Minima - the compact, yet thorough RPG

[Knarf]

I have been designing this system for some time, but have only recently gotten it sufficiently assembled for public view. It is designed as a compact, universal game without the "bare-bones" feel. At current count, character creation, mechanics, and combat system all add up to 7 pages. Is there anything I'm really missing? Is the system so flexible as to be completely limp?

Also included on the page is my magic system, intended for use with fantasy games and can be tweaked to replicate virtually any spell and any spellcaster. At least that's my hope. Do you think I accomplished it?

The URL is www.eccentrix.com/members/knarf/index.html

[Mark Johnson]

Welcome to the Forge!  

For what it is worth, I quite like your resolution mechanic.  Unfortunately, Minima's usefulness is probably rather minimal.  You did achieve your design goals.  The game looks playable.  But in its current state, there is nothing that screams "play me."  Check out John Kim's Free RPG site:  many of these freebies do the same thing that your system does.  The mechanics may differ with a different array of attributes:  but why not play Fudge or Gurps-lite?

On the other hand. your design skills seem solid.  Apply this system to an evocative setting or ramp up a particular element and you might have something really is... something.   How does this play in Actual Play?   Maybe there is something I am missing.  What provides the "ooomph" behind the game?

[Knarf]

Welcome to the Forge!  

For what it is worth, I quite like your resolution mechanic.  Unfortunately, Minima's usefulness is probably rather minimal.  You did achieve your design goals.  The game looks playable.  But in its current state, there is nothing that screams "play me."  Check out John Kim's Free RPG site:  many of these freebies do the same thing that your system does.  The mechanics may differ with a different array of attributes:  but why not play Fudge or Gurps-lite?

On the other hand. your design skills seem solid.  Apply this system to an evocative setting or ramp up a particular element and you might have something really is... something.   How does this play in Actual Play?   Maybe there is something I am missing.  What provides the "ooomph" behind the game?

I'm sure that there are people who will argue with me, but I found FUDGE to be too flexible. It essentially gave me a mechanic and a million examples of how to use it. In case you haven't noticed, I prefer something that is a little bit firmer. As for GURPS, I'm actually quite a fan (I found myself using as something of a "reality check"). The problem there is that GURPS Lite is just that: Lite. It's enough to get you through, but I know exactly how much more there is.

Minima is designed to provide a firm base without limitations on how to expand on it.

Unfortunately, I have no experience with Actual Play. One of the main reasons I'm posting that while I'm quite good with the crunchy bits, I have a hard time coming up with my own settings and adventures and such. If there were anyone out there who was good at that sort of thing, That would be ideal. I'm actually doing this with an eye to publication, so it won't be 100% charity.

My ultimate idea is that of a sort of "standalone supplement." Instead of paying $30+ on a core book and then paying $20 each for supplements, skip straight to buying only the supplements you want and nothing else. Depending on the setting, additional rules may be provided, such as appropriate weapon and equipment lists, character types and races or even things like a magic system (which is in the works on the site) or spaceship rules in the appropriate setting.

Tell me if you think that's a crazy idea!

[talysman]

My ultimate idea is that of a sort of "standalone supplement." Instead of paying $30+ on a core book and then paying $20 each for supplements, skip straight to buying only the supplements you want and nothing else. Depending on the setting, additional rules may be provided, such as appropriate weapon and equipment lists, character types and races or even things like a magic system (which is in the works on the site) or spaceship rules in the appropriate setting.

I think it's an excellent idea, more or less what I was planning to do myself. I actually like creating settings... plus, I think if you honestly examine what kinds of game books/suppliments generate the most buzz before release and what books actually sell the best, it tends to be setting books. rules expansions don't seem to do as well, and new core systems  are harder to sell, unless the first book of the core system is a setting book.

my own plan revolves around a core system I am developing for what I call my "fantasy inversions" series of settings. right now, the only one available in any form is the Empedocles game, which first appeared here as my submission to the Iron Game Chef Simulationist challenge.

as for Minima, it looks usable, but you might have a bit of a problem distinguishing it from other similar small core systems like Pocket Universe or the Action! system. to get people interested in Minima, you will need a powerful setting, which is exactly what you identify as your weakness. I would suggest teaming up with a friend who likes your system and is good at creating setting.

