My New System Post 1 of Part 3: Tooth and Claw (Weapons and How to Assemble)

Weapons in stories are things of legends; if you possess a weapon which was once held by some fabled hero, you can be sure of victory. You have Excalibur, given to King Arthur from the Lady of the Lake (Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government), and its companion, the Sword in the Stone, which, despite its name, was drawn from the stone by the aforementioned king. You have Mjølnir, forged by dwarves who had forged other weapons for the gods in the bowels of the Earth and then given as a gift to the God of Thunder himself, Thor, who uses the hammer by throwing it and having it return to him so fast that it's seen as a lightning bolt. You have the sickle of Kronus, which was given to its owner by the personification of the Earth herself to slay her lover, his father. You have the Gáe Bulg, the spear of mortal pain which was made from the bone of the sea monster, Coinchenn, which died from fighting its enemy, the Curruid, and then was given to Cú Chulainn so he could slay his brother.

Weapons in D&D and many other games are "+1 Sword of Flaming Burst" and are tossed as soon as you can find a "+2 Sword of Flaming Burst". They hold no tradition, they aren't better when the wielder learns how to use them more efficiently, and they are often sold off long before they're used simply because spending feats on using them properly would hinder the progress and power of your character. This, in my humble opinion, is utterly stupid and degrades the roleplay value of weapons and the value of a good weapons system.

Please note that everything from this point on is subject to some pretty drastic changes as I figure out how to work with character concepts and all the options as I begin to define them. While I'll lay out the ideas I've got right now, I really need to understand exactly how to balance things so that no kind of character is too powerful and no kind of character is too weak. Characters who primarily use weapons to do damage must to be balanced with characters that primarily use class abilities to do damage. And pretty much the same thing for every other role. Each role and hybrid role needs to be satisfying to play, and needs to do its job, elsewise, I'll have to completely re-work it.

To help this, instead of giving a character a "base attack bonus" like one gets in D&D, a character will get a "Weapons Skill" score or something of the like (Name very subject to change). This may end up being incorporated into the perk system, but I'm not quite sure if I'll end up doing that. Anywhen, the idea is that the better your score gets, the more damage dice you get out of using a weapon. Accuracy is also going to be determined by the score. The basics for characters are that characters who need to rely on weapons to use their abilities won't be able to use their abilities as readily as characters who don't, but by using their abilities, they get extra extra damage out of it. In the end, it should all even out so that Constant Damage characters are putting out the same kind of damage whether or not their using abilites or weapons to do damage, and the same for Spike Damage characters. (I'll need to talk about character roles and how they play into the game in a later post.)

Now that that's out of the way, time to talk about Weapons themselves.

The number of traits you can use in a Weapon is determined on how high your weapon skill score is. And that's a horrible way to lead off this paragraph. Let's start again.

You can add traits to a Weapon when creating the weapon, or whenever you can add traits to them, such as when you gain a level and are able to use more traits. Traits are the main way for people with roles other than damage to power up their abilities. For example, a character in the role of Battlefield Controller can have a hammer that throws people back further when he uses it in conjunction with an ability that tosses people around when you hit them. You could have a whip that entangles people so they take penatlies when they try to use abilities and such. Basically, you trade damage for the supped up abilities. There are traits for everyone, though, but the traits for Spike Damage and Constant Damage are not as prevalent as other traits.

