So I've been working on a game on and off for the last twelve years, more on than off, like many roleplayers, and I think its nearly ready for release.

To cut a long story short, I've been experimenting with many different types of game mechanics, game systems, and theories over that time, gutting them, polishing them, discarding bits and changing other bits, bolting parts on and testing them, from many sources, and what remains is pretty frickin good in my opinion.

At its core its a d10 system similar to CP2020, so decisions are made with stat+skill+1d10 versus a difficulty table ranging from 1 to 30, or contested.

Combat uses a few different concepts combined with some ideas and mechanics entirely my own. Initiative is gone, replaced by something similar to the Exalted battle wheel. That means actions have a cost (firing a pistol might be cost 2, swinging a broadsword might be 4), and participants advance around the wheel as they act. I'll admit the first few attempts at that caused beads of sweat on the foreheads of players more used to 1d6 initiative, but it worked quite nicely when finished.

You only roll to hit, not for damage, and the damage is decided by a) the weapon you used and b) how high over the other guy you roll. So say you have a broadsword (damage 4) and you roll 24 to hit, the other guy rolls 14 to block, failing obviously by 10, you check that on the simple damage table and get +4 damage, for a total of 8 damage and done.

Its fast paced, punchy and realistic, if I may make so bold. Here's the damage table:

Succeed by: Damage:
1-2           Quarter
3-4            Half
5-6            Base
7               +1
8               +2
9               +3
10             +4
11             +6
12             +7
13             +8
14             +9
15             +10 etc.

The first two entries are there otherwise there could be no such thing as a glancing blow or a minor wound from large weapons.

There's a lot more to it than that, but for a taster it will do. What I like most about it is the emergent behaviour, for example I sat down to write about some duck and cover/snapshot/suppressive fire rules and realised I didn't need to, it happened naturally all by itself. I went into a big six month arc of trying to balance giant monsters against humans without imbalancing the whole thing, nearly gave up, then just started actually playing them bigger stats and all, and hey, it worked great.

...

Anyway when I stood back recently and took a look at the big picture, what I realised was that it was as much a toolkit as a roleplaying game. Not a universal or generic system like GURPs, although technically it could be classed as such, but perhaps due to its mongrel heritage it came out much more modular, a true set of tools to bring forth the imagination in any scenario, any setting, from stone age to far future sci fi. Take those bits you want and leave the rest, mix and match, go wild.

In and of itself it doesn't come with any game worlds, those would be released seperately (except for the one bundled, see below). I have a half dozen of them already on the worktable.

...

So here's my thinking on publication:

• Release a free PDF with the basics in it, playable in its own right, based around one world, say fantasy or sci fi, with details of the world in it. Simple but gets across the core principles.
• Publish the full version with everything in it at the same time, and I mean everything; skills, spells, equipment, vehicles and benefits spanning the gamut from past to future, from non magical to high magic, all the juicy extras. Charge a reasonable sum for this, and release a more fully realised game world in the same package. A purchase of this will come with website membership which I will cover shortly.
• Printed copies may be available if there is enough demand for them. PDFs will be sent out whatever the case.
• Release numerous game worlds then using the core rules.

So all in, a fairly standard offering so far. The difference will be the use I hope to make of the web. With a full membership, automatically given upon purchase of the core rules (which may cut down on piracy), you get access to a wide variety of online facilities.

You can customise tables within the rules to suit yourself, like being able to easily edit a PDF, or call up customised tables. For example: let's say I want to run an adventure in the radioactive glass desert to the south of the city. I want to be able to select from a menu monsters->desert->natural+unnatural+radiation->low or no magic.
This will then present me with a list of monsters which fit that criteria, some of which I save into my private adventure folder.

Then I can go over each one and make adjustments to the stats, description, or what have you, before printing it off or leaving it in there readily tabbed for my game. This can be used by GMs who want to develop say specialised skill lists for their players, removing many they feel are superfluous or want to save for later in the game.

There will be a section specifically for online gamers, with facilities useful to them.

Whenever you log in, or on a regular basis, the system will inform you of any errata, rules changes, or updates that have been made, so you stay current without having to reference multiple sources.

It should also be a full collaborative framework, to enable the community to really share customisations. Someone might have an idea for a new monster, an adventure module, an expansion for a town on a map that hasn't got much in the way of detail, a house rule that makes sense, an entire campaign setting, or just advice on how to run a game, and this can all be published online in an easily referenced form.

Another facility in the system would be a regular mailing list, which would mimic the RPG magazines of old, containing ingame articles, revisions, perhaps a chapter from a new or established writer, a few good blog articles, that sort of thing, delivered directly to your inbox.

...

