Okay since I have hit my slump and wondering what to do next I figured I'd just post the basics of the rules for my game to see what people think.

Character creation:
You have ten stats.
Intelligence
Awareness
Willpower
Mechanical aptitude
Compassion
Body
Endurance
Dexterity
Speed
Atttraction

Stats have a scale of 1-10. To get Stat points you can either be given a set amount of points by the gm or roll 9d10 and then distribute points as you see fit.

For skill points you take the average of INT+AWARE x 10.
For body points you take the average of BODY+END x 10.

Skills have a scale of 1-8.

Task resolution is simple.
You take your STAT+Skill and roll under the total on a d20. You would subtract any difficulty modifiers from your total before rolling.

STAT checks are made made by rolling under your STAT on a d12. Except in the case of compassion where you want to roll higher for it not to effect you.

Characters get a certain amount of actions based on their SPD, so that after initiative they know how often they act. It ranges from once every 5 phases to once every phase.

Initiative: Players roll a d10 minus their AWARENESS bonus. They then act starting on that phase and just count phases for when they act, the character sheet has a portion where they can mark it down and initiative isn't rolled again until either a new combat starts or their is a sufficient break in the action to warrant rerolling initiative.

Damage can be done in two ways.

1. Your task roll acts as just a hit or miss and then rolling damage determines how solid of a hit it was.

2. Extra damage is gained for every point you beat your task number by plus a base weapon damage.

Weapons and armor are both rated in d10's. And then is the optional rule of rolls of 10 stack for damage and armor.

Since the whole thing is skill based you can pretty much play any game you want. I didn't add in rules for magic and super powers and such since they are still in the works and caused my slump but these are the basics of how the system works. I'll try and post more on the optional settings I'd be including as I have time.

Lemme know what you think.

Sylus

Okay, here's some questions:

Why are the stats and skills rated on differing scales? Not that it's bad, just doesn't seem necessary. What was your reasoning?

Can you explain a little more how weapons and armor work?

As far as my evaluation goes, this reminds me of a system I wrote called Bucket. Very much so, in fact. It's a workable system, runs pretty smoothly, if a bit bland. Basically with this type of system it will be the setting and not the rules that will make the game interesting. As long as you're aware of that and it fits your intentions for the game, I don't see a problem.

Actually Silkworm your right on the money when it makes setting more important than system. I wanted to use it so that people could get more into ROLE- playing instead of Roll -playing.

Stats and Skills are on different sclaes so that when you make your task roll their will always be a chance to miss no matter how good you are. I forgot to add in that a roll of 1 is a critical success and and a roll of 20 is a critical failure, 19's being simple failure. This way evn if you are godlike in stat and skill you still have a slim chance of missing or screwing up, just ;like in real life.

As for armor and weapons. Both are rated in d10, when you roll damage your apponent also rolls armor if your damage is less than their armor roll no damage gets through. if your damage is greater than the armor roll then the excess damage is applied to the armor and the wearer, this decreses the armors value as values of ten are accumulated losing 1d10 for every ten points of damage taken. this help get around the silliness of D&D's armor never gets screwed even if the guy is dead his armor is still in one piece. I've fought S.C.A. combat to long to ignore this fact in my game.

Hope this clarifies alittle, I can send you what I have written up if you'd like.

Sylus

Sylus Thane wrote: Actually Silkworm your right on the money when it makes setting more important than system. I wanted to use it so that people could get more into ROLE- playing instead of Roll -playing.

Stats and Skills are on different sclaes so that when you make your task roll their will always be a chance to miss no matter how good you are. I forgot to add in that a roll of 1 is a critical success and and a roll of 20 is a critical failure, 19's being simple failure. This way evn if you are godlike in stat and skill you still have a slim chance of missing or screwing up, just ;like in real life.

this help get around the silliness of D&D's armor never gets screwed even if the guy is dead his armor is still in one piece. I've fought S.C.A. combat to long to ignore this fact in my game.

This is a non-sequiteur. Prioritized Setting does not lead to less Gamism (what's usually meant by the whole Roll/Role cliche) necessarily. Or make players investigate their characters any more closely. What Silkworm was saying was (I think) that if system does not support play a lot, then the setting will have to step in. That is, if you want to look closely at the characters, then you'll have to find and exploit some element of your setting to do it, because your system won't provide that for you.

A game like Dust Devils, with a lot of system does nothing but promote ROLE-Playing, despite being all system, and just a generic setting.

Simple amd effective, but clunky. If you have negative modifiers, why not just allow a character to have higher stats and skill levels, and say that they automatically succeed, if their total with difficulty is above twenty? You already seem to allow players to automatically fail if their scores are low enough. Also, what about the case where skill+stat-penalty lowers the total to 1? If the player wolls a one, is that a success? A critical success?

