Got my basic rules. Now what?

[valadil]

I've been working on a system off and on for a couple years. Lately it's been more on than off and I've finally got all the basic rules checked off of my todo list. And I'm stuck. I'd like to go to the next step, but I don't know what that is. I've been ready to do some more work on my system for the last week and I'm just not sure what to do.

The goal is a beta test. If I can get this project far enough that I can write up a mini adventure for someone else to beta test (ie, it won't have my creator's bias messing things up) I'll be happy. But I feel like there's another step between where I am and a playable system.

I think the best way to explain it is that instead of an RPG system I have a collection of rules. I'm pretty sure an RPG system has glue and synergy between the rules, and probably some other stuff too. I'm not sure how to come up with all that extra stuff and fill in the gaps (actually I'm not even sure how to find the gaps) in my system. I think it'll require taking a step back and looking at the big picture instead of trying to work on exactly one mechanic at a time.

So, uh, any advice from someone who's done this before? My apologies if this thread is vague and indistinct, but the reason I'm confused is because my understanding of where to go next is vague and indistinct.

[Yitzi]

I'd say the two options are:

1. Go through the Core books, and see what they have that you don't.
2. Pretend you're making a campaign and players are making characters, and "play through it" (for simplicity, use simple characters and set die rolls by whatever's most convenient), and see where it gets stuck.

[Vadskye]

Weave your rules into a coherent rulebook, using your favorite system's rulebook as a guide. For example, if you use the PHB as a guide, you would first include a section on abilities (or your system's equivalent thereof). Then you would discuss races (or some similar inherent quaiity of the character). Then classes, and so forth.

The degree to which this "modeling" is useful depends on how similar your system is to existing systems. If D&D is not a good analogy, find a system that is, and use its organization as a guide instead. That's what I did with Rise.

[DoomHat]

A good setting is by far the most important mechanic in any rpg. It provides context for all that follows. In truth, if you've got good players, its really all you need.

There's a reason GURPS has ten gazillian source books. The setting-free core rules are useless without them.

So you have two options as I see it.

First, assuming you've built your system to accommodate a very specific play style, come up with a setting that demands the hell out of those sorts of actions. Greyhawk, for example, has an awful lot of dungeons lying around its landscape and a fair number of dragons inhabiting them.

Second, if you've got yourself a generic anywhazits system, scrap it, write up a cool setting where adventure is easy to come by and design your system to complement that.

7th Sea, for instance, is a game about swashbucklers. Its mechanics primarily revolve around buckling swash.

[Eldan]

A lot of rules I've seen for new, proposed systems seem to be written with people in mind who have already played a variety of RPGs. How about this: instead of doing that, sit down and write a beginner's guide.

Start at the very beginning. "What is this game?" "What does a player do in this game?" "What do the rules mean?" "How to visualize things?"

Explain what your attributes and statistics mean. What they would look like on a character. To borrow terms from D&D, since I don't know yours: what does 18 strength look like and what can you do with it? How intelligent is a nobel prize winner in your system? How would I model a professional athlete?

Examples like that do a lot to make a system feel more alive: instead of numbers, you have examples to think of. "A character with strength 20 could tip a truck on its side" is better than "A character with strength 20 has a +5 modifier to hit".

[valadil]

TY for the suggestions. It's multi-quote time!



2. Pretend you're making a campaign and players are making characters, and "play through it" (for simplicity, use simple characters and set die rolls by whatever's most convenient), and see where it gets stuck.

Sweet. That's what my instincts said to do.


The degree to which this "modeling" is useful depends on how similar your system is to existing systems. If D&D is not a good analogy, find a system that is, and use its organization as a guide instead. That's what I did with Rise.

Hmm. I think my difficulty here is complexity. D&D is my favorite system and it's clearly rules heavy. I was thinking of my system as rules light, but I don't think that's accurate. Risus is rules light. I've got way more rules than they do.

So any suggestions for a medium rules system to use as a basis? I can't think of any. I couldn't write up my rules in a 5 page brochure like Risus nor would there be enough content for something like D&D's 300 page PHB.


A good setting is by far the most important mechanic in any rpg.

Second, if you've got yourself a generic anywhazits system, scrap it, write up a cool setting where adventure is easy to come by and design your system to complement that.


