Macrocosm: Attributes part 2

After you decide what, if any, attribute subsets you would like to use you have your characters start by defining their Base attributes.  These will define how the subsets will be used.  When players are establishing the four attributes they start at 0; the level of the average human.  Players can trade up to a +2 in an attribute for a -2 in another.  Players are then given two extra points to distribute into their attributes.  Below are some restrictions.

• You can not put more than -2 into any given attribute
• You can not put more than +3 into a given attribute unless allowed by the specific setting.

Once your base attributes have been set you next move on the attribute subsets you will be using.  Your base attribute serves as the number of points you have to distribute into the attribute subsets.  This allows you to set a particular sub set equal to your base attribute and zero out the others should you like or set the points as you like.  This applies for both positive and negative values.  Finally characters are given a single point per attribute subset, that must be placed in that set.  It is up to the game master if this can be added to take an attribute beyond +3.  I recommend yes for fantasy, supers and tranhuman settings and no for modern or historical settings.

Example: A Character with a base Observation attribute of 3 has to distribute points between social, physical and mental subsets.  The player has resided to be a paranormal investigator that functional poorly in society.  Our Social attribute could be set to 0 but perhaps we should go with a -1 instead; Aspergers' perhaps.  Our player wants a solid skill to observe the physical and spiritual.  For Physical we place the 1 point we got for the -1 decrease to social; giving us +1.  Our final 3 points go to mental observation.  We now have to look over the physical, mental and social sets to decide if we wish to place our 1 point bonus for each subset into observation.  Probably not for social, but yes for physical and mental.  Physical is no problem as it sums to only +2 and is legal.  We would need to ask Game Master approval for the +4 in mental observation.

Adding a new attribute subset can also happen when the Game Master so chooses.  The addition of an Insanity or force subsets into a game that previously did not include such rules could be an example of this. 

The player always has the option of moving a stat from an existing subset to the new subset.  This allows the character to say this is what I was really meaning when I assigned the value before.  Perhaps you only had a mental subset and later add a magic subset.  The original subset is placed to zero, but is assumed to have a deficit that must be be paid off through experience awards.  Please note consider attribute subset bonus values when applying these numbers; they must remain in their original subset.  You are free to apply your bonus from the new subset to the value you carried over.  Again the Game Master must approve values of +4 and above.

Should the player not carry over attribute values, they can apply negative and positives values as was described when creating base attributes.  Again applying the subset bonus when they are finished.

Macrocosm: Attributes

Macrocosm uses four attributes to describe characters, in its most basic form. These attributes are used to modify skill roles and can be applied as the Game Master Desires.  This allows for the GM to apply unusual attribute and skill combinations as situations arise.  The basic attributes follow.

• Strength: This relates to the power and results of checks.  Raw Strength when chopping with an axe and the emotional effect of a piece of art both fall under strength. 
• Resistance: This accounts for resisting (or perhaps saving from) the some effect.  Willpower and Constitution are both represented here. 
• Manipulation: Should be used in cases of change and modification.  This could be manual dexterity or even charismatic manipulation. 
• Observation: It is simplest to point to the senses, but this represents more.  Noting a key of music or the subtext of a story also fall under observation.

Attributes range between -2 on the low end and +5 on the high end. These are modifiers that are applied to the roll.  Lower than -2 assumes a character so deficient in the particular area it would impede the heroic stories present in most game worlds.  An Attribute rated at 0 is actually the average person on the street.  Attributes of +5 are truly superhuman.

Design Note: For those of us coming through Dungeons and Dragons, only four attributes feels petty limited.  In initial design I had assumed these attributes duplicated in physical and mental subsets.  This maps more closely with the role playing games I played throughout my life. The following was my solution.

While one is more than welcome to play with the four basic attributes game masters are free to establish subsets that better capture their world or gaming philosophy.  Should your game function in a highly social world such as a song of Ice and Fire; by all meaning include a social subset of the four attributes.  Perhaps someone playing in the Star Wars universe may wish to include a Force subset.  Spiritual, Creative or even Sanity attribute subsets could be used depending on your game world.  Game Masters are of course free to use the attributes they feel best reflects their own play style / philosophy.

Value	Base Attribute	Physical Subset	Mental Subset
+2	Strength	+2	-1
0	Resistance	+1	-1
+1	Manipulation	+1	0
-1	Observation	0	-2

Look for part 2 which will include assigning starting values and adding an additional subset during game play.

Play test 1.d

well laid plans go to crap in a hand basket real quick.  There is such a huge hole in my rules that its glaring.  I am going to have to come up with some fixes.  My shooting rules against a target were messed up in that if you had a success you always hit.  I have always thought of this as a game were everything worked out to an opposed roll and I set up a situation where it just didn't.  Big time fail of rules there.  I need some big time fixes.

Fix1:  Any time you set a target number and have modifiers over 21 something special happens.  You subtract 7 from the target number and that becomes a negative success versus the roll.  So a tart number of 22 becomes 15s1.  This continues to happen for higher target numbers.  A target number of 32 does not end up at 25s1 but rather any time you exceed 21 you subtract again.  Making the target number 17s2.

Fix2:  Hard cover is going to force a negative against the to hit roll.  So if someone is ducking behind a wall and peaking out and firing you are going to need to hit both smaller target and deal with cover that subtracts from the two hit roll.  This will be set as negative one success for any type of hard cover. a tree or a building all are the same.  Something like a murder hold a castle could be two but very little else.

Fix3: Firing several range increments may start create a negative success value for very long ranges.  Say shooting five or more range increments.

Fix4: The players and game master have use of success tokens these need to be more free flowing for the Game Masters.  Name enemies may need to have their own success stone pools.

Potential Fix: look at range and scale.

