A System of My Own

[Ben O'Neal]

Hey peoples. i originally made the mistake of posting this at dragonsfoot, only to find that most people there are heavily 1e biased, but someone suggested here would be a good place to present my system, and having looked around a bit, i reckon this place will suit me nicely :D

ok, so i'm developing a system *shock horror*. it's based somewhat heavily off 3e D&D, but with some rather significant alterations. i've had a bit of a geez at the guidelines for presenting ideas, but i'm not sure if i'll do very well sticking to them. my basic idea was to create a system that was different to D&D, and played more realistically, with a greater sense of danger no matter how high your level gets, and a system that played like a novel, not a game. i wanted to be able to recreate the tactics and caution in novels, and never lose the fear of death in my players. from the first three adventures i've run to test it, with players who are veterans and advocates of AD&D, the results are pleasing. my players have quickly learnt to be very tactical in their approach to combat situations, managing to come up with all sorts of impressive and dramatic ways to kill opponents or get out of tricky situations. when a single arrow can drastically increase your chance for death, characters run for cover from a lone archer in the woods, rather than charge him, my cleric learnt that in the first adventure. ok, so here is a summary of some of the most significant changes (IMO) from D&D.

no hit points. damage is dealt realistically to target body parts, and depending on the severity of the damage, carries penalties to attributes (like making you significantly weaker and slower). this also means that an arrow to the head can be as lethal to a 20th level sorcerer as it is to a 1st level thief. five types of damage: subdual, light, moderate, mortal, and fatal.

without damage, weapons modify power and speed, through the logic of size and weight (and edge and quality), usually by providing a penalty to speed and a bonus to power. speed = better defense and offence, power = break through armor and cause damage. of course there are many cool ways to boost your weapons modifiers, and i'm considering implementing a system of wear and tear, so that without proper maintenance, use eventually lowers the modifiers. should i add this?

no level specific progression (base attack bonuses and saves don't exist). There are still levels, but each level you get a certain number of attribute points to distribute as you see fit determined by your class. if you neglect an attribute, it will be as weak when you are level 20 as it was when you were level 1.

combat is broken down to actual duelling. instead of having an AC that includes your moving and parrying, your AC is simply your hardness (and the hardness of your armor). You can raise your AC by spending points on Constitution, wearing armor, magic etc. to prevent someone from hitting you requires opposed speed checks, and the degrees of difference between your roll to thiers determines different effects, like gaining the upper hand and such. to deal damage, duellers both roll speed, winner rolls power, power breaks through armor. players make a maximum of two rolls per attack (one if ranged).

also, combat is simultaneous. it still runs through turns, but there is no initiative, and when someone attacks, someone defends. it might seem complicated or difficult to manage but i assure you it works very smoothly and quickly, and the result is very effective i think.

there are 8 attributes; Power, Constitution, Speed, Agility, Crystal, Fluid, Beauty, Influence. Crystal is like memory and learning capacity (kinda equivalent to wisdom), and fluid is analyitical and mental prowess (like D&D intelligence). there are no base saves like will, fortitude or reflex, instead, you use the logical attribute, and reflex saves can be made with either speed (small movements of hands and such) or agility (large movements).

spellcasters are born, not made. to make a spellcasting character requires two d20 rolls, the first to see if you can become a magician (rolls of 17, 18, 19) or a sorcerer (20, extra bonuses), and the second roll determines your potential in magic, by limiting the level you can attain in spellcasting. you can still take levels in spellcasting after you've reached that limit, but can't reach higher spell levels or access feats specific to higher levels. these restrictions are here because "real" magic is very powerful.

there are no spells per day, and no preperation of spells. instead, casters can cast anything they know whenever they want, but have a mental capacity in the form of spell slots. every spell uses up a certain number of these slots to cast, and many spells can be maintained, and so use up a certain number every round they are maintained. when you have used up all your spell slots, you can't cast any more spells until the next round, when your spell slots empty again (unless you are maintaining spells). this isn't really an issue until a caster can cast more than once per round, like when they gain the ability to cast simply with hand movements, and then later on by thought alone. sounds far more complicted than it is.

clerics spells also work differently. they have faith slots, which are almost analogous to spells per day, but do not require preparation. instead, their spells are contained within spell stones, that they must be in contact with in order to use. divine spells cannot be countered by anyone, because the spells come from the deity, not the cleric (clerics seldom have any casting abilities themselves, they merely focus their gods will), and if the deity says a spell is cast, that spell is cast dammit! they can be dispelled though. also, because clerics simply need to will a spell to be cast, they can make a concentration check and cast a spell while performing any other action (such as crunching someones skull with a mace).

