Here's the new crazy thing I'm doing. Y'all ready?

At the end of this post is a link to a nascent little set of RPG mechanics I've been noodling and prodding for a while now. I think it's ready to take a punch -- if nothing else, it'll be interesting to see what kind of defensive crouch it collapses into upon its first contact with real gamers. Go take a look at it, tell me what you think. I'm putting this version out free, flat, and ugly. I'd LOVE it if you looked at it from its own perspective -- "This is a set of mechanics for a setting where it's desirable for characters to succeed a lot against inanimate stuff but have more trouble with each other" -- but there's some value to looking at it from "I want mechanics that do X and here's how this fails to do X." I know (and you probably do too) that I'm likely to get a roughly equal number of "It's too complicated!" and "It's too simplistic!" answers. But hey, crowdsourcing, you take this with that.

Now, when I have this kicked into shape, I'll probably do a Kickstarter to release a formatted, fixed, pretty version, which isn't the exciting part. The exciting part is, I'd like to do this one as a broad Creative Commons release, something along the lines of "Like it? Use it for whatever."

So take a gander. Why not?

-G.

http://www.fromthedragonsmouth.com/System610vers1.txt

GS,

Cool looking system. I like the uniqueness and flexibility of System 6-10.

However, the delivery format is immensely impractical. Why not…Word (or anything that doesn’t force me to scroll right-then down-right-then down)?

I had to copy/paste it into Word before I even bothered reading it (though, to be fair, I am glad I did).

Bold/Underline etc. would do wonders for the document’s readability. The information seems too dense as it is, especially having to read around “[[begin boxed text]]” (btw, what format is this designed for?).

Please give a brief summary of the section before going into details. Refer to your skills section for a great example of this. If you had 3 Bullets saying “General”, “Specific”, and “Tailored” it would do wonders for organizing what you’re attempting to communicate.

Why have you titled it HORIZON?

I know most of these comments are readability concerns over system concerns--but I only mention them in hopes of enhancing System 6/10.

Hope this helps,

T

I put it up as a .txt to make it (ironically) as accessible as possible.  But if you want a little more formatting, try this one.

www.fromthedragonsmouth.com/Sys610.pdf

Have you taken it out for a spin yet?

-G.

Hi,

What do you face off against in gameplay? I'm not talking mechanics, because there has to be something asserted in the spoken fiction of the world or on a battlemat for the mechanics to operate from (I mean, the GM just doesn't start at the top of the skill list and go down, calling a skill check on each - the context is some fictional world thing that has come up). Let's call what things they face off against, #A. If the GM is free to put any encounter into gameplay, given how wide a selection that is, might he just choose something other than #A on a consistant basis? Not to deliberately foil the game, but if #A is one thing and there are a million other things the GM could choose from, then he only has a 1 in a million chance of actually selecting #A.

I've got a setting in mind for the system -- I'm mentally pigeonholing it as "fantasy science" -- but I see this as a typical RPG where the narrative dictates the challenges the PCs face.  As written, the system makes PCs really competent against inanimate challenges.  Even if you have the very lowest pool necessary for a roll, you probably get some kind of success 60+% of the time.  That success curve drops a lot when you hit opposition from other people.  So I see a HORIZON game as being a contrast between... mm, I guess "swashbuckling primitive frontier action" against inanimate threats and "convoluted personal and emotional skullduggery" against other people.

-G.