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beachhead1973
2013-10-24, 10:39 PM
Hi, this is a homebrew system I am working with.

The goal is to create a system which is simple to play and understand, yet highly capable of modeling advanced concepts and complex actions.

-The Basic Mechanic is the percentile roll

D100 or 2D10, with 1 die representing the tens and another the ones.

You want to roll below the target number.

The target number is the skill or stat, with any modifiers, positive or negative applied.

-There are 10 Primary Statistics. It's a lot, but I have a reason...how good it is...well it satisfied some of my own long-held issues with how stats are modeled in most games.

Strength (STR)
-simple enough.

Self (SLF)
-An individual’s sense of self; Self-control, self-discipline, self-respect: all the good stuff you need to keep your grip. People with a high sense of Self have a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with alternate worldviews; they have little capacity for self-deception.

Size (SIZ)
-How big you are. There are upsides and downsides to size. Size is a very concrete, immutable value.

Toughness (TUF)

Agility (ALG)
-How light on your feet are you? How flexible and fast. Factors into all close-combat skills, action points and Endurance.

Perception (PER)
-Your general acuity with the five senses. Perception is your ability to notice things. It factors into ranged attacks and your ability to react to danger.

Social (SOC)
-Social is the capacity to sway others and get a positive reaction from them. If you want to talk your way out of a confrontation or be liked and get along in a group Social is important to you.

Luck (LCK)
It’s just what you think it is; do you feel lucky? Well do you, punk? Luck affects any role dealing with chance, so many skill rolls. It also determines how often you score critical hits.

Dexterity (DEX)
Dexterity is the ability of fine motor skills. It factors into ranged attacks and many medical and craft-like skills.

Intelligence (INT)
The attribute of raw intellect; intelligence factors into your learning ability and also many technical or scientific skills.



TBC...

beachhead1973
2013-10-24, 10:43 PM
Derived Statistics are not chosen by the player, but determined; according, mostly to the primary statistics during character creation.


Learning Ability (LRN)
Learning Ability indicates how well and fast a character learns. Most vitally, it determines how many skill points you gain at each level.

Learning Ability equals SOC+(INTx2)+1d12

Action Points (AP)
-Action points are a very important consideration, since they mean the difference between things like getting away, or firing the that one last shot, or not.

Endurance (END)
-Endurance is representative of your Physical and Mental ability to drive the body and carry on. Whenever you do something that inflicts a fatigue point, it detracts from endurance. This is how you can fall unconscious/pass out if you are not careful.
Endurance is equal to STR+(AGLx2).

Reaction (REA)
-Reaction determines who reacts first in a surprise round. After that, unless or until something else shakes things up, or someone banks their reaction (see below), you act in order of your Reactions.
Reaction is equal to PER+AGL, so an average person’s Reaction is equal to 10.
In the case of multiple individuals with the same reaction, you roll opposed checks (best PER or AGL, Vs) to see who goes first.

Morale (MOR)
Your Morale is what you use to measure how much more you can take. Bad things happen when you run out of morale. Morale is equal to WILx2.

Dodge + Armour=Protection (PRO)
Dodge=Agility
Armour=AC from everything you’re wearing + any special enhancements or natural armour (Humans do not normally have natural armour)

Carry (CAR)
Carry determines how much stuff you can carry.
Carry is equal to 10+(5x(STR+SIZE).
That’s how much you can move and act normally with, or lift, with effort.
For -2AP and half pace, you can carry up to twice as much. Load carrying equipment modifies these numbers, but basic Carry assumes every character has access to pockets and some kind of simple backpack or satchel they can carry without using your hands.

Melee Damage (MD)
Melee damage is how hard you can hit. Stronger characters can hit very hard indeed. This value is added to hand to hand attacks and blows with melee weapons. It is also added to some ranged weapons (like bows and slingshots) and thrown weapons.

Resistance (RES)
-Resistance is how well a character resists damage. For a starting human character, this is zero, but many types of armour assist this.
Characters also have a Poison and Radiation resistance, equal to 2x(SIZ+TOU) and 2xTOU respectively

Pace (PCE)
Pace is equal to how far in meters you may move for one Action Point. UA, always assumes you are trying to get where you are going as fast as you can, but certain kinds of movement can get you there faster, if you are willing to take some hits to endurance.
Pace is equal to 1+(AGL+SIZ) So an average person can move 2 meters/per AP.

Healing (HEAL)
Healing rate is the amount of Hit Points you recover in 24 hours of activity or 8 hours of resting. UA let’s character’s heal faster so that they can get back into the game sooner after getting banged up. It’s less realistic, but more fun. Healing is based on Toughness.