[Mike Holmes]

Tell me if you think that's a crazy idea!

Actually it's pretty common. For example, the Silohuette system is included in most (all?) DP9 products. BRP is included in many Chaosium games. Etc.

As for the game, a few notes:

Some other systems check out. Action!, Risus.

First, see Mike's Standard Rant # 4: Stat/Skill systems

What's "max" human stats?

Yet another admonition against rolling to "walk across the room"! It's better to give positive examples of what ought to be rolled for than obvious examples of what should not.

Have you considered rolling a plus die and a minus die instead of the "flat curve" that you have? This works better with the optional exploding dicve system that you have. Or doing the same sort of system but non-zero based?

It seems a tad odd that on a "relaxed" attempt that the character can do no better than scoring the average result that he'd get on a non-relaxed attempt. Not a biggie, just strikes me as a little harsh.

In skill contests, do ties mean that the contest takes longer, or are just a re-roll?

Determining the Initiative Score may be done onceper round, once per combat or once ever.

Who decides this?

Nocharacter is required to act immediately, and may choose to wait for abetter opportunity,

If you are waiting, and then do something, but I decide that I then want to go before you, can I interrupt? Or do I have to predict your actions?


The multiple actions rule seems problematic. If I aim, I get a +2 (should be a -2 diff by your own admonition, actually). So if I aim again, I get another +2, and a +1 diff for the extra action. So if I aim 10 times, I'll have +20 to hit against only +10 diff. So all I have to do is declare an infinite number of aim actions and I can hit anything.

Even if you fix that, the penalty is too low in general to disincentivize multiple actions significantly. I think that you have somethign in mind that you aren't communicating clearly.

Can a character have a negative Lethal damage rating? Or does it peg at zero?


Just some notes and questions.

Mike

[Knarf]

Tell me if you think that's a crazy idea!

Actually it's pretty common. For example, the Silohuette system is included in most (all?) DP9 products. BRP is included in many Chaosium games. Etc.

As for the game, a few notes:

Some other systems check out. Action!, Risus.

First, see Mike's Standard Rant # 4: Stat/Skill systems

What's "max" human stats?

Yet another admonition against rolling to "walk across the room"! It's better to give positive examples of what ought to be rolled for than obvious examples of what should not.

Have you considered rolling a plus die and a minus die instead of the "flat curve" that you have? This works better with the optional exploding dicve system that you have. Or doing the same sort of system but non-zero based?

It seems a tad odd that on a "relaxed" attempt that the character can do no better than scoring the average result that he'd get on a non-relaxed attempt. Not a biggie, just strikes me as a little harsh.

In skill contests, do ties mean that the contest takes longer, or are just a re-roll?

Determining the Initiative Score may be done onceper round, once per combat or once ever.

Who decides this?

Nocharacter is required to act immediately, and may choose to wait for abetter opportunity,

If you are waiting, and then do something, but I decide that I then want to go before you, can I interrupt? Or do I have to predict your actions?


The multiple actions rule seems problematic. If I aim, I get a +2 (should be a -2 diff by your own admonition, actually). So if I aim again, I get another +2, and a +1 diff for the extra action. So if I aim 10 times, I'll have +20 to hit against only +10 diff. So all I have to do is declare an infinite number of aim actions and I can hit anything.

Even if you fix that, the penalty is too low in general to disincentivize multiple actions significantly. I think that you have somethign in mind that you aren't communicating clearly.

Can a character have a negative Lethal damage rating? Or does it peg at zero?


Just some notes and questions.

Mike

Most companies have a "house system" that they use in all their games. My idea is to make every "supplement" a standalone game, but one that is supported by other "supplements" in the series.

I assume a human range of 1-10. My mechanic was designed to be a unique usage of 2d6. I think I saw one of those kind of systems that you mention and tweaked it. I will consider changing it if it breaks down in Actual Play.

