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So I have a project I've long been toying around with but never got around to actually working on.. aside from some notes and half-formed ideas. I've had some encouragement lately, though, and wanted to know what you guys thought. The basic gist of it is that I want to create a simple, straightforwardshomebrew RPG system, flexible enough that it can support multiple genres and settings with some tweaking, while being simple enough to teach to new players - I have a group of friends I play games with, some are old hands at tabletop RPGs, some are more of warhammer players, some entirely new to RPGs. I'd like something that's easy to pick up, but you can actually sink your teeth into it and get inventive once you know what you're doing. I'm actually basing mine off the dynamic D6 system used in the old FFg RPG, Fireborn - I quite liked the core mechanics, though the rest of the game ended up kind of bloated. Ah, the 90s. Anyhow. The basic resolution mechanic is simple. Characters have four primary stats, rated from 0 to 10 (most characters will have a stat spread of something like 2, 2, 3, 4, likely - point-buy). Each stat has a dice pool associated with it that has one d6 per each level of stat in it. You figure out which stat is the most applicable to your situation, grab the dice in that pool, roll them. Any dice that comes up a 4+ is a hit. Basic tests usually need one hit to succeed, (a treshold of one) but more advanced and difficult rolls might need two or more. When two characters make an opposed test, they both figure out the appropriate stat to use, roll their dice, and the one with the most hits wins. When two or more characters assist one another, they both roll and add up their total hits. Lastly, for things that take a while to complete, there are extended tests. The character makes his or her test and tallies up the number of hits they got. An extended test has a certain number of hits they need to reach in order to complete the test; if the target number wasn't reached this turn, the character can just roll again next turn to get more hits. Multiple characters cooperating simply add all their hits together until they reach the target number. Particularily difficult extended tests might have a higher treshold, meaning rolls with too few hits simply won't count against the total. (The last type of a test isn't generally used in narrative play - if a task just takes a while to complete, there's no point in just rolling for a couple of minutes until the dice gods are satisfied - but might come up in, say, a combat situation where one character is working to coax an abandoned tank into life while their squadmates are under fire). Alternatively, two characters might be competing to climb a cliff, and the one who builds up enough total hits first wins. The four primary stats are: Physical Action (PA): A measure of physical strength, coordination and agility. Throwing a punch, climbing a wall, breaking down a door, balancing a tightrope, jumping a chasm. Physical Reaction: A combination of sheer physical toughness, reflexes and reaction speed. Dodging an attack, rolling with the punch, being plain tough enough to just shake off a hit, jumping out of the way when a trap goes off. Mental Action: Intellect, persuasion, logic, learning. Also includes stuff that takes fine manipulation but is still more mental than physical, like aiming ranged weapons. Shooting a gun, picking locks, bribing guards. Academic learning. Mental Reaction: Willpower, perception, common sense. Figuring out that the person you're talking to is trying to mislead or distract you, spotting somebody sneaking up on you, toughin' it out despite your arm hurting like a motherfucker. Stats are rated from 0 to 10, but most in practice characters are going to have their stats in the 1 to 5 range. In human norms, 0 is crippled, 1 is poor, 2 is average, 3 is good, 4 is superior, and 5 is excellent - the peak of human capacity. A stat of 6 or more is superhuman, typically reserved for powerful enemies or particularly advanced characters. Superhuman stats function otherwise like normal stats, except that you only roll 5 dice - and add the rest as automatic successes. A mutant bear with a PA 7 rolls 5 dice and gets 2 automatic hits on its PA rolls, for example. This both makes very high stats particularly reliable and desirable and makes sure the dice pools you roll don't get ridonkolously huge. (What do you do if one of your stats is 0? You don't natively get to roll any dice when using that stat. You can still move dice to that stat with your skills in a stance change (more on those in just a tic). For the purposes of secondary stats, treat a primary stat of 0 as 1.) Besides your primary stats, you have secondary stats based on your primary stats. Physical Action determines your action count, how many actions you get on your turn in a tactical scene. Physical Reaction determines your reaction count how many reactions you get to use when it's not your turn in a tactical scene. Physical Action and Physical Reaction together determine how many bonus skill points you get for your physical skills. (More on those later!) Mental Action and Mental Reaction together determine how many bonus skills points you get for your mental skills. (Ditto!) Physical Reaction and Mental Reaction interact to determine your health pool, how much punishment you can take before you're incapacitated or killed. Physical action and Mental Action together determine your initiative dice, which determine the turn order in a tactical scene (and can be used to see who acts first, in a narrative scene). Last, your two highest stats determine how many fate points you get. Fate points are a limited resource you can use to reroll certain dice, ignore the effects of damage and activate certain talents (more on those later!). Whenever you make a test, you may use fate points to reroll your dice (one fate point, one reroll). A single die may be rerolled multiple times (again, one fate point, one reroll). Also, an injured character may, whenever they make a roll, use a fate point to ignore the penalty from one injury die (or multiple fate points to ignore multiple injury dice, one fate point per die ignored - more on injuries later) Fate points refresh between sessions, and you can use your aspect to regain them as well. Fluffily speaking, they can represent luck or narrative causality (you're the hero, of course you're badass), divine favor, mana, how many nuclear power cells your giant loving robot has left in it - whatever works for your setting, genre and flavor. Besides your stats, you also have a background and an aspect (yes, I cribbed it off FATE, I quite liked the idea). Your background is a choice that represents your character's past experiences, training and profession. Mechanically speaking, each background gives you a handful of pre-trained skills appropriate to said background, along with a couple of options for extra skills and talents. This is a combination of flavor and a 'starter package' for useful skills and talents. Available backgrounds should be appropriate to the theme and genre of the setting/campaign in question (a modern-day play might have a Law Enforcement background, while a fantasy heartbreaker style setting might have City Guard as a rough equivalent) Your aspect, meanwhile, is a more freeform thing that represents your character's particular strengths or special abilities. You pick one and write it down - it needs to be evocative. 