I agree. Sadly my system is currently generic. I'm not trying to write a generic system, I just haven't settled on a setting yet. I never actually set out to write an RPG, I just collected a bunch of homemade mechanics, wanted to test drive them, and realized I almost had a game. I was kind of hoping I'd find a setting that made sense somewhere along the way.

Here's the problem. I don't like duplicating effort. If I'm going to play a game in Forgotten Realms, I'm going to play a D&D. It fills that niche perfectly and there's no reason to try and replace it. I also don't like worldbuilding. I don't trust myself to come up with a world and write about it, so I've got to mooch a fantasy world that isn't already taken.

I've got ideas for elemental magic and a solid set of rules for melee combat. But I'm not married to standard high magic fantasy.

(As a sidenote, the closest I've come to a good match is Jim Butcher's Codex Alera (there was another thread about a system for that in here a few weeks back). Magic in my system is elemental, with each type of magic lining up with one of the character stats. Strength is earth, dexterity is fire, social is air, and intelligence is water. I also have a health stat which is passive and has no skills, but that seems like a good fit for steelcraft. So far so good. The problem is that I have no stat for woodcraft. I haven't found a satisfying way to make room for woodcraft without it feeling like it was artificially grafted on.)


A lot of rules I've seen for new, proposed systems seem to be written with people in mind who have already played a variety of RPGs. How about this: instead of doing that, sit down and write a beginner's guide.

Examples like that do a lot to make a system feel more alive: instead of numbers, you have examples to think of. "A character with strength 20 could tip a truck on its side" is better than "A character with strength 20 has a +5 modifier to hit".

I like the idea of real world examples. I'm torn on the intro to RPGs guide. On the one hand, I'm doing some different stuff that would benefit from a clean start. On the other, this is a small scale project. I think it would be arrogant to assume it will be anyone's first RPG. Right now I'm leaning toward a separate getting started guide that explains the basics.

[Vadskye]

Hmm. I think my difficulty here is complexity. D&D is my favorite system and it's clearly rules heavy. I was thinking of my system as rules light, but I don't think that's accurate. Risus is rules light. I've got way more rules than they do.

So any suggestions for a medium rules system to use as a basis? I can't think of any. I couldn't write up my rules in a 5 page brochure like Risus nor would there be enough content for something like D&D's 300 page PHB.

It's not about the length - it's about the organization of the chapters. And besides, something like 120 pages of the PHB is solely devoted to spells. The actual "rules" section is much shorter. I bet that if you wrote your system using the same chapter structure, it would work well.

I can think of several "medium rules systems" - primarily those made by White Wolf - but they are not something that I would consider a guide to good game design, so I hesitate to recommend them for comparison.

[valadil]

It's not about the length - it's about the organization of the chapters. And besides, something like 120 pages of the PHB is solely devoted to spells. The actual "rules" section is much shorter. I bet that if you wrote your system using the same chapter structure, it would work well.


Seems legit. In all honesty I think the complexity argument on my part was my inner procrastinator making up a roadblock for me.

Here's a followup question that I think is related. How do you figure out the values of things? I've got a good idea for how skills advance, how you specialize, and how your stats grow. I've got an idea for a bunch of feats/merits/advantages/perks/I-don't-have-a-term-for-these-yets. I've got a vague idea that I'd like skills and feats to advance from the same set of experience points as skills, but I have no idea how to figure out how many points they're worth. I think that might be the "glue" I alluded to earlier. I have a bunch of relative values and no idea how to normalize them, short of throwing a ton of playtesting at the game and hoping for the best.

[Vadskye]

I've got a vague idea that I'd like skills and feats to advance from the same set of experience points as skills
Be careful with that. I generally advise limiting the degree to which it is possible to trade noncombat power for combat power, and vice versa. If your skills and "feats" work remotely like D&D, I would be hesitant to allow people to trade one for the other.

As far as your main question goes, there are a few possibilities. First, you could group things by how frequently they are used. For example, in my system, Weapon Focus gives a +1 bonus, because it is used many times per encounter. The combat maneuver feats give a +2 bonus, because they are used one or two times per encounter (on average). Improved Initiative gives a +4 bonus, because it is never used more than once per encounter.

