I've been struggling to come up with our own "house" mechanic for a while. Our projects are presently constructed around the d20 System & OGL, and I'm finding it increasingly frustrating working with its confines/ambiguity.

The mechanic I'm pasting below isn't original. It borrows from a few different ideas, namely Storyteller & Gurps. There are plenty of pieces of the puzzle missing, including Derrived Attributes (Health Points, Move Rate, etc.), Combat (although with this mechanic, that should be relatively straight-forward, and a few others. Tips on implementing these under the mechanic below would be appreciated.

I'm not a whiz with statistics. If anyone can break this apart and tell me if it works, I'd be in their debt. We've tested it out only briefly, as we don't want to tie ourselves down to something which has the possiblity of needing re-working.

Suggestions, critiques, yelling and screaming are welcome!

CHARACTER BUILDING POINTS

Players begin designing their character using a predetermined number of Character Building Points (CBPs). This number is generally assigned by the GM well before play and before players begin creating their characters. Character building points can be spent on Attributes, Edges and Flaws and Skills as the player chooses.

Character Building Points Allotment Example:
Realistic/Gritty: 50 CBPs
Cinematic: 75 CBPs
Super heroic/Supernatural: 100+ CBPs


ATTRIBUTES
Each character is comprised of 4 Core Attributes. These are: Strength, Hardiness, Agility and Intelligence. Normal humans possess attribute scores between 10 and 12. Attribute Points for each attribute can be purchased on a 1 attribute point : 1 CBP basis up to an attribute score of 12, a 1 attribute point : 5 CBP basis from between 13 and 24, and a 1 attribute point : 10 CBP basis over 25.

Example: John wants to create an overly heroic policeman in a realistic setting. He decides he wants his character to possess a Strength score of 14 (above average). He must therefore spend 12 CBPs for the first 12 attribute points in Strength, and an additional 10 attribute points (5 for his 13th and 5 for his 14th attribute points), for a total of 22 CBPs.

The total number of attribute points in any attribute directly relates to how many six-sided dice are used to form a Die Pool when using that attribute in any related skill tests. A die pool indicates the number of dice rolled when checking for the character's competency in an attribute or skill. The die pool can be further modified by a character's edges, flaws, skills and GM discretion. The Base Die Pool for each attribute can be computed by using the following formula: Attribute score / 6, rounded up or down to the next whole number.

Example: A Strength score of 14 would contain a die pool of 2. An Intelligence score of 8 would contain a die pool of 1. An Agility score of 28 would contain a die pool of 5.


EDGES & FLAWS
Edges and Flaws are intrinsic traits which help to define a character which can have a direct result on a Die Pool when performing skill checks. Edges and flaws may be purchased on a 1 edge/flaw : 5 CBP basis. A player may choose to take one or more (or more than one level in any one) flaw and, in return, receive 5 CBPs which he can place elsewhere (in Attributes or Skills).

Edge/Flaw Severity
Mild Flaw/Edge 1 (certain phobias, womanizer, good-looking)
Moderate Flaw/Edge 2 (heavy drinker, friends in high places)
Strong Flaw/Edge 3 (schizophrenic, amputee, extraordinary wealthy)



SKILLS
Skills represent learned abilities, such as driving a car or playing professional sports. Skills can be purchased on a 5 CP : 1 Skill Level basis from 1-2 skill levels (general competence), a 10 CP : 1 Skill level basis from 3-4 skill levels (limited expertise) and a 15 CP : 1 skill level basis for 5 skill levels (world-renowned expert).


SKILL CHECKS
There are three types of skill checks: Uncontested, Contested and Unskilled. Each of these requires rolling the number of dice in a die pool, adding any relevant modifiers, and comparing the number of successes (dice appearing as a 5 or 6) against a Difficulty Rating (DR).

Difficulty Ratings (DR) Required Number of Successes
Very Easy 0
Easy 1
Difficult 2
Very Difficult 3
Hard 4
Very Hard 5
Approaching Impossible 6

I don't think anyone is going to be able to tell you whether it "works" or not before we know what you want to do with it.

"Looks like a perfectly good screwdriver... oh, you were trying to hammer in nails? Well then yeah, this isn't such a good tool for you."

So what sort of game are you making this to play?

TonyLB wrote: I don't think anyone is going to be able to tell you whether it "works" or not before we know what you want to do with it.

"Looks like a perfectly good screwdriver... oh, you were trying to hammer in nails? Well then yeah, this isn't such a good tool for you."