A weapon is built by allocating the points for traits or damage. The number of points you are able to use is determined on how high your weapon skill score is. For example, at level five, you might have a weapon skill score of 5. You then can use a weapon that has up to the number of points that you can use at 5 weapon skill. If you use a weapon that has a higher amount, you gain only the first number of traits/damage allocated to it equal to the amount of points you could use at 5 weapon skill. This is because you are not skilled enough to use all of its traits together. Different traits are actually considered differently when choosing which traits you can use when a weapon is outside your point range. First are permanent traits, things that the weapon just has. If you make a weapon out of mythical golden steel it will still be made of mythical golden steel no matter who is using the weapon. Second are magical traits, enchantments and spells placed on the weapon. Using an enchanted weapon doesn't actually take much skill, but most enchantments require activation or something of the sort, so if you are not skilled enough to use the weapon and keep the enchantment active at the same time, then you can't use the enchantment. Third are skillful traits, things that the weapon can do, but it takes knowing how to do them. A scythe has its blade at such an angle that you could loop it around someone's ankle and trip them quite easily, but that's actually not the easiest thing in the world to do, and it actually takes training with a scythe to do properly in battle. Lastly, there are damage traits, which is basically just the points you allocate to damage. The better you are with a weapon, the more damage you can do.

Hopefully, this way a character doesn't get some way super powerful ancestral weapon and is suddenly much better at everything than his companions. No, his weapon might be completely different than the steel and wood weapons his comrades are using, but he's just as inexperienced as they are.

Well. I think I'll talk a bit about classes next time and then come back for some talk about armor, which is somewhat similar.

Song of the Post: "Tooth and Claw" by Animals as Leaders

My New System Post 2 of Part 1: The Message from Dr. Light (Design Goals of Subsequent Parts)

Though I said I'd be moving on to Classes and/or Weapons, I feel that I need to address some design goals of each of these sections before beginning to lay down the ground work of these parts. So, that's what I'm going to do.

Firstly, I'm actually going to talk about Equipment in general as a single Part, with sub-sections about armor, weapons and adventuring gear. To address the concerns about equipment, I've made a handy bullet point list.

• Armor adding to dodge chance has never made sense to me
• The enchantment system for armor and weapons puts too much power in the hands of casters and removes it from other players
• Upgrades are needlessly tedious to obtain
• Keeping track of adventuring gear is too tedious and boring, so nobody actually does it
• Carrying capacity takes too much time to actually figure out
• Weapons become somewhat useless too quickly
• Weapon and armor proficiencies have always been a little weird

Now, to keep up the trend, I'll make another bullet point list to list some design choices I want to promote and how I'm looking at fixing the problems that I see with previous systems.

• Armor and Weapons are each created using a modular point-buy system
• This allows for players to create really cool or interesting weapons, as well as have new traits added or subtracted from a weapon easily
• Because this may be confusing for new players, there will be a set of basic equipment that shows off some common configurations for weapons and armors
• Weapon proficiencies and Armor proficiencies are based off the styles of the weapons and armor
• Weapons are grouped by the way you use them, and each grouping has traits that you can add to your weapon that match the style of how you would use it, but are unique to that group
• Armors are grouped mostly on similarity of make and how you can wear it, each group has certain traits that can be added to it that match how you would use it
• Shields boost your ability to parry/block attacks
• This is much more like real life, and matches the active defenses that I've mentioned earlier
• Adventuring gear is going to be based mostly around a "kit" system
• Kits are going to mostly be integrated with the skill and explortation systems, and so they will be explored there in more detail
• Kits allow you to have a general idea of what you have without having to keep track of every single piece of equipment
• Kits will probably degrade after a few uses and need to be kept up with some small change or small amounts of time gathering supplies

Now, for some talk about classes and class abilities:

• Classes are based around a concept and a single basic ability that matches that concept
• Combat and exploration roles are not determined by class, but by build
• Every class should be able to specialize in one of at least three different combat roles by choosing certain options, or they can choose to pick up options from multiple combat roles
• Exploration roles are decided by the character's skill choices, which will be covered in exploration
• At each level a character gains a predetermined number of "perk points" which can be spent in a number of different perk trees available to the character
• There are a set of basic perk trees available to every character
• Some perk trees are available to the character based on weapon proficiencies that the character has, these allow the character to gain advantages when using those weapons with certain traits that the weapon has
• Some perk trees are available to the character based on the character's chosen class and they alter the way the character's class abilities act and react
• Perks replace the design space of feats and chosen class abilities, allowing the player to create the character they need and fulfill the combat role the party needs

Classes will probably get more talk at another time, as I'm going to most likely detail more about weapons and then armor first.

