Concept:
As the title says, level based system, intended to be generic.  Takes a lot of the "bones," from the various DnD varieties, but with a "KISS," approach based on skills as the determinants of all rules.  To some extent it is what I imagine Steve Jackson games would come up with if they wanted to use the DnD 3.0 open source rules.
8 stats, Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Wisdom (for system, Int is the strength of the mind, and Wisdom is the Constitution), Charisma, Appearance, Dexterity, and Perception.
Stats give a small bonus to skill rolls, which can be pretty important, magic items will also generally just give a bonus to skill rolls.
Level based system, with 100 (yes, 100) levels for normal play.  The important thing is that each game session should involve gaining 1 level, and 5 levels should be the equivalent in character improvement of 1 level in DnD, Rolemaster, Rifts, etc.
Each level players gain 9 points to put into skills (max 1 point per skill each level), with some restrictions based on class or role, e.g. a mage gets 1 point for combat skills, 2 for technical skills, 2 for social skills, and 3 for magical skills, with 1 point to put in any category.  A striker would get 4 points for combat skills, 2 for technical, 2 for social, and 1 that can go wherever (note that only magical classes are forced to put skills in magic, but the bonus point can be put in magic, that mans someone who wants to play a ranger can have magic or not as they choose).  1st level characters get several extra points, and can have a very few skills with 2 points to start. 
Pretty much anything that other games would call an "advantage," or a "class ability," is a skill in this system.  Species enemy is a bonus die of damage on attacks, but you roll the lower of your weapon skill or your species enemy skill when attacking.  Backstab is the same, Lay on Hands is a healing magic skill, etc.
Skills generally max out at 10, but there are various "tiers," of skills, so a level 2 warrior might have Longsword 3, but a level 22 warrior might have Precise Longsword 2 (which allows him to roll 3 dice for damage), skilled longsword 10 (required to unlock precise, allows rolling 2 dice for damage), and longsword 10 (required to unlock skilled, roll only 1 die for damage).  As you can see, it is sometimes worth it to use the lower tier skill when you first unlock a higher tier.

So here is my question, I see the basic mechanic as "roll D20, add skill."  Or more precisely "roll D20, add skill, add stat bonus, add magic bonus."  Given that lower level characters may go from 1-2 skill to 10 skill, I am a bit worried that combat will not give the optimum chance to hit for "fun," play, I assume that 25-50% chance to hit at low levels, moving to 25-75% chance at higher levels is ideal  I see armor classes in the teens to start, moving to high teens and even low twenties by 10th level.  I am worried that folks may get frustrated that they unlock a "double dice of damage," and then have to build that skill right back up...
On the flip side, I really couldn't figure out a mechanic for weapon skills to be interesting as they increased from 2 to 97... And I really didn't see any reasonable explanation for Armor class increasing that much.
BTW, my "realism," argument for the  weapon skills is that the first skill is the "I aim a wild swing in his general direction," the second skill is the "I aim for his body," the third tier (Precise) is the "I aim for the chest," until at the 10th tier it is "I aim for the left eye."  Each attack is more difficult, but can do more damage.  You could argue that rather than being more precise, the blows are landing more frequently if you like...

Do all skills max at 10, then go into a new tier? Like would I see something like First Aid > Doctoring > Brain surgeon? Is there a set in stone mechanic for what that means like with combat (ie more dice)? Also are skills used defensively? If one player attacks another do they both roll or does the defender just get 10+armour like many d20 variants? If I took several tiers of 'Shield mastery' or something similar what would that do mechanicaly and would I have to roll for it?

Hi,

I kind of see this as stats that affect the small picture, when I'm pretty sure your game will have a bigger picture and would like to hear about that. I find the smaller picture doesn't make much sense to me unless how it plugs into the bigger picture is known.

What's the game about - playing out a world, and just playing it out as it would seeminly naturally play out and getting into that? Or are you aiming for soap opera directly (and I mean directly - having a 'free the slave or not' moral dilema once in a blue moon isn't aiming directly for soap opera). Or heck, are you even going for the oft demonised play to win style of game? If you say 'it's like so and so books' then to me that's the 'naturally plays out' style.

horomancer wrote:
Do all skills max at 10, then go into a new tier? Like would I see something like First Aid > Doctoring > Brain surgeon? Is there a set in stone mechanic for what that means like with combat (ie more dice)? Also are skills used defensively? If one player attacks another do they both roll or does the defender just get 10+armour like many d20 variants? If I took several tiers of 'Shield mastery' or something similar what would that do mechanicaly and would I have to roll for it?