also, the feat "Turn Undead" no longer means turn away undead, it now means turn undead. i.e. clerics can become undead creatures, gaining all the benefits associated with that (like regeneration and immunity to coup de grace and fatal damage). basically, every class now has something that really gives it a huge edge in a particular area. of course, being undead has its drawbacks.

there are 6 races: humans, elves, dwarves, kerasai, sargn, and orcs. and each race has a unique twist of my own design, such as elves having tails and ears like cats and not taking falling damage, and dwarves abilities to sense direction so they never get lost and never fatiguing. the kerasai are a serpent-like people, who are 3 times more likely to become spellcsaters, but are physically weaker, and the sargn are a lizard-like people, being large and very tough, but having almost no magic.

the classes i have finished so far are spellcasters, clerics, fighters, monks, and thieves. and i am working on rangers, barbarians and psionics. i have also finished druids, but they are a template like vampires, not a class, and are very powerful (if anyone has seen vampire hunter D, think the green chick with the hair, and then some).

actually, i could go on for a long time with the differences, like fighters having different schools of fighting they can train in to learn various useful techniques, thieves abilities to learn and concot poisons and explosives of all sorts, monks incredible finesse at unarmed combat and their ability to expend ki to achieve various effects like breaking caught weapons and armor and healing themselves and walking on walls.

but anyways, its been suggested that i post my system online so people can give me feedback or try it themsleves, so here i am. if anyone is interested click the link below for a zip containing all of what i have so far (monsters, classes, races, templates, game info, magic items, spells, weapons and armor etc.). also i am open to any suggestions about how to make rangers cooler than just archers who can fight with two weapons, like by giving them something to work towards (like fighters with their fighting schools and casters with their spells). any other ideas are also welcome, as are criticisms. sometimes its better to know whats bad than whats good. oh and also as i asked earlier what do you guys think of weapons requiring maintenance?

so now the dreaded stupid question... does anyone see potential in these ideas all in one system? or does this system sound as "meh" as everyone at dragonsfoot thought it was? if you'd like a "setting" for a system like this i'd be happy to describe my VISION! but this post is long enough!

http://home.ripway.com/2004-2/66933/RPG.zip
(sorry my post was so long! there's too much to say!)

[Paganini]

My friend, the game you want is called "The Riddle of Steel." It has a forum here. You can find out more:

http://www.theriddleofsteel.net

[Ben O'Neal]

My friend, the game you want is called "The Riddle of Steel." It has a forum here. You can find out more:

http://www.theriddleofsteel.net

having just downloaded and read the quickstart guide thingy for riddle of steel i can safely say that i'm after something a little... no a lot simpler and faster to play. like 1d20 for practically everything. besides actual combat being simpler and faster, my damage determination is also simpler and faster. here is an example:

fighter swings at an enemies chest: rolls 1d20 and adds speed modifier (attribute mod + weapon mod). let's say he gets 13+4=17
at the same time GM rolls for enemy to defend itself, using exactly the same roll. let's say he gets 8+6=14
i look at my little table, and see that a speed difference of 3 lets the fighter attempt to damage the enemy, but he has to go through his sword too. enemy has an AC of say 14 (Base=10, Armor=4), and his longsword has an AC of 5 (also it's Power mod), so the fighter needs to roll power greater than 19 to damage his enemy.
so fighter rolls power: 1d20 and adds power modifier (attribute mod + weapon mod), let's say he rolls 9+11=20
so i look at my damage table and see that a power roll +1 higher than the AC deals a light wound (inconsequential in small numbers, but can add up to deal penalties).

so we have the player rolling a d20 twice, and the GM rolling a d20 once and looking at two simple tables. simultaneous fast efficient non-hit point damage. in my eyes my system might sit somewhere between D&D and this Riddle of Steel in terms of simplicity and what-you-get-out-of-it. no more rolls than D&D, as fast as RoS (or faster maybe).

my as-yet-to-be-named system isn't as simple as D&Ds REF/FORT/WILL save system, but only uses 8 attributes for everything (modified of course for specifics such as skills and items and all that), so never reaches the complexity of RoS. Perhaps that is a weakness, by taking a middle ground, but i personally prefer the compromise.

[Mark Johnson]

Ravien,

I wait for someone else to bring this up but have you read this or this?

I found it interesting that elves ended up being your cat people since many Fantasy Heartbreakers contain either new takes on elves or cat people.  You just managed to kill two birds with one stone.

I thought that making "turn undead" actually allowed the cleric to turn into an undead creature was (intentionally) hilarious.  That sounds like you turned a classic newbie misreading of AD&D into a feature of play.  Kudos.