Critical chance (CRIT)
This is your basic chance to score a critical hit in an attack. Critical chance is equal to your Luck. So if you have a LCK of 4, you have a 4% chance in every attack of scoring a critical hit.
Hit points
12+(STR+SIZ+TOU)
Advancing 4+(TOU/2 rounded down) every level

This system aims for a comic-book level of realism; you can die, but it should be in an appropriately worthy way. Save the meaningless deaths for the NPCs and the truly unlucky and oblivious PCs. Hitpoints are a way to represent this idea and your healing rate and physical performance relate to them, but above all consider Hitpoints an abstraction; a necessary evil which compromises to fun and simplicity in an otherwise realistic system.

(I had tables here for a few stats (AP, HP, ect) before I uploaded, but they got trashed.

beachhead1973
2013-10-24, 10:49 PM
There are also to be Traits; Traits pimarily alter your starting Primary and Derived Statistics and some may also alter now the rules work in relation to your character.

Skills; Everyone starts out with skills appropriate to either a Primitive, Modern or Futuristic Setting. These are the skills that anyone would have at a low level. Anyone can pick up and a swing a sword, not everyone can perform a flawless riposte with one.

Some kind of level-related bonus. Feats/Stunts/Specials/Perks, ect.


Thanks very much for your time and any constructive criticism.

Thunderfist12
2013-10-30, 05:02 PM
Good concept, this here. I just skimmed it, but I'll look back at it later.

Also, could you bold the headings and stat names? It would be much easier to read.

beachhead1973
2013-12-09, 11:42 PM
Wow, I suck.

I've been totally neglecting this thread for over a month almost. I've frankly been a bit of a forum jerk, not even leaving a note that I was getting hammered with school and life, my appologies; some people took the time to help me out and I squandered that.

But. I am back now and I will do better. It's late and I need to grab some shuteye, but tomorrow, if at all possible I will be back with the edits and answers requested.

Thunderfist12
2013-12-10, 10:28 AM
No biggie, beachhead. I do it all the time and nobody seems to care.:smallbiggrin:

erikun
2013-12-10, 05:26 PM
Just curious, but are you familiar with the RuneQuest system? It seems somewhat similar to what you have here, and even if it isn't what you want, you might be able to take some ideas from it.

beachhead1973
2013-12-12, 04:22 PM
No biggie, beachhead. I do it all the time and nobody seems to care.:smallbiggrin:

Thanks man! I had another thread on automatic fire, but I seem to have lost it. It's one of my chief concerns right now, as no game seems to do it right.

Can't believe that this forum doesn't have a find your own posts function.

Also; how may I insert or create tables?

beachhead1973
2013-12-12, 04:23 PM
Just curious, but are you familiar with the RuneQuest system? It seems somewhat similar to what you have here, and even if it isn't what you want, you might be able to take some ideas from it.

only in the most distant way...it's somewhat similar to fallout, correct?

My starting point is Fallout PNP 2.0 I actually tracked down the developer and okayed this with him.

beachhead1973
2014-01-02, 09:22 PM
Skills

I should note now, if I have not before that this is not the first time i tried this. Ages ago I had a vaguely similar project, but much more complex. I did a ton of work on it, but it was too complicated and intricate to ever work.

In laying out the skills for my 2.0 idea, I raided my old work, with an eye to creating as simple a system as possible. That's really the big deal here. I can have the best system every, but the less simple it is, the less it will be played and the harder it will be to explain it to new players.

Staring skills and Eras

Every character is made with starting skills. These are determined by the Era the character comes from. This is not dissimilar to Traveller's TL system.

There are five eras;

Primitive; This is for characters from tribal or prehistoric background

Classic; Not so much the classical era, so much as the classic role-playing setting of swords and horses.

Imperial; Characters from the age of empires; think black powder, industrial age; the last new frontiers. This can cover most of the renaissance, up through the early-mid 1800s.

Modern; Our era.

Scifi; The future; but in more of a hard science sense.

Magitech; since any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and some of the best scifi harkens back to fantasy elements; this is the era for that kind of character; more Light Sabres and Warp Drives, than more grounded scifi.

Some skills are differentiated by era or "discipline". You'll see what I mean.

obviously there is no real limit to characters in one campaign having different eras. You just need a character concept to explain it. Amish barbarian? mad scientist? feral child all grown up? Done and done!

Once you have that down, you get a few "XP" to distribute. In the main, your starting skills are determined by your stats, but you can tweak them with your XP pool.

You also get three "Knacks" stuff you do better; special talents if you will. These get a 20% bonus and advance for half cost.

I'll carry on the list of skills in the next post.

beachhead1973
2014-01-02, 10:47 PM
Skill list

So again; depending on your era; your character would start with some of these. You can use your XP from leveling up and from your starting pool to buy others; eventually all will have a buy-in cost and then advance as per a normal skill.

