After playing a certain Table Top RPG for about 20 years, and buying new editions, and accentual relearning the game over and over again, my friends and I decided to put together our own system. I know that this forum is riddled with new ideas for new and exciting RPGs, but I’m not proclaiming that my idea is the best or even the newest. I'm sure  given enough time I will find something close to my ideas within these forums. However, I wish to attempt to describe what my friends and I have already laid out. We based our whole system on the idea of "Why not?” if i can do it in real life then why is my character unable to do it within the game. For example, in some games there the ideas of proficiencies or skills? Now I understand that no one is an expert in all of these skills, but shouldn't they have some knowledge? Shouldn’t you have a base to start with? When you are placed in a situation that requires your character to do something that is not traditionally within your character's abilities, shouldn't they learn from this experience? When a fighter is forced to pick a lock because there is no thief in your croup, shouldn’t they receive some sort of bonus or points towards that attribute? Whether they picked the lock or not, they still learned something from it.

Another aspect we looked into is the progression of your Stats. When you increase your level, shouldn’t your stats improve? A persons strength increases all the time if the work out, and you intelligence increases if you study, and learn new things. When your stats increase, your variety of abilities grows.

One of the major aspects we looked at was the idea that your character should be your own creation. We found that there is something boring about playing a mage till 20th level and they are a total mage. What is preventing them from swinging a sword, or picking a lock? We opened up all the abilities to any character no matter what you are. When you pass level 1 we give you the option, to become more than just a fighter, you may take magic, assuming your intelligence is high enough, or you could take one of the other varieties of different abilities that we have.

We have already put together a list of rules, however, we haven’t play tested anything beyond our number system, but we wanted to know what anyone thinks of our concepts. Please feel free to reply by giving your opinion or by asking questions.

Well, I think the experience or advancement system of a game says a lot about it - in D&D, you get specific bonuses for overcoming adversaries and obstacles, and then, once in a while, poof! You're more powerful! Thus, there's a direct reward for defeating foes, disarming traps, and so on, but that's pretty much the only way to improve yourself.
Most White Wolf games, by contrast, have a point-buy system, so that you build up one more point in a skill at a time. The way you earn XP is a little different, of course, as it's determined by the degree to which you were engaged and contributing in each session of play. So it doesn't terribly matter what skills you used when; what matters is how engaged you were each session.
In The Burning Wheel, there's a nifty little system that bumps up your skills whenever you win a conflict that's sufficiently difficult; the difficulty is determined in the text by comparing your skill level to the Target Number of the obstacle or the skill of your opponent.

As far as leaving a rigid class system behind, all sorts of games do this, so there's plenty of examples to choose from! ^_^ But then again, if you're going for a more flexible skill system, and the skills are going to have a bigger role than, say, innate class abilities, then you could slap the name "mage" onto anybody who practices wizardry, rather than on somebody who does it in a very specific way.

One more thing - any chance you could post a link to what you've got so far for this game system? Thanks!

-- Abby

unfortunately there is no website with our stuff up there yet. we are still in the beginnings, well actually 8 months into it, but i would be able to email u a copy of what we have so far if u would like. it will be in pdf format, and as long as u dont mind the paranoia of my friend and i's name on every page, u should be good.

Hey Lrx,

Do you mind if I ask you some quick questions? Answers might save you years of grief!

What's your game about? What's the point of it?

How is your game about that? What do the players do in your game to reinforce what it's about?

For example, my game is about consequences. Players make tough decisions and suffer the consequences of their actions. It's a fantasy game. Pretty bog standard Elves and Dwarves and Wizards. When playing your character, you drive him along with Beliefs. When you choose to play to your Belief, you have to make tough decisions, but you get rewarded.

This set up changes the idea of adventures. It's not about killing monsters and taking stuff. It's about fighting really hard for what you believe in.

As Abby pointed out, it's easy to get rid of classes and levels, but what else does your game do? Answering these questions will help you develop better mechanics to replace those pesky classes and levels.

-L

There are a few simple explanations to your question so I’ll go one by one.

First: my game is about individualizing your character, making it your own. I wanted to stop people from starting as a level 1 fighter and ending as a level 1 fight, with everything that progresses the way they swing the sword, or defend themselves.

Second: the point, other than to have fun obviously, is to create the character you want to play. Then to take that character out into the world and have they adapt to the situations placed in front of them. Once again kind of obvious

Third: the game is about character customization, because I’m trying to offer the player as many options to expand upon. I give the players the option to take up magic at a later time if they didn’t choose magic, and that same character will be able to thievery if they so wish.

Fourth: they would gain levels and at each level through gaining of skills and abilities, as well as stat increases will be able to change the path of their character's progression.

