[Myrkwell] Need help with first RPG

[Saxon Douglass]

Well i've been working on an RPG for abit now and i've got numerous decisions to make, the two biggest being classes vs. no-classes and what type of die to use for general task resolution. It is based on D&D so it's not going to be anything too radical but the setting is a mix of horror/gothic and 1800s (inspired by stuff like Notre Damne and Hound of the Baskervilles) and D&D just wasn't cutting it so I statred work on this. I will have skills, feats and levels like D&D does but I need to decide on the two things mentioned above. If I did classes i'd have base, advanced and prestige classes where base is very loose and has a 20-level progression (Fighter, Thief, etc.) the advanced classes would be things like Bards, Paladins, Druids, etc. and prestige classes would be very specific with only a few levels. It'd be very much like classes in D&D that way.

If I went class-less i'd make every ability a feat or skill with things like Base Attack Bonus being a skill and such. The big problem with this system is balance because not all skils wqill be even without tweaking and it fosters generic characters. I would have everything be point-based with this system so attribute bonuses, skills and feats would all have a cost of character points (similar to BESM in that way).

I'd like to know your opinions on which is better, or atleast which might be better for this world. The game will have combat as a major part of it but not as much as D&D, if anyone knows Arcanum i'm attempting to do it like that.

[Chris Peterson]

Instead of reinventing the core rules, maybe you can write your campaign setting as a supplement to standard D&D or d20? That might be quicker to write and other people might be more likely to try it out.

[Saxon Douglass]

The thing is that i'm not happy with D&D - the classes are too restrictive (or in the Fighters case too loose), the skills too under-used, the setting is low magic steampunk, etc. I definitley know what you're saying though and it started out as that but i've come to a point where I want to make it something different in its own right. I'm not making it for selling or anything, if I get it finished I might sell a book from my site but my plan is for it to be totally free (i'm doing this for fun and I don't see why people should pay for my unprofessional work). Not to say other indie games shouldn't cost, just for mine I don't feel i'm good enough yet to be charging someone money (if I was selling books they would have maybe $1-2 dollars mark-up tops).

I'm not going away from D&D too-much though, I'll still base conflict resolution on the d20 and i'll have levels and skills etc. but it is different enough I feel for a unique book. I'd compare it to Iron Heroes or Arcana Evolved for how different it is from D&D except abit more (it will be completley self-contained ie. no refferencing D&D books). But the big issue is going the D&D classes route or BESM/GURPs point route. The die isn't that important, it'll be d20 to start with a sidebar on some alternative such as bell curves or d10. Thanks for mentioning it though - I need to remember that this world needs to be pakced with the flavour I originally invisioned and not be a generic rule set.

[Arturo G.]

Hello FlameLover, wellcome to The Forge!
What is you real name? We prefer to use real names here to drive discussion.

I'm afraid you have not yet provided us with enough information about what you really want to play. Forget about D&D or any other system you know. First, think in the kind of things that you want your characters to do in the world; think in the kind of things you like to do as a player, and tell us. There are many games around which may cover your needings, open new possibilities of play for you and your group, and guide you to new design ideas.

You may read these threads to get an idea about what people expect from you to be able to help you:
Troy's Standard Rant #1
Troy's Standard Rant #3: The Power 19

Cheers,
Arturo

[Roger]

I would suggest you read the excellent Fantasy Heartbreakers article, if you've not done so already.


Cheers,
Roger

[Tony Irwin]

But the big issue is going the D&D classes route or BESM/GURPs point route. The die isn't that important, it'll be d20 to start with a sidebar on some alternative such as bell curves or d10. Thanks for mentioning it though - I need to remember that this world needs to be pakced with the flavour I originally invisioned and not be a generic rule set.

Hi there,

In D&D you're building a weapons specialist who is to take up a particular role in a team of player characters. The choices you can make in character creation are all about planning how you're going to deal with the game's situation. The basic starting situation for play is this: Rough tough adventurers + an unexplored area with deadly monsters*

In BESM you're building your dream character from anime or manga. The list of stuff you can pick and choose from is all tied right into the setting and colour. The emphasis is on creating a character who can move about in the setting. (Haven't played GURPS so I can't comment on that I'm afraid. Is that the same?)