Song of the Post: "The Message from Dr. Light" by The Megas

My New System Post 4 of Part 2: Polyhurt (Dice, Damage and Dealing it)

Now. Dice are wonderful things that allow us to randomize the experience of play, so that we're able to have experiences with a bit of randomness injected into them, much like real life. Things don't always happen just according to plan. In fact, most of the time a plan never survives contact with reality because of circumstances that have incomprehensible complexity, which the randomness of dice-rolling simulates.

However, dice are not completely random. They do have average ranges that they will roll, and that's what we need to balance off of in a game. For example, the 20-sided die, which was determined to be the main way to determine the success of various actions in this system in the last post, has an average roll of 10.5. Now, you can't actually ever roll a 10.5, but if you roll a ton of d20's, then you'll come up with an average roll of about 10.5. But with our average, we have a deviation of 5.77. This means that any roll is most likely to fall within 5.77 of 10.5. This isn't terribly important, but it helps us understand how to make a task difficult or easy. If we want a task to be extremely easy for a character, then we put the level of roll we need the character to at least make over 5.77 below 10.5, making it very, very likely that the character would be able to hit that mark. If it just needs to be easy, then put it about 5.77 below 10.5. If it needs to be averagely difficult, then we put it as close as we can to 10.5. And then so on and so forth for the harder things.

This applied to the damage dice, as well. For example, if we have a 4-sided die, the average is 2.5, while the deviation is 1.12. That's a fancy way of saying you're going to deal about 1 to 4 damage with it.  It's most likely, however, that you're going to deal 2 or 3 damage with it (unless you step on it; there's a reason most people call d4's caltrops). So, that's that.

With a d6, it's 3.5 with a deviation of 1.71. With a d8, its 4.5 with a deviation of 2.29.

Anyway, now that I've collected and explained most of this information, I think I'm going to move onto working on damage some more.

While I would really like to consolidate the damage dice, but from what I've been looking at, the deviation between amounts of damage on different categories of weapon would be too much for the system to balance out with non-random damage. However, I've decided that three different dice, which each larger one having 2 more sides than the one smaller than it, would work just as well.

Now this is going to dip into both character abilities and the weapon system a bit. Yeah.

So, most characters are going to be doing damage through their weapons, but others are mainly going to rely on their class abilities to do damage. It doesn't make sense for the guy who can call flame from his fingers at will to go around using a stick trying to bop people over the head. He's got his fire fingers for that. So, this means that damage must be consistent across class abilities and weapons, and it must scale properly on both weapons and class abilities.

Scaling damage is easiest when working primarily with constants, rather than variables. Adding a new damage die can increase damage by a huge amount or barely any at all, depending on what you end up rolling for damage. Plus, the span between increases in damage are considerable, as you have to work on the basis that characters are probably going to be dealing an average of X amount of damage, but you still have to take into account the extremes of damage dealt by the die, which puts you at actually gaining the damage later than you would with simple constants. Another reason to mainly use constants is that it moves the majority of math to character building or non-combat situations. The plain fact is that most people aren't good at adding figures in their heads (including someone like me, who is rather good at math) and trying to do so slows down the real-time pace of combat too much.

However, constants are boring. So, while it is harder to do the math, and much more time-consuming to do it over and over and over again, the variability that dice add to damage makes it really exciting to do damage. When you get five 6's out of five d6's, you grin uncontrolably and probably spend the next seven years telling stories about it. However, you don't seem to remember a whole lot about the times you end up with all five ones staring at you..... Hmmm...

