Easy to learn Tabletop System

[Dunkoro]

After having a few gaming groups and seeing the difficulties they faced, I'd like to develop (or maybe discover) a Tabletop System, that fulfills following postulates:

1. Quick to start
When making characters takes the players 3-4 weeks it is way too much time spent not playing. It should be possible to pick up the game and start playing it on the same day (I might be exaggerating here)
Players should have 2 options when making the characters.
One would assume that the player is not familiar with the system and would guide him through the process (I'm thinking of something like an online quiz with questions about their character determining his final abilities) and there would be little to no actual reading material (1-2 A4 pages).
The other would assume the players are already familiar with the system and would throw at them all the rules of generating characters with all the possible options to choose from.

2. Characters obtain new abilities, but their overall power doesn't grow by much.
In my opinion, the character growth presented in many RPG Systems is illogical. I'd much prefer for the characters to have multiple abilities than to have a single (or a few) that he specializes in heavily. When characters grow in power instead of in versality, the monsters have to be scaled up in power as well and, after all, nothing changes, which is boring.
Epic obstacles should still be epic even for veteran characters. It shouldn't be like: "The Dragon is out of our reach... Until we kill enough Ratmen to become more powerful!"
Instead of character levels they would gain 'points' that they could spend obtaining new abilities and/or upgrading the existing ones, while upgrading would give diminishing returns for the investment.

3. As few abstract concepts as possible.
Even though we're used to using abstract concepts such as Hit Points, and Armor Class, and Damage, and Levels, and Character Class, they're simply not real and are a big oversimplification of things.
Levels are already taken care of (see 2.).
Instead of hit points, whenever you would take damage, you'd have to roll in order to see whether you've obtained a wound, the roll getting progressively harder the harder you've been hit and the more wounds you already have. If you fail, you get a wound. If you fail badly (what would 'failing badly' constitute would depend on dice set chosen) you enter a 'dying' state, from which you can go to 'dead' state.
Armor lessens the hits, while defensive abilities (Dodge etc.) would make you harder to hit.
Characters are not limited in what they might choose for their abilities, but it should be easier for them to learn new things that are connected to the abilities they already have (I don't yet know how to connect this with 'Encourage non-specialization' concept).

4. The system should be fairly generic.
Because when players learn to use a system they like to use it again in different settings. This system should not be tied to any particular world.
The core of the system, that would remain unchanged would be one PDF. Then, there would also be a lot of little (2-5 pages) 'supplement' rulebooks, that would enable customization of rules by the GM. For example, there would be separate rulebooks that would explain a few different systems of magic.

At this point this system is pretty much a stub, but I'd like to get a feedback on how the community feels about my ideas before I get too carried away with idealistic visions.

Any and all constructive criticism is much welcome.

[WbtE]

Instead of hit points, whenever you would take damage, you'd have to roll in order to see whether you've obtained a wound, the roll getting progressively harder the harder you've been hit and the more wounds you already have. If you fail, you get a wound. If you fail badly (what would 'failing badly' constitute would depend on dice set chosen) you enter a 'dying' state, from which you can go to 'dead' state.

I'm not sure how this differs from hit points. :smallconfused: To make that clear: ignore the convention of play whereby HP=meat and use the RAW that HP=ability to avoid severe injury. Taking this approach means that every damage roll is a "roll to see whether you've obtained a wound, the roll getting progressively harder the harder you've been hit". There are a number of 0HP rulings through the history of D&D, probably the most realistic being 0=death (i.e. a wound severe enough to stop a character from fighting almost certainly killed them outright), but if you want to allow players to sit around waiting for their character to die then there are down-and-dying options, too.

All I can think of is that you're intending for wounds to be represented concretely, with a body hit location chart, etc - but how could a system with this level of detail remain playable? :smallconfused:

[Dunkoro]

I'm not sure how this differs from hit points. :smallconfused: To make that clear: ignore the convention of play whereby HP=meat and use the RAW that HP=ability to avoid severe injury. Taking this approach means that every damage roll is a "roll to see whether you've obtained a wound, the roll getting progressively harder the harder you've been hit". There are a number of 0HP rulings through the history of D&D, probably the most realistic being 0=death (i.e. a wound severe enough to stop a character from fighting almost certainly killed them outright), but if you want to allow players to sit around waiting for their character to die then there are down-and-dying options, too.

All I can think of is that you're intending for wounds to be represented concretely, with a body hit location chart, etc - but how could a system with this level of detail remain playable? :smallconfused:

What I meant with this system is that there is no specific number of wounds you can sustain. You might get badly hurt by the first attack or you might get lucky and not get a single wound within the first five with the same character.
There is also the fact, that wound penalties scale. I dislike the whole "You fight at your full strength, until you take 2 more damage, then you're dying..." Wound Penalties would propably apply to all rolls. (Also, I'll propably use d100 for the game, so that the penalties are quantifiable)

[JeenLeen]

2 & 3 seem to fit Mutants & Masterminds pretty well. For 3, Perhaps you could use the Toughness save feature instead of hit points?
(If you're not familiar with it, you have a Toughness value that is based on your Stamina/Constitution as well as any modifiers. Whenever you are hit, you roll a d20 + Toughness against a DC based on the attack's damage. If you fail, you get a penalty to Toughness to being KOed, depending on how badly you fail. Each penalty to Toughness could correlate to a wound in your proposed system. In our M&M game, we houseruled (actually misread and thought the rules said) that for every 5 points you fail the roll, you get a -1 penalty. On your second 3rd-degree failure or 1st 4th-degree failure, you are KOed.)