Roleplay game Playtest 1.c

Well here are the characters i have worked up for the play test I have been working on.  I broke them into three jpegs, mainly because I don't know how to set something up so you can download it through blogger.  The characters are not really anything statistically.  I took ideas and tried to semi work them out into stats.  But for the most part I am using different stats to see if they work or not.

The names come from on of my favorite shows as a kid, Tour of Duty.  I used it because I am using older weapons.  If I can connect with Barry Nakazono or Lester Smith perhaps I could get Leading Edge and GDW to work on modern firearms.  Until then I am using old stuff so sort of a vietnam theater seemed to fit well.

Some of the guys do have concepts like knife guy and pistol shooting LT so please look at the stats.  I am sure I will have updates after tomorrow night. I am trying to get everything in place, I even glued some green army men to hex bases and have a roll out map. Still feel like I am last minuting this thing like everything else I do but here is for hoping.

Play test 1.b

This will stand as a baseline for my weapon statistics for the play test.  They are semi tuned guesses a what would work for the game    

 I am making some assumptions that are more for what i think the statistics model and not so much about the actual firearm.  I am going to try it get a base line down for one or two weapons and then start developing a calculation for twilight and phoenix command stat blocks to give an easy engine for lots of weapons.  

I am not including knife states which well be pretty simple for this round of the play test.  Please us a D10+D4 plus strength attribute modifier and an additional +3.  This would be represented as str+3.

I will be working on character reference cards during the evening and turning green army men into miniatures with hex bases. 

Playtest 1.a update

Hey all I am busy working on stats for the playtest.  I will also work out a flow chart for easy play, my own group play test will include a few pictures and something of a battle report.  I have my phoenix command and twilight 2000 books out and sitting by my bed for work on this project, so you know I am serious.  This first batch of rules may be far from perfect but will allow me to set up something of a base line.

I am thinking Damage per the two game systems and caliber for the Damage number and taking phoenix commands 20+ penetration number / twilights 2-3-nil value for special armor penetration.  This will allow you to only spend one success to get armor defeating.  Range will be represented in hexes and value for the effective range of the weapon, meaning you will be able to shoot beyond that but the would be better off doing so with a different firearm.

I am also thinking of going with an aim rule that simulates what is happening in phoenix command.  Maybe an aim chart per weapon type.  That will be more of an advance rule though.  For now aim will be the same across all weapons and probably follow Fibinochi.  The advanced version will have pistols quickly hitting a solid aim number then remaining there.  There is also the thought of a single chart with different types of weapons with a bonus and a max aim value. 

• So with fibinochi at 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 a figure of  fib +3max5 would give you, a starting aim of 2 and a max aim of 5.  The +3 being the 3rd value in the sequence and 5 being the 5th.  But as I have state in the past this is meant to be when the level of detail is needed to simulate second by second firefights.

For the playtest aim give a linear bonus straight up the number line with every multiple of seven giving a success.  This will be continued through three waves of combat.  Then we change to using only the odd numbers from the number line.

• example 1,3,5,7,9 which will double the speed of aiming.  I am trying to figure out the sweet spot that feels right here.  I feel like the odd numbers are more right.

Play Test Rules 1

As I have stated I wanted to open up my game creation process to you folks.  What I am hoping to accomplish is a series of scenarios can be run completely with the information provided.  At first these will be simple situations that try to verify my basic rules for combat are functional.  I will be running these with my group and reporting on the results but you are also welcome to try them out.  If you would like to leave comments I would be grateful, but nothing is required.

Our first scenario is going to be an armed fire fight with modern weapons. The assumption is a team of four players will be facing waves of four man teams controlled by the game master.  The players squad will be in control of a variety of equipment and character statistics.  The enemy gm squad will be average troops equiped with a unitform arms.  In this first attempt at verifying rules ammuntion will not be tracked.  Rules will include two versions of the initiative system for testing.  Additional rules will be add through additional posts.

Attributes:
Let us begin with attributes.  Attributes generally speaking provide modifiers to rules but in this rules lite test we are going to include the most applicable attribute directly into the skills section for ease of use.  Attributes will be provided for direct attribute rolls.  Since we are setting out a situation that inplies combat drones only physical statistics will be provided in this initial run.  This attributes are Strength, Resistance, Manipulation, and Observation.  The rating system currently is configured to handle attributes of 1 to 7.  The assumption is there is room at the top and bottom ends for alien and fantasy creations.  Attributes are always listed as a singlue numerical value and never include automatic success or failure.

A second component of attributes is the attribute is the attribute modifier which is a value which can be applied to a skill roll. Any time you make a skill roll an attribute modifier should be applied but it is not always the same attribute that provides the modifier. In some cases your climb skill could be modified by physical strength for holding on with a load. But this skill could also be modified by physical resistance for holding onto a rope above shark infested waters. Very often it will be modified by physical manipulation should be applied too. Though you will find a particular skill and attribute are very often used together it is up to the game master.

This chart is displaying the value that modifies your skill value so -1 to +3. The next value presented is +s1 to +s2, seems odd to you I am sure. This is an optional rule that accounts for pushing the skill to the next success value. It means you can use that much of the +1 to +3 to cape a skill to the next success value. In this first play test attribute modifiers are added directly into the values and the follow chart can be ignored. Assume any skill role is already modified with the most applicable attribute.


Skills:
I am going to figure you all are game players so lets not talk like we are five, you know what skills are.  Skills in this game are presented by two values.  The first part is the die roll modifier and the second is a number of additional successes that you automatically have. So a number off 3s2 means your skill roll will add 3 to it and even if you roll poorly you have 2 successes.  I will get into some extra additions and subtractions in the Skill roll / Check section next.

