April 10th, 2010 - Creating a game
Last night was a fairly productive evening. While it started out with lots of napping, sitting, and staring, I eventually decided to work on a project I started a long time ago. A role playing game system.
There are plenty of systems out there that deal with this particular issue. The most well known is Dungeons and Dragons. Nerds and non-nerds the world over have been made fun of time and again for playing these games. Why? I don’t really know. It’s quite possibly the most creative thing that is being done compared to the people that tend to be making fun of them.
Anyway, I’m not posting on the merits of RPGs or why people shouldn’t be made fun of for playing them. I’m here to post on my progress with my system and describe it a little.
While this specific system wasn’t swimming in my head the whole time, I’ve always wanted to create an RP system. I’ve seen a wide variety of games that each had it’s own unique method of creating characters and running them through the creation of the Game Masters. The only system I ever came across that seemed pretty simple was Big Eyes, Small Mouth. I believe this game, with it’s Tri-Stat System, are no longer in print, which is a shame because this was a pretty good system. It was simple, easy to understand, and open-ended to be applied to almost anything setting, from the highest of fantasy to the grittiest of science fiction.
The next system was Alternity. Again, this system is out of print. It’s been converted into d20, much to my sadness. I really think that the d20 system has become the microsoft is role playing game systems. Anyway, there are two things I really liked about this system. First, it wasn’t limited to specific classes or special classes like D&D is. You have a five (I think it’s five, anyway) base careers, which effect what skills cost and what bonuses you get, but that’s about it. Your professions really defined what your character was good at, AND it was completely open ended. your profession wasn’t pre-defined and completely mapped out for you, though, they did have examples and suggestions was some professions skill sets and equipment might be, but you were free to modify this (or completely ignore it) as you saw fit.
The second thing I really liked about Alternity, was it’s success system. I could be wrong about this, but D&D seemed to be an all or nothing venture. You either completed you task or you didn’t. They did have critical success and failures, but nothing in between. Alternity took your dice roll and applied it to a fairly easy to understand Success system. The lower you rolled, the better you completed your task. You may be hacking into a computer and got the information you were looking for, but triggered a silent alarm in the process. On the other hand, in the same situation, you could have done so well that even the video surveillance that watched you do all that work was replaced with completely normal video, and anyone watching never would have known you were there.
So now, onto my system. I call it the Base 10 RPS, but I don’t know how that truly reflects the system itself. I wanted to simplify the entire character creation process so that one could conceivably create a character in 15-20 minutes and be playing. That way, even if you only had one book, you would be playing in about an hour depending on how many players you had. I feel that some systems require too much jumping around in the book from the front to the back just to make one character and it takes too much time. My system only requires a vague understanding of what you want your character to do and leaves the other aspects, meaning the non-numerical values, completely up to you.
I also set out to simplify the game mechanics. Many games have different dice rolls, modifiers, and rules based on where your character is and what they are doing. If your character is in space or on a space ship or swimming or whatever, each situation seems to require a different set of rules and that’s a lot to remember. Again, I could be wrong, but I don’t think so as much. You calculate actions out one way and apply modifiers one way. It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you’re doing. The Game Master can assign a modifier to represent any difficulty or ease of performing a task that might be effected by quality of equipment, it situation, or anything. If you’re trying to fly a ship that has a horrible turn radius to keep another ship in your sights, that’s going to be a bit more difficult if the other ship has better maneuverability.
Also, direct character opposition checks. These seemed to be lightly touched on and still overly complicated. My concept, again, makes it a bit easier. Both characters roll their skill check. The degree of success that’s the highest wins. Simple. HOWEVER, this can be downgraded based on the loser’s degree of success, which I will explain in my system.
And there you have it. My system in a shell. Not necessarily nutty, but still. I’m really liking how it’s turning out, though, I do have a concern for the checks themselves. They are all rolled against a d100 (or 2d10 as most people probably don’t carry a golf ball around) which makes me think the system could be a bit more difficult than I would like. Play testing should help resolve these issues.
I’m really proud of this as well. Most of my projects never see the light of anything beyond my brain. I’m not quite sure why I can’t just put them down, but I haven’t been able to. This system is coming along nicely and lends itself extremely well to add-on modules, which was my main goal in the beginning.
Enjoy everyone!