So that's one way to look at it and decide what might help you most. Do you have a very clear idea about the play situations for your game? Can you sum it up with one sentence like I did for D&D? If you do then a very narrow character class system might be the way to go to ensure that all the PCs are equipped from the very beginning to get stuck into that situation.

On the other hand do you have very firm ideas about setting and colour for your game? Maybe then you'd find a point build system like BESM helpful. Players can have fun selecting skills and feats that let them interact with parts of the setting that they find interesting. You don't have to worry so much about situation - the GM will look at the PCs and work up an appropriate situation for play.

Tony

* I know its a lot more complicated than that! But let's not talk about that - it's just a starting point.

[Saxon Douglass]

Ok first sorry about not posting my real name - I didn't realize that's the custom here. My name is Saxon Douglass, i'll add that to me signature after this post.

Ok well what I want the system to provide is essentially a storytelling mechanism. I want a group of players to act through a world run and managed by a game master/storyteller. The sorts of things they would be doing include negotiations, fighting for what they beleive in, and struggle to acheive their goals. What I want the players to be doing is really thinking about the personality and abilities of their character and to have fun exploring this world laid out in the book and run/modified by the game master/storyteller. I want the system to give a mutual trust between players and with the game master, none of them would necessarily be out to "beat" eachother. The themes are inspired by 19th century novels and movies (I mean fiction set in the time, not only made in the time) with quite abit of horror and the unexplained. The tales of outcasts, hauntings and dark spectres gliding through the night are what gave life to this idea.

It's not ground breaking or anything - I mean mechanically it'll be similar to other "fantasy" RPGs but I want more social/horror focus and more importantly a focus on character, no only acheivment. The other big thing was a want a reasnobly rules-light game because I want their to be flexability for both the players and GM to define their characters and actions with less restrictions.

And Tony I have a very firm idea of setting, mood and theme I wish to portray. I want decisions to be hard, I want the world and it's people to feel real and mortal. I want their to be the full spectrum of hopes, dreams and goals without them being rules-centric. Now these lofty goals are something i'm not sure you can acheive with rules - and that's why I came here to ask for help.

The CRPG Arcanum is set in the time my RPG is and has a similar sort of flavour so that's what got me thinking about the possibility of doing things class-less (the only RPG I own is D&D 3.5). In Arcanum you choose a race, background and get a bunch of points to spend on attributes, skills, schematics (formulas for technological items) and spells. I would want to make the system abit deeper than that if I went that route because it is rather simplistic but I liked the concept and it made the characters feel less special (which is what i'm aiming for). Ofcourse the other route is D&D, the biggest problem being the focus on combat. I'll have an Allegiance and Reputation system in definitley either way I go but i'm not sure on how to define character abilities. I want characters to be able to either focus on fighting skills, job skills, social skills, etc. In D&D their are certain "roles" a party needs to be effective - I don't want that. I also don't want advancement to be fighting centric. My idea for advancement is level/XP based but simplified. You need 100 xp to gain a level, the variable is how much you get. For an encounter of roughly equal level you'd gain 10xp each (equal chance of failure and success), for an encounter that is easier you'd get proportionatley less until 90% chance of success where you'd gain 0xp. Doing things which are less than 50% success would earn more up to 20xp per encounter per player. The idea is that an "encounter" is any where their is a chance of failure ie. talking your way out of jail or winning a bar room brawl. I was tossing around the idea of having seperate "pools" of XP based on what you're doing but I felt they might be too cumbersome in a table top RPG (ie. you'd earn Social XP from a social encounter or Magic XP from a magical encounter).

I am new to this and my first RPG (Myrkwell) is planned to be freely released as a PDF and is mainly for fun. I'm not planning on selling it or entering competitions so it is just a matter of what I want to play but I would like to break-free of D&D-RPG thinking. Reading about DitV and Univalis (sorry if that's not the right word :|) have helped immensley but I don't want to go quite that different to start, i'd rather start more mainstream (atleast in my view) and add the differences later than start with something really out there. So the question is ultimatley any advice for this game about how it does stuff although my current thinking is it'll have levels, skills, feats/talents, dice rolling and some betting (I like that idea from DitV and i'd like to add it to the system somehow). I suppose to some up the mechanics i'd have to say this: they more you bet the more you stand to gain. What i mean is that the more you put on the line the more you will acheive if you succeed.

[Arturo G.]

No apologies needed for things like that. You will get used to the site very quickly.