Skill Checks:
Our Skill checks start with a dice roll of a D10 and a D4, Why I dont know I am weird. Also I like the probabily of these two dice combined.  These dice are open ended or exploding or whatever you want to call them.  This means if you roll max on either dice, roll it again and add that number to the result.  If you max out again keep on going until you don't roll max.

The result is your actual roll which is a numeric value.  This is compared to a target number to determine success.  If you roll equal to or higher than the target number you have a success.  If you roll higher than the target number you may generate more successes.  For every seven points beyond your target you generate an additional success.

• Example 1: A roll of 34 against a target number of 15 would generate one success for equaling 15 and additional success at 22 and 29.  For a total of 3 successes plus any automatic successes the characters skill may provide and any success stones the player throws with the roll.

The addition to this on both the player and Game Master sides is the use of success stones.  This can be added to any roll for an additional success. Players will start the scenario with three. The GM also has a pool of their own stones.  The GM's success stones count as a negative success.  Their pool starts at zero but one is added every time the players use a stone.

Target Numbers:
The target number charts are included below both a base line for the Game Master to set the difficulty of general tasks and a set of charts for combat based shooting.  These two ideas are different.  Generally speaking in combat the basic idea is size and distance for determining ranged combat target number.  With Melee combat being an opposed roll of some weapons skill vs a parry or dodge skill.  Melee combat will be covered in breif here and in depth later.

• Trivial: This is a task nearly anyone could do, a modicum of skill or aptitude might be needed but most people can figure it out.
• Easy: This is anything a novice can do without much effort.  
• Average: These skill checks are something where the results become unsure.  In the below two cases the dice average almost covers the difficulty.  Here you are getting to the base line of difficulty required to make a skill check.  This might be something beyond the beginner but no problem for the semi experience.  Clearing a jammed gun perhaps.
• Tricky: Anything beyond the norm.  This becomes is where the person of average skill busts out the book and watches a couple youtube videos before trying.
• Hard:  This is going to be a days work and mistakes are expected.  Anything requiring technique and knowledge to accomplish is hard.  This would usually take some explanation from an expert or some hours put in to get the feel for the task.
• Expert:  These tasks you know you should hand off to someone else.  Usually people are walked through these tasks on the first attempt or have hand very extensive schooling or training.
• Grand Challenge:  This level has sort of two elements.  For task this is meant to be one of those tasks that hang around for years.  Fermat's last theorem being solved, or shooting an arrow through a thrown wedding ring.  Mechanically though this level has a weird effect.  Since the bonus numbers don't often go past 7 for skills and 3 for stats this becomes a difficult roll to make.  But as some characters have successes even before the roll this level often will mean success are the only thing measured. 

Contested Skill Checks:
 Any time one person is attempting a task that another is trying to prevent or avoid a contested skill check is made.  This seems like it would be rare but in the "Crescent Star Games System" (yes lame i know) it seems to happen all the time.  Any time the Game master uses a success the role is being contested.  These are a little convoluted but please bear with me.

When you have a contested roll look at the lower actual role, this becomes the target number for the higher actual roll.  Determine the number of success returned by the roll.   Add those to the automatic skill successes and the success stones.  Cancel out the successes generated by each player.  Generally this will result with one party at zero successes. but Game Master success tokens can take a play to negative.


Whats up with all these successes:

I have described a situation where players are left with a handful of successes above, I am going to guess your are saying well what do I do with them.  This is not a game of game master arbitration of success.  If you have a single success you have succeeded at the task from the Game Masters side.  The rest of the successes are yours to spend on additional effects.  

Many times what you can spend the successes on is dependent on the task performed.  There are a few general purchases that are common though. Most of the time you can use extra successes to make an element of your job harder to deal with for the guy trying to undo it.  The person trying to free himself after being tied up may need to achieve more successes or the person looking to see if a lock had been picked may have a more difficult job.  The time of a task can be halved with an additional success.

There is another concept of chaining actions that allows players to rapidly perform a series of actions.  This is meant to simulate two things.  The first of is the character being in the flow making every shot and move is complete precision.  The second is timing where a series of events must be completed quickly and accurately.  This actually is meant to simulate elements of the prince of persia game where the player must move through a series of obstacles under a time constraint.  The Game Master can work out with the character the types of role that are needed before the roll.  Every link of the chain costs one plus the number of previous actions.  So 2 successes are required to add a link to your first action, then three are required to add to your second action.  There is not limit other than the rolls.

• Example 2a: Razgum smashes a giant spider with two extra successes and decides to use them for another attack on another arachnid.   His second attack roll comes up with three additional successes which he again uses to smash a third spider.  Razgum is in a spider smashing frenzy.
• Example 2b: Presented with a quickly raising draw bridge Rocky asks is Game Master how can he jump up the water and get up the backside of the drawbridge before it closes.  They agree he needs to chain a jump roll, an acrobatics roll and finally a climb roll. Rocky jumps the water chaining the second action.  His acrobatics roll is successful but not enough to link.  He makes some distance running up the now vertical bridge but is unable to grab a hold and pushes off into the water.

 
Nuts, battle and bolts:
Ok, I have started with two systems for initiative, that sounds like a ton of work but one is throwing out the initiative system for simultaneous actions and the other is a  blatant rip off of something from the advanced rules of Phoenix Command.

Lets start with the no initiative system.  Initiative is simultaneous so all actions happen and then are resolved.  So dont even roll it, its 2 second rounds or something.  My idea is that in all the games with initiative systems you are taking turns with the bad guys and it ends up working the same anyway.  Only the round you kill someone, if you act before them, are you getting an extra turn over an enemy NPC.  That is a lot of time rolling and counting down actions for something that is meaningless. 

