Originally Posted by
Greywander
I've long wanted to design an original system, but it's a tough thing to do when you're not familiar with a broad set of systems.
Recently, my sister offered to DM a game of 7th Sea, a game she kickstarted but hasn't had a chance to play yet. (We haven't started yet, so I might be misunderstanding some of the rules here.) I was reading over the rules and I can tell this game isn't for me. It's highly narrative focused, and to call it "rules-lite" would be an understatement. You'd think ship customization would get a dedicated subsystem as complex as D&D's magic system, but nope, all ships are identical; doesn't matter if you have a sloop or a man'o'war (you can get upgrades for your ship, but the type of ship is entirely cosmetic). Firearms have special rules in that they do extra damage, but there's no equipment section so I'm not sure how one is meant to procur them. Can I... can I just start with a dozen pistols?
Anyway, despite my misgivings, there's one aspect of the rules that intrigues me: the core resolution mechanic. When you attempt an action, you make a roll to generate a number of successes (called "raises"). To complete the action you are attempting, you'll need to spend a certain number of successes, but that's not all you can spend them on. Each action also comes with potential Consequences, negative effects that you can nullify by spending a success on them. An action can also open up Opportunities, some kind of extra bonus that likewise requires spending a success to take advantage of. The example used in the book was running out of a room that was on fire. Attempting to flee the room costs one success to carry out the action, comes with the consequences of receiving two wounds due to being burned (each of which can be negated by spending a success), and you also spot an important looking document about to be consumed by fire that you can grab on your way out.
What intrigues me about this mechanic is that it's not a strict pass/fail resolution. More or less, you get degrees of success, and then spend those like a currency to improve the situation. If you have four successes, then you can carry out the action "perfectly", i.e. you flee the room without getting burned and grabbing the document. (I believe you can also spend successes on additional actions, e.g. if you were being chased, you could topple a bookcase to block the door before you flee. So if you had more than four successes, you could find things to spend them on.) If you only have three successes, you can still "pass" the check, fleeing the room without taking damage, but you wouldn't grab the document. Or you could decide that grabbing the letter is worth more to you than preventing a single wound of damage. What's interesting is that this power is given to the player to make that choice. With only two successes, you can eat the two wounds and still flee with the letter, or give up the letter to negate one wound, or possibly even stay in the room and negate both wounds. If all you're interested in is moving on to the next scene, you really only need one success.
Now, after thinking about it a bit, I realized that this resolution mechanic is a perfect fit for a narrative-focused game. It might not be that good of a fit for something less narrative focused, though. So it might not be something I want to use in one of my own games, but it's still an interesting mechanic. Which got me thinking about how I might read up on various other systems and see if I could extract an interesting mechanic to use in a homebrew system.
Fudge is a system I've been eyeing for a while. It seems right up my alley, but I've never had a chance to play it. I was looking over the Fudge rules again and I was reminded of just how archaic they are. Fudge was meant to be similar to GURPS, but simpler and more streamlined. And it is. But compared to something like D&D 5e, it doesn't really look so streamlined anymore. As I was reading the rules, I came to the conclusion that perhaps Fudge isn't what I was looking for after all (though I could homebrew a version of Fudge that was, but at that point I might as well make a system from scratch). But there was one part of the rules that intrigued me. The wounding mechanics were almost identical to something I've posted on these very forums before. And I can't remember if I came up with it independently, or if I read Fudge first and it inspired me.
So what would be some other systems I could look into to steal their mechanics and cobble together a homebrew system? Preferably, I'd be looking for mechanics that are simple and elegant, easy to use and fast to run. I probably don't want to copy an entire subsystem, but the foundational mechanics for a subsystem might be worthy of inspiration.