Core gaming mechanic suggestion

[Nikita]

I am currently playing RPG campaign with my own resolution system (I got tired to extremely slow systems currently in market).

My current system works as following:
Each player has five core attributes which are: STRENGTH, AGILITY, WILL, INTELLIGENCE and SOCIAL. Each attribute is described as middle value 0 with -3 being totally crippled and and +3 as olympic level athlete.

Each attribute has two aspects: short time and long time. Thus for example a character who is very strong but does not have stamina to continue for long time would have STRENGTH +1/-1.

Thus there are ultimately 10 attribute values.

The mythical normal human would have one attribute as +1.

Heroic player characters start with one value set as +2 and correspondibly one as -1. Furthermore they cabn set two more attribute values as +1 with all others as 0.

The skills ratings vary from 0 to 4 with idea that you'd need roughly 1/2/4/9/16 years of experience to get 0/1/2/3/4 skill rating in particular skill.

Hobby skills are either 0 or 1 depending how seriously the hobby is taken.
Unskilled skill use is possible but with -2 modifier to roll.

Thus Jari (who plays veteran Mech pilot) has +3 to his Mech Piloting as he had been professional mech pilot for more than 10 years. On the other hand his poetry skills are nonexisting.

The idea of core game mechanic is following:
ATTRIBUTE + SKILL RATING + 2D6 versus TARGET NUMBER

The target numbers are 6/8/10/12/14/16 etc. The 6 is easy task and 8 is "normal task" with 10 being a hard task. Ever more impossible tasks have higher target numbers depicting that they are nearly impossible to achieve for normal people.

If two or more people fight against each other or are otherwise in competition, each player will roll ATTRIBUTE + SKILL RATING + 2D6 and highest result wins.

Ideas, thoughts?

[Silverlion]

I've seen it before. Lots of places. Suggests its a good start. Generally speaking though if you go from -x to +X, why is human "normal" i.e average not 0? Also consider the fact that people aren't always as skilled as their years might suggest, and/or more skilled. Its pretty common especially in mecha anime/stories for the young pilot to be "Awesome!" At least compared to veterans already extant in the background.

Also: I suggest reading more games. There are many simple games out there from the 1pg System games,  other games like Prince Valiant, and so on up to mad things which summon Cthulhu with their arcane charts and mathematical calculation. For if  they are ever properly used for they tap the unnatural angles of the ID.

[Premier]

Can you define, with specific examples, the difference between short and long time use for all the abilities? That's the part that sounds the most problematic to me.

[Nikita]

I've seen it before. Lots of places. Suggests its a good start. Generally speaking though if you go from -x to +X, why is human "normal" i.e average not 0?

The "normal human NPC" has one +1 and nine 0 as attributes to give them some variation.

[Nikita]

Can you define, with specific examples, the difference between short and long time use for all the abilities? That's the part that sounds the most problematic to me.

The following skill checks have actually happened during campaign:

STRENGTH
short: open the battered hatch of a mech quickly to save pilot before she burns to death.

long: Walking with your rucksack in survival training all day.

AGILITY
short: Driving a stolen car in a drunken contest.

long: Surviving through climbing over a steep hill in survival training.

WILL
short: keeping head cool in combat or surviving a frightful surprise in order to act.

long: doing unpleasant work in base for a month without flipping out.

INTELLIGENCE:
short: reading the situation correctly so you can order your platoon to act efficiently in combat.

long: Creating and preparing an attack plan for company.

SOCIAL:
short: Making a good impression to someone or lying convincingly to your superior on the fly.

long: Whether you are insufferable or not to important guest in his stay in unit.

Whether something is short or long depends on GM and in my mind the idea is that anything that requires quick action immediately is short while anything requiring going on for hours to a year is long.

[Bloody Stupid Johnson]

It seems to me that if most of a characters stats (more than half of them for a normal PC) are zeroes, and the rest no more than +/-1, that the level of variation provided by the attribute system may be too small to justify the extra complexity it requires.
I guess I'd probably either drop all the attributes and allow slight modifiers (+1 or +1) off feats or Edges etc instead if you have those, roll them into skills, or increase the range a bit more.

[Nikita]

I guess I'd probably either drop all the attributes and allow slight modifiers (+1 or +1) off feats or Edges etc instead if you have those, roll them into skills, or increase the range a bit more.

I have to say that the idea of making all attributes other than zero simply Advantages (and Disadvantages) makes sense in a system where attributes are essentially fixed (i.e. the system I currently use).  I' think I'll move to simply point out attribute values as Advantages and Disadvantages in my new system.

---

My old system was more flexible as far as attributes and skills were concerned. If it is worth going over ... here it is.

The old system (I used it last year) had attribute ratings moving according to collected attrbute points (for following die roll effects):
-1 to +1 (0), +2 to +3 (+1), +4 to +8 (+2), +9 to +15 (+3) and +16 and more (+4).

The idea was that every year character could do 3 things. one could either:
cost 1 thing = choose 2 skill picks from a skill pool (of 10 skills)
cost 2 thing = choose 4 skill picks from a skill pool (of 10 skills)
cost 1 thing = choose one attribute pick

Similarly the skills collected had following die roll effects:
-1 to +1 (0), +2 to +3 (+1), +4 to +8 (+2), +9 to +15 (+3) and +16 and more (+4).

[Bloody Stupid Johnson]

OK, cool.
Can't say I really like the old system as presented here - I think the main advantage of stats being rated as positive/negative is that they do away with the extra layer of calculating modifiers that many systems have.
It looks like that's done here mainly to slow down increases in the attribute?; if you just wanted to do that, you could note that it requires [score+1, squared] picks to increase the score, and they should record how many of these they're spent somewhere on their sheet.
 
(Someone did that years ago with us in Werewolf; I don't know if it was an official rule or something the GM made up, but our PCs were taking "Progenitor drugs" that gave them free xp toward their next dot of Strength, instead of just a stat increase which would have been too much of a jump).
 
Cheers,
BSJ.

[Nikita]

OK, cool.
Can't say I really like the old system as presented here - I think the main advantage of stats being rated as positive/negative is that they do away with the extra layer of calculating modifiers that many systems have.
It looks like that's done here mainly to slow down increases in the attribute?;

Yes. My old system looked nice in paper until it became obvious that only very few people enjoy detailed character building as an exercise. Traveller (in its various incarnations did that).

My original idea was that each adventure happens perhaps once a year and thus you'd spend half of your time deciding on what builds character would do before next adventure. It was a one of those "great ideas" that just did not pan out enjoyable to players and thus I ditched the old system.

---

The current system perhaps needs some more work on its combat system.

I currently use following for unarmed combat:
ATTRIBUTE + SKILL RATING + 2D6 versus ATTRIBUTE + SKILL RATING + 2D6

Both sides use Unarmed combat skill with following modifiers:
-3 if tries to pin down opponent
+1 for everyone helping one doing fighting.

The difference is amount of damage given to loser and persons have 5 + ATTRIBUTE MODIFIER of damage point until they get incapable of continuing combat.

If either side wants to pin down opponent then the side trying to pin gets -3 to their roll and if the roll succeeds the opponent is pinned and held in submission (until someone beats up the person keeping the other in submission).