There is one rule I do use for organizing the round, bad guys go first.  This is actually go allow players the benefit of seeing the bad guys action and reacting to it.  There is the added benefit of the players not getting hung up on a dead enemy shooting them.  Let me explain that as it happens, everyone gets their full action for that round in simultaneous action, so they get off their last shot.  Even when they die that turn.

Chained actions are resolved within the same round but not all at once.  Everyone goes then resolution occurs.  Then the next link of the chain goes and is resolved, and so on.  You may in fact die before getting to your linked action in which case it is lost.  That sounds weird doesn't it? It sort of contradicts the paragraph above, but that is ok.  Think of the above round lasting until resolution occurs then the next link happening in a sub round they are effectively extra rounds involving only the parties with linked actions.

I will talk about the counting clock initiative system later but, it is intended for use with firefights.  The idea is to have an ever incrementing clock and a number of phases that character and npcs must wait for actions.  This would be different dependent on the combat effectiveness of the character.  Also fear effects would be factored in as delays in actions.  This is to factor in speed of combatants and coolness under fire.  Chained actions cut your delay down significantly allowing for a deadly flurry of action.

Ballistics:
The first consideration for ranged fire is the size of the target.  Below is a chart with the target number for a particular size.  Keep in mind this is not always the full size of an object, but rather what is presented.  Hitting a prone target may be shooting at a target the size of a cat in many situations.

After you have decided on the size of the target you will then be looking at the range distance.  These will be measured in hexes on a grid for this beta phase of the rules.  After you have the distance apply and addition two points of difficulty to the shot for every range increment of distant.  Note there is a max range increment any weapon can reliably fire, sniper weapons can shoot well over 1,000 yards in the hands of an expert.  A thrown knife can not fly that far no matter what you roll.

After you have added the size value with the value for the range you will have your target number.  There are going to be modifying factors to this but they are not included in this initial phase of the play test.  This target number is what the characters ballistic skill check is made against.   As with anything you roll  D10+D4 and in the value listed on the character sheet for your roll.  That number is compared against the target number and successes are determined.   If a single success is returned move on to damage, if more are returned consult the success chart below.  Not some characters may have other options specific to themselves.

Damage and Death:
After you have successfully hit an opponent you can move on to the damage roll.  Damage values for weapons are represented as a dice roll and a number of automatic successes, which can be 0.  These values could appear as 3d4s1 or 2d10s0 for example.  Melee weapons are most often as physical strength +X value.  In these cases you would roll the dice indicated per the weapon or make a D10+D4 roll with strength modifier and the +X value.

When you do roll the number is added to the characters existing damage total.  After the new damage total is added up you are done if there is not wound check.  If a wound check is forced the characters current total wounds are used as the target number for the wound save.  Next we cancel out successes, should the character end up with any successes they have avoided taking a wound.  If they have no successes a wound is added to the character, per attacker success added to the wound save.  This acts as a longstanding disability presenting a negative success on all rolls.  Any time the character has a number of wounds equal four modified by his physical resistance attribute modifier he is dead.

UPDATE:  this is a first draft and is i complete.  I need to get movement rules settled, a list of gun stats and a dozen other things.  I am already unhappy with the way every roll seems to have its own set of purchase options.  That just seems mess and to complicated.  I think I will be creating general rules that encompass these charts as general things all skills roles can purchase.  Their will be specific options for purchase associated with each skill but these will probably be purchase and not automatic. 

for now assume 6 hexes of movement if performing other actions and 24 if only running.

Opening up my game design to you.

Hi folks, I am going to make a request for a particular type of comment.  What I am looking for are thinks you feel a good pen and paper roleplaying game should be able to do.  I am going to use them like a set of user requirements and respond back with documentation of the rules I create for them.  Or perhaps even a battle report if it is something that needs such a break down.

To start you out here are a few of my own.  I will talk about them more later but there will be at least a basic response now.

• The rules should allow for scaling levels of detail mid game. I plan to have rules that can allow the game to be dialed into a spy, magic heavy or combat heavy setting with a few hours of work.  Once this is done you can scale in and out of level of detail within minutes.  This is mainly having a board skill at the zoomed out level and more detailed skills that are derived from that broad skill when zoomed in.
• Rules should support Fantasy, Modern and Sci Fi settings. I am hoping to do this we will see, I have plans for guns and ballistic weapons.
• Video Game style combat should be supported. I am wanted to create cards that represent move that the characters can execute.  These would be something like the feats of D&D but more mapped to the Hex Grid and more over the top.
• Magic system that unified but complex enough to have varied schools and feels:  So I don't want a bunch of little magic systems that all feel slightly different.  What I do want is one wizard to have taken a path that is vastly different than another.  Perhaps even the two having an in ability to cast each others spell.  This might be something like the difference between a vivimancer and elemental mage in HARP or the modes of Talislanta.  

From you I just want ideas and I will do my best to address them in the rules.  They will talked about here on the site and  go into the game credits.

Game Mechanics: Ranged attacks and Damage

So ok I worked on my game stuff for a few minutes in the car after lunch.  It's not like I just put thought into it then , I have actually been thinking about this for some time.  I am not sure about the death rules and still am missing recovery completely but here goes.

Ranged combat is going to be entirely target size vs distance for target number.  I don't know what this is going to mean for a moving target yet. I am starting with a man sized target at short range as my base line on this.  The target number is going to be something easy for this, I am proposing 11 and will see how that goes tonight.

From here size will add or detract from target number.

Broad side of Barn               = -6
Car                                      = -4
Horse                                   = -2
Man                                      = 0
Dog                                      = +2
Bowling Ball                         = +4
Squirrel                                = +6

Distance will add +2 to the target number for every range increment.  So a head shot at two steps beyond short will be 19.  I am tracking target number, number rolled and success in game.  So hopefully if this is too easy , 19 seems too eazy, I will change it.


