[CORE] Design intentions, rough system outline

[entropy402]

Hello everyone,  this is my introductory post here after a long time of lurking. I have finally decided, like many others, that I would like to put my own system up for dissection and criticism.  Before I go about throwing out mechanics and asking specific questions, I should probably post my amateur design intentions, goals, and general ramblings.  Please feel completely free to state anything about any of the writing below.  Do not be afraid to pull punches.  I apologize if this post becomes extremely long.

the Rant/Intentions
About three or four years ago, I decided that I would like to create my own role playing system.  It was not that I thought other RPGs were necessarily doing their own individual things wrong, or even that I had any amount of distaste towards the games that I was running and playing in, but that I had things that I wished to show up more in some games, and that I was simply overcome by the idea that I wanted to build something in a hobby that has given me many, many hours of great entertainment.

I wanted to make a system that could be ran generic enough for several genres, focus on the characters and what their various personalities and beliefs led them to do, present mechanics that were smooth enough and supportive of what the group wanted to participate in to put any collective story told by the group at the forefront.  After deciding these things, and throwing a couple ideas for mechanics down in a notebook, I got a hold of two games.  One was Over the Edge, and another was Heroquest.  After reading both of these games I realized that they both contained a lot of material that I wanted to bring up in my own game, and that they also had a great deal of material that I was not so focused in, material that I would rather do away with in my own setting, or put a much less emphasis on.  I spent a lot of time after that, throwing around different mechanics into my game, batting these ideas around with published systems, running endless amounts of tests, and throwing crumpled ball after crumpled ball of unsatisfied attempts at my own game into the trash can, either because I did not like system, or felt that it resembled another too closely.  After taking time off, spending more time in school, reading more and more systems, browsing the Forge and Rpg.net, I decided that I should just create what I want.  Get a design intention and stick to it.  Do not worry about how closely my system looks to another as long as there is something distinct about my own and that it makes me happy.

After all this time, I have concluded that I do indeed want to design a relatively narrative, character-focused game that really focuses on who a character is, and what they believe in.  I am a little "rules agnostic", and dislike having to look up a great deal of information on games while playing, so I hope that my design is rules-lite enough for me.  I typically call this system the "CORE" for Character Oriented Roleplay Engine.  The name is probably already in use by someone else, but this is simply a name that I put in the notebooks and text documents when writing about this game, so I suppose it does not matter.  I am typically bad at coming up with names related to systems and mechanics, so I just go with what comes to mind.  All that stated, I now present the skeleton of my system up for criticism.

The system
There are four things about this system that I want in, one is free-form no-list skills, as I believe it allows for nearly any character idea to be easily implemented, and I love to be able to customize my own characters to the degree of having their own wacky names and specific interpretations on abilities.  The second is dice pools – for whatever reason I love dice pools, and pretty much want to have large sums of d6s sitting in front of each player in game.  The third is that I want to focus on who the character is, their own unique quirks and beliefs that make them who they are.  Where Heroquest has strong ties between characters and their communities, I want to have very strong mechanical ties between the characters and their ideologies and personalities.  The fourth is a distinction between a quick method of task resolution, and a more dramatic resolution method allowing the group to focus on events that they find interesting.  None of this is insanely innovative, but they are all things that I wish to be present in the system.

Remember, this is a very early-stage version of this system, so things are still very bumpy, and some things have terrible names that will hopefully be replaced when I think of something better to call them.  I am also just trying to express the core ideals of the system, to avoid being too long-winded, so somethings may not be fully explained, but I am trying to get the idea across.

Characters have 5 traits that distinguish them.  They have Attributes, which tell them how well they perform at various situations.  Skills which tell them what they know, and what they can perform proficiently.  Contacts being who they know and can especially aid them.  Resources which constitute possessions of note and wealth and status of particular renown.  Qualities which are traits that do not specifically fall in the other categories, being things that make the character different from the others, their beliefs, ideologies, personality quirks, flaws, emotions, prominent physical characteristics, and the like.  In character creation, these 5 traits are assigned priorities, similar to Shadowrun and Riddle of Steel, from A to E.