Callan wrote:
Hi,

I kind of see this as stats that affect the small picture, when I'm pretty sure your game will have a bigger picture and would like to hear about that. I find the smaller picture doesn't make much sense to me unless how it plugs into the bigger picture is known.

What's the game about - playing out a world, and just playing it out as it would seeminly naturally play out and getting into that? Or are you aiming for soap opera directly (and I mean directly - having a 'free the slave or not' moral dilema once in a blue moon isn't aiming directly for soap opera). Or heck, are you even going for the oft demonised play to win style of game? If you say 'it's like so and so books' then to me that's the 'naturally plays out' style.

Well, I was kind of specifically asking what you would do with it, what it'd be about when you run it, rather than what other people might do or what styles of play they might try to apply to it.

I am going to make social more important-it can be used in combat! I also hope to make a more exciting skill system, based on "attacking," problems and doing enough damage.

For a skill with no time pressure (lock picking) it won't be that exciting.

OK Callan, you asked for it...
Play example 1, healer mage, battle mage, tank and archer go into dungeon, kill monsters, take stuff, and go back to the village to heal, sell, and buy better gear.
Play example 2, Sunshine pony, Star pony, and goth pony (loosely based on my little pony since this game is for my kids) go to explore the spooky forest, they run from spiders, stomp out a fire, and find a magic crystal that makes the forest happy instead of spooky.
Play example 3, Sir Strongarm, Lady Diea, and Councilor Trent must help good King Reginalt negotiate treachery in his court.  They intimidate/flatter/negotiate with several minor courtiers, Lady Diea notices a poison in the cup for a diplomat from a neighboring kingdom and saves the diplomat's life.  Sir Strongarm holds off a group of assassins with the help of the other party members until the guards can arrive.  Finally Councilor Trent discovers the fact that one of the kings most trusted advisers was actually born in Fell, a kingdom which is hostile to the PC's kingdom, and the party brings this info to the king.
In other words, generic!

To clarify, I am interpreting your question as "how do you see your system guiding the player's play experience," and my answer is "as little as possible!"
I do think that guards would make lock picking more interesting, as would a poison needle trap (or your bound imp).  One of the things I did like about 4th ed DnD is the idea that traps should be part of encounters or encounters in their own right, I think having an "attack the trap with your skill," mechanic would make it even more fun.  Imagine using Engineering or traps skill to attack a trap mechanism as walls slowly grind closed to crush the party.  Likewise, forest survival is a battle between elements which can take damage from survival skill, and the party.  Animal attacks (encounters) from time to time make it more complex and difficult.
I am trying to figure out if I want to have "social HP," for NPC's, allowing players to attack their social HP, and defeat them into changing a viewpoint, or if I just want the actual opinion to have a number of HP, and have an "annoyance," pool.  The way that would work is that after each skill check the party uses to change a NPC's mind, the NPC rolls an attack against annoyance, if annoyance is defeated, the NPC will want to leave the PC's.  Depending on what skills were used and how, this could result in the social HP or the opinion's HP refilling, increasing, or the NPC changing his opinion in the opposite direction as the PC's wanted.

Aaron wrote:
To clarify, I am interpreting your question as "how do you see your system guiding the player's play experience," and my answer is "as little as possible!"

contracycle wrote:

Aaron wrote:
To clarify, I am interpreting your question as "how do you see your system guiding the player's play experience," and my answer is "as little as possible!"

Ok.

1) is that a good thing?
2) if not the system, what DOES guide their play experience?

Thanks for your example, Aaron!

Aaron wrote: 1. in my opinion, for the purpose of this game, yes.
2. The DM/GM/ST.  If I can run Rifts Shadowrun Mechwarrior Car Wars with shades of paranoia in the GURPS system, why can't I do it in this system?  Yes, I ran that game, the players were mechwarriors who fought in arenas for the entertainment of the customers of the mega-corps that ran the west coast after the rifts destroyed the central US (not counting the coalition).  You will never guess where the computer from paranoia came in...

To clarify, I am interpreting your question as "how do you see your system guiding the player's play experience," and my answer is "as little as possible!"