Your version of 3E sounds like a perfectly acceptable homebrew.  It probably works great for you and your game group, but I don't see why anyone else would play it.  After all 3.5 edition is still going strong and anyone who is unhappy with it, would probably pick a totally different type of game rather than a clone with less support materials.  I would be happy to be proved wrong on this though.

Tell us more about the setting, my feeling though is that if you have a great D&Dish setting, you might as well publish it D20 or at least a more compatible OGL version since your design is really not that different.

Another approach would be to remove all D&Disms, but I am not sure what you would have left.  Some of your attribute names were... interesting (crystal? fluid?)  Maybe an RPG about non-carbon based alien life forms.  

Thanks,
Mark

[montag]

Some of your attribute names were... interesting (crystal? fluid?)  Maybe an RPG about non-carbon based alien life forms.

OT: Actually the distinction into crystallized and fluid intelligence stems from the works of Cattel, a psychologist. Basically, crystallized intelligence is wisdom, knowledge, and fluid intelligence is smarts, problem solving, reasoning. The distinction is particularly useful to explain why older people score lower in IQ-Tests. As you may guess, fluid intelligence declines – mostly a speed issue though – whereas crystalized intelligence increases over the life span.
It's nice to see it implemented directly in an RPG. I'm still waiting for the emotional intelligence attribute.

[Mark Johnson]

My mention of fluid and crystal was more of an attempt at the sort of literalism that the author established with his take on "turn undead."   In all honesty, these traits look fairly decent if you were to play angels or some sort supernatural agent.  The ancient lords posses great crystal, but low fluid; yet the young disciples have tremendous fluid.  Others have enormous power or beauty.  Attribute names do quite a bit to establish the feel of the game, you might as well use it toward the advantage of play.

[Ben O'Neal]

omg, this is awesome! actual replies that are on-topic... and intelligent ones to boot! i'm in ecstasy!

@montag: yes you are right about crystal and fluid, and my sources for the names. i'm actually a 4th year psychology student, so i thought that i'd use terms that i thought were apt and original (in the RPG world).

@mark johnson: no i haven't read those links, but i am doing so now, between sentences of this reply. ok, i've just now finished reading your first link (the first heartbreakers one), and i'm resisting the ego-oriented urge to get all defensive and try to "prove" why "my system is sooo not like that!", which would be infantile and futile. so i'll now read the second link :D ok done. i noticed that in the lists of games that guy mentioned, and from my own experience in reading about RPG's, simultaneous combat has not been done. also, other "realistic" damage systems seem way more complex than mine, certainly for the GM, but also for the players, and i feel mine is easy as piss for the players, and only slightly complex for the GM (if three basic tables is complex).

i admit though, that i am only 22, and have only been roleplaying now for about a year, and have only been making my system for the last two months, but i've never heard of any other system that usues simultaneous-yet-turn based combat. and i only use rounds to measure time and determine if a character with more actions-per-round can get a free hit on you when you run out of actions that round. but i admit, my magic system is, like all others, entirely re-vamped, with the standard unique twist that all heartbreakers must have. character creation follows a random bell-curve because i see that as the closest approximation to real life creation i can imagine (ie: we aren't born with the ability to customise ourselves, unfortunately), although i do let players swap two of their scores for the purposes of meeting class requirements (every class has requirements). but i'm starting to really understand how intimately related setting and mechanic really are, especially considering my system would probably make a traditional D&D world impossible. this will become apparent as i tell you my envisioned setting (warning, this post has the potential to be rather long from here on :D).

ok, first off, my motivations for this system (which i am considering calling something like "Eclipse") were a: D&D magic users are pussy as hell; b: i love the worlds of Raymond E Feist, Robert Jordan, and to a lesser extent Robin Hobb; c: the card game Magic: The Gathering has a lot of really cool concepts and creatures, of which most are impossible to implement, but some do work (like weapons that get better the more they hit, creatures that grow from the death of those around them); d: Final Fantasy 7 has a lot of really cool stuff in it; e: in melee, if i want to hit someone in the head (or nuts), i want a difference than if i instead decided to step on their toe; f: i wanted a world where the most dominant races were dominant for a plausible reason, so humans and elves are dominant because they can become more powerful than any other creature, including dragons (i've always wondered how the hell a handful of elf wizards defeated millions of uber-powerful dragons in D&D worlds).

the reason i based my system off 3e, is because i know 3e better than i do any other system, that is to say, i don't really know many other systems, cos i've only been playing for about a year. also, my friends are into D&D, so i wanted a system that they could slip into quickly and easily, without many new terms or strange and radical changes to HOW they play (ie: 1d20 is the basis, skills lists, spell lists, equipment, attributes, and even alignment, though i want to drop that part when i figure out a way to have spells and enchantments target certain types of people without using the alignment labels).

