Paradox RPG...

[Alex Johnson]

I see that there's a history behind your genericized rulebase. My take on generic rpgs is identical to that on generic boardgames. Me, I want Risk 2210 when I want to focus on futuristic conquest, Settlers of Cataan for a great trading strategy game, and so on. You can't make a generic boardgame more Risk than Risk; providing the ability to play Chess, Draughts, Civilization, and the Game of Life with the same boxed rules set won't work.

I have the same knee-jerk reaction to generic RPGs.  I know people like the idea and try hard to write them, but I think a game specially tailored to a specific type of play will always be more fun and absorbing than a game that could be used for anything under the sun.

That said, I'm finding myself interested in Darksmith's Paradox.  There seems to be not only a motivation behind the universality of his system, but some attractive qualities of his approach.  I too have worked on a percentile system (which also screams for heavy rework, like Paradox) and there can be a number of issues.  With the approach you have chosen, let me throw out one problem.

You say attributes and skills are the ranges of human capability.  So a 100% is the absolute best an unmodified human could do and 50% is the average of what an unmodified human could do.  The catch is in the application of average.  Take lockpicking without tools.  The average human is probably 1% likely to open a lock without tools or training.  But the average burgalar might be around 20%.  While the range of ability is just as large as any other skill (0%-100%), there is a nonstandard distribution of ability such that 99.999% of people fall into the bottom 1-2%.  The question is do you normalize the scale so that the difference between "better than 20% of the population" and "better than 60% of the population" has no significance, or do you normalize the scale so that the % is the chance of success, where everyone starts out with very low numbers instead of "average" numbers in that skill?

[John Burdick]

On the social question, I like systems where depiction enhances a dice roll. One of the reasons I walked away from a game once was in-character performance. With that in mind, I also question the social stats being present if they don't fit how you play.

On the basic notion, many people use Fudge as a neutral system that can include a diverse range of characters. If I imagine a percentile version of Fudge, would it have any similarity of application? If so, how about using the Fudge approach of user defined attributes.

John

[Darksmith]

Sorry I haven't had time to respond. Work and this stupid snow storm. I'll go over it this weekend and post some replies.

Thanks,

Darksmith