Doing damage is going to have a lot of carry over from the actual shot.  So you are going to be able to increase your damage for every success on the to hit roll.   Each one will give and extra open ended D4.  for two successes you can buy an armor defeating hit.  For three you can force a wound check after damage hast been dealt.  Additional successes can be directly applied to make the wound check more difficult

The damage roll itself generated direct damage that sort of works like hit points. If the weapon give extra success they can be used to also add damage at 1 per D4.  But the cost of forcing a wound check is only two successes here. Also if the to hit roll forced a wound check you can add successes from the damage too.

So what is the Wound check?  This is a "Saving Throw" against serious hurts.  The target number is.your total current damage.  Should you fail you take a wound, which will count as a negative success to all rolls, until it is resolved.  If you fail with negative successes those are applied as additional wounds.  Should you fail by a number of successes equal to your physical resistant you have died.  This number will be treated as a max of two on head shots.

I have no idea about recovery.  Vaguely i have though about scenes being tied to healing.  If the scene ends the play heals some small amount if nothing was done.  More with basic aid and a scene dedicated to major medical care completely heals the character.  Not sure though

Roleplaying Mechanics: Combat

Sorry i have been so busy lately.  I have work going and I have been a bit sick of the computer.  I have been just trying to do and learn other stuff that is either productive or at least new.  I will post a write up on the catapult i built via a kit latter on.

This post is related to the oft mentioned and never finished roleplaying game project I have been working on.  I don't think I ever got around to doing a real combat system so I have been working on it.  I still don't have a healing and recovery set of mechanics but I guess that will have to be next.

I am going to come up with a label so it's easier for everyone to find stuff, game mechanics or something goofy like that.  But  the general dice used in my system are D10 +D4 which are exploding or open ended.  These are added to an attribute modifier which is 1-3 and you skill value which is 0-7.  This is compared vs. task difficulty.  The real heart of my system is that for every 7 points above the task difficulty you gain an extra success. These extra successes can be used to buy effects.  As character improve their skills actually include a number of automatic success in addition to the skill value.

That is all fine and seems to work in basic task resolution, but combat is always more complicated in any gaming system.  Taking what I like and dislike in games I have come up with something, I am not sure if it works , i guess we will see Thursday night.

Ignoring Initiative, which is my goal, I am just worrying about hitting and inflicting damage here.   The two hit role is going to be either a contested roll for melee or a straight target number for ranged combat.  Specifics may crop up for parrying thrown weapons but this is very high level sketch of the rules.

Taking the melee situation first.  Any Dodge, parry or unskilled person can attempt to get way from an attack.  This will probably focus on physical manipulation but a shield parry may come down to physical strength.  The attacker makes an attack roll while the defender rolls his skill or attribute.  Once successes and roles are determined we nullify the success across the attacker and defender.  If this ends with no one having success, we are done. Attack Failed.  If the defender ends up with successes and they have a special maneuver perhaps they can spend their successes to riposte or bind the attacker.  Should the attacker end up with one or more successes the attack hits.  If there are no extra successes just move on to damage.

If you have extra successes you can do more with your attack.  Using the successes to purchase effects. Here are a few I am working with in my playtest.

• Armor Defeating: 2 success over allows you to ignore armor
• Extra Die:  1 success ads an extra d4 to damage.
• Wound Check: 2 Successes forces the defender to save vs. taking a wound.  The target number is their current damage.  Extra successes can be added one for one to increase the difficulty of this save. 

Sample Rules part 12 attributes

I dint think i have dug into stats yet.  Stats are going to range from one to seven and basically function as skills.  The difference you will never have automatic successes associated with stats.  If you had some superhuman character or critter the stats would actually go beyond seven to nine or fifteen and upwards.

basically stat rolls will be skill rolls, if I was doing saving throws I may even have them just be a skill that adds to the basic stat.  These skills would then allow for automatic successes as normal.

My primary reason for the skills is going to be unskilled checks and then skill cost.  I was thinking of having starting skills max out at their controlling stat value but that is seriously lame.  I personally have no coordination but I can ride a bike pretty well.  It just doesn't feel right now limit characters like that.  It does seem right to allow them to purchase skills cheaper depending on their natural talents.  I think I got a bit into this with the experience explanation.

As to specifics on attributes i am not sure which way i am going.  I am doing a basically fantasy game so I don't feel a need to separate dexterity and some hand eye coordination stat.  Education seems more of a modern game skill also I think I am taking care of it with my skill attribute purchase system.  I know I will be doing magic so I need stats to cover that.  I know many of the spell casters in the game are going to be mystical in nature, I am not sure what sort of stats I should used.  I feel much of it would bargaining with spirits so I think i need a presence/persuasion stat. 

I think I may be wacky and split the traditional Wisdom stat in two for intuition and sensory.  I want a stat that deals with mental fortitude to bullshit.  I want it to be separate from intelligence and even Charisma.  Perhaps its best just a saving throw like skill though.  

One thought is a mental physical pair like most games do.  Something like power, manipulation, resistance and perception. 


Intelligence
Charisma
Ego
Intuition

Strength
Dexterity
Constitution
Sensory

The problem I keep coming back to here is the Ego seeming more like a skill of Charisma.  Also that split of wisdom could be removed if I am trying to go for clarity.


There is the option just to pull it out this sort of is drawn from the  Myers Briggs chart.  I am using a high charisma for the introversion vs extroversion.  High intelligence for thinking vs feeling as basically feeling isn't something you can give a stat that will be how the character is played.  Intuition verse Sensory information gathering I included both as stats.