How does that sound? Any suggestions or criticisms?

I only buy background free systems when they look to match with a game idea I have 100%.

I.e. I have done it once. Every other RPG I have nought for the background.

It is possible I am not typical in this respect, but I think its something you may want to take on board.

I'm also thinking about making the membership fee annual, which will help cover the hosting fees, and come with access to new publications that year. Also perhaps a points system so people who contribute lots to the community creatively can get membership benefits.

Quote from: jadrax;551869I only buy background free systems when they look to match with a game idea I have 100%.

I.e. I have done it once. Every other RPG I have nought for the background.

It is possible I am not typical in this respect, but I think its something you may want to take on board.

Sure, thanks. The flipside of this is when you have wonderful backgrounds with shitty systems, like Eclipse Phase. It can really take away from the experience.

I mentioned above that a setting would be bundled with the core ruleset, I think as more settings are released I could give purchasers the option of which one they want bundled, to broaden the appeal even further. Purchasers could even hold off on their selection until their desired setting is released.

The settings I have in various stages of development so far are:

• Fantasy somewhere between high and swords and sorcery, with a huge tapestry of places to go and things to do
• A dark and atmospheric Steampunk setting with all sorts of quirks, gave a few glimpses of that in the "dream of the great war" thread
• A post global warming flooding setting, I mentioned something of that in the "Ecoterrorist" thread I started earlier, may or may not contain nazis, like a cross between Fringe, Split Second with Rutger Hauer, and Cyberpunk
• A near future solar system exploration setting, with DINOSAURS, ROBOTS, NINJAS, ALIENS, PIRATES, MUTANTS and MORE (!)
• A farther future galaxy exploration setting, not unlike Alastair Reynolds' work, but again with some compelling quirks

Not enough data to really criticize much as yet (and I don't really have any opinions relevant to publishing). Couple of questions:
-do you get any discount to the 'swing time' of the broadsword for high Strength or weapon skill?
- any Strength modifier to base weapon damage?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;552498Not enough data to really criticize much as yet (and I don't really have any opinions relevant to publishing). Couple of questions:
-do you get any discount to the 'swing time' of the broadsword for high Strength or weapon skill?
- any Strength modifier to base weapon damage?

No discount for swing time based on strength, yes discount due to weapon skill. There is also a strength modifier for weapon damage. A highly skilled warrior can thus flip a blade about his head like a bamboo cane - a trained assassin can use a dagger with more potency than a town guardsman his pike.

This is what I recommend:

- Release version 1 Core Rules for free (better adoption rate, and you can decide with version 2 down the road if you want to charge or not; you can also charge a % on hard copy); prepare an "elevator" speech on the advantages of the game.

- Release a reasonably priced core setting that takes advantage of all the native strengths of your system. Pick out the top five strengths of the system, build the setting based on those.

- Create a forum / standalone community site (or throw your weight into facebook, different strategies there) and a separate blog. Work the community with regular blog updates that are hooked into the community.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;552498Not enough data to really criticize much as yet (and I don't really have any opinions relevant to publishing). Couple of questions:
-do you get any discount to the 'swing time' of the broadsword for high Strength or weapon skill?
- any Strength modifier to base weapon damage?

Would anyone be interested if I started posting up broad snippets of game mechanics, skill, combat, etc? Published for criticism and comments.

Quote from: The Traveller;553620Would anyone be interested if I started posting up broad snippets of game mechanics, skill, combat, etc? Published for criticism and comments.

Sure! Always interested in that sort of thing.

It sounds like an interesting system and I'd like to see more of it.

With regards to a membership/subscription model, has anybody made this work other than WotC and, to a lesser extent, Palladium?

Also, I'm not up on tech - is that kind of sortable monster database feasible to build and maintain at little-to-no cost?

Quote from: CitizenKeen;553852Also, I'm not up on tech - is that kind of sortable monster database feasible to build and maintain at little-to-no cost?

Well the cost isn't important if people are paying for access to it. If say a thousand people are using it at once, its going to be heavy weather, but they are paying ten bucks apiece so that's covered, hopefully with profit to spare.

I'll upload a few notes so and see what people think.

These are somewhat meta-points meant to indicate the achievements in-game of players, help to develop characters and encourage roleplaying. Its as close as we come to D&D-style XP, which is not very close at all.

From another discussion:

I link points to three things:

a) character goals established during chargen, for example minor, medium, and major goals, so the player has an incentive to act out their chosen roles. Minor goals might be something like "find out who my uncle really was and where he got his powers", major goals might be "avenge my family on a corrupt tyrant king".