For 2, you have a Power Level, which is assumed not to change, and it sets a cap on how much damage you can do, how high your defenses can get, how good at skills you can become, etc. (No matter how many thugs a local cop beats up, he'll never gain enough xp to take on Superman, to parallel your ratmen/dragon idea.) You gain xp and can increase your powers to a point or, more importantly, gain versatility.

M&M is also fairly generic, but rather high-power. Or at least it seems like you are rather limited at lower levels.

I'm not meaning to discourage you from making your own system, but M&M could be a useful resource for ideas/mechanics. Rules are free online here. (http://www.d20herosrd.com/)

[Jormengand]

Something like Alea Iacta Est would fit most of those fairly well, but the results of your actions aren't very well-defined.

Hit points are a thing, but they could be edited out to be "You might suffer a wound from being attacked" instead of "You suffe a wound when you lose 10 hit points."

It might not be perfect, but it would give you some ideas.

If you want to do something which might actually have a chance of failure, you roll 2d6. Go ahead, do it!

2d6|Effect
<=1*|You fail the action utterly, and injure yourself horrifically in the process.
2-3|You fail the action, and probably manage to do yourself an injury, or do something antithetical to what you were trying to.
4|You miss, or otherwise fail in a rather nondescript manner.
5-6|You partially succeed in your action.
7|You succeed in as much of your action as you can be expected to in one round.
8-9|You do slightly more than succeed. Either you succeed particularly quickly or particularly well, or you manage to accomplish something else minor as well.
10-11|You succeed very well on the action. A particularly well done or just plain lucky performance.
12|A one in a millio... okay, one in thirty-six before modifiers performance. You essentially complete the action as fast and as well as is possible for a normal person.
>=13*|You complete the task better than most people are capable of. Well done. Do you feel proud? Do you feel lucky? Did I put six rounds in... wait, what?

*You can't actually roll these, of course, but you can get them through modifiers.

As you will notice, the results aren't very... well, specific. That's because they don't really affect specific stats, because you don't have any stats. Well, okay, I lied. You have two stats.

First, are modifiers. You start the game with three modifiers, which obey the following rules (though I'll sort this out, so you don't really need the table):

{table=head]Situation/uses|Example|Bonus|penalty
The modifier is really specific, and it's hard to make them apply in all situations |You only get a benefit when jumping between rooftops|+5|N/A
The modifier is moderately difficult to activate, but really, really easy not to|You must be attacking with a specific weapon|+3|N/A
The action comes up fairly often, but is hardly routine|You get the modifier on all attempts to jump|+3|-5
The action is relatively common|You get the modifier on ranged attacks|+2|-4
The action is very common|You get the modifier on all attacks|+1|-1[/table]

You can never have more than +6 to a roll. Ever. Also, if you roll snake-eyes, no amount of modifying will let you get better than 4. Why? Because otherwise you can become "Too good to fail" and there's no point rolling. And that's boring.

You might also get modifiers from your equipment, or the inherent difficulty of what you're doing... or maybe if you start to lose health.

Health is out of 50. You can spend one of your bonuses at character creation to have it be out of 55 instead, if you like, or get your penalty out of the way by reducing your health to 45. Either way, it does stuff:

{table=head]HP|Effect
41+|-
31-40|-1 penalty to everything
21-30|-2 penalty to everything
11-20|-3 penalty to everything
1-10|Unconscious
0|Dead[/table]

Put simply, a character who is unconscious cannot act until healed and does not roll opposed rolls (I'll talk about them in a bit), instead, anyone trying to do something to an unconscious character uses the normal table. A character who is dead is dead, duh. Resurrecting a character may be possible, but isn't likely.

Hit point damage might take place from failing a task, but it's much more likely to come from conflicts and combats!

If you're fighting an enemy, their attempts to fight back could be represented by opposed rolls. These are pretty simple:

Both people roll 2d6
Whoever rolled higher (or both players, if drawn) finds the difference between their roll and their opponent's, and adds 4.
The effect is resolved normally.

Combat is also pretty simple. Everyone rolls 4d6 and the highest goes first. If you have a bonus or penalty to your initiative roll, it's twice the normal value because it's a 4d6 roll. Then, everyone goes into rounds, meaning that you can take a single action every time your initiative comes up. A round is probably about 6 seconds, but that depends on what exactly you're doing - if you're firing siege engines at each other, a round could be five or ten times as long.

Weapons have a damage die, just like mamma used to make, but it's often something low, like a d4 for a longsword. That's because that's the amount of damage you do if you roll a 5-6 on the attack roll - if you roll better, you add another die for each category above you get. A 7 will do 2d4 damage, an 8 or 9 will do 3d4, and so forth.