Play example 2, Sunshine pony, Star pony, and goth pony (loosely based on my little pony since this game is for my kids) go to explore the spooky forest, they run from spiders, stomp out a fire, and find a magic crystal that makes the forest happy instead of spooky.
Play example 3, Sir Strongarm, Lady Diea, and Councilor Trent must help good King Reginalt negotiate treachery in his court.  They intimidate/flatter/negotiate with several minor courtiers, Lady Diea notices a poison in the cup for a diplomat from a neighboring kingdom and saves the diplomat's life.  Sir Strongarm holds off a group of assassins with the help of the other party members until the guards can arrive.  Finally Councilor Trent discovers the fact that one of the kings most trusted advisers was actually born in Fell, a kingdom which is hostile to the PC's kingdom, and the party brings this info to the king.
In other words, generic!

Callan wrote:
Thanks for your example, Aaron!

Aaron wrote: 1. in my opinion, for the purpose of this game, yes.
2. The DM/GM/ST.  If I can run Rifts Shadowrun Mechwarrior Car Wars with shades of paranoia in the GURPS system, why can't I do it in this system?  Yes, I ran that game, the players were mechwarriors who fought in arenas for the entertainment of the customers of the mega-corps that ran the west coast after the rifts destroyed the central US (not counting the coalition).  You will never guess where the computer from paranoia came in...

Well, in terms of #2, I see this as system controlling the players play activity utterly, rather than as little as possible. The system is handing over control to the DM/GM/ST. As much as system hands that power over, it is in control of play.

To clarify, I am interpreting your question as "how do you see your system guiding the player's play experience," and my answer is "as little as possible!"

Just because system hands the GM the gun and lets him do the dirty work, doesn't mean system isn't in charge. System is just using a proxy.

Or more exactly it doesn't mean as game author, just because you write rules that hand the GM the gun, doesn't mean the game your writing isn't completely in charge of the player experience.

Play example 2, Sunshine pony, Star pony, and goth pony (loosely based on my little pony since this game is for my kids) go to explore the spooky forest, they run from spiders, stomp out a fire, and find a magic crystal that makes the forest happy instead of spooky.
Play example 3, Sir Strongarm, Lady Diea, and Councilor Trent must help good King Reginalt negotiate treachery in his court.  They intimidate/flatter/negotiate with several minor courtiers, Lady Diea notices a poison in the cup for a diplomat from a neighboring kingdom and saves the diplomat's life.  Sir Strongarm holds off a group of assassins with the help of the other party members until the guards can arrive.  Finally Councilor Trent discovers the fact that one of the kings most trusted advisers was actually born in Fell, a kingdom which is hostile to the PC's kingdom, and the party brings this info to the king.
In other words, generic!

Taking these as what you'd do with the game - do you GM alot?

Because I'm wondering how you'd take this on as a player yourself?

I mean, would you notice as a player that it really doesn't matter how beat up you get through mechanics use, as the GM has been appointed to decide whether you find somewhere to rest or a healing potion, or whether you just find more damage?

From my own actual play, I'm not terribly inclined to feel any tension over having low hitpoints or such, because I'd just feel I was being manipulated into feeling something by the GM - ie, if I don't feel tense enough, he'll drag out the next healing place a bit, to up my tension? Just because he can decide that? For myself, I'm not particularly interested in having my emotions manipulated. At all.

How would you take it as a player? That imp from the lock stabbed you right in the ear and it bled profusely - your at quite low hitpoints and as GM, I'm looking at you - if you don't seem to 'feel' the moment, I'll drag out the next heal a bit. But if your really tense I'll be satisfied I did good GM'ing already and I'll, hmmm, leave a pretty obvious hint as to a secret room 'look, a tapestry moving when there is no breeze!' with a heal potion in it. I like to reward my good little players (sigh, yes, disclosure: I've done this in real games I've GM'd)

How would you take that as a player - would you notice what the GM/the man behind the curtain is up to?

There is no accounting for the GM being a jerk in any system. Well except for maybe that one where there is no GM and players roll all the setting variables, but I still think the dice will screw me at some point.

I like the notion of combat falling in line with skills, and skills being handled the same way you would combat. It makes it all one nice neat package, but I've seen many a system try the same and found them wanting. Your tiering of the skills may allow for a more satisfying approach, but it has it's own pitfalls with solidifying what a tier means to each skill. Can the generic rule of '+1dx per tier' work for climbing as well combat? And will the tiers go up by the same degree. One problem i find vexing in my own game creation is my view that a highly trained fighter will not have the same level of consistency as a highly trained carpenter, or the level of specialization to be a neuro-surgeon is not the same as that to be a master of mantis kung-fu, even though both take a life time to achieve. Then again these problems are based on my opinions and views of very abstract things.