'Strong' isn't good'. 'Very strong' is hardly better, 'Strongest Man Alive' and 'Bull In A China Shop' or 'Strongest Soldier on the Seven Seas' work well. Once per session, when you'd be making a test, you can instead trigger your aspect. If the aspect is relevant to the situation, you get a Crowning Moment of Awesome. Make the roll for the test as normal - despite the results of the roll, you automatically succeed and regain a previously spent fate point per each success on your roll. The GM, of course, has the final veto right on broken/imbalanced aspects and whether or not it's actually possible for you to theoretically succeed (The strongest man in the world pushing over a goddamned brick wall to smash a monster is okay, the same person ripping a tree out of the ground and using it as a baseball bat probably isn't - unless you're playing a superhero game..) Next, your character has skills. Skills are divided among physical skills (athletics, endurance, melee combat, acrobatics, etc) and mental skills (research, ranged combat, stealth, etc). The skill being physical or mental essentially just tells you which stats you'll be wanting to roll on it, and tells you what kind of bonus skill points (remember those) you can use to purchase them in character creation. Skills are rated from 0 (untrained) to 5 (world-renowned expert). Basically, when you make a test, you can choose to use one of your skills appropriate to the task to make a stance change. This means you take a number of dice up to your skill rank from your other stat pools and add them to the dice pool you're rolling, then make your roll. A stance change can be made either as you declare you're rolling or in response to another character's action, as long as you're aware of said action (A drunkard throws a punch at you, you can stance change dice into your physical reaction to duck/block; an assassin throws a dart at you from the shadows, you're unaware of the attack and can't stance change). A stance change lasts until either the beginning of your next turn or until you choose to do a new stance change. Player characters can do up to two stance changes per round in tactical scenes; most non-player characters can do one stance change per turn; some rare and extremely powerful creatures can do three stance changes per turn. Basically this means that if an enemy stance changes to go on all offensive, they can't stance change back into defensive if attacked in the same round; while player characters can, but can't keep on switching between modes all the time. If a character does a second stance change in his or her turn, their stance and dice pools effectively reset to their default ratings before the second stance change takes effect. That is, you can't do one 2-point stance change to channel 2 dice into your Physical Action, followed by a second 2-point stance change to get a total 4 bonus dice - the second stance change overwrites the first. When your turn begins, your stance automatically resets back into the 'neutral' (all pools equal to primary stat) for 'free'. Stance changes only affect the size of the associated dice pools; they do not make you recalculate your secondary stats every time you do a stance change. Your health pool, initiative dice, skill ranks, fate points and action/reaction counts remain unchanged, the only difference is how many dice you have in your pools. A stance change can only use one skill at a given time. The dice can come from any one or any combination of dice pools, but only go into one pool of your choice - you can't do a 4-point stance change to put 2 points into Physical Action and 2 into Physical reaction, for example. This system essentially means that I don't need to figure out conditional penalties for stuff like 'berserk attack' and the like - the modifiers/penalties are baked into the system as-is, with players actively moving dice from their defensive pools into offensive and vice versa according to the situation. A particularly skilled character has the option on focusing on whatever they're doing, at the cost of taking resources from their other pools; meanwhile, they also have the option of playing it safe and relying on natural capacity (basic pools). There won't be too many different skills in the game; we don't need separate 'Hide' and 'Move Silently' when one 'Stealth' skill will do. There will, however, be a couple of different 'skill groups' like Knowledge (Academics) and so on. Last, talents. Talents are like feats, except that there are no 'feat trees'. A character can pick any talent at any time, there are no prerequisites. Most talents, however, are associated with a certain basic stat and scale off it. For example: Aggressive (PA): When you do a melee attack, if you use a fate point to reroll a die, you may instead reroll a number of dice up to your Physical Action stat. A character may get a bonus talent from their background, along with a smallish number of talents they get to choose from freely. There won't, again, be too many talents to choose from; I'm thinking maybe five or six for each primary stat. In addition, I might add a 'path' system where you basically choose a concept for your character - sort of like a setting-specific pseudo-class like 'soldier' or 'magician' or 'swashbuckler'. This path would basically come with a built-in talent/special power, along with a handful of path-specific special talents you can pick out of in addition to your basic talents. That's pretty much the character anatomy right there, discounting how health, injuries, weapons and combat works. How crazy of a heartbreaker system does this sound like?
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Feb 19, 2015 14:52
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 06:31 |
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