Anyway, the point is that there needs to be a balance between damage gained through dice and constants. So, for class ability-based damage, dice are going to come from the times that ability actually "levels up", such as an ability which says "this ability deals 1d6 + ability score damage at first level, and gains a 1d6 damage at levels 4 and 7". The constant damage is going to come from "modifier options" or "perks" or whatever I end up calling them. So, for options that add effects or damage to a class ability, that is going to mostly be constant damage. For weapons, the dice-based damage is going to come from "leveling up" the weapon. That's probably going to be talked more about in the actual weapons section. And the constant damage is from purchasing damage and will also be talked about more in the weapons section.

The main dice for damage purposes are going to come in three flavors. The d4, d6, and d8 are our main dice, and I'm going to try my best to keep it within those constraints. The discrepancies should be easily enough repaired with extra constant damage or different pools of perks or abilities to add on top of damage.

So. With that, I'll leave you, and next time, I'll come back with the first bits of classes or weapons. Probably both on the same day.

Song of the Post: "Polyhurt" by Com Truise 

Interlude: Depression and Loneliness

Now, I am not the most emotionally stable person in the entire world. I struggle sometimes with depression and all the time with anxiety. While my problems are mostly easily dealt with, sometimes I got some serious issues that pop up.

It seems like the occasional battles with depression are the worst. It's not that I get sad or suicidal or anything, it's just that everything becomes uninteresting. I can't concentrate on anything, and things start to lose their colors, textures and scents. For those who know me well, they know I rely a lot on scent because that sense is, for some reason or another, very fine tuned in me. When I can't smell, I get a bit down.

But yeah, depression just turns everything into this bland, inescapable gray. It's refined isolation. Contact with others would be painful if I wasn't so numbed, but I'm drawn into myself until I can't escape.

I am a lonely person by nature. It's not that I like being alone, but it's just easier for me. It's the path of least resistance. And when depression hits, I'm dragged into this never ending spiral of loneliness and lack of sensitivity.

There's not much I can do to avoid it other than make sure I'm well adjusted and have plenty of contact and responsibilities that force me to act even when I'm stuck in a well of depression. Having things that I have to do or I'll have severe problems in my life helps me pull myself back into reality. It hurts, but it really is better than being numb.

So, if any of you see me struggling with depression, help me do something that I need to do, or give me something to do. That'll help me the most.

My New System Post 3 of Part 2: Set to Destroy (Attacks, Defenses, and Damage)

While most people would think this to be a simple subject, Attacks, Defenses, and Damage (and probably health systems because that's what damage damages) are not that simple. I'll probably just lay down the groundwork of ideas here and come back with more solid rules later.

First thing, the main basic die is the 20-sided die, or d20 for those who know tabletop gaming terms. This determines everything but damage. You roll this kind of die for pretty much everything that isn't damage. Sorting out a complicated knot? Throw a d20 at it. (Or, you know, just do the Gordian Knot trick.) Sorting out an annoyingly stuck door? Throw a d20 at it. Sorting out a petulant informant? Throw a d20 at it. There's a life lesson in here somewhere.....

On to Attacking! Be aggressive! Attacks use the basic d20 to resolve whether or not the attack is successful. One of the biggest things I need to think about with is how characters gain "attack bonus". This will most likely be more solidly determined under the character and character abilities section, but I'll start putting my thoughts of how it should work down.

As I have said before, I do think that everything that affects combat should come from the character's class. Everything that affects exploration comes from skills. Everything that... well I guess I don't have much else to cover. There's probably going to be a bit of overlap between skills and class abilities, with a few skill perks affecting small bits of combat and a few character abilities affecting exploration. But, I don't want to go all the way to making attacking completely skill-based as some systems do. I've noticed that this encourages characters to min-max for specific arenas, like a diplomancer (someone who only has social skills) is completely centered on the social arena, and wouldn't really be able to preform in other arenas. This effectively cuts people off from certain  parts of the game, so you have to have one or two people in the party completely devoted to each arena, building a team of savants that are completely retarded in the areas they aren't specialized for. I don't particularly enjoy that sort of dynamic, as I prefer to have players involved with everything that's going on. If players are at least competent enough to participate in multiple arenas, then everyone is happier because everyone can be involved. And that's why I don't want to integrate the character's proficiency in combat with the skill system.