The relaxed success rule was an attempt to use the actual Skill Level since my mechanic only goes higher or lower. Admittedly, it was less than well thought out as is being reconsidered.

I leave the time taken for any Test up to the GM, but I think it is logical that an extended Contest would probably take more time.

The GM determines which Initiative method is used, based on how they want their game to go. I don't believe in "interrupting" another character's action. You either go before or after another character, and people who reserve their actions can do either.

The Aim Maneuver can only give you one bonus at a time. I have amended it to actually say that.

On the multiple actions note, I have Defend Maneuvers cost an action to use, and I'm very big on character survival, so I want a character to be able to defend effectively. They are designed so that it's possible to defend effectively, but not so easy to make many attacks, especially while defending.

Thank you for being brutally thorough, or do I mean thoroughly brutal? Refinement of ideas is very important, and nearly impossible without proper criticism.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not being Brutal at all. You asked for feedback, and this is how I do it for everyone. Sorry if it was startling; I sometimes caveat my reviews with a disclaimer, but this one was small enough that I didn't think it neccessary.

On the multiple actions note, I have Defend Maneuvers cost an action to use, and I'm very big on character survival, so I want a character to be able to defend effectively. They are designed so that it's possible to defend effectively, but not so easy to make many attacks, especially while defending.

I see what you're going for, but what you'll get is players making a lot of attacks. Because statistically, in most cases, the penalty to attacking will not lower the damage done as much as the damage will increase from making multiple attacks. The point is that a character doing several attacks may well bring down a defender before he even has a need to defend himself. Offense becomes the best defense (call this the Rolemaster problem). Why bother worrying about defense when I can be relatively sure that by berzerking I can take out my opponent in the first round?

Let's take the example of two Joe Averages. All fives. Pummeling each other. Joe Alpha gets the initiative. He plays conservatively and makes one attack, so that his defense will be as high as possible (other than the losing strategy of all out defense). He has exactly a 12.5% chance of doing damage (1 in 8).

His opponent Beta, then unleashes a series of five attacks. Why not? What has he to lose? The first attack is at only -1 as his second action of the turn, and so is Alpha's defense. His odds to do damage for the first attack are 12.15%, less than .35% less than his opponent's first shot. His second will be about 11.11%%, the third at 9.38%%, the fourth at 6.94%%, the fifth at 3.82%. After which he can't succceed unless exploding dice are being used (and let's not do that, or Beta can just keep rolling until he finally does enough damage to kill Alpha after about 10,000 rolls). Total chance to do damage this round: just under 22%. Much better than Alpha's option. Also the potential range is much larger using Beta's tactic...in fact, Beta has a theoretical chance of knocking Alpha out, whereas Alpha has none at all.

Next round, they'll likely be both standing. Alpha being a quick learner, decides to unleash six attacks. Beta now has a choice. He can either all out defend (apparently hoping for help to arrive), or he can defend against less than all the attacks. If he defends against all the attacks, then his attack won't have any chance to succeed, which makes that option non-sensical. How about defending against all but one? Well, that will result in Alpa having a slightly less than 22% chance to do damage, and Beta having about a 8% chance. That's no good. In fact, the only way to maintain parity against this option is not to defend, and all-out attack himself against the defenseless Alpha. This will give them both the same chance, a farily good one (about 95%), of doing some damage this turn.

Note that if you have a weapon that can't be easily soaked, this all gets much, much worse. Same thing if you have characters that aren't equal. I even think that I'm overestimating the effectiveness of Defense in this as well in the name of simplicity, a correction of which would also worsen the situation. I've displayed the best case scenario, and the result is the same.

Making less than six attacks is a losing strategy. And defending against any of them is also a losing strategy. End result, both attackers doing nothing but making series of six attacks.

The first thing that has to change is that all actions have to have the same penalty. Because otherwise there's no disincentive to taking extra actions. I can take one at full, or one at full, and one at a penalty? Well I'll take the second choice. In any case, this makes sense as all actions that are being scrunched into a small period of time will conflict with each other.