Shooting
-This crosses all times, cultures and barriers and works for any weapon you just aim and fire. the weapon might be harder to use, but that's covered in the weapon being stated as inaccurate. So a shotgun and an RPG-7V use the same skill.

Marksmanship
Any schmuck can point a weapon and pull a trigger; marksmanship is for well-aimed shots.

Auto-Burst
The skill for automatic weapons fire, still not sure quite how to work it out in game terms, but if it fires multiple shots in every attack, generally this is the skill you use.

Bows
Using a bow is a little different from shooting a gun, so it is a different skill. Crossbows are used with the shooting skill though.

Weapons Handling
A perfect example of an era-modified skill, in other word there are version of this skill for each era. BUT! Not every weapon made in that era is of a consummate complexity to the local tech level. A soldier of the 100 years war would still know how to sharpen a Ka-Bar knife made in 2005 just fine. So what's it do? If your weapon jams, or needs maintainance, or a simple modification or repair or parts swap; this is the related skill. This might easily come up for any complex non-attack action on a weapon; like changing a machinegun barrel for instance.

Technology
technology is all about working with the cutting edge of your day; say; a GPS for us, a copper tool set for a primitive tribesman. Another era-based skill.

Poke and Jab
I used to have a dozen skills for hand to hand combat; not so much now. Poke and jab covers all hand to hand combat and simple hand weapons; like knives and clubs. This is part of my personal theory that different fighting styles are just different, not better.

First Aid
Golden hour medical care. I might break this down by era as well, but I'm not sure. That goes for all the medical skills.

Healing
Long term recovery and care. I am not sure about eras, but this could be a great chance to add disciplines; like "Bush Medicine". Your family doctor, or a good nurse do this stuff.

Doctor
The serious stuff; this is really more about trauma medicine; surgery and ther other stuff you see on the doctor shows. Some of the "ologies" would be covered by other skills; anesthesiology for instance would be the technology skill, pharmacology would be the science skill.

Stealth
sneaking around, hiding and being quiet

Throwing Weapons
I may discipline this into things like Knives and axes, thrown spears or grenades. or I may not. you sure throw all three differently (i know). But do I want the complexity?

Whips and chains
These are weird weapons; flails, nunchaku, Indy's whip, or that Cat you don;t have room to swing. Mainly because you can do weird stuff with these kinds of weapons

Light Swords
The lighter, cut-and-thrust swords; a gladius, foil or anything else where finesse matters more than force.

Eastern Sword
swords like the Katana and Dao; light, but very strong with an equal focus on force and technique.

Heavy Sword
The unsubtle metaphors; your big, heavy one and two-handed swords; long swords, falchions, the big two-handers and bastard swords.

Polearms
for when you need to reach out and touch someone. using that extra length for a more forceful strike like a Halberd or Billhook, or to keep someone at a distance like a Pike.

Axes
Axes have advantages over swords; with less cutting area and greater weight behind it; they have the potential to batter through defences and cause deeper wounds, but they are difficult in the defence. This skill also covers Hammers and picks. Really bone-simple weapons like, say; ballpeen hammers and hatchets are covered under poke and jab.

Fighting Shield
The techniques of using your shield as a weapon.

Off-Hand Weapons
The skill of the dual-wield. Both the technique of fighting with two weapons, and using the kinds of weapons which lend themselves to this purpose. Now is a good time to mention two facts; 1) it looks worse than it is, I did simplify this part some as well, but yes; way more weapon skills than shooty-skills. I did that to flesh out the options of less-advanced eras and because different types of hand weapons tend to be very different IME. 2) Yes, you can use a similar skill for the wrong weapon at penalty, or even unskilled. You always start with Poke and Jab, so that gives you a basis to work from, but it's a steep incline.

Security Systems
Using and defeating security measures; this includes picking locks and spoofing cameras, motion sensors, ect. I have my doubts about this skill.

Steal
Pickpocket, grabbing stuff that isn't yours and getting away with it, ect.

Build and Fix
This covers an umbrella of skills I have often found seem to live in the same people. Another theory; building and fixing has more to do with a basic comfort working with tools and materials than specific skills. So instead of a bunch of different skills; you can buys disciplines and specialities, or just buff the heck out of this baseline handyman skill.

Traps
of the booby variety. deadfalls, claymore mines, tripwires.

Demolition
Working with explosives, less about swinging a wrecking ball.

Drive
primarily about ground vehicles. A prime exmaple of a skill which covers the trope of the gifted "it's got wheels, I can drive it" type, as well as other, more specific options.

Ride
vehicles you ride; motorcycles, tow-subs, skidoos, snowmobiles, ect. Not sure this requires any form of set differentiation.

Equestrian
Riding critters. I Thing I will have to break this one down, but not irrevocably. I still figure it's a basic pool of knowledge and experience you can apply more or less well to different animals, but maybe not.

