heh) on an expedition.

Or those might actually be non-issues as far as making The Realm's portions important. Needs to be thought out, written out, and played out I guess.

Quote from: JimLotFPThere needs to be a mechanical advantage in the rules for staying in the dungeon and exploring further instead of retreating back to town to rest at every opportunity. Doing that should make the dungeon harder, and make the "one more room?" decision meaningful every time. With the team combat system, hiring NPC men-at-arms becomes an effective decision even at high levels of play.

There's the standard risk of alerting the dungeon denizens to the party's presence, and increasing the likelihood of ambushes and increased vigilence on subsequent forays.

To model system-wise, you could have the monster toughness increase incrimentally with each PC trip back to the surface, and/or decrease the treasure value of the upper levels with each trip. This could be explained by the intelligent monsters pulling treasure to more secure areas while firming up the guards. Maybe quantify all this in an 'alertness' table.

Quote from: JimLotFPThere needs to be a mechanical advantage in the rules for staying in the dungeon and exploring further instead of retreating back to town to rest at every opportunity. Doing that should make the dungeon harder, and make the "one more room?" decision meaningful every time. With the team combat system, hiring NPC men-at-arms becomes an effective decision even at high levels of play.

The rogue-like AliensRL does that with a simple trick: Wandering monsters. The longer you wander around, the more time is to make aliens break out of air vents and charging you. Together with the fact that equipment won't respawn, while aliens will, it makes it a tough choice to track back und pick up equipment.

I find myself only backtracking when it's just a few rooms or if there's absolutely no other way safely to move on (like blockades of too many tough aliens, low ammo, no healthpacks left with low health or the achievement of a rare gyro-stabilizer that finally allows me to pick up an even more rare and in the endgame desperately needed heavy weapon.)

Quote from: SkyrockThe rogue-like AliensRL does that with a simple trick: Wandering monsters.

Wandering monsters should be the danger of being TOO thorough and careful since that will take time.

But leaving the dungeon altogether and coming back should create its own additional problems. Perhaps all encounter areas need two keys... one for the basic description, and one that details how the area changes/gets more dangerous every time the party leaves the dungeon.

How about a scaleable final battle... in D&D terms "The evil cleric is 5th level, +1 level for every time the party has retreated to town to rest and resupply. He has 5 3rd level fighter henchmen, +1 for every time the party retreated to town... and +1 level each for every two times the party retreated to town..." That would be cruel.

Quote from: JimLotFPWandering monsters should be the danger of being TOO thorough and careful since that will take time.

That's it - you have to backtrack manually and risk at every step to trigger another monster. And you have to backtrack again to continue your quest, triggering even more monsters.
With forth, back and onward, you get three times more wandering monsters as if you kept going forward.

You could also turn rest into a limited resource. Time limit on the total dungeon crawl and rests that eat away time, no recovery sleep while hitpoints and spells can only be healed by expensive potions... There could be a few ways.

Quote from: JimLotFPHow about a scaleable final battle... in D&D terms "The evil cleric is 5th level, +1 level for every time the party has retreated to town to rest and resupply. He has 5 3rd level fighter henchmen, +1 for every time the party retreated to town... and +1 level each for every two times the party retreated to town..." That would be cruel.

That's about the same thing a friend of me did in his effect-based homebrew: Whenever the PCs recover hitpoints and spells by rest or reload their re-roll points, the GM gets points to beef up his baddies further.
It runs rather well, although its still in the play-testing stage and has some loopholes (like giving a ton of unstackable +1 artifacts to the PCs and using the GM points sum of this junk to turn mice into dragons).

I'd look at Tunnels & Trolls for more ideas on the kind of group combat you describe.

Quote from: XantherI'd look at Tunnels & Trolls for more ideas on the kind of group combat you describe.

As I understand it (I have not seen it), in T&T you add up everybody's dice, and whichever side has the higher total, everyone on the other side takes the difference in damage. Have I been misinformed?

Quote from: JimLotFPAs I understand it (I have not seen it), in T&T you add up everybody's dice, and whichever side has the higher total, everyone on the other side takes the difference in damage. Have I been misinformed?

No, however there are some minor "added" rules that make a difference. Take that you fiend (spell) does its damage direct to a single target. (It can ALSO add to the total, but can't be double dipped its an interesting situation.)

There are also rules for "Spite" damage as well, which is a heavily used "house rule" (in spite of being included IIRC in the 5.5 edition.)

Missile fire is also done separately, before melee, it is also rather difficult--but does its damage to a single target and can be quite lethal against comparatively powerful single individuals of a group.

Quote from: JimLotFPAs I understand it (I have not seen it), in T&T you add up everybody's dice, and whichever side has the higher total, everyone on the other side takes the difference in damage. Have I been misinformed?

Silverlion's description sounds like what I recall and what I've been told by a T&T loving friend of mine.  The description of your approach just really sounded close to T&T.