Each character has four Attributes.  They are Physical, Mental, Social[/b], and Magical/Spiritual.  Each of these do not necessarily define a character in each category, but rather how well they are able to use everything about them to succeed in conflicts related to that Attribute.  So, a character with a very high Physical Attribute is not necessarily tougher, stronger, faster, and more constitute than characters with a lower Physical, but rather that they are able to use what they do possess to overcome Physical Conflicts easier.  In the working stage, Attributes are rated 1-6, with 2 being the human average and 6 being legendary.  Attributes get 16 points to distribute if they are given the A priority, 13 in B, 10 in C, 7 in D, and 4 in E.

Skills are up for interpretation from character to character, and simply tell how well a character is able to do a particular task.  Like everything else in the game, Skills are rated 1-6, with 1 representing an understanding of the task at hand, 2 being trained in it, 3 being accomplished and through most forms of traditional training on the subject, 4 shows prowess in the skill of particular note (that soldier has the best foot-work in his entire legion), 5 representing amazing ability, such as many generals may have in tactic-esque skills, or master-chefs have in cooking, and 6 is epic ability in any skill.  Skills have 40 points to distribute in the A priority, 32 in B, 24 in C, 16 in D, and 8 in E.

Contacts allow for different abilities at different ranks.  They typically have as many helpful abilities as their rank, with their most skillful ability being equal to the Contact's full rank, and each other ability drops down in rank.  So a Contact rated at four typically can help a player with one Skill/Quality/Resource at rank 4, another at 3, another at 2, and another at 1.  One/multiple of those abilities are taken up by how they react to the player character that they are a contact to.  For example, a somewhat helpful, but not really direct ability such as telling the character rumors and street information would take up a Contact's rank 1 ability, while something very useful, such as being a very gung-ho sidekick would take up a Rank 4 ability.  I have detailed Contacts a little more, but the mechanics behind them are nothing innovative, and I think I got the idea across here, so I will leave this alone for a little bit  Contacts have 25 points in A, 20 in B, 15 in C, 10 in D, and 5 in E.

Resources are items of note, and wealth dependent on setting.  Pretty much, an resource will give its rating to the character using it.  So a Pan rated at 4 gives a cook 4 dice when cooking with it.  Typically I write up resources with adjectives/descriptions for each ranking.  So a Sword rated at 3 might be "Sharp, Long, Specifically-crafted for me."  Weapons and Armor give an additional bonus of adding to or subtracting damage in Conflicts, which will be gone over more later.  Resources have 25 points in A, 20 in B, 15 in C, 10 in D, and 5 in E.

And finally, Qualities are everything about a character that does not fit above, from distinct physical descriptions, to intricacies to personality, and fervor of belief  Qualities are rated from 1-6, with Qualities being rated higher for things that the player wishes to specifically focus on in game.  So if he enjoys playing a Paladin-like character who fights demons, taking "Hates evil" at a high level would be a good idea, and allow the the character to do more in situations where evil is being fought.  Qualities also have the disadvantage (or advantage, depending on how you look at it) to hinder the player.  If the example character above has to try to placate demons in order to get something, the Quality could dampen his effectiveness in negotiation, showing his obvious disgust with the creatures and his need to lower himself to their level to get a job done.

Each character also has up to 3 "Focus".  A Focus is something that the player on a metagame level would like to see his character participate in.  It could be something like "Swashbuckling", "Dungeon-Crawling", "Romance", or just about any description that tells the rest of the group and the GM what the player wishes to see in game.  At character creation, each character has three Focus dice to spend.  They can put all three in one Focus, they can have three Foci all rated at 1, and so on.  Focus is able to be spent for a character to change one element of a scene through something like Dramatic Editing.  You want a very community-based urban game?  You can spend one dice in your "Community" focus to say that some of your friends and contacts are also at the situation the GM is describing, with the final say going to the GM of whether this may be edited or not.  You may also spend focus to give another character as many dice to their pool as you have in relevant Qualities.  This is so that other characters are not necessarily penalized by entering into situations that you as the player wish to see happen, just because they were not built to endure them.  Focus refresh at the beginning of every session.

Dice rolling in the system is based off of pools of d6.  A success is a roll of a 5 or a 6.  I have not worked too much with "critical" or "fumble"rules yet, and whenever I run any short scenario or one-shot with this system, I usually say that a critical success is when a player rolls double over what his opponent did if contested, or scores three or more successes than was necessary.  A fumbled roll is when a character fails and there are more than one 1 present.  What you roll and how you calculate pools is dependent on what sort of a contest is being resolved.

