So, we're working on a system we're currently calling dLITE. Its specifically geared towards largely freeform gaming - and PbP play in particular - so its a very light system, in fact the rules currently fit on one page (with a bit of room to spare).

Core Mechanic
Roll d10. Add all relevant modifiers (such as skills). Success is achieved on a roll of 10 or higher.
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Focus
Focus (or Foci) are the core of a PCs abilities, and usually consist of different forms of power, be it physical (for weapon combat), magical, tech, or most anything else. They serve in much the same way as Skills (below), but can be used to stack with a skill if both are of relevance to the action. Example: picking a lock, by itself, may only use a skill (lock picking), but picking a lock using a lockpicking spell would allow you to add your magic focus to the check.

Usually, Foci are not purchased with Motes, and instead are acquired in creation (perhaps as a racial element) or earned as a reward for use in play. All Foci have a maximum score of 5.
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Skills
There are no pre-defined skills in dLITE, so a skill consists of any ability, action, or talent you feel your character would have some better than average skill in. Skills are raised by using "dots", which count as a +1 modifier on all d10 rolls against that particular action. Skills usually will not stack, and have a maximum score of 5 Dots. Skills are purchased using Motes (see below), at a cost of (10*purchased dot level). Example, dot 1 costs 10 motes, dot 2 20 motes, all the way to dot 5, which is 50 motes.
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Motes
Motes are the experience system of dLITE. How they're awarded may vary from game to game, but are usually given by the Visionary for completion of tasks, or by other players in acknowledgment of exceptional role play. They are spent directly on advancing player skills, but can also be used as Plot Points (below).
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Plot Points
Plot points, or "Retcon Points", are used in a multitude of ways, including purchasing abilities or tools that are beyond the scope of the skill system, as well as large plot pieces (such as a wizard constructing a golem or machinist building an automaton), advancements of ones personal plot (purchasing a plot of land to found a town/stronghold), or the games plot (building onto an existing town, founding a business, installing a rapid transit system). Plot Points are also used in emergency situations, where a tool is needed that had not previously been established. Example: player falls off a cliff. If he's previously established himself as having or building an anti-gravity belt, he's able to use it and avoid injury. If not, spending Plot Points would allow him to "retcon" one into existence. Plot Points may also be used in place of an action that may normally require a roll, to achieve an auto-success.

Each Plot Point costs one Mote.

I notice that at the moment the system seems to encourage one super-skill. Now you can discourage this in a few ways, such as using a skill pyramid (each skill needs two more skills on it's level than on the level above before it can advance), or by requiring people to alternate through skill uses during a scene. You could also just veto frequently, but it might be good to get an idea of how many skills you expect people to have, and how general or specific they should be, at least as an example to those building characters.

I agree with JoyWriter. Go SBA style and do a pyramid; one 5 Skill, two 4 skills, three 3 skills, four 2 skills and five 1 skills. I think it scales well. :D

I'm not sure if other people feel that using the term "dots" is pretentious/annoying... but I do. :)
I'm sure some people will feel at home when they see a familiar term like that I guess... It doesn't really matter, it is just a small point of contention. ;)

There are no pre-defined skills, and I do agree it does to some extent promote a single "uber-skill". Skills are likely to be quite specific, while Foci figure to be the power behind your actions. We're also not minding the fact that odds are characters will start with one exceptionally strong skill, as the system is geared towards a very broad range of actions.

Aegir wrote:
There are no pre-defined skills, and I do agree it does to some extent promote a single "uber-skill". Skills are likely to be quite specific, while Foci figure to be the power behind your actions. We're also not minding the fact that odds are characters will start with one exceptionally strong skill, as the system is geared towards a very broad range of actions.

My point is... the pyramid is just a very loose structure used to avoid somebody becoming uberjuiceman. No harm in implementing munchkin protection. :) It doesn't really matter if you have predefined skills or not... it is just a smart way to array skills... in my opinion of course.

It very well could be great for that, yeah.  We'll spend some time weighing the pros and cons of that, as it may have the adverse effect of forcing a character into into a particular box due to system crunchiness, rather than because it's truly how the character would have developed on his own.

I usually spend too much time building AMFs (Anti-Munchkin Fields) around my mechanics, so the temptation and justification is certainly there.  But I'm purposely trying to pull myself out of that comfort zone and into a different thought process for this project.