Another approach is to group things by how frequently they are likely to be chosen. For example, Improved Disarm is much more of a "niche" feat than Weapon Focus; significantly fewer characters are interested in disarming than are interested in attacking with weapons. If you want to encourage highly varied characters, make "generic" feats more expensive as niche feats. If you want to make characters more similar to each other, make niche feats expensive and generic feats more common.

Additionally, it can help. group all of your "feats" into categories based on their purpose: skill-based feats, combat-based feats (possibly subdivided into offense and defense), magic-related feats, and so on. Then, within each category, make sure that no feat is excessively powerful relative to other feats which serve a similar purpose. This helps solve the problem of trying to compare Spell Focus with Weapon Focus. It really doesn't mean anything to directly compare those an abstract sense, because there are very few characters which would actually be interested in both. Focus on making sure that the feats are balanced within their categories. That is both easier (because it is a smaller number of things to consider) and more important (because imbalances are more obvious when viewed from this perspective, and players tend to look at things solely from the perspective of their own characters).

[Rephath]

I have some advice and you're not going to like it. Take your rules and throw them out. Completely. Never build the rules first.

The first thing you do when creating an RPG is figure out what you want players to be doing. Then, you build a setting with opportunities for players to do that and rules that make it easy and fun for that to happen.

When building a generic system, your setting is "everything" and what players are doing is "everything" so you build rules to incorporate everything. Usually, however, what players are doing is more specific and you'll need to tailor the setting and rules to that.

If you build the rules first, they don't always fit with what you want to happen, and you try to make a square peg fit in a round hole.
After you figure out what your game is about and the players are doing, then you're going to try to find the best ways to model it. The good news is you can start scavenging rules from the set you had made and I told you to throw out. You won't keep all of them. But you'll keep some. The bad news is you'll love your mechanics so much you'll try to shoe horn them in to places they don't fit. Which will end up with you building large flaws into your game. I've done it many times.

Some final good news though. You'll need to build a lot of crappy systems before you get good. I shudder to think of the systems I imposed on my friends in college. Practice makes perfect, and this'll be good practice.

[Rephath]

If you hate building settings I have several ideas.

1) Get someone who is good with settings to help. I'm mediocre with them myself, but consider myself fantastic with rules. I have a friend who is fantastic with settings, mediocre with rules. When our powers combine, we are unstoppable.

2) Steal a setting. This is how most of my games start. Your game looks like it has elemental magic where magic isn't just about how smart you are. So you might set it in Golden Sun or Avatar. You can't sell a game like this, but it's legal to play among friends and good practice.

3) Brainstorm. What if I had a world that was mostly like _______ but I included ________? How would the world in _______ time period have changed if ________ was possible? What don't I see happen in other settings that I wish I did?

4) Open Resources. Build the basics of the setting. Rope anyone you can into adding details.

Often when I start with #2 I start changing things to make them easier to model, or as I think they make more sense, and slowly but surely I get something of my own that's unique and different.

[Vadskye]

I have some advice and you're not going to like it. Take your rules and throw them out. Completely. Never build the rules first.

The first thing you do when creating an RPG is figure out what you want players to be doing. Then, you build a setting with opportunities for players to do that and rules that make it easy and fun for that to happen.

When building a generic system, your setting is "everything" and what players are doing is "everything" so you build rules to incorporate everything. Usually, however, what players are doing is more specific and you'll need to tailor the setting and rules to that.
I agree that it is essential to have a desired play style or other goal for the game. However, that is very different from having a specific setting. D&D is more or less setting-agnostic, but it is designed for a specific play style and general environment. I guess it depends on what you mean by setting. Do you need a world map and specific countries to design a good system? Absolutely not. But you do need to know what your goal is for the game.

[valadil]

The first thing you do when creating an RPG is figure out what you want players to be doing. Then, you build a setting with opportunities for players to do that and rules that make it easy and fun for that to happen.


I've heard of this approach before. I can see why it works. Without trying to sound like a special snowflake, I don't think it'll work for me this time. It's a question of motivation. I'm motivated to write rules. I'm not motivated to write a setting. I've got enough motivation from the rules that I can run pretty far with that. All my settings ideas stop after a paragraph because that's where they run out of steam. Starting with a setting means I won't get anywhere.

(Of course the counterpoint to that is that if a setting is required, starting with rules gets me many hours of wasted time on rules before I get to the setting dead end and then stop.)