Chr
iNtuit
Sensory
Int
str
con
dex

It looks a lot like AD&D to me but maybe play testing will be needed.

Sample game rules part 8 ramblings on experience

I have sort of talked a bit about experience but the more I consider what I have said it seems like I am getting at a level based system.  I don't really think I have ever decide that it actually was a level based game.  I actually think I started specifically not wanting a leveling system. 

That said I have two thoughts that are pulling me back around.  Those are the thought that no matter how granular i get it I am going to have a break down where players have not enough reward to improve or the will.  I don't want it to be all rewards come with level but there will be some times where they get less reward than they need to improve, its just a fact.  The second though is I am inclined to have some sort of role arch type if only for role playing purposes.

To expand that last thing, I have played in Gurps and the GM clearly said "While GuRPs doesn't have classes it kind of does have classes."  What he meant was you have an idea behind what your doing even though you haven't a class.  With complete freedom there still is an idea you are working from.  I want players to be able to argue , without rules and dice, "I am totally a rogue guy!" or "I'm a viking I should be able to do that!"  And just have the concept keywords sway my decision as the GM.  What I don't want is the players pulling these statements out of their ass.

I think my reward scheme would be something like you are grated some number of reward/experience/whatever points for completing a goal.  Those goals may be either personal, adventure or community.  Personal are things you worked out at character creation and have a major and minor.  Adventure are things the GM would have written into an adventure.  The Community goals are going to be things the player turn into goal by each handing over seven points of stones, Aligned stones count for two and the other count as one. This could be anything that has been annoyingly thwarting the players.  Getting into a location or dealing with some baddy who often gets away.

The reward points will be spent for increasing skills and buying some extras, like spells or combat maneuvers.  Skill can be purchased at a rate of 1 point per X+1 reward points, where X is the number of successes currently.  So 0s1-7 cost one for one. 1s1-7 cost 2 for one.

Sample Rules part 7 more skill musing

With some time and thought on my super new Role playing game I present more musings on skills.  I have long thought I would have skill trees of some sort. My previous thoughts on exploding skills gives me the idea of mixing the two concepts.

The roleplaying game's skills will have a general skill or skill group.  This will represent the collapsed skill that can be used when you are using it for general stuff or when the game isn't allowing for that skill to explode.  Some games will just not need all your skills to explode open for a greater level of detail.  I seriously doubt knowledge type skills will require more detail for example.   But you can also have two games that are played with different focus.  Lets say shadowrun is the setting, one game may not focus on decking, so no exploding of matrix skills.  The second game is all decking all the time so it almost requires it.

As I currently see it skills would have a list of sub skills and talents.  These would be purchased to round out a skill branch.  Your skill would directly transfer over to some primary subskill you selected.  Then you reduce the skill pay four points for your next sub skill or talent.  Talents would only be available if you already have that same number of subskills.  If you have one subskill you can have one talent.  Once you have a number that can not be positively subtracted by four you are done.

For example a stealth skill of 2s3 that is unexploded may work like the following.  2s3 hiding sub skill.  Then you subtract four for 1s7 in sneaking.  Next we want a couple of talents again subtracting 4 we have an effective 1s3 and talk a talent that allows for faster sneaking.  Our second talent drops us to effectively 0s7, we take a sniping talent that allows for hiding successes to be added to attacks.  We may want another talent but can only have as many as we have skills.  Her were would need another skill at 0s3 for tailing.  We are done here as we cant go negative.

You will notice in the above example its actually best to take our three skills and then our talents.  As that would make our tailing at 1s3. I think the way this will work out is you will take the skill or talent at the time it becomes available then as you increase skills it will automatically increase the whole tree.  That way you are again losing out if you don't take your skills early in your progression but you will also not have the advantage of the talents.

Sample Rules part 3 skill rolls

The basic mechanic for any role playing game is the skill role.  It is the one that is up front for players to see and is something they own.  There are some systems that account for a more basic control of the scene system but my game is not meant to cover that particular style of play at present.  I personally prefer a crunchier system and just don't have the players for a diceless game. 

As I have stated the rolls made in my game are generally covered by a D10 + D4 open ended roll added to skill value.  This gives me an average of 8 points for any dice roll plus skills. 

Moving onto the skill levels the Characters Might have I am thinking something that looks like the below chart.  But with this I really don't see a starting character having beyond a 0s5 unless they have made some rather foolish sacrifices.

0    Unskilled
1     Read a wiki entry
2    Read a book
3    Had a class
4    Has done it enough to get the hang of it
5    Skilled or naturally talented
6    10 years in
7    Grizzled old Pro   

1s1+     Master
2s1+     Rarefied circle of experts
3s1+    Advanced the art

Now taking the base roll of 8 with a skill potential of 0-5 we are skill checks of 8 to 13 being the norm.  From here I really want the 3 or 4 to be the characters go to skills so we are looking at 11 or 12 being average rolls coming out of starting characters. 

I personally dislike games that don't give beginning players a shot at kills, I am specially thinking of Palladium here, and want to set my target numbers appropriately.  I would want my players with the 0s3 skills to succeed about 75% of the time and the 0s4 skills 80-85% of the time.  Here are the percentages of my rolls.


2    2.5    100
3    5    97.5
4    7.5    92.5
5    10    85
6    10    75
7    10    65   
8    10    55
9    10    45
10    10    35
11    10    25
12    7.5    15
13    5    7.5
14    2.5    .25

It looks like a target of 9 is going to give me the rolls I am looking for.  So my skill chart is going to take 9 as the average target

7     Easy
9     Average
11    Tricky
13    Hard
15    Very difficult
17    Near Impossible

Maybe a touch too hard but we will see in a demo.