so now finally to my setting vision. when thinking about a world of arcane power and deities that actually interact with the world (i don't want to spark a religious debate), and knowing what i have learnt in psychology, and knowing what i know of humans in our history and modern world, i cannot believe a world such as that in traditional D&D. instead, i can believe the world of jordan, with aes sedai seeking out those who can channel, and whisking them away for training, keeping strict ties on those who can, and only releasing those with no real potential hesitantly, and also the worlds of feist, where when magic is weak and incredible rare, it is feared and misunderstood (as on midkemia), but when magic is powerful and also somewhat rare, it is respected and revered, highly organised, and as with jordans world, those who can use magic are whisked away to be trained to their fullest potential and to become part of a single organisation (as on kelewan). as for divine magic, the reason my clerics cannot cast spells themselves is because if they could, they would be spellcasters (which is also why you can't take spellcaster as a second class, it requires inherent potential and many years of training, like monks). so instead their spells come from their gods, in the form of spell stones. in my setting clerics belong to orders, and most orders have temples in most towns. temples give clerics orders, use them as spies, use them to gather information about the world, and to influence the world in the orders favour, use them for defense of their causes, and all that stuff. notice i said the ORDERS favour, not the deities. there is an important difference, and because of the nature of my deities, sometimes it's hard to know what will please or upset a deity, this is because my 8 deites are as follows: order, chaos (uber-deities), life, death, peace, war, air+water+winter+autumn, and fire+earth+summer+spring. clerics seldom simply adventure for adventuring's sake, and always report to their temples. thieves belong to highly organised and secretive guilds, who punish failure and disobedience with death. fighters also usually belong to some group or another, be they militia, bashers in thieves guilds, knights, mercenaries, etc. monks have their orders and temples too, and it is their incredible discipline and honour that adheres them to their orders. rangers are really the only class that is condusive to adventuring in the classical sense, being mostly loners and scouts, but even they are often under the commision of a local duke or whatever.

so in terms of class, my players are always aware of their place in the world, and their responsibilities and consequences of their actions. my current group consists of a necromancer, a cleric of semheran (goddess of air+water+winter+spring), and a thief. so far, my thief has failed a task set him by his guild, and is marked with a blackened hand ("the mark") so that other thieves will kill him on sight, my cleric never forgets to report to her temples, who are using her to discover about a plot to kill the prince (which my thief was invloved in), and my necromancer let her former master die before she was officially graduated, and didn't bury his body or put him to Rest (without being put to Rest, its possible for some dead to remain as ghosts or reanimate their bodies), so she now has haunted dreams and must return to The Academy for graduation and seek to Rest her former master. i've only run three sittings so far that have spanned two Chapters (my name for adventures, because it makes more sense to me), and i'm pleased with how integrated with their world my players are. of course, this could be achieved simply through GMing, but i think that the way i have made my classes, and the fact that death comes quickly to those without a battle plan also plays a large role.

my setting is a world that is organised, and at the height of it's power. there are no ancient ruins holding powerful magic artifacts that cannot be made anymore, because "modern" magic can make everything. the academy uses magic items as currency, and keeps supply low so as to keep value high, trading them for all the services and supplies they need. the kingdom has been torn by war, and has so far lost half it's land to an army of orcs and keresai (powerful sorcerers), and whilst the academy could destroy the orc army in one swoop, it stays its hand because of an agreement with the keresai enemy not to weild magic in this war because both sides understand the terrible destruction that would be wrought, rending the land a scorched waste. so instead the kingdom and academy negotiate with the invaders whilst holding two choke points as their last real defence. what they don't realise is that the invaders are not invading for land or power, but are running from a terrible menace, in the form of a vampire lord who has an artifact which blocks out the sun in a sphere radiating from it, and this sphere grows each day, slowly increasing the area of safety for the ever-increasing vampire army within, and of course, vampires are incredibly powerful at night. the vampire lord obtained this artifact from a group called the Sakrumar, who are those who follow the nameless god of chaos. the Sakrumar are basically the universal enemy in this world, just as the nameless god of chaos is the universal enemy for the other gods. they seek to bring destruction to all, and free their deity from the prison which the other gods hold around him. and so far my group has found the closest thing to a dungeon in my world (besides maybe sewers), and that is a newly made hidden underground empty barracks with a portal, which leads to another portal, which they don't know is the fortress of the Sakrumar, who are building these hidden barracks in a few places, and planning to fill them with soldiers, who will strike at the kingdoms defenses from behind only to dissapear back underground. of course, a lot of this is really my current campaign, and not a general setting, but things like the Sakrumar, The Academy, clerical Orders, Kingdoms, and the races are.