So what sort of game are you making this to play?

Also,

Can anyone tell me the probability of rolling a 5 or 6 on a 1d6 or, even better, where I can find a probability chart online? I'm guessing it's 33% but I'm probably statistically incorrect.

Thanks!

Oh, I forgot to say... "Welcome to the Forge!" Unless I'm completely mis-reading your statistics in which case... "whoops"

I wasn't actually asking so much about setting, but I didn't communicate it clearly. Let me try again.

Is the game meant to support an emotional soap opera? A cinematic sequence of flashy battles? A careful examination of the world, its internal logic and how the characters fit into it? A mythic quest where overtones of morality and destiny tint every action? Something else entirely?

Is it meant to encourage tactical precision over roleplaying flair or vice versa?

Are players supposed to know generally what their skills will achieve, or is random variation in results half the fun?

If the answer to those questions is "The system should do any of those things equally well" then that is probably where the system is broken.

TonyLB wrote: Oh, I forgot to say... "Welcome to the Forge!" Unless I'm completely mis-reading your statistics in which case... "whoops"

I wasn't actually asking so much about setting, but I didn't communicate it clearly. Let me try again.

Is the game meant to support an emotional soap opera? A cinematic sequence of flashy battles? A careful examination of the world, its internal logic and how the characters fit into it? A mythic quest where overtones of morality and destiny tint every action? Something else entirely?

Is it meant to encourage tactical precision over roleplaying flair or vice versa?

Are players supposed to know generally what their skills will achieve, or is random variation in results half the fun?

If the answer to those questions is "The system should do any of those things equally well" then that is probably where the system is broken.

Hi HP, and welcome to the Forge!

Joe appears to have wasted 10 build points, by buying two attribute points (the 13th and 14th points) that exceed the rounding breakpoint at 12. He will get no more dice and therefore will perform no better at strength tasks than a character with a strength of 12 (or average). He would have to spend 20 more build points (for a strength of 18) to see any benefit.

Why have an attribute scale that must be divided by six to determine the number of dice, instead of just having the attribute be the number of dice? You mentioned some plans for derived attributes for movement and health, but if you're planning to use typical formulas for them, those too will be riddled with rounding breakpoints. (And you have to ask yourself, do movement and health really have to be related to other attributes, or would they be better as a separate CBP purchase?)

Here are the probabilities for rolling target number or more successes on a d6 pool where success is a roll of 5 or 6. Row is number of dice in the pool, column is difficulty (number of successes needed).

[code]POOL DIFFICULTY
SIZE 1 2 3 4 5 6

1 33.33%
2 55.56% 11.11%
3 70.37% 25.93% 3.70%
4 80.25% 40.74% 11.11% 1.23%
5 86.83% 53.91% 20.99% 4.53% 0.41%
6 91.22% 64.88% 31.96% 10.01% 1.78% 0.14%
7 94.15% 73.66% 42.94% 17.33% 4.53% 0.69%
8 96.10% 80.49% 53.18% 25.86% 8.79% 1.97%
9 97.40% 85.69% 62.28% 34.97% 14.48% 4.24%
10 98.27% 89.60% 70.09% 44.07% 21.31% 7.66%[/code]

Any time you have a difficulty scale based on adjectives (easy, very hard, etc.) you have to be sure the players can assess the difficulty consistently. If making a shot is "difficult" does that mean it's difficult for the average person (who would likely be untrained in shooting), difficult for the average cop, difficult for the average world-class competitive shooter, or difficult for the average action-movie hero? This is especially problematic when a system is supposed to cover the gamut from gritty to superhero. Note that for an untrained human with average stats, "easy" still fails about half the time. And players and GMs have to understand that "very difficult" doesn't mean "you're going to have to try extra hard on this one," it means "even the guy with world-renowned expert skill and an attribute of 30 is going to fail almost half the time."

- Walt

Walt Freitag wrote: Hi HP, and welcome to the Forge!

Joe appears to have wasted 10 build points, by buying two attribute points (the 13th and 14th points) that exceed the rounding breakpoint at 12. He will get no more dice and therefore will perform no better at strength tasks than a character with a strength of 12 (or average). He would have to spend 20 more build points (for a strength of 18) to see any benefit.

If you're using a dice-pool mechanic, I would strongly reccomend building everything with units of one or more dice. That keeps things clean and transparent, both for you as designer and for the players.

