How does one go about creating an RPG?

[Zelkon]

So, I've been plotting and planning for an RPG for nearly three years, and now I think I'm ready to really start work on it. The only problem is, I don't have the slightest idea on how to set it up and get all my ideas across. How should I start making an RPG?

[butterbow]

Bring your central ideas onto paper, perhaps with a mind map. Then you've got a starting point and can work either fully on one idea or change from time to time and work on everything at once.

[Frozen_Feet]

First, there are multiple threads conversing this question in the Homebrew subforums. I suggest you look there for start. :smallsmile:

Here's a step-by-step guide of how I usually go about it:


Decide what your game is about - the feel or setting you're aiming for. Is it a space adventure? Horror story? A fantasy about a ragtag bunch of misfits?
Decide what kind of play you want to emphasize. Tactical combat? Survival in the wilderness? Political intrigue?
Now, think of what are relevant traits of a character considering the above. For example, if it's a combat game, you need to know how much weaponry your character can carry. Make a preliminary character sheet based on this data.
Next, write up an index, like you would for a book. You can take example from pre-existing roleplaying books. This will be your to-do list, the skeleton around which you will write your rules.
Now, start thinking of a core mechanic. How are conflicts solved and decisions made in your game? How much power and responsibility is given to different players? What kind of dice will be used if any)?
At this point, you will usually have some idea how to notate things on a character sheet. (For example, the numeric range of character abilities (if any).) You can start writing how characters are created in your game.
Now that you know (roughly) what kind of data represent which kind of character, and how to define character abilities, you can start to make rules for how they interact with each other. Start with the section you want to emphasize most in your game (combat, exploration, diplomacy, etc.). Repeat for the next relevant part. Continue until all relevant sections have rules for them.
Now that you have the basic rules worked out, you can work on how to lead your game and how to craft game scenarios.
Proofread your work. Correct obvious logical and typing errors. Change those rules you got better ideas for.
Playtest. Craft a game scenario and run it with several different groups. Give your system to someone else to use and see how well they do. Adjust your rules based on feedback.
Repeat the above ad nauseam.
After you're satisfied with the game, start thinking of presentation. Read through your text (again) and see if it would be clearer if organized differently. Change your indexing if you have to. Play around with fonts and formatting to make your text a better read. Draw illustration where necessary for understanding of the game rules.
Get someone to draw pretty pictures for you based on the subject matter of the game (presuming you're not much of a drawer yourself). Slap them in your text.
Unless you can do it yourself, get someone to lay out your work so it can be printed / made into nice PDF.
Put it online or start looking for a publisher.

[atomicpenguin]

The first thing you'll want to do, in my opinion, is figure out exactly what you want out of your RPG. Do you want your system to be rules light or heavy? Do you want to emphasize roleplaying or combat or advancement? Do you have a setting in mind with mechanics you want to include (fear, inner demons, etc?)? Then go out and research other games and systems to see if your vision has already been made. In my opinion, homebrewers should subscribe to the hacking philosophy of "solve every problem once". For example, I have a DM friend who plays DnD 4th but wanted to run a space opera game. His thought process was "I want to run a space opera game, but DnD 4th isn't good for that kind of game. Therefore I should make a whole new system." As a result, we had to play his busted system that didn't really make sense when all he had to do was use Alternity, largely considered to be the best Sci-fi system ever made.

Once you've determined that there is no other system or game that does what you want to do, you need to figure out the main mechanics: namely character creation, combat, and skill challenges. Character creation is essentially creating an arbitrary scale by which one can determine how good someone is at a certain area compared to other skills they have or others have. The two categories here are abilities, things like strength and intelligence that represent broad strokes and the natural abilities of the character, and skills, things like shooting and history knowledge that are more focused and are learned skills, requiring practice or training to use. Ideally, your system would find a way to make skills partially dependent on abilities (see DnD 3rd, 3.5, or 4th or Savage Worlds for examples). This can be static like in DnD, where certain skills link to specific abilities, or freeform like in Cortex system, where you can attach any skill to any ability based on specifically what you want to do with the skill (ex: if you want to shoot a gun, link shooting to dexterity. If you want to identify a gun, attach shooting to Intelligence). You also may want to allow for bonuses (feats, edges, etc.) and character flaws to balance them , which can be implemented as a basic point buy system. Throw in whatever extra mechanics you want that are relevant to the game you want to run (ex: biggest fear in Deadlands).

Next is Skill challenges. Having figured out your stats, figure out how you want to use those stats to determine whether a person can do something. It may help to be thinking about this as you determine character creation. Step one is setting a baseline for success, either a moving one like DC's in DnD where the baseline moves up or down based on the challenge or a static baseline like Savage Worlds where all you have to beat is a specific number (4, in this case) and you put bonuses or penalties on the player's roll to determine the difficulty. You can simply stop here and say that if the players are strong/smart/skilled enough to do the task, then they succeed, but most systems like to incorporate an element of chance. That's where the dice come in. You can use a single roll, like d20 or Unisystem, or a low roll system like Basic or GURPS, or a dice roll system like Shadowrun. You can even do some crazy combination of the lot like Deadlands Classic or Savage Worlds. Do your homework and try to find a dice mechanic that matches your system.

Then there's Combat. The good news is that you've done most of the hard work already. You should use the stats that you've already made and try to incorporate the dice rolling mechanic that you already have. The main things you need to figure out are how to attack, how to defend, and how damage works. How to attack should be similar if not equal to a skill roll like above, possibly using a relevant combat skill. Defense can either be active, where the defending player must make a roll modified by speed or endurance or whatever relevant stat, or passive, where defending characters have a defense score that is the target number the attacker must beat to hit. Just a hint: passive is so much easier you might as well just do that. You should then figure out how damage works. It could be a simple numerical HP system, like DnD or Unisystem, or a knockout scale like FATE or Storyteller, or a wound system like Deadlands classic or Savage Worlds. I'll leave it to you to come up with damage outputs for weapons, only suggesting that balance be the key there.

The rest is more or less just extensions of what you already have. Need to know how swimming works? make it an extended test in athletics and/or endurance. What about poison? make it a vigor or endurance test. Once you have the skeleton in place for your system, the rest just sort of makes sense. The last step is balance. Essentially, you want to make it so that things that are harder to do have big rewards and things that are easier have small rewards. It shouldn't be too easy to do things, but players also shouldn't be failing at things that are supposed to be mundane and commonly easy. The only real way to ensure of balance is playtesting. Strong arm some of your friends into playing a one-shot or even a full campaign if you're confident, or you can try it on one of the forums at GitP.

[Zelkon]

It's going to have a complex character creation mechanic with points, trees, and the like, but relatively streamlined play after paperwork is finished. I'm thinking a sort of skill based system using the d12 and flat modifiers. However, each skill rank unlocks more autosuccess abilities and new uses of the skill. Lots of abstractions are made. This means that classes have a specific amount of damage they do and bonus to whatever the defense mechanism is based on their level, similar to BaB. Weapons and armor are all fluff in other words.