i see "adventuring parties" like those in my favourite novels; as pawns of greater games, who don't follow because of the promise of treasure and powerful rewards, but because they live in a world that is bigger than them, and just like we modern humans don't just do whatever the hell we want at any given moment, neither will they. i want melee duels, where weak opponents are slayed quickly, and even opponents are faught with in epic battles, only really won through luck, and at higher levels, because of the size of the modifiers achievable, luck becomes only a small part, leading to truly challenging duels. i also see mages duelling with other mages, by each one struggling with the other to cast or counter through opposed skill checks, or by simpy shielding the other from magic entirely, as they struggle to break free and reach the weave again. clerics must be tactical with their casting, as any two spells from different deities negate each other, and spells from opposite deites completely annihilate everything within a sphere of where they were cast, adding a neat tactical way to kill someone, but also making you cautious of where you cast. thieves can use poison to kill with a simple scratch, or explosives to kill many from afar, whilst fighters can pull off various techniques, designed to increase their offence, their defense, or improve themselves through meditation. this is starting to sound like flavour text, sorry, i sometimes get carried away :D also this post is really long.

i hope this has given you some idea about the setting or why someone might want to use my system at all. if it hasn't, forgive me, i'm a total newbie here and i've only read topics on the first page, and few of them speak of "setting". but like i said before, i've only been working on this for two months now, and most of what i've made has been to keep up with my campaign. so i'm totally open to new ideas or suggestions on how to make this not a heartbreaker. i personally think i've pretty much torn the original 3e to shreds, really only keeping the fact that it uses a d20, classes, levels, skills, and feats, but even changing all of them to varying degrees, like not limiting how many points you spend on skills (i figure it just means you've focused your life in one or a few skills instead of many), having requirements for every class, and doing my best to make them from scratch, only using levels to measure when you gain class-based improvements, and to increase ranges/durations of spells, and rewriting all feats to suit my needs, dropping heaps, making more, limiting most to certain classes and levels, all that. but whilst i've made tons of changes, i also want my system to feel intuitive and familiar to anyone who plays it. but as i said, all suggestions are welcome to make this not a "fantasy heartbreaker".

i've read that people who post topics here should disclose what they plan on doing with their systems once completed, and i plan to (if anyone is interested of course) release my system for free, probably as a pdf, possibly with artwork done by me (i am also an artist, though i mostly draw), depending on how much time i can devote to this now that uni is starting again soon. ultimately, i just want this system to be as cool, intuitive and easy as i can make it, so that me and my friends can worry about epic campaigns and strong character development without too much looking at rules and with a minimal of arithmetic, and if i achieve this, and no-one else cares a toss about my sytem, it won't bother me. but if someone else tries my system and thinks it's great, that's the perfect icing on the cake. i'm not worried about selling this, i make money from graphic design, and i'm not competing against all the other established systems out there.

[Mark Johnson]

Ravien,

I am glad you took the suggestions in the spirit in which they were intended.  Game design is a lot of work and I know you mainly intend it for use with your group, but if you are going to release it to the public you might as well make it the best game you are capable of and still fulfill your vision.  In order to do that I will recommend a few reading suggestions and offer a few critiques.

Further Reading

One more Forge based thread that might interest you as someone who is new to gaming is Mike's Standard Rant #1.

Other than the Riddle of Steel, already mentioned here, a good example of a non-heartbreaking Fantasy game is The Burning Wheel.  It has an interesting and very unusual combat system.  A longer analysis of what works and doesn't work in both systems I think would be useful as you further refine and reshape your system.

For a more D20 related system, check out WOTC's Wheel of Time RPG since your setting seems to have some affinity for Jordan's work, you might want to see how other's tackled it (if you haven't already).

Also check out Dawnforge: Crucible of Legend for another D20 take on one of your setting ideas: a magical civilization at its height rather than the faux medievalism of traditional D&D.  WOTC definitely thinks this type of setting has potential, most of the finalist in its setting search fell into this category, even though the eventual winner ended up being some kind of psionic steampunk hybrid.

Points of Concern

You describe the PCs as "pawns" and there does seem to be a lot of non-player initiated plot going on in the background.  One major criticism of many of 80s/90s D&D settings was that the NPCs ended up being the stars of the show while the PCs were led around from place to place in the name of the "story."  With all the megapowerful vampire lords and sorcerers running around, you may end up with a similar situation in your game.  

Character creation follows a random bell-curve because i see that as the closest approximation to real life creation i can imagine (ie: we aren't born with the ability to customise ourselves, unfortunately), although i do let players swap two of their scores for the purposes of meeting class requirements (every class has requirements).