Sample Rules

Ok this is the start of me putting down some of my game ideas.  I will probably start pretty general and then work on detail as I have more and more feedback.  This is something of my philosophy for the game as well.  I want do a game that has a configurable level of detail. So you can dial up focus in some areas and down in other areas. For example a thief heavy fantasy campaign could increase the level of detail around traps and go with a simplified version of magic rules.

While the above is my philosophy I also have a set of goals in mind that will have effected my ideas.  For example, I really want to be able to capture aspects of brawler video game combat.  I want there to be moves and chained combos.  I also want to be able to simulate timed events with increasing stress.  Finally i want to do things with a percision that allows the difference between success levels to be clearly distinguished.

well lets get down to it. Combat seems to be the heart of most systems, but I have never seen a "Good" system that doesn't derive combat from the basic task/skill resolution mechanic.  having two entirely different systems for combat and general roleplaying sort of sucks for everyone involved, so i want to steer clear of that.

taking that in mind I have stolen from a couple of game and came up with a system based on roles and automatic successes.  Borrowing heavily from hero wars skills are repressented with a number of successes and a modifier to role.  For example Toad has a stealth of 1S3; meaning before roling the dice Toad already has one success and when rolling gets to add 3 to the role.  I am going with a set dice role, say d10, for all skill and attribute checks.  I really hope to do the same in combat and everywhere else but we will see what happens.

For dice i dont know why but I am going with D10+D4, its weird like me.  also it bears out on the earthdawn step math I have been using to check things with.  I am not sure if i will stick with it, but i do know its exploding.  With all the standard open ended dice rules.  I hope everyone reading this will be clear with this but assume you reroll and add the total to your roll if you max out a die.  Keep doing it if you role max again.  In rolling you are going to add you role total with that modifier.  For example Razgum has a seduction skill of 0s7.  When he tries to lay down his best lines at the local bar he starts off with a failure already but he has 7 to add to the die role.  Lets assume he roles 6,4 and 1 for 11 plus his skill of 7 for 18. 

Alright lets talk about different types of skill checks now that we have Razgum's role. I am currently thinking there needs to be two types of skill roles.  A basic skill check where the GM sets the difficulty and the player tries to meet it.  And an actively opposed check.  THis is where you have an undefined difficulty that is set by the defenders resistence role to an action.  Perhaps a parry being made against an attack for example.  So what is the difference here.  When a character makes a basic skill check they are trying to meet the GM defined target number and then every 7 beyond that counts as an additional success.  On the opposed check the lower role just becomes the target number for the higher role.  Every 7 beyond that role counting as an additional success.  Lets go back to Razgum, and lets say the situation is Razgum is trying pick up lines on a no consequence NPC.  So if the GM set a target of 9 then Razgum would have generated 2 successes on his check.  If Razgum had a skill of -1s7 he would have only come up with a single success.  I will talk about multiple successes later on but you need to assume you need a single success to do an action and the rest are considered additional successes.

Moving to the other type of role.  Lets have Razgum try and seduce an improtant leader in the opposing army with his trollish charm.  The GM would probably role some sort of willpower check to resist.  Taking Razgums roll of 18 the army leader rolls 28.  Comparine 18 to 28 that 10 more so the army leader gets two successes.  In this case Razgum needed to suceed to even zero successes would have worked for the army leader.  Normally a role must generate one success, which additional successes being used else where but here both success can be used against razgum.  While thinking about this you will notice it is possible for a 4s2 to generate a lower number than a -1s7 skilled person which could be total bs.  after the roll and the calculation of successes and subtract the lower from the higher.  This makes it a dual step process which sort of sucks but makes stuff more fair.  Giving Toad a chance with a 4s7 seduction and a roll of 18 against the 0s7 army leaders total roll of 28.  We now have Toad with 4 automatic successes and The Army Leader with 2; allowing Toad to succeed with 2 successes.  As opposed to resistence Toad needs 1S for success leaving 1 additional success. 

I am talking a lot about additional successes without really addressing them.  The come out sounding a lot like WOD or Shadowrun, which I actually dislike.  I hate how nebulous the difference between 3 and 4 successes.  Going back to my goals, I really want these things to be clear.  My solution is to allow players to uses additional success to buy better results.  I like this because it give me a clear idea how things resolve and I think it would be fun for the players.  Earthdawn sort of had an example of this where two success levels equalled and armor defeating hits on an attack.  I dont have enough details on this but I would like to say a stealth with a lot of additional successes could spend those successes to make a search or spot check more difficult.  In some cases I think the character could buy options to use additional successes for.  Like having a rogue who can spend 2 additional successes to make it impossible to tell if they picked a lock.

I understand I am talking about tons of additional successes here.  Which brings me to my next component of the games.  I am going to use pente stones as additional successes that anyone can throw in with their role.  You will have a limited pool of these but they will be there when you want them.  Its really a rip off of Karma from Earthdawn or chips in deadlands.  The only real difference is i am going to have three colors of stones.  Green, Clear and Red; which represent Positive, Neutral and Negative alignment. I will be giving out stones as rewards during play.  On occassion I will say ok this represents high magic in the area.  Chris will often be playing a mage and will say oh some of my abilities require magic, so that is positively aligned; meaning i can use it as a green stone to power some specific ability.  Rich is playing a Xambrian who has a hinderance against magic, because he likes to roleplay gothy guys.  He says oh I have a magic hinderance that is a negatively aligned red stone.  I am playing something totally stupid that talks in a funny voice, its nothing to me so I take a clear stone.  We can all use them whenever we want and they function the same (as an additional success) but Chris can also use the red as magic.  Some of his spells/abilities may require a few magic stones.  I will just used the stone as normal, thats all i can do.  Rich may take an exp penalty for using a non aligned stone.  Also these stones could be used at the end of a night for exp.  If you have more than one positive alignment category just count them as flexible, it gets too much of a pain to track many types of things.  I was thinking of having tons and tons of types of these stones but ugh headache.