Some final good news though. You'll need to build a lot of crappy systems before you get good. I shudder to think of the systems I imposed on my friends in college. Practice makes perfect, and this'll be good practice.

Agreed. This is why I'm only aiming to write a beta test. Publishing this, even as a free PDF implies that it has to be worth playing and I'm not sure I can get to that point.


If you hate building settings I have several ideas.

2) Steal a setting. This is how most of my games start. Your game looks like it has elemental magic where magic isn't just about how smart you are. So you might set it in Golden Sun or Avatar. You can't sell a game like this, but it's legal to play among friends and good practice.


Inspiration and motivation aside, I'm strongly biased in favor of stealing a setting. I don't think it's practical to write a setting, especially for a supposedly light system.

I got a bad taste for homebrewing in my first campaign. I ran a homebrewed world. It had a lot of neat ideas, and there was no way I could write them all down. Even worse, there was no way the players would read everything I wrote. If 10% of my ideas made it onto paper and 10% of those ideas were read and retained by the players, they only got 1% of what was in my world. In their heads the rest of the world was generic high fantasy land. On top of that, there was way more published material on a campaign setting like FR than there was ever material for my game. This made it really hard to see world building as a practical endeavor.

That said I can see a few cases where it makes sense. If your PCs are exploring a new world and they have no basis of knowledge coming from that world, you're going to have to do some building. I've played in games like this and they've been pretty fun, but I'd hate for my system to be limited to this kind of game.

If you're going to invest time in a campaign setting and build the world over the course of several games, that's a great way to communicate the world to your players. I think for that to work I'd have to be a group's primary GM for a number of years.

I think the collaboration idea is interesting, but not going to work in my case. I stopped gaming because I had a kid and it became impractical to hang out with gamers. It is very practical however to have a project I can do on my computer once the toddler goes to bed. For the time being, I'm gonna keep this one solo, although I do agree that having a world builder would probably be more optimal.

[DoomHat]

Look, here's a link to a Keith Baker interview where he talks about how he designed Eberron and why he made those choices.

{LINK} (http://masterplanpodcast.net/2012/08/ep-56/)

It much pretty much sums up everything we're trying to get across with dozens specific examples.

[valadil]

Look, here's a link to a Keith Baker interview where he talks about how he designed Eberron and why he made those choices.

Ooh. Not only a relevant topic, the rest of that podcast looks fantastic too. Thanks!

[Rephath]

I know you don't like designing settings. My advice about getting a setting first still stands. To design something your first step is to figure out what you're designing. If you don't know how the object will be used or what it will need to do or why it exists, you have no grounds for making it. It's like saying "I want to build a machine," without knowing what it will be used for, or do, or who's going to use it, or why it even is being made other than you want to make a machine.

All that said, I should clarify, you don't need to build your setting in its entirety. What you need to figure out is a general idea of what is possible. For example "This is a sci-fi world that has no magic and technology is generally the source of cool powers and abilities." If you have a magic system you'll need to figure out what you want it to be able to do, generally, and what it can't do, and how prevalent it is in the world.


You need to answer the following questions:
What is possible in my world?
What is not possible?
What will players be doing in this world?
What will people be expecting me to have?
What is important to simulate?
What is not important to simulate?

[Yitzi]

I know you don't like designing settings. My advice about getting a setting first still stands. To design something your first step is to figure out what you're designing. If you don't know how the object will be used or what it will need to do or why it exists, you have no grounds for making it. It's like saying "I want to build a machine," without knowing what it will be used for, or do, or who's going to use it, or why it even is being made other than you want to make a machine.

All that said, I should clarify, you don't need to build your setting in its entirety. What you need to figure out is a general idea of what is possible. For example "This is a sci-fi world that has no magic and technology is generally the source of cool powers and abilities." If you have a magic system you'll need to figure out what you want it to be able to do, generally, and what it can't do, and how prevalent it is in the world.


You need to answer the following questions:
What is possible in my world?
What is not possible?
What will players be doing in this world?
What will people be expecting me to have?
What is important to simulate?
What is not important to simulate?

Of course, that doesn't require full worldbuilding (i.e. a setting), just enough that you know what's going on. A full setting would have the advantage of helping with naming and popularity, but isn't really needed.