Your fist is an item, but it can't be attacked separately. It provides -2 on rolls to attack with it and has a damage die of d1. So, 1.

Choose two things to get bonuses on, or swap one out to improve your hit points to 55.
Choose one thing you're bad at, or if you still have 50 HP reduce them to 45
Choose a special ability you have eg a magic spell.
Choose an item which improves your attempts to attack something eg a sword, staff, etc.
Choose a defensive item such as a shield or piece of armour.
Choose a tool or similar.

As an example, Wizzy The Wizard might choose to have +2 on his magic spells, 55 hit points, -3 on all attacks without magic, the ability to use a healing spell, a staff that allows him to fire magic bolts at his enemies, a robe which only reduces damage by 1 but doesn't hinder his spells, and a pendant which allows him to grant someone increased speed. There, done.

Armies, spaceships and elephants, oh my: Anything which isn't a human (even if it's a lot of humans) follows exactly the same rules, but will often get massive bonuses against single humans. This is an exception to the maximum of +6 modifier rule: there is no way that a common person is going to defeat a whole squad of archers, though a powerful wizard might.
I smash it!: Items do have hitpoints, but they can't fall unconscious or take penalties: they can only "die" (be destroyed). I won't give you item hitpoints unless you really decide you want to sunder it.
I used to like the Called Shot rules, but then I took an arrow to the knee: You can't deal damage to specific body parts. You can't use I smash it on someone's fist, either, so don't try it. You can attack specific body parts to impose penalties on an enemy.
Multiple actions: You can take more than one action in a round (so long as the actions make sense together - they should be possible at the same time, really) but you take a -2 penalty on any roll you make for actions during the round - it's a good idea to move and take out your weapon at once, because then you're not making any rolls! (It's a little difficult to fail to walk or take out your weapon, even if you try to do both at once.) This does mean that you're potentially making multiple separate rolls in the same round, and each one has its own bonuses/penalties.

The penalty is separate from the maximum of +6 bonus - that is, it's applied after the bonus cap. So if you have a +10432 bonus, and try to take three actions, the bonus is reduced to +6 and then you take the -4 penalty for multiple actions. Similarly, if you have a penalty of -47, this becomes -6 and then you take a penalty. Serves you right for trying to do three things you're bad at at once.

You may never make more than 3 actions in a round, because you aren't awesome enough to do so. Deal with it.

Charging is one action. Talking is no actions. Taking out an arrow and shooting someone is one action. Taking out a bullet and loading it is an action, firing it is another, and no you can't do both in one round.
Rarity and shopping: Items have a rarity value which basically shows how good they are, and how much you're likely to get for them. The rarities are:

(Unique)
Legendary
Rare
Uncommon
Common
Trivial
(Worthless)

Apart from Unique or Worthless, all items can be swapped out for two of the category just below them, or an equivalent amount of money (buy value = sell value. Why? Because.) Unique and Worthless are a whole different kettle of fish - unique items are difficult to get your hands on and you can't just go ahead and buy them even if you're prepared to cough up two legendaries, and they're usually very... well, unique, meaning that no-one wants to buy one either. Worthless items can generally be bought with handwaved money - you're rich adventurers, we don't keep track of food or whatever.

"Trivial" items will generally include multiple pieces of ammunition, because each one is worth so little that making even smaller categories for each one would be silly. Things like Alchemist's Fire, which some weapons use as ammunition, will also be "Trivial" items.

Common items include a sword - non-magical, and generally boring, but a good thing to have about.Uncommon items are often either magical or technological, though a Really Good Sword might also be uncommon. Rare items will be powerful, and technological or magical. Legendary items might be one-of-a-kind, but they can still be bought - indeed, they're the best money can buy. They're often actually superior to unique items, because unique items are literally anything that you can't acquire in a town.

[Eulalios]

What I meant with this system is that there is no specific number of wounds you can sustain. You might get badly hurt by the first attack or you might get lucky and not get a single wound within the first five with the same character.
There is also the fact, that wound penalties scale. I dislike the whole "You fight at your full strength, until you take 2 more damage, then you're dying..." Wound Penalties would propably apply to all rolls. (Also, I'll propably use d100 for the game, so that the penalties are quantifiable)

You can accomplish the same with exploding damage dice.

[Dunkoro]

You can accomplish the same with exploding damage dice.

But I'd also like the wound penalties to apply to other rolls as well. Having more varied damage doesn't change that part.


Something like Alea Iacta Est would fit most of those fairly well, but the results of your actions aren't very well-defined.

Hit points are a thing, but they could be edited out to be "You might suffer a wound from being attacked" instead of "You suffe a wound when you lose 10 hit points."

It might not be perfect, but it would give you some ideas.

If you want to do something which might actually have a chance of failure, you roll 2d6. Go ahead, do it!

