Destiny RPG

[Chronologist]

So this is my first time here at The Forge, so I'm unsure as to what's really going on. None the less, here's what I've come up with. It's not complete yet, but I'll try to post more later.

The game is called Destiny (at least for now). It's a d10-based game. Players get a certain number of points at the beginning of the game to spend on Attributes, Skills, Proficiencies and Powers. Points from one must be used in that category or in a lower category (Attributes > Skills > Powers > Proficiencies)

Attributes are your physical/mental potential. They are Strength, Agility, Toughness, Intellect, Willpower, and Charm (similar to the D&D stats). Each is a value between 6 and 18, and they cost from -4 points (6) to 16 points (18). A higher number is better, as it increases your rolls with that attribute and gives you your Effectiveness (or EFT for short). Normal "humans" have about 9-11 in most attributes.

Skills are divided into Combat, Defense, Saves, and Utility. They are

Combat      Defense   Saves       Utility
Unarmed    Dodge      Fortitude   Leadership
Melee        Stamina   Reflexes    Tactics
Ranged      Focus      Courage     Guile

These skills range from 0 to 10. When using a skill (like unarmed) in combat, you roll Skill + Attribute bonus + d10 to get your result. At levels 4, 7, and 10, a skill increases your abilities somehow, by either increasing combat damage, effectiveness against certain effects, or other miscellaneous bonuses. Most starting characters would not have a skill value higher that 4, and an average skill of 3.

Powers are either Spells or Effects. Spells use the mental attributes, while effects can use any of the six attributes, depending on the nature of the effect. Spells are divided into the Elemental (Intellect), Planar (willpower) and Psychic categories. The spell effects are divided as follows:

Elemental   Planar                  Psychic
Fire            Aura                     Telekinesis
Water         Healing/Harming    Telepathy
Air             Light/Shadow         Psychoportation
Earth          Bless/Curse          Illusion
Magic         Channel Divine     

Spells damage your Mental Health when you cast them, but they do significantly move damage than normal weapons.

Powers use one of the above spell types, but instead of the assigned attribute, they use the attribute that most fits the action. For example, a minotaur might have a power that lets him smash smaller enemies backwards. This would use the Strength attribute to use.

Proficiencies are what your character knows how to do. These include the ability to wield certain types of weapons, wear armor, and perform combat maneuvers, as well as your knowledges, basic skills (like swimming) and more advanced skills (like Alchemy).

Each character chooses a Race, such as Human, Dwarves, Elves etc. Each race has its own size, but most are size 4, while gnomes are size 3 and orcs are size 5. Each race grants a bonus to 2 attributes and a penalty to one. They also grant a conditional skill bonus and a racial power.

For example,

Elf
+2 Agility, +2 Charm, -2 Toughness
+2 to Reflexes for Sight checks and Initiative checks
Blade Dance: You can move between attacks when wielding two light weapons
OR
Bow Flurry: You can ignore the first Range penalty with bows, and gain a +1 to hit enemies within Close range.

Substats
Some values are derived from your stats. These are crucial values such as Health and Mental Health.

Health: 5(Strength + Toughness) + 10
Mental Health: 5(Willpower + Intellect OR Cunning) + 10
Move: Size + 2 (squares you move with a Move action)
Speed: Agility Bonus + Intellect Bonus + Reflexes + Dodge (Determines who goes first in a turn)
Armor: Stamina + Armor value
Mental Armor: 2(Focus)

Characters can take an Attack, Move, and Free action each turn, in any order. An Attack action lets you, well, attack an enemy with a weapon. A Move action lets you move your Move value in squares. A free action lets you do anything else other than attacking or moving.

The game takes place on a square grid, like D&D.

Now, to the heart of it. Destiny is the game's currency. I'm going to use Silver and Gold coins for it. The players start each session with an amount of Destiny depending on their character's Race (humans get more, some get less), the GM's general sense of session difficulty, and any other factors. Charm also increases starting Destiny. Players gain Silver Destiny whenever they continually act in character, go out of their ways to move the plot along, or have any of their character's problems crop up during the game. Players spend SIlver Destiny to give themselves bonuses to their rolls, to activate/negate their Assets/Flaws (more on that later), and to activate Powers. Gold Destiny is gained whenever key plot areas are completed, a PC does something phenomenal, etc. They are much rarer, about a 5:1 ratio of Silver to Gold. Gold Destiny can be spend to give the Player's character a major boost in a fight, heal the character in a major way, or activate your character's Destiny. Your Destiny is something like what your character aims for at the end of the campaign. If you activate your Destiny, until the end of the fight, while following your destiny, all of your Assets activate and all of your Flaws are shut down temporarily (this is a huge boost).