The character's proficiency in attacking in combat does need to come from the character's chosen class, but I'm still thinking how I can do that in an interesting and fun way, rather than the way that D&D has done it in the past. In D&D, you simply have a flat Base Attack Bonus that's determined by your level in a class. I'd like to give the character a bit more choice on how they raise their ability to attack. This bears more thinking about.

On to defenses! The best defense is a good defense! Defenses are active, as of my last post. You actively guard with your shield or parry blows with your sword. You actively roll with the blows to take less damage or nimbly dodge attacks. So, defenses should act a lot like attacks. They should be gained and improved in a similar way to offensive capabilities, such as being determined by the character's class abilities rather than by what kind of armor you felt like buying. Yes, you probably want to use different kinds of defensive abilities if you're only using padded cloth armor than if you're using full plate with articulated joints. The cloth does afford you more mobility (well, unless your armor is extremely well fitted; one of my friends made a set of fully articulated plate that he could do jumping jacks and cartwheels in without problem), so you're probably going to focus more on dodging blows rather than trying roll with the blows so that your armor takes so much of the force out of it that you don't even get a bruise, since your armor is more likely to get cut open along with your bowels if you do that. If you're in the full plate, it makes more sense to learn how to use its weight and its ability to take the force out of blows rather than dodging everything. And if you're going to be using a shield regularly, it's probably best to learn how to use it to catch, deflect and even parry blows with it.

I'm still thinking about this will all work out, but I'm thinking that players will have more of a perk tree setup for how they gain their class abilities, or how those abilities are modified into a specific role. Each class having its own tree, and probably some general abilities that they can purchase, like everyone could learn how to use a shield. This will need to be determined more in the characters and classes section.

Now, for damage and health. This is perhaps the most solidified of the ideas I'll be putting down here today. There are two measures of "health". The first is your Vitality. Vitality is your energy to keep fighting and how many minor injuries or almost injuries you can sustain before taking serious damage. Vitality can also be spent to fuel certain abilities that would definitely take a bit out of you to do. For example, going into a battle frenzy would exhaust your strength a bit at the end, and your endurance would likewise be sapped by attacking all out with an extremely powerful blow.

The next is your Wounds. Wounds are a measure of how many serious injuries you can take. Most of the time, you can only take a single wound at a time, unless you're suffering truly massive damage (e.g. having a dragon's corpse fall on you, falling from orbit, having a grenade explode in your stomach, etc.). If you would take over a certain number of vitality in a single blow of damage, you instead take up to that many points in vitality damage and take a wound. And that hurts. If you would take over double that number of points in vitality, you instead take double that many points in vitality damage and take two wounds. And that hurts more. This continues until you take too many wounds and are instantly turned into paste.

Whenever you take a wound, you are also afflicted by negative status effects for a certain amount of time. For example, you take a heavy wound and are made nauseous by the pain.  Or you get a hand chopped off and can't use that hand until it's put back on. It's not good to take wounds, and taking wounds is an indication that you're in a very challenging situation, and probably need to not be as aggressive as you were being.

Anywhen, on to damage. I would really like to standardize damage dice into a single die type. I've thought about making that the 6-sided die, or d6. But there's some problems with the d6. The biggest one is the average damage jump from 1d6 to 2d6, which is 3.5 to just under 7, if my math is correct. That's nearly double the amount of damage. If I standardize to the d6 and have light weapons do 1d6 damage, while the next class up does 2d6, and the next does 3d6. That 3d6 weapon does an average of about 10.5 damage, which probably cuts through people's vitality at level 1, giving people tons of wounds and cutting down enemies way too easily.

I'm going to call this a post for now, and do a lot more thinking about how to average health and damage so that you're not going to cut enemies down immediately because you have a big stick and not do any damage because you don't. Next post will probably be more about damage and a lot of math on damage dice averages. Hopefully you guys like that.