And ultimately, with its free-form roots, the hope is that rolls would only be called for in two situations:
1) When failure would result in the mission/goal being a failure as well.
2) When failure would result in the death of a party member.

All else can, and should, be roleplayed out.  Good or bad results.  I guess maybe I'm banking on the lack of munchkins playing this sort of system, as it's almost an anti-Gamist system.

That makes sense. I'm probably out of my element here because I'm the Gamist sort, so just ignore me. ;)

MacLeod wrote:
That makes sense. I'm probably out of my element here because I'm the Gamist sort, so just ignore me. ;)

MacLeod wrote:
That makes sense. I'm probably out of my element here because I'm the Gamist sort, so just ignore me. ;)

The D20 systems can be silly things... not that I don't like the D20 itself, I love how it goes perfectly into 100, for instance. ^_^ I understand where you are coming from though, I'm trying to get away from D&D fantasy. Probably for different reasons than you. I'm doing it because while D&D3.5 is crunchy it isn't in the ways that I would like. It loses out on what I like to think of as fun complexity... D&D4E's Powers system could have been good but was handled poorly*, completely replacing class features was a stupid idea.

Anyways... I don't see why your rules wouldn't work just fine for a narrative game. :) One question, which I'm sure you expected from a Gamist... Are combat situations played blow-by-blow or is a single roll used to define an entire scene?

*pointlessly huge lists of different powers that could easily be condensed into effects in order to apply them to different frameworks).

MacLeod wrote:
Anyways... I don't see why your rules wouldn't work just fine for a narrative game. :) One question, which I'm sure you expected from a Gamist... Are combat situations played blow-by-blow or is a single roll used to define an entire scene?

Cool. I guess that makes Wounds the only defined 'skill'? I think you may want create a Resolve skill as well, for mental anguish inducing attacks. I imagine your final draft would end up with a sample list of skills...

How is character creation handled, by the way? I always assume structure cuz that is the sort of guy I am... but I'd imagine you'll have very loose "power levels" or something similar? (average characters have 10 motes to distribute amongst skills, 15 for pros, 20 for human peak, 25 for superhuman, etc...).

Also, why 'motes'? It is a funny bit of terminology... It doesn't really identify itself very well, ya know? I'm a stickler for terminology I guess. @_@

MacLeod wrote:
Cool. I guess that makes Wounds the only defined 'skill'? I think you may want create a Resolve skill as well, for mental anguish inducing attacks. I imagine your final draft would end up with a sample list of skills...

MacLeod wrote:
How is character creation handled, by the way? I always assume structure cuz that is the sort of guy I am...

MacLeod wrote:
Also, why 'motes'? It is a funny bit of terminology...

visioNationstudios wrote:
And ultimately, with its free-form roots, the hope is that rolls would only be called for in two situations:
1) When failure would result in the mission/goal being a failure as well.
2) When failure would result in the death of a party member.

All else can, and should, be roleplayed out.  Good or bad results.  I guess maybe I'm banking on the lack of munchkins playing this sort of system, as it's almost an anti-Gamist system.

Such an idea is definitely for a particular audience... I like rolling dice, personally. Dice and stats bring out the game aspect of RPGs... and I like feeling as though I am playing a game. Games entertain me. :D Then again, so does the simple act of controlling the actions of some mighty character doing mighty things...

This would be a game for a fairly specific niche. For one, its specifically for online games, and most likely best for PbP games, where dice-heavy games tend to make things very slow. Probably the best audience for a game like this is people who enjoy the concept of freeform, but want a bit of rules structure to it.

I'm interested that you put the dice rolls there; 4th ed was designed with one of it's goals as removing the "save or die" from the game, and replacing it with temporary conditions or folding it into the hitpoint system.

Now in case you think that hitpoints are too "gamist", consider this; a danger scale that builds up allows players to play the drama of a conflict appropriately, and pace out important conflicts in a way that suits their character, rather than having a "surprise! He's dead." thing going on. So is there another way to run conflicts? Notice how there is a distinction between the temporary and the hitpoints? Have it so that a character cannot cause a permanent change unless they commit to it, and that could cause them damage. This may be familiar from "bringing down the pain" in "The Shadow of Yesterday" but I'm deriving it from a different source, so it may look different:

People know that hitting another character in the head cannot permanently incapacitate them, or lead to things like capture or loosing something important, unless they commit to the conflict. You can knock someone out and daze them, but if you try to do anything else to them they will be able to come round in order to stop you.

