Hello everyone! I'm currently working on a spaghetti western Indie RPG called "Viva Wallach!" Basically it's aimed at fans of the genre and just about anyone who's ever watched a Leone movie and pretended to be Clint Eastwood. Eurowesterns or spaghetti westerns as they are more popularly called are far more violent (not to mention anachronistic) than their American counterparts. I have a library of about 200 of them and it is believed that around 800 haven been made since the 1960's. I intend to make a small print run of this game for sale. The game features characters like; The Drifter, The Mankiller, The Drover, The Gambler and a few others (I've decided on making them archetypes with customizable features). The attributes are pretty much in keeping with the ambiance of the spaghetti west; Macho, Wits, Reflexes and Charisma with ranges from -9 to +9. In the game everyone starts off with a vice (The Gambler actually starts with 2) and once your vice boxes are ticked off that character falls prone to his vice and receives a negative modifier to his actions until his vice is sated. Combat is to be quick and deadly just like the movies with the player characters having the advantage of performance points to negate effects of lethal attacks or modify rolls. Some characters will be able to use performance points to do special things only their archetype is capable of; for instance The Drifter can trade in a performance point in order to ignore reloading his pistol if he runs out of Balas (bullets), The Gunfighter can trade one of his performance points to "unload a full round" into his opponents and so on, poker chips can also be used to keep track of performance points in order to add a little ambiance to the game.
In any case combat and tasks are all rolled against a target with applicable modifiers. The combat system is somewhat like the save versus damage system of Mutants and Masterminds and still needs a little work but I figure it will be; 1. roll initiative add reflexes 2. roll a die to attack, add modifiers and if you hit add your damage bonus defender now rolls, adds his modifiers (Macho, armor, etc...) and tries to match or beat that number, if he fails and is a Nobody he is out, if he fails and he is a Minor Player he may be wounded or out and if he fails and is a Major Player he may be able to get away without a scratch..
Skills are defined by the archetype and are stated as " things I'm very good at" with a modifier of +3 to the task and "things I'm ok at" with a +2 modifier for the task and so on eventually ending with "things I haven't done in a long time"... I haven't decided whether everything will be done with a 20 sider or not but I am leaning towards it because I want to keep the game mechanics uniform, simple and quick.
My questions are:
Is there a better way to resolve combat or does the method above do the trick?
What would be a good way to reward players other than using performance points (I don't want players to only rely on performance points) or what are some creative ways in which I can give them out ?
Can the attributes and skills remain static or should I have a system where characters improve and if so how should I pace it?
I have generalized idea of how things will turn out but I am looking for the more experienced designers out there to give me few pointers and share their thoughts with me.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Martin K.