[Resurrection]A more traditional modern-day RPG with a twist

[WonderLlama]

I have been working on Resurrection off and on for about 5 years now.  The system is fairly close to complete, although I am still tweaking quite a few things, and am always looking for better ways to do things.  This isn't the first game I've designed, but it is the first full-fledged RPG.  I had actually typed up about 45 pages worth of book at one point, which didn't even cover any of the campaign world, but I was very dissatisfied with most of the prose, and also make a few very significant alterations to the system since then.

I introduced myself in a post about a Reservoir Dogs-inspired game.  I still intend to submit a version of that for review fairly soon; it's nearly done.  

Resurrection is more long-term.  I probably won't have it done until I take some serious time off from work or retire, probably in 1-3 years.

This is not a revolutionary game.  It is a game along the lines of a D&D or a Rifts; it is combat centric with characters that become more powerful and work together for the good of the group more often than not.  It has a gamemaster who more or less has absolute power.  This is not an attempt to change the concept of what an RPG is.  It is an attempt to combine some of the things that have made for some of the most enjoyable games I have ever seen in the genre and remove some of the more glaring problems.

Here are the important things I am trying to accomplish (that I can think of at the moment):
1- The players are trying to succeed at their own goals, drawing them into the gameworld only because of their need to use it to succeed.
2- Making a character should be interesting.  Characters should have flashy interesting powers that do neat things, and should be able to be better than one another in areas.
3- Making a character should be (partially) a gamist exercise.  You should actively be considering what steps make you more and less powerful.  There are wrong decisions.
4- Characters do not need to be balanced per se.  But making a character should not be a solvable exercise.  Given any character, it should be possible to create another character that is measurably better in some significant area.  Unless you really screw up, you should never feel that your character's abilities are totally overshadowed by the rest of the group.
5- The game should have a lot of combat.  You should be able to have your character try to do anything you like, but the game should make you voluntarily want to try combat much of the time.  Combat is fun.
6- The players should be able to freelance.  If today, I don't want to follow the adventure, I should be able to go rob a bank, start a soup kitchen, or conquer Mars.
7- The GM should be able to write adventures.  Freelancing is fun, but at some point, you want to try something prepared or it just gets silly.
8- When players are coerced, it should make sense in the game world.  The players shouldn't decide to go along with the adventure to make the GM happy or even to have fun.  They should do it either because their character really might want to, or because some in game world feature makes them.
9- Player coercion should be kept within very well defined limits.  If I can't decide what my character is doing, there is a reason that I can discover and possibly circumvent in the future.
10- The players should be a team.  They can have clashing personalities, different goals, and even fight amongst each other, but when it counts, they should work together.  And it should make sense, not just be arbitrary.
11- Characters should usually stick along for a long time.  A player should be able to get to know a character well enough to be excited about coming to play it.
12- Characters should advance.  Players should get to make gamist decisions about the evolution of their character.  The decisions should be interesting.  Many people find this indescribably fun.
13- The game should use a system I like.  For reference, I hate the d20 system.  But it does have to be a system with interesting tactical combat, preferably one in which minis can be used to enhance the game.
14- The game should have a rich game world that is interesting to interact with in its own right.
15- The game should be exciting.
16- The game should move quickly.
17- The game should introduce moral choices without judging the results.
18- The GM shouldn't have to cheat.  The game world should largely be unbreakable enough that there is no incentive to fudge dice.


Those are the goals.  Here are the broad features I have envisioned to meet those goals.  At this point, they are unlikely to change unless something really spectacular comes along, but at least in theory they could change, unlike the above.  I'll go into more detail on most of this later, and on request, but in broad strokes:

- The game is set in something very much like the modern-day real world.  The GM and players have some idea how difficult things are in the real world, helping to ad hoc difficulties for various actions.  The players can decide to drive down the road unexpectedly, and the GM just needs to pull out a road map to figure out where they get.  Plus the GM can describe a restaurant he's been to better than one he just made up on the spot.  This helps immensely with goals 6 and 16.
- Combat will usually be very deadly. It will be possible to beat somebody in a large number of different ways.  Even if you're a much better fighter than I am, I might get the drop on you and win.  And there will be a lot of character devoted to doing that in various ways.  And also, characters must find themselves needing to fight in different ways.  This helps with goals 4, 5, 13, and 15.
- Characters will readily come back from the dead.  Ok, that is largely the premise of the game.  It also helps with 11 and 18.
- There will be an in game world system under which the character are influenced heavily and sometimes even very briefly controlled.  I have the details of this worked out, although I don't want to go into them here.  I think this largely addresses 7, 8, 9, and 14.  7 because the GM can give the players a very good reason to choose to do the adventures.  Also, because if they decide they don't want to live with this compulsion anymore, the GM can come up with good adventures dealing with this pursuit.  8 and 9, because there are actual rules for when the GM can use these techniques, how the players can resist, and even how the players can twist the system against NPCs or each other.  Also, since characters usually don't stay dead, and the GM has equipment to make most stuff up on the fly, this system actually should give players freedom to muck up just about whatever they want without worrying about breaking the world.  14 because this is an interesting system to explore.  I suggest the players play once without knowing the details of the game world, and learn as their characters do.  After that with new characters, they know everything, but they remember the learning process and have a better idea what their characters might be going through.
- The characters are involuntary contestants on a sort of game-show (named Resurrection).  They could be just about anybody (although naturally the game show picks people who are interesting) prior to the game show.  This touches 2 because it makes sense that characters would be interesting, as well as just about anything the player wants the character to be.  5, because it's a violent game show.  7 because the adventures are usually contests in the show.  10, because they're a team on the show.  But they learn that in game, so they aren't necessarily friends.  Just teammates by necessity.  8 because the entities doing the coercion have a motive.  14.  15.  17 because the game show will sometimes ask the players to do bad things.  They don't have to do them, and the consequences one way or the other should be limited to what makes sense.
- The system will be dice/difficulty/modifier based.  There will be a small number of possible difficulties which will have a large impact on the success of an action.  These difficulties should be easy to pick because there aren't many of them, and they are based entirely on what level of training a person should have to normally be undertaking that action.  That should help with 6 and 16, because the game can quickly adapt to any random thing players might try to do.  Modifiers will be less significant, but fine tune the odds of success a bit; hopefully it won't matter if they get screwed up a bit.  The game will give players a number of d20s each round (currently 4) to spend on various actions, representing concentration.  I hope that will prove an interesting tactical decision as well as being fairly intuitive (and addressing 13).
- Characters will get a few big flashy advantage style traits, some attributes, and skills.  They will depend on each other a bit for coherence, but be purchased separately, with some one-way exchanges possible.  I'm hoping the system I have makes for exciting characters that have non-overlapping strengths and weaknesses.  Also, any broad category you can invest in should be exploitable if you don't. 2, 3, 4, 5.  This is probably the most mutable remaining area.
- Characters will advance.  I intend to use a small scale XP point system.  XP will be used to slowly advance skills.  Also, characters will get smaller advantage-like bonuses over time.  This is intended to give players some power to look forward to and keep their characters from getting stale, since they are long-term.  Not so much as rewards.  XP will be given out steadily and as a reward for certain in-game successes, as well as to a lesser degree for being entertaining.  Advantages will be given out based on character actions only, and players should be eligible for them at the same rate.  All this is done by the GM alone. 11, 12.



I haven't really been able to categorize my RPG desires in GNS terms.  I roleplay to solve problems detached from the real world through the perspective of someone different from myself.  Perhaps more of a gamist bent, but I more like seeing how a totally different me attacks interesting problems, succeed or fail.  That, and I like laughing a lot.

My goals are largely intended to combine the very best experiences I've had in roleplaying.  Probably my favorite campaign ever was a Nightspawn campaign run by one of my friends.  Strange, because I hate that system, and am lukewarm on the setting, although I do like the characters.  It was the way he ran it.  

There were things going on in the world that we could interact with.  And some darned good adventures.  But mostly we went wherever we wanted in several planes causing all sorts of random havoc, sometimes helping each other, sometimes entirely separate from each other, and sometimes against each other.  And it didn't always make sense, but the GM always had something interesting available whatever we did.

I have had a couple of playtests with my usual group of players.  The game is largely targeted at catering to their kind of desires, after all.  To my surprise, they all really like playing even the first draft, and I think I was the harshest critic of how it turned out.  Mostly, I thought the characters were too bland, and a few parts of combat were too slow.  But overall, this game has been good enough to go for a couple years now.  I'm still tweaking it because I'd like it to be better than good enough.  I've tweaked the basic system a little bit, and the character creation system a lot since then.

Before going into specifics, my first questions.  Do you see why some people would like each of my primary objectives?  Are there glaring gaps between my features and goals?  Can you think of features that seem blindingly obviously better to meet my goals?  Is any of that really unclear, so that you would like

clarification?

