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AMX
2013-09-10, 04:48 PM
I have, on occassion, tinkered with ideas for an RPG of my own, but only recently did it occur to me that...
a) I should probably write this down if I ever want to get anywhere, and
b) I might want to ask people with more experience and common sense for advice.
So I'm doing both at once now :smallsmile:

Calling the current state "rough" would be a bit like calling an empty lot "a house that needs a bit of work," but a) if I don't document what I have, I'll just end up re-doing the same basic parts without ever getting anywhere, and b) if there's something fundamentally wrong with these basics, it would be good if somebody noticed it early.

So, without further ado...

The most basic idea
Players earn Experience Points by, in no particular order
...facing IC challenges
...overcoming said challenges
...portraying their characters well
...behaving reasonably OOC.
These XP are then spent to buy Skills
-I'm thinking a rate of (Current level) * 5 XP per Skill Point.
-There's also a skill cap so you can't sink all your XP into a single skill; this needs balancing, which I can't do without coming up with a lot more numbers first...
After amassing enough SP to be noticeably more powerful, a character gains a Level, which
...grants more health points
...grants a boost to one of the basic stats
...increases the skill cap
..."unlocks" any special abilities that require a minimum level (otherwise, they are treated like skills)
...serves as a starting point for the GM to figure out what they should be able to handle.

Character Basics
Characters have the more-or-less standard 3 mental and 3 physical stats, plus 3 "Aspects" which I'm currently calling "Background," "Type" and "Education."
Crunch-wise, all three are the same thing: Lists of "Associated Skills."
For each of a character's Aspects a Skill is associated with, the Skill's XP cost is reduced by 1/5th. So a completely unassociated skill costs the full (Current Level) * 5 XP, but a Skill that's associated with all 3 Aspects costs only (Current Level) * 2 XP.
On the fluffy side, this is explained thusly:
Type: The character is just naturally good at this stuff
Background: The character is familiar with this, due to growing up in an appropriate environment
Education: The character was trained for this at some point, formally or otherwise.

Obviously, these should gel with the character's backstory (if any:smallfrown:)

Approximate power
Ideally, I'd like an approximately linear power curve over 30 levels, with level 10 being a suitable starting level (think DND 3.5 Level 1 or 2) and level 20 being around the upper bound of realism (think DND 3.5 level 5 or 6).
I'm pretty sure that's not going to work out, but for now it'll do as an approximate direction.

Speaking of direction, what genre is this for, anyway?
I'm a bit torn between Low-Magic Fantasy and Space Opera.
Currently leaning towards LMF.
Maybe I can finagle things to work with both. It's not like anything's set in stone yet...

Retraining
Any time you buy a Skill Point, you can trade in 1 SP to reduce the cost of the new SP by 1/5th.
(You can only trade in 0 or 1 point, but no more at once. So you always have to spend at least (Current Level) * 1 XP to buy a Skill.)

Optional: IC Explanations
Explicitly labeled "optional" because this kind of rule can easily end up overly restrictive:
Skill gains should have some connection to IC events.
It's OK if the connection is somewhat flimsy.
It's also OK if the connection is rather remote - you don't need to pump XP into a skill the moment you have an excuse for it, you can learn something else first, wait until you earn more XP, or even hold off and keep your XP in reserve for a few sessions.

Example:
Joe spends the day at the office, attends a lecture on hyperphysics in the evening, then goes out drinking, which ends in a bar fight.
Joe's player can now raise any of the following skills:
Profession: Clerk
Hyperphysics
Unarmed Combat
She has enough XP to buy 2 SP, but decides to buy only one SP in Hyperphysics, and keep her remaining XP in reserve.
She will still be able to buy that point later, in any of these three skills, as well as any others that have come up recently, or will come up soon.

But: No JIT Learning
Where JIT means "Just In Time" - i.e., waiting until right when you need to make a skill check before raising a skill.

Example:
The next day, Joe gets into another bar fight.
An extra point in Unarmed Combat would be helpful right now, and Joe even has the XP for it - but right now, XP are useless; only the SP Joe already has count.

Counterexample:
Joe owns a spaceship with a broken hyperdive. With no budget for either a replacement or a professional repair, he's trying to find the problem himself, but so far, it has proven untractable.
This is primarily a Spaceship Engineering problem, but improving that would require training (very expensive) or at least the right books (somewhat expensive).
Since Joe has a little budget problem, his player has him attend walk-in lectures (free) on Hyperphysics instead; since the problem lies with the hyperdrive, Hyperphysics will provide a synergy bonus.
While Joe's player already knows that Joe will have to make this exact check soon, she can still raise his applicable Skills - this is not JIT Learning, it's just normal preparation.

I may have strayed into Space Opera with the examples.

I'm pretty sure I had more, but I can't remember it - should have written it down, I guess :smallredface:

Obvious ToDos:
Find a useable range of numbers for the stats.
Find a way to generate the actual stats... some kind of point-buy system, I think.
Build a list of Skills.
Build a list of Aspects.
Cross-reference the two.
That will require nailing down the genre, or I could just do the whole work twice.
Decide if the Skills should have Specialisations, and how to handle them.
Other races/species?
Figure out how to handle skill synergy.

I think that's everything for the moment... :smallsigh:


Edit: Oh, right...
For the "standard roll" I was looking at 1D30 + applicable stat/skill + any bonuses.
Roll-over mechanic, hitting the target number exactly is a "minor success" (details TBD and depending on what the roll was for).
If practical, I'd like to avoid penalties; I'd prefer raising the target number instead.