[Rephath]

Of course, that doesn't require full worldbuilding (i.e. a setting), just enough that you know what's going on. A full setting would have the advantage of helping with naming and popularity, but isn't really needed.

Exactly. I typically figure out what I'm stealing or need to simulate, then build the rules (because I love rules and kind of enjoy settings) and then try to start weaving setting and rules together to reinforce one another. For example, in one game I have set old against new, and one of the conflicts is magic vs. mad science. In rules terms, while you can do both because it's a flexible system, it's discouraged by making you build your character in two entirely different directions sapping your resources.

Alternatively, I might build setting to reinforce rules. I created a game where you played as the evil overlord of a dungeon like in the game dungeon keeper. I couldn't work out a good way to simulate a 3D dungeon, so I built an entire cosmology wrapped around the concept of you not being able to dig up or down in this world.

Anyway, point being get enough setting to know what you need from your mechanics, then match mechanics to your need, then go wherever you want to from there. My advice.

[valadil]

Anyway, point being get enough setting to know what you need from your mechanics, then match mechanics to your need, then go wherever you want to from there. My advice.

Ah, gotcha. While I'm not about to design major cities or NPCs, I do know that I want a world with knights and swords. Magic exists, but its prevalence is undetermined. I can do forest level setting decisions no problem. I thought you were suggesting starting with the trees.

How do you feel about lazy evaluation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_evaluation)? Do all the decisions need to be laid out in advance or can they wait? I wanted to do melee combat and social skills before getting to magic, so I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about what sort of magic I'd like to represent yet. All I know is that it's elemental and there are four or five elements, each tied to a stat. I wasn't planning on doing more rules until I was confronted with some more decisions for magic.

[Yitzi]

How do you feel about lazy evaluation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_evaluation)? Do all the decisions need to be laid out in advance or can they wait? I wanted to do melee combat and social skills before getting to magic, so I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about what sort of magic I'd like to represent yet. All I know is that it's elemental and there are four or five elements, each tied to a stat. I wasn't planning on doing more rules until I was confronted with some more decisions for magic.

I think that should work ok, as long as you don't forget about what you have so far once you get around to doing the magic system.

[Rephath]

Ah, gotcha. While I'm not about to design major cities or NPCs, I do know that I want a world with knights and swords. Magic exists, but its prevalence is undetermined. I can do forest level setting decisions no problem. I thought you were suggesting starting with the trees.

How do you feel about lazy evaluation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_evaluation)? Do all the decisions need to be laid out in advance or can they wait? I wanted to do melee combat and social skills before getting to magic, so I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about what sort of magic I'd like to represent yet. All I know is that it's elemental and there are four or five elements, each tied to a stat. I wasn't planning on doing more rules until I was confronted with some more decisions for magic.

You seem to be missing two things. How extensive magic is will shape your world and mechanics quite a bit. And what you want to do, or not do, with races will also be important.

[valadil]

You seem to be missing two things. How extensive magic is will shape your world and mechanics quite a bit. And what you want to do, or not do, with races will also be important.

I'm still not sure I agree that setting should shape mechanics in this case. I think it's bidirectional.

I'm trying to build a diceless system where players have static bonuses for stats and skills, but have pools of willpower points for when they need that extra oomph. That informs the setting about quite a bit about the magic system.

1. It's somewhat deterministic. Players always know what they can cast. This implies that it's going to be something that's been studied and tamed to an extent.

2. It should burn through those pools of willpower points. I don't want vancian magic. I've seen games where you can cast all day until you botch, but if I'm not doing randomization there's no botching. That leaves me with fatigue, which the willpower points model pretty well.

3. One of the features I haven't spoken about as much is that each of the elements ties to a stat. I expect full on mages to be versatile, investing the bare minimum in stats. However if a character is focused on a stat, they might as well buy up a little magic so they can use that stat to their advantage. To compare it to D&D, if there was a feat that let you cast a handful of spells off your strength score, quite a few fighters would take it. Given that there's an option like this for every stat I see most characters dabbling in magic at some point in their careers. That plus the studied and tamed comment makes me think magic is widely spread throughout the world.

(Incidentally all these things are still pointing me towards Codex Alera. I wish I had an answer for the woodcraft problem.)