So what is "committing"? Imagine that instead of rolling the damage for each hit of a combat, you just let people keep narrating it, and then tallied them up when you got to some "moment of decision". Now depending on genre that moment will be very different, it could be the moment they punch, it could be when one character tries to get up off the floor after receiving a flurry of punches and flipping kicks, or it could be when one character looks another in the eyes and they wonder if they can do it. It's the moment when the audience holds their breath, and that is when dice kick in.

Now part of my idea is that anyone going into a proper combat should expect that their character could also get hurt, or rather that anyone seeking to change another character should also be willing for their character to change. This is also my solution to the "one skill" problem, as the idea is that skills can shrink in value if you use them and lose "maybe he wasn't such a good fighter after all".

As far as actual resolution goes, you add up your skill and focus, perhaps also adding some other bonus for "unanswered attacks", and roll off against an opponent, who adds whatever they are committing to 10 (actually that changes your probs doesn't it, my attack system could put it back though). This way players can just leave it and hope the attacker/changer will fail, or risk loosing more on a success.

The idea I had for unanswered attacks is when people declare what action they are doing and the defending player cannot think up a response to all of it. That doesn't mean that "more posts = win", as one defence can cover a lot of attacks, but it's for those times that one player uses the fictional constraint better than the others. Generally players will want at least one unanswered attack (at a +5 ish bonus) to pull the odds back to neutral, so they will prepare the ground. If they can get two in, then you probably don't need to roll, it's that likely they will win, but that requires the two kinds of attack to be different, work together, and obviously show an overwhelming advantage.

This idea would require time-limits on duals, so people can't go on too long narrating attacks and feints before coming to a moment of decision. I'm not sure how you would do this yet, but perhaps an epic battle where logic and positioning is used frequently is no bad thing.

Finally, have you considered how many rolls people will do relative to the amount of motes they gain? Because if you roll very little, then a non-mechanical description and a pool of plot points may be the best strategy, especially for players wanting to influence the wider story!

I believe there may be some confusion in regard to the "only roll if failure results in death or failure of mission".  The concept that would be emphasized to the players/GMs is that it is actually possible to completely roleplay out an entire combat scene.  It's OK to get hit, to miss your shot, and even occasionally to lose the fight.  They should feel free to do those things with the meta-info that the outcome of this combat will not directly result in failing their end goal.

What this is not suggesting is a "boom, slap, you're dead" combat style, where if you fail to "save" (a concept on it own foreign to this system) then it's time to draw up a new character.  Instead, it's based on some free-form concepts that revolve around the (obvious, yet unfortunately necessary to note) notion that "your character is not infallible/invincible/indestructible- so don't roleplay as if they are".  Whether this is dropping your sword in surprise over something that happened in combat and leaving a gaping hole in your own calf (yep, that was me) or scrambling to evade a pursuer and spraining an ankle, there are lots of ways to show that you will not always succeed 100% of the time.

Cool, glad to here it, I can't quite picture how that meshes up with your resolution mechanism though. It seemed to me like you were saying you only roll when really bad stuff can happen, so what of what you mentioned involved rolling?

That would mostly be subjective, depending on the GM running.  But the encouraged concept would be to understand the difference between a random encounter, barfight, beat up the random street thug for information, etc., and a much more storyline-dependent run-in with the main villain of the particular story arc.  Likewise, out of combat, the line should be drawn so that not every time that a player jumps from point to point (rooftops, rock formations, speeding trains, etc) is a situation where falling would put you in an impossible "bottomless pit of fire-breathing chinchillas" scenario.  Sometimes falling may just mangle a leg, crack some ribs, or bruise an ego.

Perhaps another way to look at it is to ask yourself this question: "Is there any way that I can see me surviving or my main goal achieved if I were to fail here?"  If the answer is no, then I would estimate a good 95% of all gamers would ensure that they did succeed at that particular junction, if given the choice "Pass or Fail" (which is essentially what free-form RP does all along the way).  This takes those scenarios, and those alone, and forces a mechanical solution.