2d6|Effect
<=1*|You fail the action utterly, and injure yourself horrifically in the process.
2-3|You fail the action, and probably manage to do yourself an injury, or do something antithetical to what you were trying to.
4|You miss, or otherwise fail in a rather nondescript manner.
5-6|You partially succeed in your action.
7|You succeed in as much of your action as you can be expected to in one round.
8-9|You do slightly more than succeed. Either you succeed particularly quickly or particularly well, or you manage to accomplish something else minor as well.
10-11|You succeed very well on the action. A particularly well done or just plain lucky performance.
12|A one in a millio... okay, one in thirty-six before modifiers performance. You essentially complete the action as fast and as well as is possible for a normal person.
>=13*|You complete the task better than most people are capable of. Well done. Do you feel proud? Do you feel lucky? Did I put six rounds in... wait, what?

*You can't actually roll these, of course, but you can get them through modifiers.

As you will notice, the results aren't very... well, specific. That's because they don't really affect specific stats, because you don't have any stats. Well, okay, I lied. You have two stats.

First, are modifiers. You start the game with three modifiers, which obey the following rules (though I'll sort this out, so you don't really need the table):

{table=head]Situation/uses|Example|Bonus|penalty
The modifier is really specific, and it's hard to make them apply in all situations |You only get a benefit when jumping between rooftops|+5|N/A
The modifier is moderately difficult to activate, but really, really easy not to|You must be attacking with a specific weapon|+3|N/A
The action comes up fairly often, but is hardly routine|You get the modifier on all attempts to jump|+3|-5
The action is relatively common|You get the modifier on ranged attacks|+2|-4
The action is very common|You get the modifier on all attacks|+1|-1[/table]

You can never have more than +6 to a roll. Ever. Also, if you roll snake-eyes, no amount of modifying will let you get better than 4. Why? Because otherwise you can become "Too good to fail" and there's no point rolling. And that's boring.

You might also get modifiers from your equipment, or the inherent difficulty of what you're doing... or maybe if you start to lose health.

Health is out of 50. You can spend one of your bonuses at character creation to have it be out of 55 instead, if you like, or get your penalty out of the way by reducing your health to 45. Either way, it does stuff:

{table=head]HP|Effect
41+|-
31-40|-1 penalty to everything
21-30|-2 penalty to everything
11-20|-3 penalty to everything
1-10|Unconscious
0|Dead[/table]

Put simply, a character who is unconscious cannot act until healed and does not roll opposed rolls (I'll talk about them in a bit), instead, anyone trying to do something to an unconscious character uses the normal table. A character who is dead is dead, duh. Resurrecting a character may be possible, but isn't likely.

Hit point damage might take place from failing a task, but it's much more likely to come from conflicts and combats!

If you're fighting an enemy, their attempts to fight back could be represented by opposed rolls. These are pretty simple:

Both people roll 2d6
Whoever rolled higher (or both players, if drawn) finds the difference between their roll and their opponent's, and adds 4.
The effect is resolved normally.

Combat is also pretty simple. Everyone rolls 4d6 and the highest goes first. If you have a bonus or penalty to your initiative roll, it's twice the normal value because it's a 4d6 roll. Then, everyone goes into rounds, meaning that you can take a single action every time your initiative comes up. A round is probably about 6 seconds, but that depends on what exactly you're doing - if you're firing siege engines at each other, a round could be five or ten times as long.

Weapons have a damage die, just like mamma used to make, but it's often something low, like a d4 for a longsword. That's because that's the amount of damage you do if you roll a 5-6 on the attack roll - if you roll better, you add another die for each category above you get. A 7 will do 2d4 damage, an 8 or 9 will do 3d4, and so forth.

Your fist is an item, but it can't be attacked separately. It provides -2 on rolls to attack with it and has a damage die of d1. So, 1.

Choose two things to get bonuses on, or swap one out to improve your hit points to 55.
Choose one thing you're bad at, or if you still have 50 HP reduce them to 45
Choose a special ability you have eg a magic spell.
Choose an item which improves your attempts to attack something eg a sword, staff, etc.
Choose a defensive item such as a shield or piece of armour.
Choose a tool or similar.

As an example, Wizzy The Wizard might choose to have +2 on his magic spells, 55 hit points, -3 on all attacks without magic, the ability to use a healing spell, a staff that allows him to fire magic bolts at his enemies, a robe which only reduces damage by 1 but doesn't hinder his spells, and a pendant which allows him to grant someone increased speed. There, done.

Armies, spaceships and elephants, oh my: Anything which isn't a human (even if it's a lot of humans) follows exactly the same rules, but will often get massive bonuses against single humans. This is an exception to the maximum of +6 modifier rule: there is no way that a common person is going to defeat a whole squad of archers, though a powerful wizard might.
I smash it!: Items do have hitpoints, but they can't fall unconscious or take penalties: they can only "die" (be destroyed). I won't give you item hitpoints unless you really decide you want to sunder it.
I used to like the Called Shot rules, but then I took an arrow to the knee: You can't deal damage to specific body parts. You can't use I smash it on someone's fist, either, so don't try it. You can attack specific body parts to impose penalties on an enemy.
Multiple actions: You can take more than one action in a round (so long as the actions make sense together - they should be possible at the same time, really) but you take a -2 penalty on any roll you make for actions during the round - it's a good idea to move and take out your weapon at once, because then you're not making any rolls! (It's a little difficult to fail to walk or take out your weapon, even if you try to do both at once.) This does mean that you're potentially making multiple separate rolls in the same round, and each one has its own bonuses/penalties.