The only other thing I'd comment on is that with 5 and 6 being successes, that's a 33% success chance per die rolled. That's a bit higher than the White Wolf nWOD 30%, but you don't have exploding dice pools, either. You may find yourself in playtesting with a pretty flat, predictable success rate -- in other words, rolling the dice could often be replaced by just taking the dice pool divided by three as the number of successes.

While I can understand wanting to get out from under D20, what I'm not seeing here is where the improvements are. I can see the similarities to GURPS and Storyteller that you mention, but that only makes your game about as good as those systems at best.

A few questions. Why make a "house" system? If you're not going to leverage off of the popularity of D20, or one of the other systems out there available for use for this sort of project (Fuzion and Action! come to mind), then why do you want to make a generic-ish system at all? Why not tailor a system for each game you make. I don't mean to be harsh, but do you see your house system becoming as widely used as even GURPS? Much less D20? If not, then the benefits of it being generic are mostly lost.

Second, if you still are determined to make a house system, then why make it just a rehash of other systems that exist? Why not try to make something substantively better. Rather, why would I play this instead of grabbing my GURPS books and playing your settings? Or something better, like FATE? If that's the case, then why not write it for one of those? If the setting is good enough Steve Jackson will buy it. If you want to be independent, then FATE is going with something like an OGL license.

Mike

DannyK wrote: If you're using a dice-pool mechanic, I would strongly reccomend building everything with units of one or more dice. That keeps things clean and transparent, both for you as designer and for the players.

DannyK wrote: The only other thing I'd comment on is that with 5 and 6 being successes, that's a 33% success chance per die rolled. That's a bit higher than the White Wolf nWOD 30%, but you don't have exploding dice pools, either. You may find yourself in playtesting with a pretty flat, predictable success rate -- in other words, rolling the dice could often be replaced by just taking the dice pool divided by three as the number of successes.

I'm probably not expressing myself very well, but I was speaking to the same issue as Walt. I like the simplicity of translating stats into numbers of dice rolled directly. I think it's also better to have all difficulty modifiers, to hit bonuses, etc. work in terms of making the dice pool bigger or smaller.

You really should think about what people have said about "why create your own generic system", though. There's nothing wrong with inventing the wheel for yourself, but these days, there's a remarkable number of free wheels available, some of which are pretty nifty.

To put Danny and Walt's point another way:

What's the difference between a 10 and an 11 in Hardiness? What mechanical effect does it have?

Or, why not use:

dice-cost
1----6
2----12
3----42
4----72
5----132
+1---+60

If the attribute doesn't do anything itself, only use the secondary trait. This is one of the most annoying holdovers from old D&D to 3E. The only thing that the attribute itself does is to make it harder to go from one level of bonus to another. Which could be represented in character points or something as you do. If you have CP, then there's absolutely no reason for attributes like this.

Mike

There are a lot of good points here that I'm not going to repeat; I've got problems with your character creation numbers.

If we're doing "Realistic" play, I've got fifty CBP to build a character.

I'm told that I have four attributes, and normal human is from ten to twelve, which costs me CBP per point. That means that to be a below average ordinary human with minimum ordinary scores of ten each I've just spent forty points.

Now I have ten points left. I can buy two skills or edges at level one or one skill at level two. If I decide that I want my character to be only average, eleven points, in any one of those attributes, I reduce what I can have to one. With two average and two above average attributes, I've spent forty-six points (eleven, eleven, twelve, twelve), and I can't afford any skills or edges.

The only way to make such a character even nominally playable, it seems to me, is to take several flaws so you can buy the necessary skills. Those numbers seem way off. It also doesn't appear that 100 CBP is all that much for creating a superhero, given that a score of 19 costs forty-seven points and only gains one die over a score of 13 which costs seventeen points.

I could be wrong; I don't do much with point-based character generation.

However, I concur with Mike. There are a lot of working game systems out there for which you could design worlds. Why are you trying to develop a house system?

• Transferability? Do you see players moving characters between games?• Familiarity? Do you expect that you'll be able to sell games based on the fact that people already understand the core of the system?• Production? Do you think that you'll be able to crank out games more quickly if you've got one system to rule them all?

Maybe there's another reason. What benefit do you gain from using one system for every game, instead of designing each game individually?

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: There are a lot of good points here that I'm not going to repeat; I've got problems with your character creation numbers.

If we're doing "Realistic" play, I've got fifty CBP to build a character.