I wanted to talk about crits and fumbles.  Basically there are no crits that is just a very open ended role that give lots of successes.  Fumbles is a D10+D4 roll of 11 that ends with 0 successes or less.  I know this is going to be a problem with low skilled characters so i will probably give a confirmation reroll if you have 0 or less automatic successes.  You can even throw in you stones, but the GM will probably also be throwing in stones against you knowing what is at stake.

This brings me to another concept the devils hand.  While boss and sub boss NPC's will probably have their own stones the GM can always draw a random stone against you.  this effect happens during a roll.  On the up side the opposed player gets a random draw from the stones immediately after resolution of the action.

I probably should get onto the linked action thing now.  this is my way of doing timed actions and multiple attacks on high skill characters.  You can link actions on top of each other and they will be resolved within the same round.  This can go on indefinetly but the mechanic is going it going to take X+1 successes to link an action; where x is the previous number of actions taken in the round.  So you first link will cost you 2 successes.  This gets you to another action and another roll.  From here you would need 3 successes to link a third action.  I like this because I have always wanted to be able to generate suspense related to quick actions like jumping from a falling pipe into a roll under a portculus.

Combat Round

Ok Lets move onto the meat of this.  COmbat is pretty unfleshed out in my mind but i have a few idea.

Initiative is simultaneous so all actions happen and then are resolved.  So dont even roll it, its 2 second rounds or something.  If you want to interrupt an action you will need the specific ability and then pay the stones.  Or already be doing some sort of reactive action, parry dodge etc.  Chained actions are resolved within the same round but not all at once.  Everyone goes then resolution occurs.  Then the next link of the chain goes and is resolved, and so on.  You may infact die before getting to your linked action in which case it is lost.  Also some characters will have abilities to break linked actions cancelling out your next action.

I have been thinking of just having to hit rolls being based of of size and distance.  That would be assuming a target that is just there for the taking.  Active defense of parrying or dodging, could increase the target number to hit the same way opposed roles work.  that will make it pretty easy for melee hits to occur though.  I am not sure what i want to do with that perhaps we could subtract automatic dodge or parry successes.  Or maybe its just and aspect of the game where you are trading blows if not using an active defense. ONly very defensive characters would be able to dodge and then chain for a return attack.  I would have the defense stand for the rest of the round in this case.

Armor will be deducted from damage rolls just like earthdawn

Damage rolls are going to be opposed roles.  The attacker is trying to generate damage numbers with the roll,their modifiers AND THE DEFENDERS HIT POINTS, the defender will be doing a soak roll.  Your are going to compare the rolls and generate success for the higher rolling party. Next check if the attacker was the high roller if so the damage goes directly onto the defenders hit points.  Now compare successes!  Should the defender have more he could completely soak the wounds from the hit.  A really good role could generate some sort of rage stones or effect on certain defenders.  If the attacker has more successes they are applied to the defender as wounds, which deduct from all actions.  Certain attackers may even be able to force a death save by spending their successes.  Normally a death save are made according to the monsters death save chart which defaults to 5,7,9,10,11,etc.

My one fear of that damage system is i am hitting players twice.  If they are getting a bunch of damage they are going to have a harder and harder time soaking it, and if they have wounds they will have a harder and harder time soaking that damage.

The round would go something like this

1. Dont roll initiative.

2. Resolve Defensive opposed rolls

3. Resolve Attack Roles

4. Role for damage on success

5. Deduct Armor from damage

6. Determine Soak roll as Damage roll + current hits

7. Roll for soak

8. Apply damage and wounds to total

9. Resolve Special Actions

10.Death Checks

11.Check if there are any further linked actions

12a. if yes then proceed with 1 with linked actors.

13b. if no then new round

(an interrupt action can happen whenever the conditions are met) interrupt actions are more like AOO's in a way.

1. Dont roll initiative:  THis should be easy for some players.

2. Resolve Defensive opposed rolls:  Any one useing Parry or dodge as an opposed roll will make that roll at this point.  They may generate linked actions as well.

3. Resolve Attack Roles:  Attackers roll against the opposed roll or a target size ,modified by distance, roll.  Again Linked actions can be created here as well.

4. Role for damage on success:  Attackers make a str roll modified by weapon and make not of damage and any make not of any automatic successes they may have.  they should report a number such as 15 hit points and 1 automatic success.

5. Deduct Armor from damage.  subtract armor from the damage.  AC 5 would mean that 15 is now 10.  This has nothing to do with the 1 automatic sucess and it still remains.

6. Determine Soak roll as Damage roll + current hits:  Ok, add the victims current hit points onto the attack roll.  From above the 10 + 13 from a previous attack for 23.

7. Roll for soak: Ok the victim rolls their soak and has a target number of 23.  Lets say we roll great and get 27.  the damage is soaked but with no automatic successes. 

8. Apply damage and wounds to total: Any damage now officially it added to hit points.  From above we have zero.  This is where we remember that 1 automatic success.  This will normally be applied as a wound, even if no damage was applied.  Some characters may have other options allowed to them and could forces a death save or convert the success to Hit points of damage.

9. Resolve Special Actions.  Here we resolve everything else. players running or doing something else.  Everything is resolved

10.Death Checks: Any player that has hit a number of wounds equal to their death save chart must make a death save now.  Also any character that has been forced to make a death save in set 8

11.Check if there are any further linked actions: If anyone has linked an action in this round we start another action phase.  This will be sort of a side pot, with only those with links going.  At the end we check to see if more linked actions occur.

12a.Run that linked action round

12b.New round for everyone.