Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;704490Anyway, you could always have a failure represent some sort of major injury and success represent a minor injury. Perhaps two tables of results, some of which might impair the character's fighting. The less detailed option would be a penalty on the next save, although that could be considered a sort of 'hit points'.
If you have a lot of luck points flowing, you could also skip penalties and just have failure representing a character being unconscious, since the luck points granting re-rolls will effectively function as 'HP' until they run out.

I would like to try to design the system without resorting to tables. The effect of a failure would have to be not too harsh if failures turned out to be as frequent as I think, but am not sure, they will (is this phrase even remotely syntactically correct?) since when weapon and armor cancel each other out the roll would be made with 0 to 3 penalty dice, depending on the difference between the attacker's level of success and the defender's level of success. So, while a one-time penalty on the next roll in case of a success might be appropriate (for a moment you're in shock, it was a near thing that that blow hit you), I wonder if the effect of a failure being a permanent (for the rest of the fight, that is) penalty of one die wouldn't make the combat too gritty for low-powered characters (a high-powered character with a large pool of bonus dice to spend would be able to ignore a one die penalty for many rounds). On the other hand, maybe a permanent effect is needed in order to prevent fights from dragging on.


Thank you for you reply!

Quote from: MatteoN;704072May I ask for a suggestion related to my project without derailing the thread? (If the anwer is no, please don't reply my message!)

I still have just a vague idea of the combat system. I was thinking of having the difference between the level of success of the attack (critical success or normal success) and the level of success/failure of the defense (critical success, normal success, normal failure, critical failure)*, that is a number ranging 0 to 3, be the number of penalty dice that affect a roll made by the defender against the "ability to avoid being injured and keep on fighting". The weapon used by the attacker would also add (as many as its rating) penalty dice to this roll, whereas the armor worn by the defender would add (as many as its rating) bonus dice. The result would always have the lowest number as the tens' digit, unless the weapon is magical or otherwise extraordinarily dangerous for the defender (e.g. a silver weapon against a werewolf, a light saber against a vampire ).

Now, the possible results of this roll, like of any other, would be:
critical success
success
failure
critical failure.

Critical success would obviously mean that the defender is completely unscathed by the attack, whereas critical failure would obviously mean that the defender is taken out of the fight by a permanent (or fatal) wound. What effects would you attach to the other two results, considering that penalty dice would tend to outnumber bonus dice and I wouldn't want to use hit points?



* When two opposed rolls score the same level of success, the winner is the roll the generates the largest margin of success (=ability-roll).

Quote from: MatteoN;704553The effect of a failure would have to be not too harsh if failures turned out to be as frequent as I think, but am not sure, they will (is this phrase even remotely syntactically correct?) since when weapon and armor cancel each other out the roll would be made with 0 to 3 penalty dice, depending on the difference between the attacker's level of success and the defender's level of success.

What about this solution:

CRITICAL SUCCESS: the attack hit you at full force but left you completely unscathed. The attacker is blown-away, and perhaps harmed himself while trying to hurt you: they have a penalty die on their next roll.

SUCCESS: you have no trouble enduring such a small amount of damage and pain as the attack was able to inflict you.

FAILURE: the amount of damage and pain the attack inflicted you is more than you can easily endure: you have a penalty die on your next roll.

CRITICAL FAILURE: the attack hit you at full force and left you devastated. The damage and/or pain call a halt to your fight.

What would I hybridize? The Stars Without Number system with the old-school (1E/2E) Shadowrun setting. Psionics would have to be tweaked a bit to give us Shadowrun magic, but, otherwise, I find SWN a more elegant ruleset than the Shadowrun rules, which tend to be a bit on the complex side of things.

Hybrids are tricky business.

But I guess I'd mash up WFRP's career system, Kult's madness/enlightenment system, Stormbringer's summoning magic, nWoD's Virtues and Vices, Runequest 6's Combat Styles and Special Effects, and a setting somewhere between Ravenloft: Masque of Red Death, Solomon Kane and Jack Shear's Gothic Earth.

Here's another, simpler one: DC Heroes' resolution with FUDGEsque player-defined and numbered traits in lieu of atributes, advantages and drawbacks; plus Wild Talents' build-your-own-powers.

Quote from: TristramEvans;702101UA's Madness Meter + DC Heroes's resolution mechanics and attributes+TSR Conan RPG's skill system + WHFRP 1e's crit tables + Army of Darkness's Mass Combat Rules+ Godlike's setting

Godlike uses ORE.