The penalty is separate from the maximum of +6 bonus - that is, it's applied after the bonus cap. So if you have a +10432 bonus, and try to take three actions, the bonus is reduced to +6 and then you take the -4 penalty for multiple actions. Similarly, if you have a penalty of -47, this becomes -6 and then you take a penalty. Serves you right for trying to do three things you're bad at at once.

You may never make more than 3 actions in a round, because you aren't awesome enough to do so. Deal with it.

Charging is one action. Talking is no actions. Taking out an arrow and shooting someone is one action. Taking out a bullet and loading it is an action, firing it is another, and no you can't do both in one round.
Rarity and shopping: Items have a rarity value which basically shows how good they are, and how much you're likely to get for them. The rarities are:

(Unique)
Legendary
Rare
Uncommon
Common
Trivial
(Worthless)

Apart from Unique or Worthless, all items can be swapped out for two of the category just below them, or an equivalent amount of money (buy value = sell value. Why? Because.) Unique and Worthless are a whole different kettle of fish - unique items are difficult to get your hands on and you can't just go ahead and buy them even if you're prepared to cough up two legendaries, and they're usually very... well, unique, meaning that no-one wants to buy one either. Worthless items can generally be bought with handwaved money - you're rich adventurers, we don't keep track of food or whatever.

"Trivial" items will generally include multiple pieces of ammunition, because each one is worth so little that making even smaller categories for each one would be silly. Things like Alchemist's Fire, which some weapons use as ammunition, will also be "Trivial" items.

Common items include a sword - non-magical, and generally boring, but a good thing to have about.Uncommon items are often either magical or technological, though a Really Good Sword might also be uncommon. Rare items will be powerful, and technological or magical. Legendary items might be one-of-a-kind, but they can still be bought - indeed, they're the best money can buy. They're often actually superior to unique items, because unique items are literally anything that you can't acquire in a town.


2 & 3 seem to fit Mutants & Masterminds pretty well. For 3, Perhaps you could use the Toughness save feature instead of hit points?
(If you're not familiar with it, you have a Toughness value that is based on your Stamina/Constitution as well as any modifiers. Whenever you are hit, you roll a d20 + Toughness against a DC based on the attack's damage. If you fail, you get a penalty to Toughness to being KOed, depending on how badly you fail. Each penalty to Toughness could correlate to a wound in your proposed system. In our M&M game, we houseruled (actually misread and thought the rules said) that for every 5 points you fail the roll, you get a -1 penalty. On your second 3rd-degree failure or 1st 4th-degree failure, you are KOed.)

For 2, you have a Power Level, which is assumed not to change, and it sets a cap on how much damage you can do, how high your defenses can get, how good at skills you can become, etc. (No matter how many thugs a local cop beats up, he'll never gain enough xp to take on Superman, to parallel your ratmen/dragon idea.) You gain xp and can increase your powers to a point or, more importantly, gain versatility.

M&M is also fairly generic, but rather high-power. Or at least it seems like you are rather limited at lower levels.

I'm not meaning to discourage you from making your own system, but M&M could be a useful resource for ideas/mechanics. Rules are free online here. (http://www.d20herosrd.com/)

Thank you two. I'll take a look at these.

[TheFamilarRaven]

Looking it over, I have a few comment/critiques/questions that hopefully will help.

I'll be playing devil's advocate for every point so just a heads up.

1: Does this mean the game has a list of abilities to choose from? Or are they generically named so that the same ability could be many different things? Honestly, that's more complicated than a class system, and there's no problem with that, except that you said you wanted a simple system.

And why would you need an online quiz if you could just ask your player what they wanted their abilities to be? I don't need a quiz to tell me that I want to fly and spit poison.

2: What's the basis for gaining these points? There are plenty of point buy systems (i've never "played" any but...) but there has to be some way to gain these points. How is that different than leveling up? Because you don't have a number on your character sheet where your level should be?

Also, how would you determine if the players have spent enough points to be ready for, let's say, a dragon? Does every creature have to but points for abilities? If so, then that makes answering the above question a little easier.

You mentioned you don't want classes to be locked into specializations. But why is versatility better than power? (ignore the DnD wizard).

You mentioned you can upgrade your powers at diminishing returns, why? The goal of many table top games is for players to specialize and work together So what if the monsters the PC's fight scale in power with the players?

This is true for many RPG's and not limited to table top games, and the system works rather well.



3: This sounds way more complicated than a HP system. If your goal was to change HP to emulate realism more, you may be on the right track. But for a simple, easy to learn system, HP works fine. Everyone can understand HP.

4. I'll admit, the only table top RPG i've played would be DnD. But I was introduced to a system like two weeks ago called Big Eyes Small Mouths (BESM). In case you've never heard of it ... It is basically designed to be a table top RPG for anime/manga. But it has almost everything you require.
1) Fairly simple rules. Only 3 stats, and a d6 system
2) Characters buy abilities with points, rather than have abilities granted to them from their "class", allowing characters to be either versatile or specialized.
3) Each ability is generically named to be fit any type of character.
4) Can easily be molded to fit any setting.

