Solving the Inherent Problems of the d20 System

[DevolutionaryCyberSpud]

My indy RPG (CARPS at http://w00tism27.tripod.com/carps ) is a minimalist RPG which is designed to one-up the d20 system (which by the way I despise). I will cover one by one the problems I have solved. Perhaps you will find the ideas useful for your RPG. Feedback and constructive criticism appreciated.

Problem: When rolling in d20, the roll makes up for most of your bonus at early levels, but much less at higher levels.
Solution: CARPS uses Logarithms, which discount an equivalent portion of each number (since only relative scores matter), resulting in all things being measured in a 1-10 scale, with the dice giving +5 to -5 (1d6-1d6).

Problem: Characters are not customizable; you must choose a class which is very limiting and a great deal is random.
Solution: Point-based stat-skill-trait system which measures both positive and negative, qualitative and quantitative aspects of the character with NO classes(!), NO random generation, and specific attributes that allow for fine tuning.

Problem: You must choose from the skills, spells and feats listed.
Solution: Skills (which define feats, skills and spells, as well as a few other things in CARPS) are made up by the players! A basic system to balance this out is provided.

Problem: Characters have no weaknesses; only lack of strengths in certain areas.
Solution: Using Traits, which measure qualities of characters, you can get extra points by taking on disadvantages. These too (along with the advantages) are made up by the players! (with a balancing system).

Problem: Levels. Levels are bad. They make growth go in a start-stop rhythm, and limit growth based on how high you write up the stuff for the levels.
Solution: CARPS uses no levels. You can spend XP as you get it. You get XP for a lot more than killing, too. This is only one of the many sources of XP in CARPS.

Problem: Dice always give bonuses, never penalties. Always different levels of good luck. In addition, you have an equal chance for a monumental success (20) as an average roll (10) or terrible bad luck (1).
Solution: CARPS uses 1d6-1d6 for everything. This means +5 to -5, with the greatest chance for +0 (1/6) and the least for +5 or -5 (1/36 for each).

Problem: Complex rules slowing down the action.
Solution:CARPS has strange rules that seem complex, but are really quite simple once you figure them out and are EXTREMELY streamlined during play. Plus there are very few of them to learn (especially compared to the d20 system).

Problem:Only covers Fantasy games (unless you want headaches converting it).
Solution: The unique nature of CARPS mechanics allows whole worlds from the normal to the very exotic (I once played one where everyone was an insect!). And zero work for the GM creating the world! [/b]

[hanschristianandersen]

Hi Spud,

Welcome to the Forge, and hold onto your hat.

I hate to break it to you, but what I'm seeing looks very much like a Fantasy Heartbreaker (see http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/">here and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/10/">here.)

Your base assumptions are lifted directly from D&D - that is, play primarily about solving puzzles, completing quests, killing things.  At least, that's what the system rewards you for doing.  Nothing wrong with that, I love a good D&D-style adventure, whether or not we're using D&D mechanics.

To a lesser extent, play is about being clever, staying within the bounds of your character, and rules-lawyering.  (Yes, rules lawyering earns experience points.  To me, this screams "The best way to earn XP is to watch the GM like a hawk and try to call him on every possible slip-up and deviation from the rules.")

But the emphasis on winning battles and completing quests isn't the only thing lifted from D&D.  Entire chunks of text in "The GM's Section" are paraphrased, or even lifted almost verbatim from the D&D 3E DMG.   There's nothing wrong with agreeing with 3E's philosophy on how a game should be run, and there's nothing wrong with expressing that same advice in the text of your own game.  However, what I see in your text smacks of plagiarism.  Even if you feel that Cook, Tweet,  Williams, and the rest of the 3E team did an absolutely perfect job of articulating these ideas, Wizards owns the copyrights to that text, and it's not yours to use.

My advice would be to scrap that entire section of document immediately, and find a way to express the ideas that you find interesting in your own words.  Then, while these ideas are fresh in your mind, go over your mechanics with a fine-toothed comb, and find ways that your mechanics actively contradict your notions of what "good play" feels like.  Sure, you've got the meta-rule that the GM can "ignore the rules when they get in the way", but if the GM is going to have to regularly override a rule, then think long and hard about whether that rule deserves a place in your system.