The question here is do you want the character's in your game resemble those in real life or in literature.  I would also argue to some extent that we aren't born with the ability to customise ourselves.  Unless you are playing infants, most people have a chosen over time whether to develop their strength (weight training), intelligence (reading), dexterity (playing basketball or even video games) or charisma (joining social groups).  Now these choices are influenced by family, social background, circumstance, temperament and interests.  Wouldn't a game which let you choose these factors be equally as realistic as throwing dice?

If you want to give the feeling of just being born into a world and disempower player choice, why do you let the character choose class and skills or swap attributes?  I don't really have a problem with randomized character creation, it just seems to work better for certain type of games than others.

To The Point

Is there anything in particular you need help with?  A mechanic that isn't working the way you want it to.  I am sure you would get a lot more feedback here if you were trying to fix a particular problem.  Since you are posting here in the first place I am sure that you are not 100% satisfied or confident in your creation.

Talk Soon,
Mark

[Ben O'Neal]

thanks for the reading links, i'll get right on it :D

Game design is a lot of work and I know you mainly intend it for use with your group, but if you are going to release it to the public you might as well make it the best game you are capable of and still fulfill your vision.

couldn't have said it better myself. which is exactly why i posted here, to see if anyone can point out flaws in my system. i am also open to suggestions for modifications that might make it more palatable and less of a fantasy heartbreaker. it was never my intention to design some revolutionary ultimate system, but if i can make it more unique than perhaps it already is, i certainly won't hesitate (unless it disagrees with my fundamental concepts of my personal ideal fantasy world).

You describe the PCs as "pawns" and there does seem to be a lot of non-player initiated plot going on in the background. One major criticism of many of 80s/90s D&D settings was that the NPCs ended up being the stars of the show while the PCs were led around from place to place in the name of the "story." With all the megapowerful vampire lords and sorcerers running around, you may end up with a similar situation in your game.

hmmm, good point, but i think my GMing style works to elliviate this problem. i only plan broad ideas for how the world progresses, and take into careful consideration the actions of the PC's when refining it. so just like in real life, it might seem to some that the players have little impact in some things, but in reality they can't know what would have happened had they made different choices. but i also let them know the significance of their actions through  my flavour text at the beginning of each gaming session, which usually involves the perception of events or the aftermath through the eyes of another person, perhaps a villian, perhaps a tyrant, perhaps a man they helped out. for example, in my second session, my players discovered about a slaving operation in a town, and eventually discovered it was being run by pirates, and this was all part of what i planned. but then, to deal with the problem, they burnt down the pirate ship while it was docked and awaiting the new cargo, and i originally hadn't planned for this. but it opened doors, so by the end of that session, they captured the pirate captain, and took him to an underwhelmingly responsive guard captian. in the next session i ran, my opening flavour text began with a man whom they had met briefly before, watching from within a warehouse as they burnt down this ship, and through the text they discovered he was the man in charge, and he now hated them and left with plans for putting a bounty on their heads. so their actions have always had some significant impact on the world, and most of the time, i hadn't planned for that. so far they have two thieves (one of them the party NPC) who are marked for death by the thieves guild, all of them have a bounty on their heads by the pirates, word has spread about the group who freed dozens of slaves and killed many pirates, word has spread about two of the girls in my party saving the prince from being kidnapped (the reason my thieves are marked, because they failed), word has also spread about a group of people saving a town from being destroyed (the man in charge of the pirates tried to blow up the enitre town with barrels of explosive in the cells underground to cover his tracks and because he is in cahoots with the Sakrumar), and more than i can remember, and all of this has been done on the fly from 4 sessions.

my players are the stars of their story, and they have a great impact on the world, but the world also has an impact on them, and is much larger. it's a fine balance i think, and i believe it can't be achieved through a mechanic, only through GMing. if it can be achieved through a mechanic, my guess it would be a fairly tight and restrictive one.

The question here is do you want the character's in your game resemble those in real life or in literature. I would also argue to some extent that we aren't born with the ability to customise ourselves. Unless you are playing infants, most people have a chosen over time whether to develop their strength (weight training), intelligence (reading), dexterity (playing basketball or even video games) or charisma (joining social groups). Now these choices are influenced by family, social background, circumstance, temperament and interests. Wouldn't a game which let you choose these factors be equally as realistic as throwing dice?

this is a very good point. my original idea to deal with this was to let players swap two scores with two others, but i can see how that doesn't quite capture the reality of human development. however, each level up classes give attribute points to the players to distribute as they see fit. fighters/clerics/rangers all get 5 attribute points each level, and the rest all get 4, so as soon as they gain a level, character customisation comes into play.

thing is i need character creation to follow a bell curve with 10 as the centre, otherwise i need to adjust basically everything. perhaps if i simplified each attribute to 4d4, and if you roll a triple, you then roll another 1d4 that sends your score further in the direction it was already heading (positive or negative modifier)? should i allow players to arrange all their scores to suit their needs? or limit the arrangment to only a few scores (2,3,4)? i admit my current system, whilst it does what i need it to do (bell curve about 10, quasi realistic), seems complex to most people. any suggestions?