We based the whole game on how the restrictions of other systems didn’t let you do certain things. I understand that there consequences to everyone's actions and that will be present, but the consequences won’t be based upon your alignment, but your actions. My personal philosophy is that good people sometimes do bad things, and evil people sometimes do good, it doesn't always change them. The consequences of your actions will come no matter whether you are good or evil. it understandable that your players are placed in positions to make tough decisions and then deal with the consequences, if they weren't placed in these situations and just did nothing but go through dungeon after dungeon just killing things and collecting gold, then it’s safe to say they wouldn’t play the game.

As far as fighting for what you believe in, that is a matter of opinion. Some fight just to fight, some fight to survive, some don’t care either way. And other because they are forced to. I don’t mean it’s always a physical fight either. A battle of wits or of skill is still a fight. There will be consequences no matter what you are fighting for.

I think that abby may have misconstrued where I was going with my idea, I’m not eliminating levels, or classes. At level one you will still be able to choose a class, but once reaching level 2, you will be able to decide if you wish to continue with that profession or begin to experiment with other class abilities. The point is choice. There should always be a choice. If we as GM's give the characters the choice to explore different avenues of choice, then maybe there will be a more interesting and inventive ways to deal with these characters. I have been running a campaign for almost 10 years as a GM, and to be honest, there is little you can do to make the game more interesting without a total overhaul. At least that’s my opinion. When my friend and I were discussing where we were going with this, he said something that made a lot of sense, he said "these characters should be the best of the best, otherwise they will just be another group of adventurers walking around in a whole world of adventurers, and why would anyone hire them over another group? Because they came at a cheaper rate?" that’s where we are coming from. Your character should be something special; otherwise it’s just another character in a group of millions.

Hey, L!

I suppose maybe I did misconstrue a desire to eliminate classes and levels; some games do that, on the basis of flexibility. That being said, your dilemma about the "best of the best" is something I've experienced a lot with D&D - if you take the cleric class for a moment, knowing that they can perform miracles, you have to think, "Gee, this guy can't be the knob who gives the Sunday sermon. He's got to be someone special!" But the designers don't really acknowledge clerics, or anybody, really, as being special. Powerful, sure; but the game is so setting-neutral that it's like they didn't want to pass judgment on what you could do with their rules, so they were just as vague as they could be.

I say that any level 1 PC class character in D&D 3E is definitely an elite, already - they outshine NPC classes, no question, and even after just a couple of levels, they can perform feats that astound the common people; this is especially true for the magic-users! Does that help settle the issue for you at all?

As far as flexibility, alignment, and consequences - yeah, alignment has felt weird and arbitrary to me pretty much since middle school, and I'm happy to have left it behind. What you're describing about character customization - how do you want to depart from the way that Other Game ^_^ does things? Characters can, indeed, take up magic or thievery at later levels if they wish. Granted, you don't have to depart from D&D if you don't want, but if you find that it's not customizable enough, then you've got a direction and a goal. Awesome!

I would recommend checking out the spell-list system for the MUD "Gemstone 3" (they have a Wiki somewhere, I'm sure) - they have classes and levels, but you get skill points every level, and certain skills common to all classes. The differentiation comes in as far as how much Warriors pay for magic vs. Wizards; that kind of thing. My question is, if you have classes and levels and such, can someone realistically turn into more of a fight/cast/steal hybrid over time? Or a combo of two of those things? How easily do you want that to happen, and are there rewards or penalties (or both) for sticking to one "type"?

To be honest we truly didn’t think that D&D 3e or even 4e was what we were looking for. My friend and I found ourselves rewriting the rules anyway. Things didn’t make sense to us. We felt that powers shouldn't be the way to go, only being able to use certain things once a day, while others may be used at anytime. Why can’t we do whatever, whenever? That’s one of the questions I wanted to tackle. I started playing D&D back in 1990, and I was 6, we played 2nd edition. Even at 6 I had questions of "why not?"  So we decided to build this system.

As far as rewards, there will be Exp rewards for using your abilities, and skills, there will also be skill improvements each time you use the skill, because if you use a skill, whether you pass or fail the check, you have still learned something and bettered yourself. A player should get rewards based upon completion of the task or challenge in front of them, and if they do it in a unique way or interesting way, why not give them a bonus.

We are trying to create a character class system that will broaden your choices, and we do that by creating more classes beyond that of the regular classes. Creating classes such as a bullet mage, assassin, or other creations we have concocted opens up more possibilities for the player to choose from and doesn’t just create a fighter mage. There are prerequisites, the character is required to have a certain percentile in the skills of that class, and must meet the minimum stat requirements. But since your stats increase and so do your skills, you as a player will eventually meet the requirements for every class. The whole trick is, when you take a new ability that is not of your original class, and then you begin that ability as if you were level 1. the best example would be a fighter that wishes to take on magic, if he just attained level 4, and took spell craft, then he would begin casting spells as if her were a level 1 mage, and his spell progression would go from there, at level 5 he would be on the same level as a 2nd level mage. The bonuses to sticking with your chosen class manifest in stronger abilities and damage. For instance, a mage that continues to pursue that class instead of straying will eventually be able to eliminate different parts of spell casting, making it faster, stronger and more effective.