I'm told that I have four attributes, and normal human is from ten to twelve, which costs me CBP per point. That means that to be a below average ordinary human with minimum ordinary scores of ten each I've just spent forty points.

Now I have ten points left. I can buy two skills or edges at level one or one skill at level two. If I decide that I want my character to be only average, eleven points, in any one of those attributes, I reduce what I can have to one. With two average and two above average attributes, I've spent forty-six points (eleven, eleven, twelve, twelve), and I can't afford any skills or edges.

The only way to make such a character even nominally playable, it seems to me, is to take several flaws so you can buy the necessary skills. Those numbers seem way off. It also doesn't appear that 100 CBP is all that much for creating a superhero, given that a score of 19 costs forty-seven points and only gains one die over a score of 13 which costs seventeen points.

I could be wrong; I don't do much with point-based character generation.

However, I concur with Mike. There are a lot of working game systems out there for which you could design worlds. Why are you trying to develop a house system?

• Transferability? Do you see players moving characters between games?• Familiarity? Do you expect that you'll be able to sell games based on the fact that people already understand the core of the system?• Production? Do you think that you'll be able to crank out games more quickly if you've got one system to rule them all?

Maybe there's another reason. What benefit do you gain from using one system for every game, instead of designing each game individually?

--M. J. Young

HP wrote: We want the system to be as unobtrusive as possible. Very easy to learn, very invisible during play...

Walt Freitag wrote:

HP wrote: We want the system to be as unobtrusive as possible. Very easy to learn, very invisible during play...

Isn't "I have Agility 3, so I roll 3 dice for Agility tests" less obstrusive, less difficult to learn, and less visible during play than "I have Agility 16, so I divide by 6, that gives me 2.666 which rounds up to 3 so I roll 3 dice for Agility tests"? You still haven't explained why you want the more stretched-out scale for Attributes. Based on what you've described so far, it doesn't give you more discrimination between different characters' strengths and weaknesses during play, only a flimsy pretense of it.

It may be jumping to conclusions, but without any rationale from you, it's natural to suspect that you're imitating Attribute scales from other systems (specifically, d20) from force of habit and no other good reason. That would be counterproductive, if your goal is uniqueness.

- Walt

Edit: By the way, is there a name we can use when addressing you? It feels kind of strange talking to a press.

Hi Ed,

No, I'm saying that if a character has an Agility for which it would be appropriate for the player to roll 5 dice, it makes more sense for the Agility Attribute score to be 5, not 28.

(Please don't say "But then he'd only be rolling one die." I'm saying that the Agility of 5 should mean that 5 dice are rolled for it. Which gets rid of the dividing by six altogether.)

An Agility score of 7 that tells me to roll 7 dice is easier to handle than an Agility score of 28 that I have to do division and rounding to figure out how many dice to roll.

There's no difference in scalability or in the functionality of the system, it's just easier to use.

In your present system, a character with a Strength of 14 is no different than a character with a Strength of 12 and 10 more CBPs saved up. The character with a "lower" strength and the saved CBPs is actually better off, because he still has the option of spending the saved CPB points on whatever he wants while the "higher" strength character has already spent them and is getting no benefit yet. There is no reason in your system for any sensible player to ever have an Attribute score other than 3, 9, 14, 20, 26, 32, 38 and so forth (assuming .5s always round up), so you might as well just call those same Attribute scores 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... which have the advantage of directly telling the player the number of dice that get rolled for them.

- Walt

Walt,

That's a very good point. I had thought about implementing a lower attribute score, but read somewhere that there were intrinsic problems with using a lower score attribute system (1's, 2's, etc.) -- perhaps it related to scaleability. But that doesn't really apply with dice pool mechanics.

I'm sure you're right and I'm trying to apply principles from somewhere else.

Thanks!

Homogenized Press wrote: There are several reasons for wanting to create a house system. The primary reason is because the games we have slated are very unique. It wouldn't do them justice to slap them under the OGL or another system. The game we're working on and those in the planning stages share similar ideas and concepts.

We want the system to be as unobtrusive as possible. Very easy to learn, very invisible during play, yet we don't want it to be diceless or not have a random element. It must also be flexible and have the ability of being modular.

M. J. Young wrote: Hi, Ed. I think you've misunderstood the direction of the question; in fact, your answer suggests you haven't really thought it through completely.

Let me toss in a few pithy and hopefully useful comments:

ATTRIBUTES
Each character is comprised of 4 Core Attributes. These are: Strength, Hardiness, Agility and Intelligence.