Song of the Post: "Set to Destroy" by Parkway Drive (I figured I'd start including the songs whose titles I'm using as the names of these posts at the end of said posts.)

My New System Post 2 of Part 2: Light Up The Night (Reactivity as It Applies To Combat)

One thing that I'm actually feeling a bit conflicted on is reactivity. But first, an example and definition of reactivity, since it is a word I am making up. Reactivity is how the system allows for players to react to the actions or events of a game. A system is considered to be highly reactive or to have high reactivity if players can react to every action and reaction of other players or situations in the game. Most of what I'm going to cover in this post is reactivity in the combat, we'll get to how I want other systems to work later. After all, Part 2 is all about Combat.

Reactivity can be both a good thing and a bad thing. A system with a healthy amount of reactivity allows players to take charge of an event that doesn't start in their favor or keep control of an event that started in their favor, while the opposition provides a challenge to that control without directly wresting it away from them. A system with an unhealthy lack of reactivity basically forces players to acquiesce to the actions of their allies and opponents without allowing them to do anything about it. And a system with an unhealthy amount of reactivity takes the control of the situation out of the player's hands and puts it in the hands of whomever ends up with the last say.

I'd rather try and set up the framework for a system that has a healthy amount of reactivity. Now a lot of that means building a system that works in most circumstances and then helping smooth out the outlying ones when we get to testing them.

Now, to dive into how I want reactivity to affect this system and how it is in systems I'm familiar with.

In D&D of the various kinds, the reactivity tends to be very low, however characters are usually able to still take charge of most situations. Now, part of the problem in most editions of D&D is that many characters who weren't spellcasters couldn't take control of any situation at higher levels. The other part is that a lot of combat turned into rolling dice against numbers that were already static without any interaction or interplay with those actions, really. There are abilities to hold actions until specific actions taken by opponents, and the ability to react to specific things, but most powers and feats negate that at higher levels and it gets boring as crap.

Now, in a different game (that's actually in a different genera, but it's similar enough to take some pointers from), called Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack (Or Mobile Frame Zero: Alpha Bandit, but that's the expansion on space combat), there is a high amount of reactivity which makes the game enjoyable to be played. The basic premise is that you control a small squad of mecha and so do your opponents -- this being a wargame, your friends are your opponents. The priority favors those who bring just few assets to the fight to go first, but not be at a severe disadvantage. But the reactive part comes when an opponent attacks one of your frames. If you're attacked, immediately you get to react with the frame that is attacked. I enjoy that aspect because it keeps people involved in the game.

My main problem with combat is that it becomes too un-involved in most current systems. So, it needs to become faster-paced so that people's attention stays focused. Unfortunately being more reactive breaks combat flow a bit. However, it keeps people tied to the game, even when it's not their turn. Due to that fact, I'm going to try and find a balance to keeping people involved with by making the system more reactive, and smooth flow to combat.

I'm thinking that defenses will stop being static. While that is really convenient in combat, I think that by making defenses active, I can promote some reactivity. So, now we come to the basic way for you to react to the actions that happen around you. The reaction.

The reaction is a set of actions that you can use off of your turn, mainly when you are attacked, as a defense. For example, deflecting a sword blow with your shield is a reaction. However, so is stalling your air-bike so that you drop below a missile. Most reactions either require a roll that may or may not fail, or they cost vitality, though not as much as actually taking the hit would. And most of these probably don't work with every single circumstance, so they're situational.

This is how I feel that I can take armor and turn it into damage reduction without losing much. Big meathunk guys can wade through hits without really needing to parry and such, and can, instead, take options for their reactions that make them extra powerful at dealing tons of damage, controlling the battlefield, or keeping their allies safe. Lightly armored fighters can have amazing defensive maneuvers that keep them from taking a single scratch. Magicky people can do magicky things and poof stuff.

More will be detailed as I start figuring out the characters' abilities and stuff, but I really think that using this is a step in the right direction.