The first which I am currently calling Apace Conflicts, is your standard roll-once-to-resolve-a-conflict mechanic that is present to allow the players and GM to gloss over situations with a dangerous or possibility of failure, but not take up too much of the game time away from what the group finds particularly interesting.  To calculate what one rolls in this conflict, each player involved takes an amount of dice equal to their relevant Attribute, plus their relevant skill, and adds any additional dice for Qualities that could pertain to the situation, and any items that assist them with the task (so, prying open a rusted door would call a player to use his Physical Attribute + some sort of lifting skill + any "big size"- or "strongman"-like Qualities + the rating of any crowbar or prying items being used).  Situational modifiers to conflicts work out as a loss or addition of dice.  If it's dark and stormy, remove two dice from the pool, if it is a simple job in a relaxing environment, add two.  So on and so forth.  Once you have resolved how many dice there are in a pool, the player rolls his character's dice, and if there are any successes, he resolves the conflict in the manner that the player wishes to see, using how many total successes he got as a guideline for exactly how well things went.  Same with failures.  If he did not achieve what he was intending to do, count up how many ones are lying around and judge how bad the outcome came about.  These work out to be Margin of Successe and Margin of Failure.  If you are competing against another character in an arm wrestling contest, the amount of successes you achieved over him is your Margin of Success, and his Margin of Failure is how many Successes he needed to tie.  If the character was doing something particularly dangerous, the GM may say that any losing parties has to make a Wounding Roll and achieve as many successes as their Margin of Failure.  I will go over the Wounding mechanic in a little bit.

The second is what I have been calling Dramatic Conflicts.  This works similar to Heroquest's Extended Contests, but I think has a slightly different focus and accounts for the elements that I want to stress in my system.  First, everyone states their character's intentions, be it "shoot that alien with my laser pistol" to "avoid being shot by a laser pistol", to "talk everyone out of settling differences through laser pistols".  The intended action for each character should be broad enough that it seems as if they are working towards an overall goal, but focused enough that you can determine a relevant Attribute and Skill to use in the Conflict.  After intentions have been stated, everyone calculates their dice pool in the same way as Apace Conflicts, your Attribute + Skill + Qualities + Resources.  Multiple Qualities can stack for relevant situations, making that many times characters will be adding just as many dice to their pool in Qualities as they are in Attribute + Skill.  Sometimes certain Qualities are flaws to the character possessing them in certain situations, and advantageous to his opponents.  If an archer is aiming for an ogre character down the hill, the Ogre's Quality of "Huge" is not going to be all that useful.  So this Quality is added to the Archer's pool, rather than the Ogre's.  Once dice pools have been calculated, people begin Betting dice against each other.  This shows competitive action between the characters, and determines how much of their focus, vigor, abilities, and options they are using towards each other in accomplishing their goals.  Whenever someone bets dice against a character, that character must bet at least one dice back, to show that they are at least resisting the action being performed against them, even if it is only recognizing that "I don't want to get hit by this guy's frying pan".  No matter how much dice a character has in a dice pool, they cannot ever roll more than a relevant Attribute + Skill.  So, a character could be trying to help his friend change their car's tire before the zombies come, and has a lot of dice in his pool due to his high Mental Score + his "explain auto parts" Skill coupled with his handy "Fix anything book", but if a zombie lunges for him, and he decides that he is going to try to swerve out of the way, no matter how much dice is in his pool, he can only roll his Physical + Dodge Skill.  How many dice are rolled depends on how severe of an action the character is performing.  Looking at opponents or trying to recognize their capabilities is around 1 dice.  While coming forefront with guns blazing, or debating a topic from top to bottom is an entire Attribute + Skill roll.  Once all actions and reactions have been decided, roll the dice, and count up successes to each of the Bets placed on the table.  Calculate everyone's Margin of Success and Margin of Failure for each bet listed.  After this is done, unless the GM decides otherwise, each character must make a Wounding Roll for each bet lost.