How that might works with dynamic choice to defend, I don't know. The simplest option is just have Defenses on their own track for penalties. Basically the first Defense is free, and more would be at penalties based on the number performed. Other actions would have one free, and further penalties be based on the number of additional actions decided upon on the player's initiative. There are other, simpler ways, but they don't have the dynamic elements that your system has. Even this one, however, makes it senseless to chose not to defend.

Also, you might want to bump the penalty to +2, otherwise it still makes more statistical sense to make four attacks at +4 diff than it does to make one at no penalty. Even with a +2 penalty it still makes more statistical sense to make 2 attacks than one. To get rid of that would require a penalty of +3 for each additional action.


BTW, I just went through the magic system, and I like it a lot. A couple of notes:

The difficulties seem just to be for color. Why can't I have a create fire spell that makes a matchlight of flame in my palm? Well, I can, but it's the same difficulty as the fireball. Why not just have the player choose a difficulty that seems to match the effect?

Area of Effect should probably make things quite a bit more difficult than just +1. Perhaps a doubling is more in order? Also, you might want to consider simple Range as a +1. Ranged effects have a significant advantage over non-ranged.

Also, it seems very easy to make magic items. Permenant items will only take a few weeks to create even for the most powerful ones. Typically this leads to players using this as a cheap and easy method of getting powerups. If it also mentioned that the process was expensive or dangerous or somesuch, it might go a long way to avoiding this.

Mike

[Knarf]

I'm not being Brutal at all. You asked for feedback, and this is how I do it for everyone. Sorry if it was startling; I sometimes caveat my reviews with a disclaimer, but this one was small enough that I didn't think it neccessary.

On the multiple actions note, I have Defend Maneuvers cost an action to use, and I'm very big on character survival, so I want a character to be able to defend effectively. They are designed so that it's possible to defend effectively, but not so easy to make many attacks, especially while defending.

I see what you're going for, but what you'll get is players making a lot of attacks. Because statistically, in most cases, the penalty to attacking will not lower the damage done as much as the damage will increase from making multiple attacks. The point is that a character doing several attacks may well bring down a defender before he even has a need to defend himself. Offense becomes the best defense (call this the Rolemaster problem). Why bother worrying about defense when I can be relatively sure that by berzerking I can take out my opponent in the first round?


BTW, I just went through the magic system, and I like it a lot. A couple of notes:

The difficulties seem just to be for color. Why can't I have a create fire spell that makes a matchlight of flame in my palm? Well, I can, but it's the same difficulty as the fireball. Why not just have the player choose a difficulty that seems to match the effect?

Area of Effect should probably make things quite a bit more difficult than just +1. Perhaps a doubling is more in order? Also, you might want to consider simple Range as a +1. Ranged effects have a significant advantage over non-ranged.

Also, it seems very easy to make magic items. Permenant items will only take a few weeks to create even for the most powerful ones. Typically this leads to players using this as a cheap and easy method of getting powerups. If it also mentioned that the process was expensive or dangerous or somesuch, it might go a long way to avoiding this.

Mike

First off, don't knock a compliment. (At least that's what it was intended as.)

Actually, I did the math once and each result has an 8.3% chance of coming up (Remember, there are 12 possible outcomes). And also the penalty is cumulative, so that by the time you get to attack #6, the Difficulty has increased by 5 (roughly 42%). The Difficulty of such an attack against a normal person (Agility 5) is 10. If the attacker is average and untrained (Skill Level 5) that's only a 16.6% success chance (There are only 2 successful results: 10 and 11). Of course, you obviously have skill in higher math and so I will probably bow to you on this one.

I don't think I want to track 2 sets of penalties. 1 is quite enough. My options therefore (as I see them) are: 1) Defenses are free and don't cost an action. Other actions do. 2) All actions suffer a +2 cumulative penalty and characters will have to rely on their soak. (Putting the damage randomizer in the hands of the players was either a stroke of genius or insanity).