Is there anything in particular you need help with? A mechanic that isn't working the way you want it to. I am sure you would get a lot more feedback here if you were trying to fix a particular problem. Since you are posting here in the first place I am sure that you are not 100% satisfied or confident in your creation.

i must say, having now tested all forms of combat i have (mage duelling, ranged, melee duelling), except one (hammering, like melee duelling but without the offensive/defensive, both sides just try to whack each other fast enough that they don't get whacked at the same time, used more when you are desperate, or fighting a creature that cares not for defending itself), i am fairly happy with the variety of options, speed, danger, and realism of my combat system. i've even had to use GM priveledge and fudge a few rolls so that my 5th level spellcaster wouldn't get murdered by gobins with one hit, instead she takes moderate wounds and i cross my fingers she rolls high next time ;) also, i have put too much effort into my feats to really be willing to change that system any more than it is currently changed, which is still quite a bit. i beemed with pride yesterday when my cleric couldn't decide which spells to choose from her 2nd level spell list because they were all so cool, and then later they all had great difficulty deciding which weapon enchantment to buy because they were all so good. that basically epitomises exactly what i wanted to achieve. a game where everything was so cool you really had to think to choose what you wanted, instead of a list of "meh".

but one area i really would like help in is skills. right now, my skills are basically identical in function to D&D. sure there are a few here and there that i have made myself, and there is no limit to how many points you can spend on a skill, but they are otherwise identical. but what i want to achieve is a way to learn skills instead of distributing points at level up. but this system has to make it harder to learn them the higher you get in them. and it has to work in conjunction with actually using the skill. my current basic idea involves rolling against a DC (defined by the GM for traps or whatever or an opposed roll against Hide and Spot checks for instance), and if you beat it by a close margin (say 3) or fail by a close margin (again, say 3), then you gain one rank in that skill. it needs to be a close margin so that players with high ranks won't learn from beating easy DCs where they are likely to beat it by more than 3, and players with no hope of coming close to the DC don't learn from it. the advantage to this system is i can factor in things such as professional training or magic items that increase your learning, by widening the margin by which you need to achieve a skill rank, and things that can do the opposite as well. can anyone think of any holes in that system? should success give more ranks than failure? because this uses a d20+skill ranks+attribute modifier, is 6 (3 each way) too small a margin for learning, or too big?

finally, i have an idea for a mechanic i want to implement, a mechanic which will give power to the players, a mechanic of luck. the next few sentences might seem like quite a tangent, but i assure you they come back to luck:D i currently have in place a standard that your basic medium sized humanoid can sustain a maximum of two moderate wounds. take one, suffer penalties, take another, you die in 1d12 rounds and must pass a constitution check to stay conscious, in which case you suffer the cumulative penalties of both wounds. the only way to incease this two wound limit is by spending points on constitution. for every 10 modifier points you have (not the base score), you can sustain one extra moderate wound. because of the scaling of my modifier/attribute ratio, if you start with 10 points on constitution (modifier=0), you can spend 10, and raise your constitution to 20 (modifier=+10), and sustain another moderate wound. but you must spend 20 points for the next +10 modifier, and then 30 for each +10 from then on. so what has this got to do with luck? well i want my luck to work via a similar system. i always wanted my Influece score to be more than just a measure of how influential you are to other people, but also a measure of how influential you are to the world around you. so my idea is this: for every 10 modifier points you have for Influence, you gain a corresponding level of luck. with this mechanic, it's only feasible for anyone to actually reach 4 levels of luck. each level is independant, so level one is seperate from level 2 and so on. each level can be invoked a number of times per day equal to 5 minus itself. so you can use a level 1 luck 4 times per day, level 2 three times per day, level 3 twice per day and level 4 once. if you have reached level 3, you can use level 1 four times per day, level 2 three times, and level 3 twice, so they accumulate, and don't override each other.  here's how i'm considering letting them work:

level1: player can reroll any roll, OR player can take a 50/50 chance of total failure or total success regardless of the difficulty of the task at hand even would your scores prohibit you within the bounds of possibility (works for anything except combat).
level 2: player can alter an unknown value to their desire by a factor of 2 or 0.5. for example, if you fight an opponent with a longsword and a pouch, you can't make his longsword a rapier (it's already a known value) but you can make his pouch have either half the gold it would have had, or twice the gold (factors of 0.5 and 2 respectively). this could also work for the number of enemies on the other side of a door, or anything ese they think of.
level 3: player can take total success regardless of the difficulty of the task (doesn't work for combat), or player can make another target creature or player fail/succeed at any task regardless of difficulty or skill (again, not in combat).
level 4: (this ones a bit tricky) player can totally fluke out and succeed at any one thing they try, no limitations. perhaps i should make a 50/50 for this? or they can choose to avoid any one lot of damage from any one source.

i think level 4 needs more options, and maybe level 3 too. but what do you guys think? it would certainly make gambling interesting :D i'm still playing with this idea so i'm open to critisisms and suggestions, as i am with skills. thanks!