Also, while we're at it, what's your range of stats and skills. Max level is "Godlike"? So what portion of the range are humans? Giants for "Body"? Cheetahs for "Speed"? And why do we have Mechanical Aptitude, and not Verbal Ability?

D&D's aromr does get damaged. Says so in the rules. There are just no specific mechanics to handle it. What you're saying is that you want all details of this sort handled by mechanics? Do you have the GURPS rule for picks getting stuck? Or, rather, when does something that can happen in-game become absolutely nevessary to describe with mechanics? For the game you want to play. Making specific rules like this is a long and slippery slope. Especially for a system that's supposed to be about ROLE-Playing and not Roll-Playing. ;-)

Mike Holmes wrote: What Silkworm was saying was (I think) that if system does not support play a lot, then the setting will have to step in. That is, if you want to look closely at the characters, then you'll have to find and exploit some element of your setting to do it, because your system won't provide that for you.

Simple and effective, but clunky.

Well I would like to publish some day. There are still some rules in the works that would cover things like the supernatural and super powers, as well as magic for fantasy, those may be the innovative rules.

The main thing with Frontier is that it is designed to be versatile, but mainly to specific enough to get you going yet still slightly vague for easy player innovation. This will also be readily apparent in the settings that would be available with it too. They will be made to be specific enough for a gm get a good start but still be open enough to tailor it to their own needs and desires.

I guess my main desire is for playability without sacrificing anything. If a new player can pick up the game and go with it with very few or no questions at all then I view it as a success. If a seasoned gm can look at it and say hey these rules are a little too vague vague for me but they have the suggestions already for making them more detailed, or their to detailed I like them vaguer which is easy enough to do with hadly any work, then I consider it a success. If anyone to were look at the settings and say great these are detailed enough for a good start but aren't so strict that I can't add in my own things without screwing up some big metaplot, then I consider it a success as well.

Sylus

Sylus Thane wrote: Not being well versed in the GNS at all I'm not sure how to reply to this one. The goal was to make a game where the rules were simple and covered the bases as well as possible that way you could devote your time to setting instead of system. I guess this what I meant by Role vs Roll.

What makes this clunky in your opinion? I didn't let stats and skills go higher because if your dealing with things where you would automatically succeed why should you have to bother rolling anyway?

Plus if your modifiers are so extreme that you have to roll a 1 to exceed it is probably going to be a common sense thing of whether you try against the odd or not. But if you wish to try against the odds to that extreme then yes by all means try and if you roll that 1, then yes it would be a critical success, considering the odds it most likely should be.

I used the term godlike just as a word, it doesn't really apply to the scales. As for descriptive words to rate the scale it would probly best relate to Fudges as a 1 being poor and a 10 or 8(in the case of skills) being legendary. Plus for the STAT of body it would be relative to species as well as attraction, if dealing with a game that is nothing but humans everything is equal across the board.

The really I put in mechanical aptitude was to have a stat that related to a persons ability to create things.

Well I guess I never ran across the rules for armor in d and d, guess the guys I played with never felt it was all that important.;)

As far as having it covered in a mechanic it is simply a way to rate your after its been damaged to get a feel for how long it may last as well as a sescriptive for armor being scavenged or found that is in less that perfect shape. This way players have a relatively easy way to keep track of how their armor is faring.

Don't worry about the GNS. What I'm saying is that there's no proof that a simple system makes players pay any more attention to setting, characters, anything. It's a question of what the rules focus on that determeines what they will cause players to focus on, if anything.

But as it stands, your system will have players looking at thier skills and attributes, and thinking about how they can use them.

And from what you way above, you seem to feel as well that a character could have a igher stat.

Given what you have so far, I assume that there will never be any bonuses to rolls (else you could get an automatic success, and then restricting the scale is pointless). Which means that a roll with no penalty is the easiest task available. Right?

Lesse. 9d10 averages 49.5 points. Just under five points per stat. If I put an 8 in a stat making me well better than average for a starting adventurer, and have a related skill maxed out at 8, that gives me a sixteen total. Which means that the easiest task available to the system gives a person with an above average stat and maximum skill, a 20% chance of failure (not to mention a 5% chance of Critical failure). That may be what you want, but it seems clunky to me.

Odd logic. If something is harder, and less likely for me to acomplish, the more likley it is that a success will be a fantastic success. Sorry, that just seems counterintuitive.

So an average titan, and an average gnome both have a BODY of 5? Does BODY mean something like attractiveness? As in the phrase"Hot Body"? Or does it refer to strength, size, physique, etc? Most games with a BODY stat have it mean the latter. Further, your game is about all sorts of different spiecies, not just humans, right?

Is that particularly important in the Frontiers milieu? If so, cool. I was just unaware.

So the game is quite a lot about coming up with salvaged parts of armor, and keeping your armor intact? Besides damage, this is the only thing in the system that's dealt with in any specificity. Playing such rules, players will therefore focus on finding good armor, and repairing it when damaged, etc. Is this an intentional feature of the system?