On the magic system. At this point you are correct. All the Difficulties are essentially numbers that I pulled out of my ass. There's nothing stopping you from creating a Create Fire spell that has any manifestation you like. The reason that the Control Verb was included in the Fireball spell was because it is a targeted attack spell.

The Explosive Fireball spell is just an example of how it is possible to power up an existing spell (Fireball) by increasing the Difficulty without adding more Magic Words. Again, all numbers are pulled out of my ass here.

My primary concern with the system is the Base Casting Time. At first I thought it was wonderful. It rewarded you for improving your Skill Level in the spell and if you're using a spell point option, it reduces the cost there too. But then the question becomes: What happens before you reach that point?

If you only have a Skill Level of 7 in the Fireball spell (Difficulty 10), then you have to spend 3 rounds casting the spell before it takes effect. A Skill Level of 7 in Flesh to Stone (Difficulty 13) results in a Base Casting Time of 6. Most fighters can finish an enemy off in 6 rounds and probably less. But then, a Difficulty 6 higher than the Skill Level results in a barely castable spell, or one that can only be made or easily castable by taking more time.

You're probably right on the magic items front. But then, I'm just considering time considerations here. There can easily be other considerations that are more dependant on the specific setting, such as material components, cash costs (I avoid making economic assumptions in the core rules. I leave that to the settings.) and other whatnot. Or maybe I just need to rethink things based on the wonderful feedback I get.

[Knarf]

I have updated Minima to include some suggestions and comments I have recieved here.

Extra actions are at a +2 penalty, but defenses still cost an action, so hopefully people will be thoughtful with their extra actions.

I added an increased success rule. I had a critical miss in place, but no critical success.

Modified the magic system so that ritual casting can take advantage of increased success to become a viable option, not just for flavor.

Still hunting for a setting (traditional fantasy seems easiest, but other ideas are certainly welcome) and playtesters.

[Mike Holmes]

Have you thought of trying it out over at Indie Netgaming (see the sig)? I think that such a light system would be optimal for IRC play.

Mike

[Knarf]

Ever helpful, I see, Mike. Keep that up and I might just list you as a valuable contributor.

[Andrew Martin]

Is there any reason why your system is so much like Action! or Fuzion?

What would be the benefit to players and GMS if they used your "Minima" system over, say, Fuzion? (Fuzion can be downloaded for free from here: http://www.talsorian.com/freestuff.shtml )

[brainwipe]

I must admit it did look very Fuzion like to me. But then, there are only so many ways you can make a simple mechanic. My only gripe would be that it has nothing to pull me into playing it. There is no twist or anything new or exciting in it.

[Andrew Martin]

My only gripe would be that it has nothing to pull me into playing it. There is no twist or anything new or exciting in it.

I agree, that's why I'm asking the author, in case we missed something that seems obvious to the author but isn't being communicated to us, the readers.

[Knarf]

Is there any reason why your system is so much like Action! or Fuzion?

What would be the benefit to players and GMS if they used your "Minima" system over, say, Fuzion? (Fuzion can be downloaded for free from here: http://www.talsorian.com/freestuff.shtml )

I did not design my system to consciously emulate any other system.

My goal was to make the system as compact, yet as thorough as possible. Note that the rules include a complete set of Attributes and Skills, so the GM doesn't have to choose which Attributes will be used (as in Fuzion) or design Skill Groups (as in Action!). This allows the GM to get past fiddling with the rules options and moving right into designing the adventure and setting.

The players don't need to have a lecture on the options available to them, since there's very little needed fiddling. They can take the basic options and expand upon them with just a little imagination, instead of forcing someone to meticulously detail all the possibilities.

Admittedly, the magic system does require a bit of fiddling, but considering what it does, that's pretty much unavoidable.

Also, under my grand scheme, the rules would be reprinted in every book, so you only need to buy one book instead of the main book and reams of supplements so common in the industry.

The main reason I'm posting about it here is to find ways to make it better. Most ideas I've heard involve giving it "flavor." However, my design is intended to be a "universal" system and so I'm not sure how much "flavor" I should give it. I would rather to see the diverse settings produced for it giving their flavor to the system, not the other way around.