[Ben O'Neal]

ok, i've read those links, and considered the possibility of actually reading and playing many systems... then i realised i have no money for that and if i did have that sort of money i'd be spending it on more important things, and even if i were a billionaire, i still have one major problem. i live in australia. we don't get inundated with rpgs here (ok, maybe if i were a billionaire that wouldn't matter). free rpgs i might download though. perhaps i'll have a look around for some. but so far i have AD&D3e, Alternity, and Riddle of Steel under my "read 'em" belt.

inspired by RoS, and another thread on this forum (can't remember which one, used fatigue to limit spellcasting), i have finished my psionic class. they (like most of my other classes) have a unique mechanic that makes them special. i've developed my list of all the Psi abilities, and they are segregated into three main areas; Spirit, Kinetic, and Mental. Spirit is kind of like common ground to all Psionics, in that using those abilities costs the same for everyone. Kinetic and Mental on the other hand, force the player to choose one as their strength, and one as their weakness. abilities you are weak in cost twice as much to use as they would if you were strong in them. all psionics can use all abilities at any time, provided they have the Psi points (mental capacity) to do so. there is no learning of abilities here.

ok, so every psionic has a Psi capacity equal to their Fluid and their Influence modifiers combined. every ability has a cost, and this cost is deducted from the Psi capacity when used. Psi regenerates at a rate of one point per round. in addition to this Psi cost to use an ability, every ability carries with it subdual damage equal to 4 times the cost. to avoid this damage, the character must make a constitution check, and this check is directly deducted from the subdual damage. if there is any subdual damage remaining, it is dealt to the character and cannot be prevented in any way, even if you have magic that makes you immune to subdual damage. so for every use of any psionic ability, a character must risk knocking themselves out. unless of course, they are using a weaker ability and can easily deal with the subdual damage from it.

also, every ability can be boosted to become more effective by spending more Psi to use it (and thus increasing the subdual damage you need to avoid). certain abilities can be maintained, and they use up Psi points every round they are maintained (essentially preventing Psi from regenerating). maintained abilities deal their subdual damage when they are released.

i think this mechanic makes things interesting. first, the characters must balance between raising their stats to have better capacity to use better abilities or boost abilities more, and raising their constitution to be able to handle the massive subdual damage that could really screw them over. it also adds an interesting tactic of completely using your entire capacity on boosting an ability knowing full well you can't deal with the subdual damage, just so you can get in one last hit before you knock yourself unconscious. it also can allow weaker characters to use strong abilities by knocking themselves out. of course, sometimes that's gonna suck, but at least the option is there.

on another note, i just thought i'd mention i have finally implemented a version of the materia system in Final Fantasy 7.  through a feat and a magic item, players can pick a specific weapon and place slots in it, the number limitied by the size of the weapon. there are three types of materia (i call them "aeteria" for familiarity and why-the-hell-not), scarlet, emerald and black. scarlet are basically your evocation/damaging stones, emerald are your enhancement stones, and black are your death-like stones. they all work by placing them in combinations (order is not important to save me from the nightmare of detailing the effects of combinations of 5 where order matters). different combinations have different effects. i've only allowed combinations up to five, and for any combination all the stones must have a purity level at least equal to the number of stones in the combination or they explode. for example, if you have three stones of level 5 purity and two of level 4, you can only make a combination of four stones, add one more stone, and the level 4 ones will explode. that probably sounds more complex than it is. :D

oh yeah and i also finished my ranger class. snipers in the woods... hell yeah!

well, just adding an update and throwing out my ideas for the mechanic of psionic abilities. if anyone has any thoughts or issues with my Psi mechanic i'd love to hear them. cheers

oh, and one more thing... what would you guys reckon if i scrapped my current "buy spells with spell points, spells cost more to buy from schools that aren't your chosen one, then cast till you drop so long as you have the capacity" magic system with something like this psionic mechanic i have? ie: all spells are available to be cast by any caster anytime provided they have the capacity to do so, but spells from a school that's not your chosen one cost more to cast. i like the freedom of having all spells at your fingertips if you risk taking the subdual damage, but i'm not sure i want to throw away learning spells. any ideas?