OK, I just don't understand, can you explain how the system controls the play experience in very small words?  Pretend I am a 4 year old...

I see the rules as a necessary evil, which is needed to keep bad players (e.g. cheaters) in check

but which should not influence actions any more than required.

horrormancer wrote: There is no accounting for the GM being a jerk in any system.

So, back in the day, we played AD&D2.  We noticed a thing; we felt missile weapons were underpowered.  With weapons having a damage ceiling, and HP's not really, it was very difficult to set up your classic kill zone in front of a castle etc.  Seeing as you could only fire about 2 arrows per round, and a round was a whole minute, only 1HD or so opponents could be cleared out by missile fire.  Anything else could rush the gap and close.  The result was, of course, that players didn't use missile weapons much.

So we "fixed" by adding a house rule to the effect that a combat character got bonus damage equal to their level.  A 1d6 arrow was not very dangerous, a 1d6+8 arrow was rather more so.  Missile weapons became viable options again, and PC's started to adopt them.

So, that change certainly did change the experience of play, because the alteration to system produced a new sequence of logical choices, a new balance of tactical factors. (Note that I say "fixed" in inverted commas becuase the original state of affairs was perfectly justifiable; we changed to suit our preference, we did not make a thing that was "wrong" into a thing that was "right", even if we thought of it that way at the time).

That is precisely what the rules are there to do.  If you really want trules to be invisible, then the solution is to play totally freeform, without any rules.  This has difficulties of its own but it certainly meets the stated goal.  But any game is of course defined by its rules - it consists of nothing much else.  The rules are what distinguishes this game from that game, becuase they produce certain kinds of play.  And this is a central problem for generic games; IME, playing different settings with the same rules, ala GURPS, does a poor job of bringing each individual setting to life.  Playing GURPS always feels like playing GURPS.  It's not that it can't be done, but it would arguably be done better by dedicated rules that created a suitable set of logical choices that represented the desired setting more closely.

Rules must, inevitably, control a lot of the experience of play; that is what they do.  If they aren't doing that, they aren't working and aren't relevant.

When I first got here, I asked "am I in the right place?"  http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=29929.0
Short summary was "Gee, it seems like everyone here has indie games that fill niches and serve a particular game world, I want to create a generic system with wide application to compete with Gurps, ADnD, etc.  Am I in the right place to discuss this?"
I can understand and agree that maybe a setting focused system does a better job in that setting, but a generic system does better for crossovers and for supporting lots of game types without making players (like wives and young kids in my case) learn lots of sets of rules.  In any case, the purpose of this system is to be generic, it doesn't matter if a focused game is "better," or not, I am not making a focused game for reasons of my own.  Whether generic games are intrinsically worse than focused games is probably an interesting topic for another thread...

So can we get kinda back on topic?  To rephrase it, I am worried that the tendency of characters to go from tier 1, skill 10 to tier 2, skill 1 will be too "swingy."  One possibility I thought of was letting people start tiers at different points, or letting them begin spending for a new tier before they finished the old one.  Perhaps a cap of 10 is a bad idea.  Maybe each tier should be 15 points, but tiers should open at skill 7 or so.  This would give a level 13 character potentially a tier 1 skill at 13 and a tier 2 skill of 8, effectively they can take a -5 to hit to do an extra die of damage.
Or I could just have people automatically enter a new tier, but track it as one skill.  If your skill is 45, you can either do 4 dice at skill 10, or 5 dice at skill 5 (skill/10 is dice, if you round up your skill is the second digit, if you round down your skill is 10). 
But then I see everyone having a skill of 10, and what is the point of that?
On the flip side, if someone has a skill of 45, imagine the math involved, it is nuts.  There is a reason most games don't use numbers higher than 20.
Of course stats will boost effective skill, but I want different skill levels to be important.  A level 14 character choosing 1 die at skill 10 or two dice at skill 4, it is a hard choice, which is good.  But at skill 45, why take a chance at doing one extra die of damage if you take a -5 to skill?
Any ideas?

Quick question- If I top out a skill at 100, or 10 tiers of 10, do I have any greater chance of doing a 1 tier action than someone that only has 10 points total in a skill?
If no, why?