In a Wounding Roll, a character rolls their relevant Attribute + a resistance Skill or Quality.  So, someone getting hit with a sword would probably roll Physical + Healthy Quality, or anything else that the GM and player agrees on to work.  A character must make as many successes with their roll as they had in Margin of Failure, but they may only roll up to how many dice are left in their dice pool after all bets are placed.  If the opponent was using a weapon to special item to wound you, add that weapon's Rank to your Margin of Failure.  If you have any protective armor or gear as resources, subtract that total from your Margin of Failure before rolling.  If you go all out in a brawl with fists swinging, trying to knock your opponent out as soon as possible, you leave yourself wide open if you miss.  You take as many "Wounds" in an Attribute as many successes you needed to achieve to match your Margin of Failure.  Each Attribute has four levels of Wounding, which I am calling "Bumped", "Bruised", "Beaten", and "Broken".  Each time you take one wound in an attribute, you receive an additional -1 dice penalty to all rolls (so, someone who has taken up to Beaten in Physical, and Bumped Social is taking -4 dice to any pools until the individual wounds are "healed").  This shows that if you are physically harmed, you are going to have a harder time conducting research or intellectual arguments, social debates and confrontations, and movements necessary for magical abilities.  Same with any wound in any of those other situations.  If you are frustrated because someone insulted your family honor, you are going to have a harder time acting precisely in physical situations, with clear thought in conflicts that require a deal of thinking, or the open-mindedness needed for magic.  Wounds represent short-comings, loss of options in conflicts, frustration, realizations of weakness, physical injuries, and so forth.  If you wound in any Attribute beyond "Broken", the character who assigns you that final wound gets to describe what happens to you in relevance to the wound that you have taken, and you may no longer attempt any action relevant to that Attribute.  So if you go beyond "Broken" in Social, you are just too frustrated to be able to interact with others in a cordial manner, but too unfocused to be able to debate anything on a social level.

After Wound Rolls have been made, everyone fully describes the events based off of the results shown on the dice and in the Wound Rolls, and then everyone collects their dice.  Each character involved gets all dice back from bets that they have won, and an amount of dice Bet against them by opponents who lost those bets.  Characters who lost Bets do not receive the dice that they bet back.  Characters then reevaluate what they want to do, and determine if they lose or gain anymore dice.  The amounts added to a pool from Attribute + Skill does not change, showing that if you start off in a favorable/unfavorable situation, other characters are going to have to deal with that for the rest of the Conflict.  However, Qualities and Resources can change from intention to intention.  If you pull out brass knuckles during a verbal argument, you continue to use your Social + Bull skill as the base for your dice pool, but now you also get to add brass knuckles' rank to your pool.  If your character goes from trying to talk things between two people, and you are using your "Hate war, love peace" Quality, those dice are subtracted from you pool if you realize that you are going to have to resort to violence to solve things.  Characters continue to declare intention, place bets, roll for Wounding, and redeclare until all the players and the GM agree that the Conflict has been resolved.

I really must cut this short, so I will stop describing the system with that.  There is more to it, but I think that this (hopefully) gets the ideas across.

Again, what I am trying to do is create a relatively Narrative system that focuses on who characters are, and what they believe in, and what impact that has to a story.  I want mechanics that allow for players to support the various shticks and desires that the character wants to participate in and achieve.  I would like the system to be generic, so that I can use it to run any game that I do not have another system in mind for.

So out of all of this rambling I should ask a few questions.

1)Does the core mechanics look sound?  I know I glossed over everything quickly, and left a lot out, but are you able to get a grasp for what I am trying to do?

2)Is it distinct in the fact that I want Qualities to help out greatly in Dramatic Conflicts, showing that in the system, fighting for your beliefs, and supporting your quirks is more important than having to go to so-and-so to train to become a great swordsman, on a mechanical level?

3)Any suggestions to what I am trying to do?  This system, although I have worked on it off and on for sometime due to school and work, is still relatively in its baby stages, and just getting to its feet.  I run games here and there under it, but have not really done a lot of work outside of writing.

4)Is the model I am aiming for even worth it?  I am very excited about the things that I have done, even though it obviously has a great deal of faults, and almost all of the seams are still showing, but is what I am trying to do done better by someone else that I should just take the time to really focus on adapt my ideas into that other system's model?  I love to create, and as I have said, I am very proud with what I have done so far, despite its flaws, but would it just be easier for me to look at another system, fit my thought process to that, and focus on contributing to that system's community?

Again, sorry for such the long post.  Thank you for taking the time to read any amount of it, and thank you for any comments that you may have.