Simple system, many problems

[maldito]

I'm always thinking in new games and I almost never finish them.

Now I'm thinking in a new one: players would be soldiers in a science fiction army, like Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie).

One of the most important factors that make me not finish a game is the system. I'm always looking for a simple system, easy to understand for new players. I had thought what I think a really simple system, but it need some refinement.

Some terms would be in Spanish, for I find them difficult to translate. Hopefully it will be understandable.

Characters would have three basic Attributes:
Rudeza – might, brawn, strength
Astucia – intelligence, wits and charisma
Maña – dexterity, agility

These Attributes would go from 1 to 5.

For an action to be successful, you'll have to roll 1d6 and add the number of an Attribute. If the total is equal or higher than 7, then the action is successful.

For difficult actions the roll would have a penalization of -1 or -2.

One of the main features the game would have is Coraje and Fatiga (courage and fatigue)

Courage, as the other attributes go from 1 to 5. You can spend a point of courage to have an automatic 6. Instead of rolling a dice, you spend a point of courage and add 6 to your Attribute.

Points of fatigue would be gaining doing strenuous actions (fighting for long time, not sleeping, forced march, etc.) If your have more points of fatigue than points of courage you would suffer a -1, or -2 if you have lot of fatigue.

That's basically all I have. These are my problems:

Skills

I don't want a big list of skills. I thought that every attribute could have 3-4 "specialties". At character creation, the player picks some of them, actions were his character is specially good. But I don't want the specialties to have a number. A character could have a dexterity of 2 (below the average), but have a specialty in Pilot. How could the specialties work?

Combat

I want to keep the system the simplest it can, but combat would be an important aspect of the game, it must be quick but not so simple the players won't find it entertaining.

I thought to create two other attributes, used mainly in combat:
Reflejos – quickness, speed. Used for initiative and determine how much you can move in a turn.
Resistencia – stamina, resistance. The defense roll for attacks.

I have some options:

An attack roll (made with Rudeza -brawn) vs. a defense roll (Resistencia -stamina). If the attack is higher that the defense, the damage is dealt.
How can armor work here? Add to the defense roll or to resist points of damage?

The other is: the attack roll must be equal or higher than 7 to be successful.  Then, the attacked player would roll his Resistencia (stamina), for every point above 7, he cancels one point of damage.
Here armor would be added to the Resistencia roll.

Other option is, if combat is so important, then have different attributes for it.
3 Attributes for attack:
Brawl - for attacks without a weapon.
Melee - for hand to hand weapons, like knifes or clubs.
Ranged combat – for fire weapons.
And 2 for defense:
Reflejos – for initiative, move and dodge.
Resistance – like the examples before, just to resist the attack.
Brawl could be used to parry.
With attributes for combat, characters could have specialties for them (machine guns for Ranged combat, knifes in melee, etc)

Or maybe leaving three main attributes for actions and three for combat (Melee, Ranged and Dodge, perhaps?)

What do you think? Which is my best option; do you have other ideas?

I don't want a damage roll, just a number that is subtracted to your health points. For example, a knife would deal 3 damage, a pistol 5, and a micro gun 12.  If you roll a 6 on the dice in your attack roll, then you'll deal critical damage, the knife would deal 4 damage instead, the pistol 7, the micro gun 16.

I also don't want plain hit points, so I thought in a condition tracker. You have a condition for three parts, one for every Attribute: Head (Astucia –intelligence and wits), Vital organs (rudeza –brawn) and Extremidades (arms and legs, affects dexterity).
There are three condition levels: OK, Wounded and Mauled.
If a character has points of damage in a part equal to half his total Health points, then he is wounded in that part, and suffers a -1 in his rolls with the relative attribute. If he has damage in a part that are equal to 3/4 of his total Health points, then, he is mauled and suffers a -2.
Example: The character has 15 health points. To be Wounded in his Head (and have a -1 in his Intelligence rolls), he must have 7 points of damage there. To be Mauled (and suffer a -2) he must have 10 point of damage in his Head.

Do you find other problems; can you give me some suggestions?

Thanks for having time to read my post.

[Luke]

This game reads like it's only about fighitng, is that the case?

[soundmasterj]

I don't want a big list of skills. I thought that every attribute could have 3-4 “specialties”. At character creation, the player picks some of them, actions were his character is specially good. But I don’t want the specialties to have a number. A character could have a dexterity of 2 (below the average), but have a specialty in Pilot. How could the specialties work?

Roll 1 more dice for every speciality that applies. Only count the highest die.

Combat

I want to keep the system the simplest it can,

Well, you got a lot of combat rules there. In my experience, when rules are combat heavy, actual play is oftentimes combat heavy and sluggish. What you could do is something like this:

You have 3 attributes.
In combat: rudeza beats astucia beats mana beats rudeza.
Not in combat: mana beats astucia beats rudeza beats mana.
Every player has 2/4/6 specialities per attribute. 0/1/2 have to be combat specific, 0/1/2 peacefull.


To be better than somebody else, you roll dice; you decide which attribute to use; if your stat beats his, he has to reroll his highest die once.

Armor, weapons etc. is all speciality. So say I'm a Soldier, I have
Rudeza (4 specialities): heavy armor, rocket launcher, strong punch; feels no pain
To attack (in combat) with Rudeza, when using your launcher, you roll 2 dice and keep the highest. When defending in your armor, you roll 2 dice.

Get what I mean?

[maldito]

The main theme of the game will be fighting with extraterrestrials and the life in a special group of men trained to defend the colonies.

soundmasterj, I like the way you describe the specialities.

At first I wanted the character creation to be point based. So you chose to create a Hero with high attributes or with many specialties.

I was looking the Warhammer Roleplaying Game, I like how combat works there:

The attacker roll his weapon or ballistic skill, if he success, he determines the damage rolling a d10 and adding the damage from the weapon, then substracting the toughness and the armor. The other player could have dodged or parried.

I think something like that could be done in my game, I will just need to adjust the damage. The only thing is that probably I'll have to create another attribute (toughness or stamina)

[Luke]

Have you checked out Gregor Hutton's 3:16? It seems to have the same goals and themes as your game, but with a stripped down, very simple execution. The stress is more on colorful roleplaying and the big picture, but all to good effect. It recreates the space marine theme admirably.

-L

[Wordman]

A second on 3:16.

If you want to stick with the system you describe, I'd consider raising the base target number a bit higher, particularly if you add in the specialties. It depends on how often you want failure to occur.