Here is something your skill system makes me think of.  It's the roll system for HeroQuest by Issaries.

As I remember it is based on a 20 sider roll off of a "keyword" which is basically your ability which has a rating.  You are trying to roll low.  If you roll a 1 it's a critical success, if you roll between 1 and your ability number it's a success.  If you roll greater than your ability it's a failure and if you roll a 20 it's a fumble. 

Now this is always an opposed roll.  The GM rolls for the other side the same way either for a character or for a more generic resistance number based on what your character is trying to do.  (So I might have a cliff rated at 17 for example.)

You determine the actual success of the contest by comparing the success of the GM vs the roll of the player.  Whoever has the higher roll wins.

But here is the thing that seems relevant to your system to me. It's kind of a tier system. On most "skills" you can roll over a max of 20.  Once you do you gain what's called a "mastery."  So say I have a skill of 17 and I end up adding 10 to it.  Instead of 27 I say I have a skill of 7M (or seven with one mastery.)  See how that works? I've moved up a tier but the target is a little harder.  The important thing now  is what the masteries do.  Masteries allow me to change the success of my roll by bumping it up.  So with a skill of 17, whatever I roll (say a failure), I I'm stuck with it.  If I roll with the 7M skill I might roll a failure, but I can use the mastery to "bump" it up to a success.  If I have a skill of 7M2 (seven with two masteries a.k.a. 47) and I roll a failure I can bump it up twice, first to a success and then to a critical.

Now say for some reason I still have an unused bump.  Say on the 7M2 skill that instead of rolling a failure I roll a success.  I can go ahead an bump my roll up to a critical but I still have one unused bump.  So now I can bump the success of the other guy down a rank.  Say he rolled a success.  I can bump him down to a failure.

In Heroquest the comparison of the rolls between the sides is the degree of success.  Me and my opponent are seperated by two levels (critical vs failure).  So in my last bit if I have a Critical success and my opponent has a failure so it becomes a Major success for me and a Major failure for my opponent.

I guess the sum of my post is, perhaps the added levels could add a "bump" type thing which would increase or decrease the degree of success.  So even if your next skill rank messes up his roll he could use a "bump" to moderate the failure to something more marginal.  The higher the rank of the skill the more the bump would be capable of  bumping the result.

On most "skills" you can roll over a max of 20.

horomancer wrote:
Quick question- If I top out a skill at 100, or 10 tiers of 10, do I have any greater chance of doing a 1 tier action than someone that only has 10 points total in a skill?
If no, why?

It sounds like your best option then is having skills ranging from 1 to 100 with players taking a -x to perform their skill at higher tiers. So if I have lock picking at 43, and I have to pick a crummy lock, you could say the lock is 10 DC and 1 tier. I would auto pass that since I'm a lock picking badass. Now a super high quality lock might be 25 DC and 3 tier. If I wanted to beat this lock i would have to take a minus (lets just say -10 skill = +1 tier) then roll. So I would not be rolling at a skill of 13, but I would have a 3 tier success. You could also let very skilled players take larger penalties to perform actions quicker or the like. Like I could say I want to pick the crummy lock in only 15 seconds instead of a minute and that ups the tier target to 3 instead of 1.
Combat will be trickier since you don't want opposed rolls, but maybe have armor soak up tiers of success rather than uping the DC to hit? An example would be some knight in full plate could effectively ignore 3 tiers of success against him, so a fighter would constantly be needing to take minuses in order to be effective.
If you keep things base 10, you can minimize the crunch in your system. You may also want to look at different dice mechanics than 1d20. Skills are going to be very high with this arrangement, so having something like 3d12 or 1d100.
You may also try changing your number range, or the number of levels you have to help keep numbers smaller and more manageable compared to the dice you use.

But then I see everyone having a skill of 10, and what is the point of that?

Hi, Aaron,

Would this work?  To attempt a skill do both a "normal" die roll and do an extra percentile die roll.  If that extra percentile die roll is below the character's level then some sort of minimal success happens even if the "normal" die roll would fail.

Then brain surgery is predominantly a matter of the character's skill at healing, but a higher level character gains a proportionally greater chance of winging it simply because he or she has such awesome overall background knowledge and experience.

In melee combat, the weapon or combat skill would dominate.  But higher level characters are dangerously unpredictable.  Just about anything they try to do or dodge might minimally succeed.