I recently posted looking for people to read and playtest a Sci-fi game that I have written, called IRREGULARS.

I am also going to post a series of threads to discuss specific aspects of the game, to get feedback and advice for details of the game from people who aren't interested in looking at the complete thing.

So first up, the CORE MECHANIC:


Characters have Stats and Skills.

Stats are a number, with 8 being the average for a normal person.

Each Stat has a list of Skills under it.

Skills have a Skill Level, which starts at Untrained, and goes up through Beginner, Trained,
Professional, Adept, Master and Exemplar.

All Skills start at Untrained, and whenever you add a Level to a Skill it goes up to the next Level.

You get some Skill Levels to develop your basic Skills through character generation and then add further advancement through spending XP earned in gameplay.

To make a Check, you roll a number of d8 equal to the Stat the relevant Skill is under.

Your success is determined by counting how many of the d8 achieve a Strike.

The number needed on each die to get a Strike is determined by the Level you have on the relevant Skill: 8 for Untrained, 7 for Beginner, 6 for Trained, 5 for Professional, 4 for Adept, 3 for Master, and 2 for Exemplar.

So if you have a Stat of 8 and the relevant Skill at Professional, you would roll 8d8 and all results of 5 or more will count as Strikes.

The GM sets a Target Number for the Check, and that is how many Strikes are required for success at the Check.

Modifiers can be applied for easier or more difficult tasks, which take the form of a plus or minus to the number of dice you get to roll.

So.. I've had some anti-d8 feedback, and apparently the number of them I own is abnormal... So, a switch do other dice seems to be in order.

I don't want to go for d6 as that would mean I could only use 5 Skill Levels (always have to keep 1 as a miss).

If I change to d10s I think it could be workable while keeping the same 7 Skill Levels (so that I don't have to re-do every career, NPC, android, creature, etc.)

The Strike Values for the different Skill Levels using a d10 system would be: 9 for Untrained, 8 for Beginner, 7 for Trained, 6 for Professional, 5 for Adept, 4 for Master, 3 for Exemplar.

So, 1-2 is always a miss, no matter your Skill Level.

This would also allow for something else that has been suggested: having an open-ended result that would allow re-rolls of certain dice. So, a result of 0 on your d10 would be a Strike and also mean you get to re-roll that die for a chance at extra Strikes.

After further discussion with several people, I've decided to stick with the d8 system.

The maths behind it is solid; the probabilities of success work out nicely.

And most role-players are quite happy to buy dice for a good system that they want to play. In fact most role-players I know are just looking for excuses to go dice shopping...