Also, since players love exp, the "ignore any rules that get in the way" rule will have players falling all over each other to get the 5 exp reward for "calling the GM on an error."  Unless you ignore that rule too.

As for the rest of your mechanics, the three-tier attributes/skills/traits system is reminiscent of GURPS (or maybe HERO/Champions, which I'm less knowledgeable about.)  The core dice mechanic is from what, Feng Shui?  The experience point system is straight from Palladium.

However, the skill system took all my assumptions and turned them upside down.  Namely, the part about how skills are not costed relative to how difficult or rare the skill is in "real life", but instead they're costed relative to how narrow they are.  I've never before seen a system in which "Brain Surgery" was less expensive than "First Aid".  It's an interesting inversion of the usual pattern of having "difficult specialist skills cost more".

Combine this with the free-form nature of skills, (which I've seen before, but not with the costing being inversely proportionaly to specificity), and I can easily imagine making a character who has a few tricks up is sleeve, like a big, dull-witted lout who is astonishingly good at poker.  Or perhaps a slender, wisecracking rogue who is simply unbeatable at arm wrestling.    Or a skilled samurai with extra skill in one particular signature attack move ("I've won fifteen duels with my tsubamegaeshi strike!")

The decreased cost for these so-called "Trivial" skills might really let you give your characters some real heavy-duty mechanical muscle to back up these character quirks.  I really like that, and I hope it survives any future revisions that you might undertake.

[Andrew Morris]

Namely, the part about how skills are not costed relative to how difficult or rare the skill is in "real life", but instead they're costed relative to how narrow they are.  I've never before seen a system in which "Brain Surgery" was less expensive than "First Aid".  It's an interesting inversion of the usual pattern of having "difficult specialist skills cost more".

I used this model for a game I am currently working on with a friend, but we scrapped the idea because it has the problem that the more general skills made the specialized skills pointless. For example, having Swordfighting is useless if I have Armed Combat at a higher level. We couldn't come up with any really elegant way of solving this, so we changed the model. Now we are going with the idea that skills are all roughly as specialized, but they cost more if they are more useful in game. For example, Research is a more important skill in our game than Armed Combat, so research costs much more.

So how is this resolved in your game, Spud? And what's your real name, by the way?

[M. J. Young]

Welcome to the Forge, Devo. By they way, we tend to use real names around here--nothing wrong with a handle, really, but it feels like you're not human. I'm Mark, but they call me M. J., which is a long story not worth telling at the moment.

I'm not a D20 fan myself. I'm a long-time OAD&D referee, going back to 1980, but I thought that the AD&D2 changes were unreasonable, so 3E really did not sit well with me at all. Still, it's a decent game for what it's intended to do. It doesn't work as well for "everything else", but people are working on it.

More to the point, it's not the only game in town. All the problems you've addressed in your post have been addressed many times in many games, often quite effectively. I get the impression from reading your post that you don't have much experience beyond D20. Maybe that's a wrong impression; but around here, D20 doesn't a lot of attention, because it's buried in the wealth of great games that don't have the problems it presents.

I was going to go through your "problems" individually and suggest how they've been answered by many other games; some of what you cite as "problems" are really design choices that have very positive features for what they do, and some of what you cite as solutions have problems of their own that you ignore. However, I'm not here to criticize your design--only to call your attention to the fact that your vision seems rather confined.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[DevolutionaryCyberSpud]

I understand your concern about plagiarism and I do, in fact plan on scrapping that section. Thank you for pointing out the flaw in XP system (I just think adding humor makes reading a manual less painful). I have never heard of GURPS or Palladium, incidentially, and I believe that these are generic concepts within an RPG. Thank you for your input.

[Jeph]

I understand your concern about plagiarism and I do, in fact plan on scrapping that section. Thank you for pointing out the flaw in XP system (I just think adding humor makes reading a manual less painful). I have never heard of GURPS or Palladium, incidentially, and I believe that these are generic concepts within an RPG. Thank you for your input.

He wasn't talking about plagiarism.

He was saying that, despite a completely different rules set, the assumptions inherent in the rules of CARPS are almost identical to those inherent in the rules of D&D. In other words, we're not sure if you're telling us what you really want out of the game, or what you're used to getting out of the game.