Nemesis (free download) adapts the UA Madness Meter to ORE.

Wild Talents has a more expansive powers system and Kerberos Club has a build-your-own skill system (e.g. instead of picking up Marksmanship, Riding, Ettiquete, Military Science etc. you make up a skill called "An Officer And A Gentleman").

I realize that you're not an ORE fan but that gives me ideas. I've been meaningful to give Wild Talents a spin for some time now... Not a fan of Godlike per see but I'd love to try a pulpier, more Hellboy/Weird War II sort of game with this combo.

Quote from: J Arcane;702479I've been toying around with something that's sort of GURPS + DC Heroes.

My interest is piqued. Care to elaborate?

Quote from: golan2072;711100What would I hybridize? The Stars Without Number system with the old-school (1E/2E) Shadowrun setting. Psionics would have to be tweaked a bit to give us Shadowrun magic, but, otherwise, I find SWN a more elegant ruleset than the Shadowrun rules, which tend to be a bit on the complex side of things.

I've just released a cyberpunk sourcebook for Arcana Rising, itself now in print, called Welcome to Neuro City. Between the two books you should have no trouble at all doing just that.

Neuro City was basically written because I couldn't be arsed to learn SR rules all over again and I already had an urban fantasy game.

Quote from: The Butcher;711106My interest is piqued. Care to elaborate?

I wound up writing Roulade: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hWDeEiNI5aRWF1QjVqY25lTU0/edit?usp=sharing

It's more a cross between FUDGE/Fate and DCH in the end, and I don't know yet if I like it. Have a gander though.

Quote from: J Arcane;711394I've just released a cyberpunk sourcebook for Arcana Rising, itself now in print, called Welcome to Neuro City. Between the two books you should have no trouble at all doing just that.

Neuro City was basically written because I couldn't be arsed to learn SR rules all over again and I already had an urban fantasy game.

Thanks for the heads-up! Definitely on my to-buy list.

SR has a very cool setting, especially its older variants (SR1/SR2), and especially if you go over the top with Pink Mohawk, but in my experience the rules are quite cumbersome and difficult to teach to new players, especially ones without RPG experience.

Of course, with SWN and its cyberpunk supplement Polychrome I can also run a "Shadowrun" campaign with aliens instead of Metahumans and Psi instead of Magic.

D6's ease of use, modular advancement, and escalating costs with (some other game's) balanced library of character options.  Hero, maybe?  GURPS?  Something like that.

Boot Hill 1E + 13th Age

I used Boot Hill (old TSR wild west miniatures rules) as the base combat system and brought in the "background" parts of 13th Age to give characters depth. (13th Age uses "backgrounds" as a catch-all to replace skills.)

I actually threw in some scifi elements and ran a quick Firefly campaign. Much fun.

Something else I've been musing on lately is a different way of crossbreeding the systems: take several systems, boil down the stranger conceits of each system to become class features of a class, so you have a game where players can sort of play any of several systems at once. Obviously core mechanics (how combat works) needs to be consistent but there are probably ways of rationalizing some of the differences in how skills and the like operate.

e.g. idea for a game where fanatical Mormon gunslingers, crazed sages, crashed space people, mutants and standard dungeon-grubbers battle Cthulhu and his cults:).

Classes:
Dog (Dogs in the Vineyard): conviction class feature, you can initiate social combats and opponents have to give in or start fighting back. Free gun.
Sage (Call of Cthulhu): get an Education score, percentile knowledges (number of points based off EDU mostly), but a Sanity score due to too much Forbidden Knowledge.
Traveller: crashed space dude, roll for terms of service (giving more specific 'class skills') and a few starting tech items.
Delver (DCC): get a Luck score, a secondary skill relating to your old mundane occupation, and a merry band of henchmen.
Mutant (MSH? Gamma World?): gets some randomly determined super powers. Limited skills, relies mostly on natural powers.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;712952Something else I've been musing on lately is a different way of crossbreeding the systems: take several systems, boil down the stranger conceits of each system to become class features of a class, so you have a game where players can sort of play any of several systems at once.

This is an idea I too had, but I think it takes a deep understanding of many systems to be able to come up with a playable and fun system (you might be up to the task).

Thanks!

(My problem is that I'll probably get distracted by some other idea in about 5 minutes though).