Let me first say that I have complete sympathy with the dream of having a multi-national gaming empire. I have the same dream on occasion. It's pleasant. But let's set that aside for a moment, 'kay?

You say all of your games are unique, but in the same vein. Could you tell us what that vein is?

If you can do that then we can more usefully give you feedback on whether your proposed system actually supports the type of play you're aiming for.

At the moment, I don't think you have a system with any meaningful content. What you have is an inoffensive assortment of numbers that, if everyone agrees on their use, will help you to arbitrate the rules. That's better than a sharp poke in the eye, but much less than a system could be. It doesn't have any content that will help people to tell a story.

By comparison, check out Scarlet Wake. It has laser-focussed content. It is custom-made to create incredibly cool, over-the-top killers who have been dreadfully wronged and now seek revenge. It does this very well. You could try to make a mild-mannered librarian in this system, but odds are that after a few rounds of trials and tribulations you'll be playing an angst-soaked killer bookworm with spinning razor file-cards of doom, and loving it.

And Scarlet Wake is also very much universal. Anywhere people are wronged and seek stylish, bloody vengeance, Scarlet Wake works great. Its default setting appears to be modern-day Tarrantino blood-fests, but the folks playing in this Actual Play post decided to change the setting to a semi-magic, victorian steam-punk one, and seem to have had a lot of fun with it. However, because of the system they ended up making ninja-witches and steam-cyborgs bent on quests of bloody retribution.

Personally, I think that's what you should be aiming for, whether you want to focus your game on one setting/situation or make it as universal as possible. Making your game generic with regards to the trappings of the story does not excuse you from your responsibility to provide and reinforce a message that will inspire more enjoyable play and better stories. That's the game designers job.

In all honesty, I don't think everyone understands my reasoning. This is probably in part because I've had very little sleep during the past week :) And I can't adequately put my thoughts into words (without sufficient coffee). I appreciate the criticism, suggestions, and input and invite the discussion to continue.

I'll try to do a better job of descibing my intentions:

1) I don't want to reinvent the wheel. But it looks like I'm up against a wall on this one. I'm very adamant about not going d20 or OGL (SRD) at this point. I've thought about it quite a bit and I see a change in the direction the industry is heading. There are more anti-d20 people now than ever, and I see it growing to a critical mass. While it may not be hurting WotC's sales (and probably won't for very simple and obvious reasons), other publishers see the change in the wind. With all due respect to Greg, the other OGL systems are either, as I've said, not very visible (for use of a better word), or are too constrictive in their licenses.

2) I don't want to build a better apple cart. I have no intention of building the end-all, be-all RPG mechanic -- just a simple and stable one we can customize, bend and twist without having to call in a team of lawyers. TonyLB: We have very realistic aspirations, believe me, which don't include becoming the big gaming empire. We just want to put out good games :)

3) The audience for our games isn't the typical roleplayer. We expect to get a lot of people new to RPG's picking up our games. With this in mind, we need a system that's simple, yet modular enough to grow with our customers.

The first post in this topic was only intended for the use as a sounding board. We spent 4 hours putting a base mechanic together, if that, and wanted opinions on its feasibility. Again, and I can't state this enough, I appreciate everyone's comments, suggestions and ideas. It's been very informative.

Hiya Ed, welcome to the forge!

Homogenized Press wrote: *snip*The first post in this topic was only intended for the use as a sounding board. We spent 4 hours putting a base mechanic together, if that, and wanted opinions on its feasibility. Again, and I can't state this enough, I appreciate everyone's comments, suggestions and ideas. It's been very informative.

Homogenized Press wrote: If you want to run a successful game company, you need to rely on the same group of customers coming back again and again, and bringing their friends who, in turn, come back again and again. If you publish games, each having its own mechanic, you run the risk of alienating your customers. I think Wizards realized this when they took over TSR. Unified mechanics are the trend, although slightly less so than five years ago (due to d20 glut). Some of the major industry players are either abandoning d20 in order to make their game more unique (realizing that the d20 market is so bloated) or slowly switching their goals to unified "house" systems (for the same reason). In essence, the market will become as fragmented as it was 10-15 years ago.

Working with a generic, "house" rules system affords you the ability to be consistent from game-to-game, enticing customers to buy new products. You can more easily work with writers who understand what you want because they'll be working under the same mechanic umbrella as everyone else.

If you want to run a successful game company, you need to rely on the same group of customers coming back again and again, and bringing their friends who, in turn, come back again and again.