G: UM (Genus: Unitary Mechanics)

[peejay]

Hello all,

As I am new here I must apologise if I inadvertantly stray from the rules etc. I have read them (honest!). After many years of getting by with hastily scrawled notes I've finally decided to bite the bullet and attempt just what you good people are doing, the development of an indie-rpg.

Okay down to business.
The main system mechanic I've been building from is drawn from the theories of Patricia Benner, an academic who developed a sytem for catagorising levels of competence. Her main work 'Novice to Expert' is extensively drawn upon in nursing (my real life profession). I have coupled this with a pyramidal development model. For example; in any one skill (I use this term loosely) there are more people who could be defined as Novices than there are Competents and so on up to the top of the pyramid (Masters). At present I'm using unitary d10's (i.e. 0 counts as Zero) for chance factors (hence the system tag G: UM)

I would be grateful if anyone could provide answers to the following couple of questions.

1) Have there been other systems that use this framework? If so which?
2) Has anybody tried to develop this kind of system themselves? and if so what were the pitfalls?
3) Anything else that folks have to say about this? (I know the information I have provided is minimal at present but I did not want to overload this post)

Thank you for your feedback and/or looking

Peejay

[Mike Holmes]

Answers at this point:
1) If all you're saying is that your character generation system will make it progresively more expensive to have a higher level of skill in something than the lower levels, then this is about as common as gunfire at an Afghani Wedding. The classic 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55... progression is found ubiquitously in RPGs, as are other curves like squaring the cost. FATE is a game I've been playing a lot lately, and it has an interesting system in that it requires you to purchase lower level skills to "support" a "skill pyramid". Check that out. May turn out that ancient Asians beat miss Benner to the punch on this one.

2) The biggest pitfall is that the whole idea has a suspicous premise. That is, what the heck does real life have to do with your game anyhow? I mean, do you really want characters to have the same hinderances that we do in real life? Why? What does it support in the game?

3) I'm not sure what your system entails, precisely, so it's hard to answer your questions. There is no such thing as overloading a post here on The Forge (AFAICT), so please include the neccessary info. If you want to present an entire game text, then link to it, certainly. But short of that, post away.

Mike

[peejay]

Firstly thank you Mike for taking the time to post, much appreciated.

In answer to your own question (Number 2) I guess I am a simulationist by bent therefore systems that appeal and/or make particular sense to me have a more rational/less heroic bent, for example Harnmaster. As to wether I would want the characters to have the same hindrances - Yes, after all a persona in the game is IMHO less rounded without limits that ensure the player has to use their understanding of the persona in order to achieve their goals {& not the GM's ;) }

In reference to point 1) I suppose that it is fundamentally a 'higher skill higher cost' equation however my aim in posting was to establish wether the same or similar had been done (in the sense of the work of Benner on Learning theory and pyramidal development). Thank you for the heads up on FATE I will have a look at it forthwith. As G: UM requires that the lower levels of the development pyramid support the upper ones also.

Whilst I have every intention of publishing G:UM I am under no illusions that it is going to be the next 'Big Thing' (would be nice though *shrug*) and my aim is merely to put it out there. However I am not the worlds greatest with computers and most of my work is at a very rough stage (pen & paper) at present. In time I hope to put out G:UM with three modules for Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction but at present I am looking at probably a minimum 10-12 month incubation period (mainly due to work and kids).

The hub of the G: UM system is simply a five step pyramid designed around a 5-4-3-2-1 ratio which is used to provide a clear level of competence (thereby avoiding time consuming dice rolling where it is inappropriate) and also numerical ratings to enable fate to take a hand in less certain situations. Skills are resolved by a '2d10 roll equal or under' format where 0 = Zero. Statistically speaking this means that a Master who has to roll (without any modifiers) has a 96% success rate whereas a Novice's ranges from 2% to 21% (as the Novice category has 5 steps).

When I have something more organised I will post further information. In the meantime thank you again for your feedback.

Cheers,
Peejay