Pilot
as in Airplane and helicopter and space ship.

Heavy Equipment
As in do not operate while under the influence of; cranes, backhoes: the big working tools mounted on stuff.

Science
The sciences.

Words
Broken down into languages. Your use of words in writing and speaking; a deffinate candidate for specialization. I'll talk more about Disciplines and Specialization later.

Barter/appraise
Making better deals, knowing how badly you are being ripped off.

Gambling
games of chance.

Survival
Staying alive in the wilderness

Mariner
Operating and manning a watercraft.

Submariner
Ditto; underwater craft.

Artillery and mounted weapons
The big guns; towed guns, tank guns, ship guns, you get the picture.

Guided Weapons
Think-guided missiles

Comms
Communications equipment.

Spotter
Spotting for fire from someone else; this usually works with a radio and so it might become a comms discipline. Could be used with artillery, airstrikes and orbital bombardment

Navigation
Finding your way around the back woods, the open ocean, the clear blue sky or the black of space.

Career
The generic skills not covered elsewhere. Accountancy, the less-glamourous parts of being a soldier, ect.

Climbing/Rappelling
Going up? Or down in a really cool way?

Freefall
Airborne all the way!

Knowledge
You get a free discipline in knowlegde for each point you have in Intelligence. The more specific you make it, the better it works, but the less often it applies. You either know it, or you don't.

Intel/Counter-Intel
The other Black Arts.

Investigation/Interrogate
Gumshoe skills.

Torture
It's not pretty, but if you're going to attempt it, you better know how it's done. I may make this a trick, rather than a skill and apply it as part of Investigate/interrogate.

Air Traffic Control
Possibly another Discipline waiting to happen, but of Nav or Comms?

Protocol and Procedure
The boring stuff that makes your life easier when someone else handles it.

Food!
Cooking and Baking

Escape Artist
possibly set to become a discipline of Steal, if I re-name Steal. This is the real Houdini stuff.

Sprayers
Weapons and other devices, which emit a spray of fluid, foam or similiar.

Handle Animals
the training and managing of lower life-forms. Wagon-driving would be a discipline of this.

Art
I don't know what it is, but I know what I like.

Flight Pack
jet, rocket, gravity, helicopter, ect. Could even cover a set of Wings or magic boots.

Indirect Fire
Mortars, grenade launchers and similar.

Slieght of Hand
Stage magic and it's practical applications

Training
teaching others how to do that voodoo that you do, not very well.

I am considering some kind of magic skill or skills as well. i think i like the representation of raw magical power as an extra Stat purchased through a trait, but I like the Dresden Files version of magic as both power, as skill. In addition; I like the idea of the learned sage: no natural power, but in exchange for ritual and particular spell components, able to practice magic in a limited way.

beachhead1973
2014-01-02, 11:06 PM
Okay, so last for the night:

Specializations and Disciplines.

I talked about them both; what are they?

Okay; I have these two competing drives; I want a comprehensive skill system, but I also want to avoid a huge list of skills, as in GURPS. GURPS is great, but huge skill lists really messed with my friends in our games.

Specializations

I am not sure if specializations should be partly free or not? maybe for the first one, but the basic idea is this; My skills are open enough to encopass different things; a specialization gives you a 20% bonus with one thing and a -20% penalty with everything else. So Artillery/Mounted Weapons with a (tank guns) specialization.

I am also playing with the idea of a limited number of additional specialties (which would cost XP) at a reduced bonus, but the same -20% penalty. So it would go down by 5% with each specialty, so you could have a maximum of 4 in any skill. maybe 5, but a 0% bonus seems weird.

The general idea is; different, but similiar enough to work for specialties. Specialties reflect focussed training. A specialization could be anything, in theory and I am considering additional tricks grenting additional bonuses to more specific things, like a weapon or skill focus. So to follow our example above; an additional bonus for the M68/L7 series tank gun (105mm rifled NATO tank gun, like on the M60 and Leopard 1).

Discipline

A discipline could be like a branching skill, or perhaps a separate, cheaper skill which is related to the basic skill, but is different enough to separate.

This is something I really puzzle over.

I do have these competing drives of simplicity and believability/realism (of about a comicbook-level).

In the previous incarnation I had a system of tiered skills where a certain level of a basic skill allowed you to advance into another, different skill.

As I said, it's a puzzler and it lasy at the heart of how I have laid out and defined the skills.



Other ideas I have are particular types of science, piloting, technical skills as tricks, but applying to the basic skill? Should you be able to use some of them without the associated trick? You don't get a trick all the time.

I would like to be able to model the natural tech-savvy or driver-person.

Again, a lot of TL;DR, but thank you for your time and interest.