Achieving each of these goals comes with a point reward, it can't happen by accident or someone else's agency (evil tyrant king gets run over by a cart), and its part of the goal whether or not the player wants to do it personally as part of the goal ("He's mine, back off!"). The more difficult the goal, the higher the reward.

During chargen the group can collaborate and have the same or complementary major goals, which gives them another reason to stick together. Further character goals can be added as the game continues, on consultation with the GM to determine the level of goal.

This is my favourite method of awarding points, since it gets the players interested, immersed and involved in the campaign world right from the start, gives them motivation, and helps them roleplay strategically.


b) game and campaign goals, the GM sets certain events in advance, upon completion the group gets their points. These goals can be altered if the group goes a different direction. Again these are graded according to difficulty.

The GM may also set personal goals for individual players. These goals are usually not shared in advance. That the goals can be altered prevents players for trying to spend the whole session second guessing the GM.

Typically these goals don't involve simple physical feats but things that mean the players need to use their heads.


c) Role playing occasionally. I tried out a hidden voting system whereby after each game the players vote for one person based on their role playing in that game, but its hard to avoid it becoming a player popularity contest.

One slightly messier system is to have a pool of role playing points and split this up according to the votes, so if you have a pool of 12 points and 4 players, one player gets three votes, they get nine points and everyone else gets one, with a minimum of one. Typically a rather low three points per player is used in the pool, as role playing should be encouraged but not imposed.

The GM should not arbitrarily hand out points for this in any case, to avoid accusations of favouritsm. There is likewise no magic spell or draining power that can get you extra awesome points, they happen purely through achievement.



These points can then be used to wipe out problems, add benefits (different to skills, more "hardcoded"), add fate points, or adjust statistics/manna pools etc. The structure of the game is designed in such a way that it should take a few sessions to build up a lot of "awesome points", its not meant to be a quick process, and pushing a core stat like say strength from 8 to 9 needs a lot more points (45 points) than pushing it from 2 to 3 (15 points).

The main advancement route in the game is through skills and equipment, which incidentally provides a motivation to accumulate wealth if possible, otherwise why even bother. XP isn't awarded for killing and looting, your skills improve as you use them or train, and you gather wealth purely because you want to buy cool stuff or otherwise be rich. The concept of character levels doesn't exist.

An important departure from D&D style games is that characters start out pretty tough. They can improve their skills as they go along, pick up better gear, and more to increase their power, but you're ready for any adventure from the get-go.

The deadliness of the game can be dialled up or down depending on whether you want gritty or pulpy high fantasy very easily, by increasing the points players have to spend on stats at the start, and more importantly simply by increasing hits.

I spent a long time fiddling with things like increment points which were the idea used in CP2020, when you get a high enough roll, your skill gets increment points. When that skill has enough IPs, it increases by one, and your IPs are reset to zero on that skill.

Horrible idea, lots of accounting, dragged combat down, generally a pain while being conceptually realistic, and realism is something I strive for.

Eventually it dawned on me that the number of times a skill is used in order to increase it by one is a fairly reliable number - Maximillian will usually increase his sword skill from 6 to 7 around the say 30th swing, all else being equal.

Once I got that message, it wasn't hard to emulate the idea without accounting simply by working the numbers. So what we have now is, if you roll a natural ten on a skill roll, you can roll again (during or after the scene, your call), and if you roll higher than your skill score, it increases by one point.

So lets say I have skill 6 in sword wielding. If I roll a natural 10, I can then make a seperate roll to improve that skill. If the seperate roll is 7, 8, 9 or 10, the skill improves from 6 to 7. That means one in twenty to thirty swings will result in a skill improvement. Its sweet particularly because it creates its own gradient of difficulty, naturally.

Skills have difficulties as well, so I'm messing around with making it roll above skill+skill diff in the seperate roll. This makes it harder to advance in skills but better emulates the real process.

In the example above, sword use is difficulty 2, so if I roll a natural 10 with my skill six, I would have to then roll over 6+2, 8, so the skill would only advance on a 9 or 10, one chance in fifty. Its a bit harsh though.

Also this system makes players excited to roll 10s.

The upshot basically is that its fairly easy to advance to an average level of skill in most things if you use it often enough. Advancing from a high level to an even higher level is much more difficult. To move from an 8 to a 9 will take an average of fifty skill uses. Moving from a 9 to a 10, a hundred. Skills can go beyond ten also.

I like the XP system.
 
The skill improvement system seems realistic, if perhaps a bit random. Reminds me of Basic Roleplaying and friends  (Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and HarnMaster) - though with that it was only 1 roll/adventure (which has its plusses and minuses).
 
Tougher starting characters seems like a good idea, too (approve); how does that work out for NPCs though - are they hard to take out or do these tend to have different hit points ('minions' and such) ?