As you can see, much of the game is tailored towards quick combat. I'm still working on some of the other parts of the game, like monster abilities and balance, but when I'm done, I'll post it up.

Please post a response. What I really need is some feedback, good or bad.

Oh, and I'm not sure what the policy is on using Internet information in your own games, but if you like what you see and want to incorporate into your own game, please ask me first.

Thanks.

[whiteknife]

Is there anything specific that you need help on? What you've posted seems to be fine to me, and as far as a combat/character creation system goes it seems to be pretty standard.Is there anything particularly outstanding about the game? The idea of destiny is interesting, although not exactly entirely new. One thing I didn't really get in your post was what characters in the game are doing. I assume from what you've posted that they're generic fantasy heroes who go around and fight monsters to achieve their destiny, but I could be wrong. I get the feeling that you want feedback on the battle system, since that seems to be the core of the post, but again, I could be wrong.

One thing that I did notice is that you wanted the game to be focused on quick combat right? Well, if that's your goal then you might want to consider streamlining the system to not have as many modifiers to one roll. Anyways, like I said, i you have any more specific questions then I can be of more help.

Good luck on your game.

[imago]

Besides whiteknife's very good points, I want to know: is Destiny affected by levelling up? I mean, it does change the tone if characters' Destiny helped them less when gaining more levels (which means they would be reaching the potential that could only be emulated by spending Destiny some levels earlier), while the opposite means that characters deserve higher Destiny for being more effective fighters. Or you might even go for fixed Destiny.

Will it be one of the above or do you have an alternate option?

[Chronologist]

1) The system's modifiers for rolls are Attribute bonus + Skill + d10. THat's it. If you get a magic weapon, you get a bunus to hit. Some weapons come with a bonus to hit in them. Attribute bonuses range from -2 to +5, and higher when your attribute goes above 18. I really can't find any other way of factoring in all of these is a streamlined way. Suggestions would be great!

2) Yeah, it's a generic fantasy style game, but you can also play Modern and Sci-Fi, because I've made some rules for those too (like guns and vehicles etc). THe idea is to create a simple, fun, and open system for people to RP in, without having to spend two hours to resolve a single fight (like what happens in D&D 3.5).

3) Destiny is something halfway between innovation and... old. Lots of games have Drama Points or Plot Points or some kind of luck system. Destiny is a little different because you can also exchange it for loot. WHen you find treasure, you can use up a certain number of points, and the DM will say "Cool, you find this nifty magical broadsword!". It does away completely with having to track wealth.

4) There are no levels as of now. Characters gain experience points as they complete sessions and continue the plot of the campaign, as well as defeating enemies. You spend these points to increase your attributes, skill, powers, and proficiencies however you want, but some cost more than others to increase, and as your skill/proficiency/attribute increases, it takes more experience to increase.

5) As the story continues, characters will not gain more base Destiny points each session, unless they increase their Charm attribute. Anyway, Destiny points are always relative, they get more effective as you get stronger in whatever you're using them on (they double your Skill modifier on a roll, so as you get more skilled, they get better). So you'll have about 3 starting each session, plus your Charm modifier.

Thanks for the insight, please keep the comments coming!

[Chronologist]

This is an add-on to a previous post of mine.

How destiny points get stronger: Destiny increases your multiplier. Let me explain with this Attribute chart.

Initial and Improving attributes. Players start with 20 points

Att.   +/-   B   Cost   +
1   -3   1   /   /
2   -3   2   /   23
3   -2   2   /   19
4   -2   2   -6   16
5   -2   3   -4   13
6   -1   3   -3   10
7   -1   3   -2   8
8   -1   4   -1   6
9   0   4   0   6
10   +1   4   1   4
11   +1   5   2   6
12   +2   5   3   8
13   +2   5   4   10
14   +2   6   6   13
15   +3   6   8   16
16   +3   6   10   19
17   +3   7   13   23
18   +4   7   16   27
19   +4   7   /   31
20   +4   8   /   36
21   +5   8   /   41
22   +5   8   /   46
23   +5   9   /   52
24   +6   9   /   58
25   +6   9   /   64


Att. is the attribute that you're buying. You can only buy up to 18 in any attribute initially. Some races have bonuses to attributes which can raise this initial number above 18. No attribute can be less than 4. If a character's attribute, because of a racial minus, would be reduced to less than 4, then the player must buy at least as many levels of that attribute so that, after the adjustment, the lowered atribute is at least 4.

+/- is the bonus or minus you add to all of your Skill rolls involving that attribute. Therefore, you add your Strength modifier to rolls with heavy weapons. In certain circumstances, you add your Agility modifier to rolls with certain types of melee weapons, like daggers and rapiers.