Although if you use this system, you'll have to deal with HP and Energy Points, and since you seem to not like the HP system ...

Honestly, the only thing I wish the books for this system included was a table of contents for all of the abilities they have.

Hope this helps.

[Dunkoro]

Some fair points here.


Looking it over, I have a few comment/critiques/questions that hopefully will help.

I'll be playing devil's advocate for every point so just a heads up.

1: Does this mean the game has a list of abilities to choose from? Or are they generically named so that the same ability could be many different things? Honestly, that's more complicated than a class system, and there's no problem with that, except that you said you wanted a simple system.

And why would you need an online quiz if you could just ask your player what they wanted their abilities to be? I don't need a quiz to tell me that I want to fly and spit poison.

Yes, the game would have a list of abilities to choose from.
I could design a class system for that, but what difference does it make whether there are 30-ish classes (to represent all the character concepts), or 50-ish abilities to combine however one likes?

Online quiz would be not only to determine active abilities, but to determine stats as well. Also, it would become less arbitrary and not GM-Dependant (I like to lessen the responsibilities of the GM's wherever I can)

2: What's the basis for gaining these points? There are plenty of point buy systems (i've never "played" any but...) but there has to be some way to gain these points. How is that different than leveling up? Because you don't have a number on your character sheet where your level should be?

Because points are a smaller quantity. They can be split to buy more lesser abilities or accumulated in order to obtain something more powerful.

Also, how would you determine if the players have spent enough points to be ready for, let's say, a dragon? Does every creature have to but points for abilities? If so, then that makes answering the above question a little easier.

The point is that all challenges will be of a similar power level, except for some Mythical challenges (like the Dragons or such) that would require players to undergo serious challenges to even have a chance of surviving (for example they'd have to undergo a ritual in order to be more resistent to Dragon's breath).

You mentioned you don't want classes to be locked into specializations. But why is versatility better than power? (ignore the DnD wizard).

Because Power doesn't matter. Because having 2x more power against 2x better defensive capabilities of an opponent do not change anything. Everything is just as it was, except for the fact that you're rolling more dice.

You mentioned you can upgrade your powers at diminishing returns, why? The goal of many table top games is for players to specialize and work together So what if the monsters the PC's fight scale in power with the players?

This is true for many RPG's and not limited to table top games, and the system works rather well.

I do realize that. What I meant was not for PCs to be Jacks of All Trades, but for them to branch out inside of their own specialization. Wizard would learn different spells that would have new effects. Warrior would learn new techniques to use Ki. Rogue would use their Luck Points better. (Yeah, I plan for each concept to have some point reserve they could use to do something awesome, I think it's better than having an 1/Encouncer or 1/day effects)


3: This sounds way more complicated than a HP system. If your goal was to change HP to emulate realism more, you may be on the right track. But for a simple, easy to learn system, HP works fine. Everyone can understand HP.

It is way more complicated, that one's true. But all it changes is adding one more roll to damage resolution.

4. I'll admit, the only table top RPG i've played would be DnD. But I was introduced to a system like two weeks ago called Big Eyes Small Mouths (BESM). In case you've never heard of it ... It is basically designed to be a table top RPG for anime/manga. But it has almost everything you require.
1) Fairly simple rules. Only 3 stats, and a d6 system (I plan on having 8 stats + 4 derivatives, and d100 system :smallwink: )
2) Characters buy abilities with points, rather than have abilities granted to them from their "class", allowing characters to be either versatile or specialized. (A lot of games uses this concept)
3) Each ability is generically named to be fit any type of character. (That's... not so bad an idea)
4) Can easily be molded to fit any setting.

Although if you use this system, you'll have to deal with HP and Energy Points, and since you seem to not like the HP system ...

Honestly, the only thing I wish the books for this system included was a table of contents for all of the abilities they have.

Hope this helps.

It certainly did.

[TheFamilarRaven]

I may seem lazy, but I'm not going to quote your responses :smalltongue: but I will mention what I'm responding to, and i'm still playing devil's advocate.


Your first point point is fine, there is no need for classes when characters just buy abilities. I still don't think you need a quiz but hey.

I don't think point buy is in smaller quantity than a level system, but that's irrelevant. You didn't respond to the first part of the question so I'll re-word it. How do player's gain points to buy abilities? IF they get it by overcoming obstacles, how is that different from simply gaining experience and leveling up? Obviously, with point buy you can have a little more wiggle room in how your character advances, but how is gaining points any different from gaining levels, and is it really "easier-to-learn" than "you level up, you gain these abilities"

In regards to nothing changing. You mentioned that x2 power versus x2 defense is the same as x1 versus x1 defense. First of all, things do change, because even though x2 power VS x2 defense is the same challenge, the character with the x2 power can now walk over those pesky x1 defenses no problem. The player feels like their character has grown in power (and they have), even if the creatures they are fighting now, are technically just as challenging as the creature they fought back then.

