The name's a bit pretentious, but fuck it, it's catchy. I'd rather be a pound of pretense than an ounce of forgettable.

Okay, this project grew out of a few dozen conversations here, and a few years of generally being frustrated out there. It's always a little boring when people talk about how they were influenced by Das Schwarze Auge and how they want to reclaim OD&D from the West Coast Philistines or whatever, so I'll skip that.

The New Standard is a generic RPG system that assumes the characters are a part of the setting. It is skill-based with a relatively tight skill list; I'd say its a hair tighter than the World of Darkness skill list. The base systems assume a human scale; dealing with things significantly larger or smaller than human sized is handled through a Scale system, similar to FUDGE's scale system.

The resolution mechanic is entirely d20 based, roll under the skill. Difficulties are a minimum number that must be rolled over. For example, a character may have an Aim skill of 13, (for a 65% success rate). While firing in a rain storm, they might have a Difficulty of 6, meaning the player has to roll between a 6 and a 13 to succeed.

That's the gross system. You can improve your odds by spending resources-- essentially Willpower that lets you roll twice and keep the better result. What, I'm not too good to steal.

The nuts and bolts of the system come into how the character interacts with the setting. When the game begins, the GM and players set three dials on the game: the Tone, Setting, and Genre.  

The Tone is essentially the amount of Protagonist Protection the characters get. In the baseline Gritty game, the characters are competent, but still very mortal. They're not as fragile as say, 1st level D&D characters, but even a guy with a pen knife is dangerous if properly motivated. The next step up is a Pulp game, that give the players more ways to manipulate the system, and the final setting is a Heroic game, where the characters are capable of marauding their way through mooks and rewarded for acts of heroic insanity.

Setting is essentially the technology level of the game, and largely determines how the skills perform. A character with a modern, Cybernetic age understanding of Medicine will cure circles around the most learned sonuvabitch in the Bronze Age. Assuming that a character is familiar with the technology level of their setting is what lets me cut down the skill list. For example, the skill Aim covers spears and bolas in a stone age setting and pulsed laser cannons in nanotech setting.

Finally, the GM and players pick a genre, which is essentially a set of containers for additional modules. Picking a Horror genre adds in mental trauma, rules for generating unspeakable horrors, and building mysteries. Picking a Fantasy Genre gives rules for magic, other races, and generating ancient landmarks or mysterious mysteries of strange mystery.

I've been playtesting this with my D&D group for the past few weeks, and I've noticed that the game runs pretty quickly. Combat is run similar to OD&D, where the players declare an action in order of lowest to highest Intelligence, then execute them in order of rolled initiative. Putting Initiative into the resolution roll has sped things up slightly, at the cost of some minor confusion that is entirely the fault of the GM, that is, me. (I keep forgetting to declare NPC actions).

The resolution system has turned out to be a hit, as has character creation-- I've built in a "Concept Generator" for those players that have a tough time with building from square one, and the character creation owes a lot to While Wolf, which for all their sins knew how to get people into the game quickly.

Things I'm considering:
+ Cutting the number of attributes down from 9 (Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intelligence, Focus, Empathy, Status, Reputation, Connections) to 6 (Vigor, Agility, Intelligence, Focus, Empathy, Status) and roll the Expendable Stats (Stamina, Focus, and Reputation) into one general Purpose pool called Willpower.

+ One of the skills is Wealth, which is by far the best balancing act I've done in the game. It's gotten mixed reviews from the players, some who love the abstract nature of managing businesses and income, and the other who seems a little irritated that he can't front-load the character with gear.

+My my my, what a sweet structure for splat books you have, my dear. The hardest part is keeping the splat books light and airy.

Alpha Rules Document 1.5

Rough Character Creation Rules

im about to read through the rules the idea of having to roll over the dc intrigues me i dont think i like it but i think a lot of people will. However i have 1 vital thing to say.


ah a wealth stat get it away from me get it away from me its icky. Wealth stats a shit

Personally, I am a serious minimalist for rules.
I suggest consideration of reducing stats further to only 3 (Physical, Mental and Social)

... Warrior/Wizard/Rogue (Fantasy)
... Jock/Geek/Socialite (Modern)
... Pilot/Engineer/Merchant (Space Opera)
... break it/fix it/smile at it

But, your game, so whatever makes you happy.

My advice is go down to six attributes.  Also how big is your skill tree?  If you got too many skills you may want to do what I done for my game system that I am building which is give out unlimited skills.  Basicly let the players make up the skills and just keep a small amount as must have for every game skills.