The base (or B) is the number that is multiplied to determine you weapon damage. For example, a short sword has a multiplier of x3, an attack bonus of +1, and a damage bonus of +0. Therefore, a character with Melee skill 3 and Strength 14 will calculate his damage in the following way:

Damage = 3(6) + 3 + 0 + 0 = 21 damage
Damage = (multiplier x B) + skill + weapon bonus + magic bonus

Cost is the cost to buy it at the start of the game.

+ is the amount of experience you need to increase an attribute one lower to that level. For example, it takes 8 EXP to raise an attribute from 11 to 12, but it takes 18 EXP to raise an attribute from 11 to 13.

Most game sessions should give players from 2 to 10 experience points. This value increases as the challenges the players face get more difficult.

More updates later

[Vulpinoid]

Quick Questions...

Why have attributes on a 6 to 18 scale when the game is based on d10s?

Why use a d10 when you have so many references in your description that say "like D&D"?

Not criticisms, just asking...

V

[xenopulse]

Hi there,

Welcome to the Forge.  I'm Christian.  What's your name?

First, to your very first line.  What's going on here at the Forge is people helping each other to design and publish games.  We're a friendly bunch (most of us), but real help with these tasks requires real criticism.  So when you see people questioning your design decisions, please take it in the spirit of constructive feedback.

With that said... your game looks like a candidate for a classic fantasy heartbreaker to me.  In short, those were games that were hung up on D&D as the model, with minor modifications, that people printed up and which all failed to be very successful.  I assume you're not looking for commercial success here--though you could!--but the point is: I see a lot of D&D in here, and I'm not sure whether that's because you think those things are the best way to achieve your design goal, or if they're baggage that you haven't been able to shed yet.

For example, you say that Destiny is the heart of the game.  And it's a neat idea!  But when I read through this, I imagine me spending a lot of time in play juggling other things.  That way to calculate damage?  That's pretty involved.  And there are tons of other factors in there like that chart, having to keep track of costs, and so on.  Now, complexity is not a bad thing per se.  Crunchiness can be lots of fun (if it's tied into meaningful player choices).  But I don't see how most of your system supports your basic premise.

Maybe you can tell me in two sentences what your game is striving for.  And then try to imagine what you want your perfect play session to look like.  Not just in the fictional abstract ("And then we killed a dragon!"), but in the moment-to-moment interactions between players.  And finally, think about every single piece of your design.  How does it fit with your goals?  What would the alternatives be?

Here's the core thing I found about your game so far: "a simple, fun, and open system for people to RP in, without having to spend two hours to resolve a single fight."  Now comes the next question: how does your design do this better than other games out there?  (Better in a way related to your vision of fun in RPing.)  Say, FATE (www.faterpg.com) or The Pool.  Or even D&D 4th Edition, which is a lot faster than 3rd Edition and actually lots of fun.

Again, all I'm trying to do is help you think about your design so you can cut away the parts that are just "habit" from D&D and really get to the core of what excites you about roleplaying.

[Chronologist]

Sorry for the long wait. I'll try to answer as many questions as possible.

First, Vulpinoid.

1) The attributes are on a 6 to 18 scale instead of, say, a 1 to 10 scale, because I don't want a character with Strength 4 to think he's twice as strong as a character with Strength 2. If it was instead strength 14 and strength 12, the players could tell who was stronger, but without a seemingly massive difference

2) I want to use a d10 because a d20 would increase the influence of chance in the game and reduce the influence of skill. Sure, I could double all of the skill values and such, but I don't want players to cry out "Ok, I rolled a 22 to hit him with a broadsword" and for that to miss. A large die feels like it would devalue rolling high numbers. Also, I find it easier to read d10s, and they're easy to combine if I need to roll percentiles.

Thanks for the comments, it made me think.

Next, Xenopulse

3) I'm Chris

4) I base quite a bit of this on D&D 3.5 because that's what I usually play. This is also based a bit on the Buffy RPG, and a game I made a few years ago over a weekend. I want it to seem a bit like D&D so that my friends who play D&D can transition easily.

5) I can see how it seem complex with the charts, but only making characters; there are spaces on the character sheet to put all of your types of attack; spells, melee, ranged, unarmed, dodge rolls, etc. so the players can jus see their hit bonuses and damage they deal.

6) The thing I'm looking for is a fast and simple game. I want the rules to be balanced, and as simple as possible, but with enough complications and permutations to make an interesting game. My perfect play session would be one where the players keep in character almost all the time, the plot progresses smoothly and quickly, with quick and deadly combat, and a game where all the players (and the GM) have fun.

Thanks for the comments, and keep them coming!