Requiring a special ritual to defeat a dragon sounds more like a quest rather than something that should be written in the mechanics (besides, resisting a form of an attack is easily something that could be covered with a point buy system). There are many mythical creatures other than dragons, and since you wanted a system that can be molded to any setting, which creatures require special methods to defeat, and what is the basis for that? Anything non-humanoid? Big-creatures?

In regards to character's branching out within their own specialties. That's great. It's fine, however you mention their are no classes and that investing in powers gave diminishing returns. If you had a list of classes to choose from, I.e warrior, rogue, priest wizard for example. And each class had a multitude of abilities that player could buy with points, THAT makes sense and is easy-to-learn, which is the title of this thread.

I'm really going to have to see the finalized version of the HP system before I make any judgements, but as a I said before, if you're looking to make an easy-to-learn system, keeping HP as it is works best.

8 stats +4 derivatives!?! Ye gods! How is that easier to learn than 6, or 3 stats? I mean, sure, there are systems with it but in my experience, the less a new player has to deal with, the easier things are to learn.

and a d100 system, hmmm well, if it's the only die you use than I goess it's pretty easy to learn

Hope this helps.

[Dunkoro]

Your first point point is fine, there is no need for classes when characters just buy abilities. I still don't think you need a quiz but hey.

I don't think point buy is in smaller quantity than a level system, but that's irrelevant. You didn't respond to the first part of the question so I'll re-word it. How do player's gain points to buy abilities? IF they get it by overcoming obstacles, how is that different from simply gaining experience and leveling up? Obviously, with point buy you can have a little more wiggle room in how your character advances, but how is gaining points any different from gaining levels, and is it really "easier-to-learn" than "you level up, you gain these abilities"

That's quite a fair point... But I might end up having archetypes that at level up gain something like "10 points to buy X/Y/Z abilities" where X, Y and Z are determined by the specific archetype. That would allow to have different tiers of abilities (some would cost 1 point while others would cost 10) instead of having D&D problem of balancing all the feats to be appropriatly powerful against each other.

In regards to nothing changing. You mentioned that x2 power versus x2 defense is the same as x1 versus x1 defense. First of all, things do change, because even though x2 power VS x2 defense is the same challenge, the character with the x2 power can now walk over those pesky x1 defenses no problem. The player feels like their character has grown in power (and they have), even if the creatures they are fighting now, are technically just as challenging as the creature they fought back then.

The grand question being... Why did they become so powerful? I can understand a character developing in power by 50% throught all of his life, but not much more (unless he's not starting at above-average level as 99% of PCs do)

Requiring a special ritual to defeat a dragon sounds more like a quest rather than something that should be written in the mechanics (besides, resisting a form of an attack is easily something that could be covered with a point buy system). There are many mythical creatures other than dragons, and since you wanted a system that can be molded to any setting, which creatures require special methods to defeat, and what is the basis for that? Anything non-humanoid? Big-creatures?

It's more of: Most creatures are a similarly powerful challenge to the PCs. Some creatures are more powerful and instead of requiring the characters to simply develop more, defeating them requires some thinking and/or outside help.

In regards to character's branching out within their own specialties. That's great. It's fine, however you mention their are no classes and that investing in powers gave diminishing returns. If you had a list of classes to choose from, I.e warrior, rogue, priest wizard for example. And each class had a multitude of abilities that player could buy with points, THAT makes sense and is easy-to-learn, which is the title of this thread.

As I said higher, I might end up using "archetypes" after all, precisely due to the reasons you've pointed out.

I'm really going to have to see the finalized version of the HP system before I make any judgements, but as a I said before, if you're looking to make an easy-to-learn system, keeping HP as it is works best.

8 stats +4 derivitives!?! Ye gods! How is that easier to learn than 6, or 3 stats?

What's to learn here? Come on... You can always reference your sheet if you forgot about any of the abilities, and you'll have all of them memorized in no time anyway. Current idea:
Strength + Stamina (Constitution/Fortitude)
Agility + Dexterity (Dodge/Reflex)
Intelligence + Presence (Power)
Perception + Wisdom (Will)
With the Derivatives being in parenthesises.


and a d100 system, hmmm well, if it's the only die you use than I goess it's pretty easy to learn

Yeah, I'd like to use d100 only. I've even contemplated using a deck of cards instead of dices, but that has its own problems (shuffling is not sufficiently random).

Hope this helps.

It really does.

[Morph Bark]

If you want to use d100 and not have the characters grow in power, check out Call of Cthulhu (6th edition). While it has some awkward things, and the power level is really, really low (ordinary humans who easily go insane), it really nails the power level remaining mostly the same. It helps that it's primarily a non-combat game, but combat is certainly not excluded.

[TheFamilarRaven]

I only mentioned the stat thing because of the easy-to-learn title. You, me and other table top players could handle 8, 12, 20 stats and be like "wow, 20 is a lot of stats but whatever". But I've had those players, and i'm sure you have judging by the 1st point in the OP, that can't keep track of all of the stuff, even though it's on the page. Not to mention the three weeks it took to make their character (which may be exaggerated :smalltongue:) In this case, the less stuff to keep track of the better, and easier it is to learn.