I will address more detail on the system, setting, and characters in separate posts so that it will be easier to direct followups to the proper section.

[WonderLlama]

System
Players generally announce what their characters are trying to do.  Sometimes, mechanics aren't needed, like when they are just talking.  When they are, players allocate dice from their pool to each thing they are trying.  Some actions are automatic, like moving, and don't require a roll, but you still allocate the dice out of the pool.  Most actions require rolling.  Sometimes you will allocate dice on an as needed basis, rather than all up-front, when time is very critical, like in combat.  Dice are restored at the end of every round for actions that are finished.  A round is however long the shortest action being taken is.  So if you're doing something that takes 10 minutes with 2 of your dice, and rounds are 5 seconds, you aren't going to be seeing those dice for quite a while unless you abandon your action.

When you roll dice to determine success, you need to determine 4 things.
How many dice?  Usually the number you allocated, but sometimes for actions you could undertake without real concentration, like staying on your feet when pushed, you get free dice.  
What's your skill?  Skills are important.  Note your skill in the action undertaken, which will range from 0-6.  If skills just don't apply to this action, everyone has 0.
What's the difficulty?  It should be the same as the level of skill that a person would normally need to undertake that action.  Some actions shouldn't be undertaken by anyone and have a difficulty of more than 6.
What are the modifiers?  Usually one or more attributes apply, and are modifiers.  Attributes usually range from -5 to 5.  There may also be the usual RPG situational modifiers, usually on the order of -3 to +3.

You subtract your skill from the difficulty, and look the result up on a table to get the target.  It's the same table for absolutely all rolls.  If skill matches difficulty, you will be rolling so that you would succeed about 50% of the time with 2 dice (the number then depends on the final system).  The targets get harder or easier depending on the difference, and will become truly automatic or impossible at about the +/- 3 mark.  Roll your dice, take the highest, add the modifier, compare to the target.  If you would have succeeded at a higher difficulty, you have a higher level of success.  If you would have failed even at a lower difficulty, you have a level of failure.  (I am playing with the idea of adding the two highest dice, inspired by TSoY, but that will require some retweaking and testing to see if it fits.  But I like the effect it can have on the pattern of variance.)  Not terribly complex, but not D&D simple either.

There are opposed rolls and endurance rolls too.  I have systems I like for them.  I've read Mike's standard rants, but the math in the opposed roll one doesn't apply to this system.  And I can't think of a better way to pull in the level of concentration opposed contestants are using.

Combat is important to this game.  Combat won't so much use special rules as more rigid types of rolls required and specific difficulties.  For example, you will normally start combat with realization roles to pop yourself into combat mode and awareness roles to determine the situation.  And generally, you will know how hard it is to hit someone, what benefit you get for holding back dodge dice for the round, and how much movement a die will buy you.  The main special rule is, as usual, damage.  The game has a two part damage system.  One for hit points that represent general, short-term damage, that might knock you out, but will generally heal.  The other for area specific, structural damage, that can impair you in specific ways or kill you, and won't heal within the scope of the game (barring special, but not necessarily uncommon circumstances).

Some of the more important details of combat: If you hit, you don't need to make any further rolls to do damage, you've already announced what part of the target you'd like to hit, and the degree of success in your attack is the only random factor in damage.  You can avoid being hit either by preemptively taking some sort of evasive action, or by reactively defending yourself.  For the former, you pay dice at the beginning of the round and increase the difficulty of attacks against you.  For the latter, you need to be aware of the attack, and make a check out of turn yourself to avoid being hit with your remaining dice.  You can borrow dice from your next round for this kind of reactive check.  It tends to be a little bit more effective, but only against a single attack.  You can generally move and take an action as part of the same turn, but must pay dice separately.  You can set aside dice to use to interrupt other people, but you won't be guaranteed success.  You generally don't get a lot of information about what's going on in combat unless you spend a die to look around.

When it matters, players and NPCs will act in a generally nonrandom order based on an attribute, and sometimes a characteristic.  It keeps things moving better if people always know when it's their turn.

That's the basic idea.  There are a few bits that behave a little differently, but generally very close to the same system.  Much of the system section is devoted to examples to help the GM set difficulties.  The GM will be setting the difficulties, although player suggestions should be welcome as long as the game doesn't get bogged down.  Much of the game is the way it is to make setting difficulties as intuitive as possible.

Is that clear?  Need more details on anything?  Does it sound like a fun system?  Any conflict you see between this system and my goals?  Or just suggestions?