My New System Post 1 of Part 2: Horizon to Zenith (Combat: Action Economy)

One of the first things that needs to be established before we go delving into much else is the action economy. This is a topic that not only affects combat, but it also affects exploration and musses around with the entire system. The biggest thing I'm going to think about in this post is the combat action economy, and I'll probably address the exploration action economy a bit, but will actually get to the main of that later. This will also probably tie directly into the upcoming post about turns and turn-taking. (Also, this is just to get a basic concept so I can start building the system; it will most likely be modified and/or re-hashed sometime later in development.)

Now, the action economy, for those not in the know, is what kind of actions you can take in what amount of time. Basically, say you only have 6 seconds worth of action in a turn, what can you do in those 6 seconds. In terms of gameplay, this usually talks about what kind of "time cost" there is on each ability. In D&D, everyone has the same turn structure, with different tiers of action. You only get one of this kind of action, one of that kind of action and one of those kind of actions per turn. Some actions cost you both your this and that kinds of action, but leave you able to take one of those kinds of actions. Other systems have used "action points", where every action has a cost and you only get so many action points per turn. When you run out of action points, you can't take any more actions, but if you still have action points left, you can take actions all throughout the turn until the next time you come up in the order and your action points reset.

Honestly, while the former kind of option seems primitive and quaint compared to the cutting edge of the "action points" system, I'm leaning more toward the D&D-esque action economy for simplicity's sake. One of the failings of the"action points" systems that I've played with was that it made people have to put too much time into thinking about their actions before taking them. It slowed combat to a crawl, in the game and in real life, which is the opposite of what I want to happen. However, this doesn't mean I'm going to be ripping off the D&D system entirely. No, I feel like that system could be scrapped and a new, more streamlined system be instituted, and one that fits modern design techniques better, too.

Most of the game could be run through a tiered system of actions. At the top, you have an entire turn, with actions that take the entire turn. Then, the turn needs to be split. Now, I'm not quite sure exactly how to break this down so that players can have enough actions to do what they need, but have few enough actions to keep things running smoothly.

There's one thing that D&D has, which is a tiny slice off of the "Full-turn" actions (I know there's nothing called a full-turn action, but you have the 1 round action [not to be confused with the full round action] which is basically the same idea) giving you various types of "quick", "immediate" or "swift" actions, which take tiny amounts of time and can typically be done freely as a reaction on the enemy's turn. These kind of actions can typically be taken regardless of what other actions you have taken prior. For the initial setup, we are not going to have these as part of the system.

So, let me break down the concept for you:

Full Turn Action

|

      Attack Action -- Movement Action

                                    |

                                    Partial Movement Actions

The Full Turn action, which I may have covered earlier, but enough of that jibber-jabber, is an action that takes the full turn. You use up all movement and attack actions by taking a full turn action. This means that a full turn action would need to make up for the fact that you can't move and can't attack, and would therefore either have to be worth more, but not tons more, or would have to be worth more in a specific situation. (For example, giving an archer or other kind of ranged character an ability that knocks an enemy that's gotten too close for comfort away from the character whilst doing damage to the knocked away enemy.)

The Attack Action (or Attack-Equivalent Action) is the basic action for attacking. As one would expect. The majority of attack actions would be attacks, but a lot of attack-equivalent actions would be actions that are not attacks, but use up your ability to attack in that turn. Things that usually up your damage on the next turn or increase your allies' damage, such as kicking an enemy on its back and immobilizing it until your friends can enact a Mexican hat dance on it.

The Movement Action (or Movement Equivalent Action) can be split into two Partial Movement Actions. Each partial move action allows you to move a certain number of movement squares (the actual distance depends on the scale)and the movement action allows you to move double that amount. Other move equivalent actions or partial move equivalent actions are usually things that allow you to either re-position yourself or your allies, or allow you alternate modes of transportation during a subsequent movement. Things such as growing claws that allow you to cling to walls would be a partial movement equivalent action. Or they're things that need to take up smaller amounts of time and that's a good place to put them.