Ok. That is a beggining.
You say you only have read D&D 3.5. I think you are still too much focused in the only way you think an RPG may work. I perfectly understand some things you say about the kind of game you want to play. It sounds nice. You have an idea about something which is clearly different from what D&D has provided to you. Thus, I think tweeking D&D would not be the most easy or successful way to do it. Believe me, there are plenty of different games around which break apart from classes/attributes/abilities/combat turns and all this stuff you have in mind. Looking at some of your comments I think you have arrived at the proper place.

Roger is right. Surely the Fantasy Hearthbreakers articles will bring you some light.
What you need is to read new games which are different and promote some of the kind of experiences you want.
I'm hesitating to suggest something because there are people much more experienced than me on this. Does someone want to suggest something to begin with?

Cheers,
Arturo

[Jasper]

Almost any "bleeding edge" Forge-produced game will challenge assumptions. But if we want to stick to something that tackles some similar problems...try checking out Keith Senkowski's Conspiracy of Shadows and Clinton Nixon's The Shadow of Yesterday. Both "shadow" games, both good, both different, and yet not totally unfamiliar. Also, the advantage of TSoY is that the rules are free to download. HeroQuest is a solid bet as well, but grokking the rules might take more time and it is a larger, more expensive book.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Good day all,
Saxon I suggest that if youhave your heart set on "tweaking" the d20 system which is completley fine you might want to check out John Kirks free book on rpg desgin patterns.
http://legendaryquest.com/
Giving it a read through checking out the role play games that were broken down into desgin pattern in the back, and then do a briefbreak down of the D&D system. After you have broken it down to its basic patterns decide what does not work for you rip it out go back through the patterns and find what fits back in to replace it. This method might takea little time but in the end it seems like an easier way to break a system down for tweaking.
Regards,Seth

[Saxon Douglass]

Sorry for not posting before, I've been busy with assesment period stuff.

I've looked through the stuff you linked to mostly. It is very interesting but is too out there for me just yet because I have a "war-game RPG" attitude that i'm trying to break out of slowly. I've been thibking about the project and I see two divergent games emerging. One is quite D&D but with less combat focus and set in 19th century the other is like I outlined above. I could try and do both at once but I'm not sure how that would work.

I play with people who are coming from video games (which I do to) so I think i'll tackle the D&D-esque one first. I'll still try and acheive less combat but it will still have stuff like classes, levels, etc. in the first version. I was thinking of a character points system but thought it might be too hard to balance. If I was going to do it though i'd remove "levels". You'd just get a number of points per encounter based on difficulty (1=easy, 2=moderate, 3=hard, 4=impossible) which you'd spend on skills, attributes or feats.

I am lost on what to do because I have several ideas I want to acheive, some of them too hard I feel and others I'm not so sure I actually want to! I want people in the game to do less fighting and more social stuff but I don't want it to be completley "loose" like DitV is. I'd be looking at about 1 combat encounter for every social one for example. The other thing is I want "monsters" to be just like the other races and I want a party of any type to be able to have fun. I mean a party filling all 6 major rolls should be just as usefull as a party of the same roles if the GM does the right thing (allowing multiple sollutions to a challenge).

I'll just modify D&D for now. I plan on releasing "splatbooks" once the main game is done experimenting with some rules such as social combat and mass warfare which i'd be too worried about putting in the core book.

[Trevis Martin]

Hi Saxon,

I'm impressed at your desire to design your own RPG so quickly!  I know the D20 SRD is available for download if you're wanting to make something out of that.  I think its on the Wizards website or you can find an online version of it at http://www.d20srd.org/.  But my number one recommendation for you is to play a bunch of games.  Even if you don't know what they do or how they do it.  Try em out once or twice and see how they work.  It'll give you a feel for how things can be done in different ways.  In your position right now you're kinda trying to build a car after having taken a ride in only one model.  For some customizable toolkit type games I suggest looking into JAGS or JAGS2, FATE or its mama FUDGE.  Those are all free.  A fantasy game that sounds very much like what you are interested in (though not 19th cen) is The Burning Wheel  Another strong possibility is The Riddle of Steel

There is a game out there that matches Arcanum to some extent.  That would be Castle Falkenstein by R. Talsorian It's 1800's steampunk with fantasy races.  Unfortunatley I think it's out of print, though there is a GURPS version.  You can also get it as a PDF from Drivethrurpg.com or maybe as a real book on ebay.  Systemwise I'm not sure it would be in step with what you are looking for but like I said I strongly suggest you try out a lot of games, even if you think you won't like them.  You'll get a better idea of what will work for you.

