The Idea: Intrepid!, a pulp scifi RPG in the vein of Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers. I plan to use the word "Atomic" liberally.

The inspirations: aside from the conceptual ones mentioned above, which form the basis of the aesthetic I want, I am also interested in a more general scifi "Group of companions adventuring through space!" concept. See, Flash Gordon is all well and good, but when you really sit down and watch it there isn't a whole lot of depth or variety, and I want my game to run a little deeper, a little more emotionally, and sometimes a little more serious than the source material. With this in mind I will also be taking setting and story advice from things like Doctor Who and Firefly. One of my strongest influences is/will be White Wolf's Adventure!. In my opinion this game is perfectly done and truly evokes a pulp feel in its system. Also I should mention that this is essentially a reaction to  the years long non-release of Palladium's Mechanoids Space. When I first heard they were creating a pulp space action game I reacted by coming up with a million different world/game ideas. That was five years ago, but my brain still won't shut up about it. I am sick of waiting... so I'm gonna make the damn thing myself.

The Man: I have never written an RPG system before, nor have I even taken on a creative project of this magnitude of any kind. However, I have become familiar with a great many tabletop RPG systems over the years and found that I have have a particular talent for grasping this sort of thing, as well as a creative mind that is endlessly spewing ideas. I am preparing myself by setting up to GM my group's next Pathfinder game, taking particular care in world building, adventure writing, and system understanding. I want this, and I have the time, the motivation, and the Adderall prescription to make it happen.

The request: I have never done this before, and don't know anyone who has. But you have. I need advice, and I don't know exactly where to start. I don't know what all to cover, I don't know how to create a balanced system, I don't know what the resources are, I don't know what the steps are, and I don't even know how to use this site really. I do know the kind of game that I want to create, as well as which aspects of other RPGs I want mine to have. In brief, I want the streamlined-ness of d20, the point-buy style of White Wolf, the gritty lethal damage system of Shadowrun 3rd, the stunt system of Exalted, and the Inspiration system and general feel of Adventure!. It is the fine-tuning and integration of these things that I need help with. I am your vessel! Fill me with knowledge!

Hi,

In terms of 'emotion', there are two types I'm aware of an author trying to evoke - pushing for social change in the real world, and the other is simply conforming to expectations and entertaining people as the world keeps going the way its going. From Dr Who, most notably (I think) the new episodes, and from watching only the firefly movie, I think they have pushes for social change in the real world/makes social comment and reflection on the real world layered onto their boys own adventure format. I think it works - a spoon full of suger helps the medicine goes down. While the conform to expectations utterly and flatter the people of the world while it keeps going the same way as before, is essentially all suger and no medicine.

In terms of suger and medicine

In brief, I want the streamlined-ness of d20, the point-buy style of White Wolf, the gritty lethal damage system of Shadowrun 3rd, the stunt system of Exalted, and the Inspiration system and general feel of Adventure!. It is the fine-tuning and integration of these things that I need help with.

Hi Rodjman,
It's good that you have a strong idea of what you want in your game. The hardest part is building something that conveys the feel you want. If you like Adventure! figure out what exactly about it you like. You can go a long ways just by cherry picking concepts from other systems, distilling them down to their most basic ideas, then dressing them up in a way that lets them mesh well with other parts of your system or story. Along the way you may come up with a new way of doing something, or a new view on an old problem, which is great but not vital to having a fun system.

Might help to write down some priorities. Would having a complex battle system that was 'accurate' to your view on how combat should work be better than a simpler system that left more to the GM/Player's interpretation of what is possible? Would having a multipage character sheet be viewed as wasted bookkeeping, or essential to making detailed characters? Are you cool with dice/cards/counters/calculators/etc. being needed to play your game, or do you want everything to be summed up by one mechanic of some sort.

I think your list of priorities will give you a better understanding of what tools would be best used in your system.

I remember seeing the original Mechanoid games from Palladium, I thought they were cool and had some great ideas in them...

...then I saw the Mechanoid space supplement for RIFTS. Again, so much potential...but squandered...

The re-release of the original gme came and went without much fanfare a few years back...

So, you could say that I've also been waiting for the great game that could have been...but never was.

I've also considered writing up something myself that filled the Mechanoid void...but my projects in recent years have taken me in some very different directions.

The first thing to consider when developing a project like this is the type of game you want your players to have...lots of over-the-top action...dark gritty technological horror...emotional responses to a world in flames...each will require a focus on a different set of rules. Sure you can do a kitchen sink mentality, create a game that can handle everything, but there's a bucket load of them on the market already. To really make a game that leaves it's mark on it's audience, you need to find a specific element to focus on and make your game about that.

After that point, you can start thinking about what dice to use, what attributes best revolve around the concept and how characters actually achieve meaningful objectives within the context of the setting you've devised.

Personally, I'd be looking at a focus on heroics and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds...so your core attributes would reflect heroic virtues, your combat system would probably involve a morale check at the beginning of every round

Example...

Good success = do something with style and boost the morale of everyone around you.
Partial success = manage to pull yourself together long enough to do something that might make a difference.
Partial failure = remain scared, unable to do anything more significant than defensive actions.
Epic failure = run away screaming like a girl (no, I'm not trying to be sexist here...but in a game with stereotypical "manly" virtues, it seems the appropriate failure terminology.)

Hit points become one side of combat, Courage points might become another side. Every time you get hit there's a chance you'll lose courage points, every time you miss an attack on your opponent, or every time that attack is simply absorbed by the opponent's armour, you'll probably lose courage as well ("I'm hurt, I'm injured, this thing is so terrible that I can't overcome it....time to curl up in a fetal ball and pretend none of this is happening").

Once you start thinking through scenes and issues like this, you can start to look at other inspirations that tie into your concept, think of specific scenes in movies that reflect the kind of thing your going for. Think about how game mechanisms might reflect the scenes you are watching. Character A failed his roll here, and that's why he is acting this way...character B succeeded awesomely in her roll, and that's why this spectacular event happened in the scene.

Make sure you tie together the types of actions that you want in the story, with some mechanisms that make them possible in your game.

A lot of games out there keep the two ideas of story and game very distinct...D&D is a great example of this failure, Palladium fails in this respect as well. You don't need things on a character sheet to help drive a story, you can simply have it filled with numbers, percentages and statistics that will probably never enter play...but then you've still got the hard task of making a meaningful story and a fun play experience. That's why a lot of gamers end up writing a second sheet of character background and stuff that they can draw on the make the game meaningful for their character.  

I could probably keep ranting on this for a while, so I'll stop here.

Needless to say, I think it's a great idea for a setting, and I'd love to see someone do it properly.

can you describe:
3 characters you would have in the system
3 adventures/modules that you would run with the system

every decision you make designing a game is a trade-off

are rules consistent or realistic?
are characters simple or detailed?
is combat fast or detailed?

Do this: sit down and write yourself "an example of of play".  You've got an idea but it's probably more vague than you think it is.  Write out part of the kind of play expeirence you would like to produce - what kinds of things players say, the kinds of things they do, when they reach for the dice, if they do at all, when they reference their character sheets, that sort of thing.  This will help you clarify your own idea, and it will help you highlight the things that really really need to be expressed in mechanical terms.

Forget about concepts like "balance"; forget about importing things from previous systems.  Just figure out what it is that you want this game to actually do.  Once you have that clearly expressed, you, and perhaps we, will be in a much better position to arrive at specific techniques for you to employ to achieve those ends.

Cool!  Retro 50s future technology with concentric rings on everything, yeah?  Will it have those nifty 'video screens' or will it be strictly space radios only?