..

I'm shocked to hear that you've never heard of GURPS. It's one of the top 5 big systems (talking popularity) at least. You can download the 'lite' version for free here.

Actually, while we're on a horizon-broadening kick...

Riddle of Steel Quckstart
Legends of Middle Earth
The Pool

That should do to get you started. :^)
--Jeff

[Valamir]

Hey Devo.

Maybe you don't need to design a new game at all.

Maybe you just need to actually find one of the 10,000 RPGs that aren't d20 that already do all of the things you'd want your game to do, and just play that for a while.

Clearly you need to broaden your game horizons and see what the state of the art is before setting out to recreate the wheel.

I predict alot of really exciting gaming sessions in your future as you discover and try a sampling of what's out there.

[hanschristianandersen]

Spud wrote:

I understand your concern about plagiarism and I do, in fact plan on scrapping that section.

Jeffrey wrote:

He wasn't talking about plagiarism.  He was saying that, despite a completely different rules set, the assumptions inherent in the rules of CARPS are almost identical to those inherent in the rules of D&D.

Jeffrey, to be clear, when I said "plagiarism" I  meant exactly that.  As just one example, compare bullet point 13 from "The GM's Section" of CARPS v2.6 to the paragraph on "Metagame Thinking" from page ~14 of the D&D 3.0 DMG.  That's not the only instance.

To be fair, it doesn't look like there was any malicious intent, and the questionable content is confined to that one lengthy section on "how to run a game".  It looks to me like Spud read the DMG, thought "Hey, yeah, that's good advice, I completely agree", and then paraphrased large chunks of text into his own draft.  Spud, I'm glad to hear you're planning on dealing with this.

I wholeheartedly recommend following up on Jeffrey's and Ralph's "horizon-broadening" suggestions.  If, after sampling some of the wide range of systems that are out there, you decide to write your own game, then make sure that the text that you write is truly yours, and is something that you can be proud of.

And on the subject of horizons, what RPGs have you played other than D&D?  Are there any others that you've read, but not played?

[Jeph]

Jeffrey, to be clear, when I said "plagiarism" I  meant exactly that.  As just one example, compare bullet point 13 from "The GM's Section" of CARPS v2.6 to the paragraph on "Metagame Thinking" from page ~14 of the D&D 3.0 DMG.  That's not the only instance.

Oops. Sorry for misrepresenting you.


Spud: Also, what sorts of fiction do you enjoy? That can be as influential (if not more so) as the games that you have read and played. Lastly, what do you want, as precisely as you can state it, out of play? That is perhaps the most important question of all when developing a new game.

--Jeff

[Andrew Norris]

Hi, Devo --

Based on some of the mechanics and issues you've discussed in your initial post, here are a few RPGs that you'd probably find it enlightening to read through:

Point-based character creation - the canonical example (from a system that's been around literally for decades) is GURPS. There's a lite version for free download at http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/3e/.

Weaknesses as character traits - while this is covered by Disadvantages in GURPS and the Hero System, I think you'd find it interesting to read FATE (http://www.faterpg.com, see "Free Downloads"). It's a system that allows characters to have attributes (called Aspects) of any kind -- you could as easily have three levels of "Alcoholic" or "Bookish" as you could "Strong".

I hope these are an interesting read. I'd definately echo the thoughts of some of the previous posters -- you may find, after looking through some of the hundreds of RPG systems out there, that someone's already made a system that fits you well. If not, though, you'll be able to inform your design by looking at how other developers have dealt with the same issues.

[TerroX]

I like the skill system idea.

- if the specialist skills cause general skills to become irrelevant, then the specialist skills should have pre-requisit skills. I know this makes picking skills annoying because you have to look them up or something, but if they are listed in a sub-group on the sheet it should be okay - unless you have optional pre-requisit skills then it will get tricky.
e.g.  Creative Writing does require Literacy - even if you suck at spelling you might be a really good writer.

There is no need to tell players they have to pick up X and Y before aquiring Z though (because it feels limiting as a player to hear that), just reverse the idea and tell them that aquiring Z gives basic skill have in X and Y for free (sounds impressive, free stuff) but costs more up front if you don't already have X and Y (aww, we knew there would be a catch).