Lest you think me facetious, the game Afermath! had a complex system that related to armor and its condition. As such I found players giving long consideration t the armor they had during chargen, and spending a lot of in-game attention on trying to find and fix armor. Players do what a game gives them to do.

Sylus Thane wrote: Since the whole thing is skill based you can pretty much play any game you want. I didn't add in rules for magic and super powers and such since they are still in the works and caused my slump but these are the basics of how the system works. I'll try and post more on the optional settings I'd be including as I have time.

I'm a player. Why would I use this system over, say, D&D D20, Fuzion, or Fudge? D20 is more popular and has a lot of adventures for it. Fuzion has magic, superpowers, psionics and cybernetics. Fudge lets me roleplay. :)

What does Frontier do that these common, readily available systems don't all ready do?

Sylus Thane wrote: Do you ask things like this of the three games you mentioned?

Why ask them of me?

Sylus Thane wrote:

Stats and Skills are on different sclaes so that when you make your task roll their will always be a chance to miss no matter how good you are. I forgot to add in that a roll of 1 is a critical success and and a roll of 20 is a critical failure, 19's being simple failure. This way evn if you are godlike in stat and skill you still have a slim chance of missing or screwing up, just ;like in real life.

I think that people want to know why they would play this game over any other is because they have to learn a whole new system when they already have several memorized, am I right?

Besides, when you have a bookshelf (or stack, heehee) of roleplaying games, you arrange them by system. I have my GURPS books together, my D20 books together and my WW books together. There's 3 systems with the ability to adapt to any new world.

What happens now is there is this NEW game, which involves a new system and new books... when this new game (which I'm sure is really neat) could just as easily be converted to GURPS; a game system I already know by heart.

This is *I* ask "why play this game instead od D20." If I am going to start collecting this game and use this setting and system, I have to be presented with a reason why I should be inclined to do so.

Unfortunately, (and I'm not trying to be mean, this is just IMHO) "just give it a try" isn't sufficient. I'm a poor gamer (as I'm sure most of us are) and when we go to the bookstore with 30 bucks, why would I pass over a book for the system I already like to "try something new?"

What is the hook? What gets someone interested in playing your game?

Everyday you'll hear a half dozen new songs on the radio, and most you won't notice. If a song doesn't get you listening in the first thirty seconds, its lost you.

RPGs have this same concern, tenfold. I'm not going to read a game because the cover says 'give it a go', I'll have to read five RPGs everyday until I die. There has to be a reason for me to notice yours. If you say, 'because my system can do anything', every free RPG out there says this, and this won't interest many impartial people.

The hook doesn't have to be in the mechanics, and historically it hasn't been, but somewhere in your design has to be that killer baseline that makes people pay attention. Perhaps if you fleshed out the setting a little, we could see why setting is such a dominant part of your design.

Jeremy

Hey Sylus,

Welcome to the Forge, sorry about the intense heat; dunno what's wrong with the thermostat. Anyway...

Y'know, we're talking about almost the exact problem elsewhere. Over in Why do games have to have a 'premise?', exactly this question has come up; except we're talking about the question instead of asking it. The reason "Why should I play your game?" has been 'shot down' is because, as it has here, it puts the thread-author on the defensive.

Several alternatives have been listed like "What do you do in this game?" "What types of play does your game best support?" "What does your game have to make it cool?" "Why did you choose to design it this way? (Id est, what features were you attempting to support? Does your design support them?)" "Is it about what you want the game to be about?" And so on.

Don't take the earlier challenge as some sort of insult; like saying your game isn't worth anything because it didn't go first. I think what is being asked here is what makes your game distinctive? If you'd like design critique, in order to tell you what works and what doesn't, people will need to know what you were trying to accomplish. You can't simply say 'it lets you do anything you want,' because people who might play it won't give it a second look because they might not know what they want. Most games give you something; what's the something for your game?

Is that better?

Fang Langford

p. s. It really is a good thread, you should go over and read it before going on here.

Welcome to the Forge, sorry about the intense heat; dunno what's wrong with the thermostat.

As you say in your summary paragraph, "the whole thing is skill based." Meaning, I think, that the rules you've presented here are a bare framework, which becomes a complete system when and only when the skill rules are filled in. (And even if that's not what you meant, that's how I interpret what's been presented so far.) How do you envision that happening? Are players supposed to invent their own skills? Or are skill lists going to be part of the supplemental settings? Or are GMs supposed to invent skill choices for players?

Could you be any more specific about what it is you're stuck on? That might be a way to scare up some more helpful feedback.

- Walt

Actually I'm stuck on rules for super powers. I'm just not real sure where to start with them.

Sylus

Sylus Thane wrote: Actually I'm stuck on rules for super powers. I'm just not real sure where to start with them.