My point was, in order to create an easy to learn system, consider designing it for someone who has never played DnD, or any other table top RPG before. Use bullet points to map out how to create a character, then go into detail about each point later. Use Bullet points to briefly overview skill/combat/what have you, then go into more detail.

I think 9 times out of ten. It's not the system that's complicated, but the way it's presented.

Hope this helps.

[Saidoro]

So you want to make GURPS? I suppose it isn't exactly fast to build characters with, but it would count as such by your listed standards. Assuming a less massive amount of allowed time to qualify as quick to start, I think points 1, 3 and 4 may be incompatible. I don't know that it's impossible, but I've never seen it done. FATE (http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/) does 1 and 4 really, really well but it's rather abstract. GURPS does 3 and 4 very well, but takes a while to build and to learn for any but the most basic of characters. Everyone is John does 1 and 3, but is about as far from generic as you can get. I'm not sure you can actually have all three, decreasing abstraction necessarily increases the amount of time it takes to build characters unless you mitigate that by decreasing choice which necessarily makes the system less generic.

[DMMike]

1. Quick to start
When making characters takes the players 3-4 weeks it is way too much time spent not playing. It should be possible to pick up the game and start playing it on the same day (I might be exaggerating here)
Players should have 2 options when making the characters.
One would assume that the player is not familiar with the system and would guide him through the process (I'm thinking of something like an online quiz with questions about their character determining his final abilities) and there would be little to no actual reading material (1-2 A4 pages).
The other would assume the players are already familiar with the system and would throw at them all the rules of generating characters with all the possible options to choose from.

2. Characters obtain new abilities, but their overall power doesn't grow by much.
In my opinion, the character growth presented in many RPG Systems is illogical. I'd much prefer for the characters to have multiple abilities than to have a single (or a few) that he specializes in heavily. When characters grow in power instead of in versality, the monsters have to be scaled up in power as well and, after all, nothing changes, which is boring.
Epic obstacles should still be epic even for veteran characters. It shouldn't be like: "The Dragon is out of our reach... Until we kill enough Ratmen to become more powerful!"
Instead of character levels they would gain 'points' that they could spend obtaining new abilities and/or upgrading the existing ones, while upgrading would give diminishing returns for the investment.

3. As few abstract concepts as possible.
Even though we're used to using abstract concepts such as Hit Points, and Armor Class, and Damage, and Levels, and Character Class, they're simply not real and are a big oversimplification of things.
Levels are already taken care of (see 2.).
Instead of hit points, whenever you would take damage, you'd have to roll in order to see whether you've obtained a wound, the roll getting progressively harder the harder you've been hit and the more wounds you already have. If you fail, you get a wound. If you fail badly (what would 'failing badly' constitute would depend on dice set chosen) you enter a 'dying' state, from which you can go to 'dead' state.
Armor lessens the hits, while defensive abilities (Dodge etc.) would make you harder to hit.
Characters are not limited in what they might choose for their abilities, but it should be easier for them to learn new things that are connected to the abilities they already have (I don't yet know how to connect this with 'Encourage non-specialization' concept).

4. The system should be fairly generic.
Because when players learn to use a system they like to use it again in different settings. This system should not be tied to any particular world.
The core of the system, that would remain unchanged would be one PDF. Then, there would also be a lot of little (2-5 pages) 'supplement' rulebooks, that would enable customization of rules by the GM. For example, there would be separate rulebooks that would explain a few different systems of magic.

At this point this system is pretty much a stub, but I'd like to get a feedback on how the community feels about my ideas before I get too carried away with idealistic visions.

Any and all constructive criticism is much welcome.

1. Quick to start.
All players should be able to write out a character concept. Who or what their character was, is, and will be. Some games make this highly abstract by allowing a character to have a descriptor, and basically turning that descriptor into an attribute. To me, quick to start means your character has three or four features, instead of 30+ statistics.

2. New abilities, no power.
This is, well, your opinion, man. Just consider that if characters don't grow in power, they're not likely to survive tackling more powerful opponents.

3. As few abstracts as possible.
No, no, no. Abstract = imagination. You want lots of abstracts, or you'll have ungodly complex character books, or overly-rigid games.
Player: I attack the kobold.
GM: sorry, no attacks. Would you like to swing your sword at the kobold? If you do, you'll have to roll hit location, penetration, blood loss, infection percentile, and E.R. proximity.

4. Generic rules.
And supplements. Why can't RPGs be plug-and-play? I've been working on the same idea for a while - just about done. Mine, for your info, is HIGHLY abstract, but it's also very versatile. And going through play-by-chat testing soon...

[Just to Browse]

Increasing granularity means decreasing simplicity, and increasing generic-ness also means decreasing simplicity.

You should do like board games. Get your concept, write rules to that concept, and accept the fact that some simulations will have to be done with different rulebooks. Don't make your RPG capable of emulating laser rifles and katanas in the same setting, because it will never be simple and interesting enough to your tastes.