Would this be fun? Or is it too simplistic?

[Perch]

I'm planning on using a system Inspired by Paranoia on a play by post game.

I would like to know what you guys think.


-Character sheet-
Name:
Sex:
Age:
Physical appearance:
Traits:
Background:

Your skills are divided in Action skills and Mind skills. Each skill is divided in three sub-groups and each sub-group has 11 categories. You must choose one of the sub-groups to divide 30, another to divide 25 points and a last one to divide 20 points, but each categories must have at least one point. You can't put more than 17 in one category.


Action skills

Personality Skills

-Oratory

-Intimidation

-Con games

-Speech

-Persuasion

-Deception

-Interrogation

-Charisma

-Leadership

-Psychological torture

-Storytelling

Stealth Skills

-Concealment

-Disguise

-Light hands

-Security Systems

-Shadowing

-Escaping

-Sneaking

-Surveillance

-Marksman

-Traps

-Defensive Roll

Fighting skills

-Agility

-Explosives

-Blades

-Blunt

-Fine Manipulation

-Projectile Weapons

-Thrown Weapons

-Unarmed Combat

-Mounted Combat

-Block

-Acrobatics


Mind skills

Academic

-Science

-Cultural aspects

-Puzzles

-Investigation

-Linguistics

-Supernatural knowledge

-Metaphysics

-Occultism

-Theology

-Herbs

-Alchemy


Non-academic

-Faith

-Intrigue

-Invention

-Logic

-Seduction

-Machines

-Perception

-Reasoning

-Promptitude

-Crime

-Consciousness


Biological

-Biosciences

-Medical

-Potions

-Poison

-First aid

-Surgery

-Anatomy

-Animal anatomy

-Animal care

-Humors

-Cooking

Edit: It is a d20 game. You need to roll low. If you roll your value or less you are able to do your action if you roll more you fail. If you roll a natural 20 you have a critical failure and a natural 1 is a critical hit.

Edit2: Maybe I should use lower values?

[Grod_The_Giant]

My first thought: you have, effectively, almost seventy skills. In most cases I've found that the more skills you have, the less competent PCs feel-- they essentially get forced into narrower and narrower roles, until you dilute "charismatic rogue" down to "good at telling half-truths and nothing else." There's arguably a realism bonus, but after a certain point I think it starts to go the other way around- you're good at Accountancy but not Math, say, or you can perform Surgery but not First Aid. If you really want to hit that level of gritty detail, I think specializations are a better way to go about it. You have, say, +10 Deception, with a specialty in Doublespeak giving another +2.

Looking at your skill lists specifically, not only are they overly long, but they're redundant. What's the difference between Oratory, Speech, and Storytelling? Occultism and Supernatural Knowledge? Also, why is "Biology" such an enormous category-- is that going to be a major focus of the game? I mean, dear god, I count 8 different skills that could all be combined under "Doctoring."

Finally, even with all the above taken into consideration, you're not giving nearly enough points. If you're doing d20 roll under, a score of 5 is "blitheringly incompetent" (only a 25% chance of success) and 10 is "barely capable" (50% success rate). You have to go all the way up to 13-15 (65-75%), I think, to have enough chance of success to not look like a total tool. And you're giving... 20-30 points, 11 of which will instantly be sucked away buying everything up to 1.

A skill/subskill, d20-roll-under game can work, to be sure. But I'd say you need to cut your skill list by maybe two-thirds and increase starting points to make it work. Try having everything start at a rank higher than zero, too.