Another brief, free, Victorian game is Vis Imperia Victoriana though I've never played it so I can't speak to its quality.

best of luck to you.

Trevis

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Well, the idea behind game design is to find a balance between design goals and mechanics. Let's look at the pros and cons of Character class:
Pros:
Guided character development
Guided encounter design
Ease of game balance
Specialized archetypes

Cons
Cookie-cutter characters
Potential for unbalnced/unfavorable classes

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya Saxon,

Welcome to the Forge.  I just have a quick little questions for ya :)

First, what do you want the characters to do in your game and what would be their motivation to do that?  In DnD3e the characters are built for combat.  They are to go out, kick butt, take the monsters' stuff, and get better at kicking butt.  They're perfect for that!  But there's a lot more to gaming than just killing monster after monster.  You mention an 1800's setting full of horrors.  That's a great idea.  I personally dig it big time.  But really right now you have a setting with PC's in it.  So what I want to know is if the characters work *with* the horrors to accomplish something or against the horrors to save something?  Either or both are good game ideas. 

Peace,

-Troy

[Saxon Douglass]

Managed to change my name - now I shouldn't stick out so much :)

Trevis, thanks for all the links! I've looked through them and saved for later since I found them quite interesting. They rmake you realize that there are millions of ways to do things and that even the basic mechanics of say D&D are not the only, and from what i've seen best way to handle things. It seems to me trying to roll low is abit weird but Fudge is pretty interesting in the how it replaces numbers with words. I'm not sure I want to do that myself but it should serve as a reminder that you should keep things simple.

dindenver, I've decided to keep classes for now although I might drop them later. They will be alot less important than D&D classes though they'll be mainly a packet of skills rather than a full archetype you follow. They do seem to have more pors than cons overall though so I'll just see how things go.

Troy, I want the players to acheive what they and the GM agree they want to acheive ;) I know that's a cop-out answer but it's the truth. Whether it is reclaiming a lost family heirloom, helping a legion of Kobolds overthrow the Dragons or just avoiding paying tax I want the players and GM to agree on an end goal or goals and to then try and acheive them. My plan once the basic rules are out is to write campaign books detailing a story, encounters, etc. but It'll be up to the group on what they want to do. With my group it'll probably involve fighting but for someone else it might not. I don't want to create GURPs or FUDGE here - the rules are set in the world and it is assumed you are playing in THIS world but what you try and acheive is up to you. I want the feeling you get when you play Morrowind. You're in this world, and now you just gotta work out what you want to do. Whether you wish to sail the high seas plundering treasure, fight for freedom, become a landed gentry... The goal(s) are decided by the players in the beginning of a campaign or session and it's the GMs job to facilitate that (although they don't have to make it easy). I want the group to decide what happens overall but to still have someone who has the last word because I know most gorups couldn't cope with "voting" for a character to live or die. Now motivation is tricky because the motivation would be just wanting to acheive it. I'm going on the basis games go on - you're playing it to have fun and that is all you're wanting. So the motivation is to have fun and socialize I guess. Ofcourse the gaining experience and treasure, succeeding in your goals or whatever might also be a reward depending on the player.

As you can see I havn't got a firm grasp on what they will be doing or why they will be doing it but I know I want it to be group centric than D&D is. In D&D, at the end of the day, it is up to the DM what happens. While I still want some "over-seeing" body I want the rules to encourage a group feeling rather than player vs. GM. I DM with my group of players and they feel sorta like it's them against me when I don't want it to be that way. I want to be there to help tell the story they want told, not to say "Sorry, you know that sister you were trying to save? While i'm having a crumby day so.... dead!" (not that i'd ever do that but some DMs are like that. I want the group to tell the story, not just the GM basically.

The sorts of things my OWN group would do in the game though would be quite D&D I'm guessing. I'm trying to have less combat and more RP but they are resistant. It's not that they don't want to I don't think, some of the players have got there personaltities and goals all worked out, it's just that they feel like they have to fight in D&D which with the way it's setup you sorta do. The game is first and formost for my own group, although I want it to be open enough that if there are other groups out there who feel the same way they can try it too.