And lastly, there is the Reaction. Reactions I will talk about in a subsequent post, as I really want to delve into the ramifications of reactions in a system and how to set them up with proper balance.

So, for this time, I will bid you adieu.

My New System Post 1 of Part 1: Dark Tony Hawk Is Born (Design Goals and All that Jazz)

In my earlier post, I talked about making a new pen and paper, dice rolling, tabletop roleplaying game system. So. Here's my general design goals for this project and the thoughts I have behind them. (Most of this will look somewhat similar to what was said last time, but either be more or less vague about it.)

• Combat needs to be quick in real and in-game time
• Combat needs to flow (Rounds need to go by at a constant rate)
• Players need to have a manageable pool of in-combat options to choose from for each turn
• Exploration needs to be interesting
• The Skill system is the basis for Exploration and needs to have good interplay with obstacles
• Players should have tools to deal with their situations
• Classes should be based off of a general concept but allow for variation in role within the concept
• Not every class should be able to take on every role, but every class should be able to take on multiple roles or even hybrid roles as they advance
• Classes should have a central mechanic that fits with the flavor of the class
• Most choices should be made in character creation, allowing for quick decisions and manageable numbers of abilities in exploration and combat

Note that these are some design choices that I'm trying to make for the project in general. I will be mussing with these as I get more into the system and will be creating some design goals for each piece of the project. The main pieces of the project as I see them now are: 1. Combat, 2. Classes, 3. Skills, and 4. Other Options.

While Combat should be the first thing I focus on, there are pieces to combat within the 

system that need to be figured out. These are:

• Action Economy
• What kinds of actions are there and how do they constitute a turn
• Turn Taking
• How is the order determined, and under what circumstances can the order be disrupted
• Defenses
• What constitutes the various defenses and how are they applied
• Attacks
• How do you attack, and what are some ideas for basic kinds of attacks
• Damage
• How is damage calculated and from what sources can it come

So, expect to hear more back when I've got a better idea of what constitutes combat, and feel free to add comments on what you would like to see out of a combat system or how you think one of these topics might work.

Post 1 of Part 1. Part 1 = General Design Goals.

A Ramble: Why I Don't Like Spells (Warning! Disjointed and Pointless!)

I don't like spells. It's not that I don't care for magic, I love magic. What I have a problem with is spells and spell systems. (Most of this ramble is in the context of D&D 3.x and such systems.)

Spells can typically be working into novels and stories just fine. Harry Potter somehow made a system that both had defined rules for its spells and absolutely no limits for its spells, and this captured the imagination and made the story fun, because the characters had to work with the few spells they knew and use their heads to get through the situations they found themselves in. However, when you read things like Dragonlance, or other obviously-based-on-D&D books for that matter, they have to show the massive breadth and depth of the magic system, but it ends up mostly looking like the spellcasters are pulling things out of their hind ends (even when it's written really well).

This can extend into gameplay, especially with divine casters in the 3.x systems. No challenge can stand up to a higher-level (or even not-so-high-level caster sometimes) because they can just bypass the entire thing. Set up a plot point of having a quest for a spear that has the power of the sun so you can subdue a vampire? No need, the Wizard and the Cleric can shoot sunbeams out of their palms. An arduous climb to find a guru who knows where the spear is? No need, a fly spell can get you to the top of the cliff; or even better yet, a scry spell can find the spear without even having to leave the house. There are too many ways for them to bypass everything. Big stone golem boss? Stone to Flesh, and it's  now useless. Big humanoid bad? Flesh to Stone, Stone to Mud. Your big bad is a mud puddle.

Spell systems in roleplaying are overpowered by simple fact of nature. There's no challenge, and there's nothing interesting about playing, except as being a some kind of power trip. Needless to say, I feel that spells in their current state are not good.

Frankly, I feel that my problems with spells come down to two issues. The first: spells allow a person to bypass things that everyone else simply has to deal with. The second: spells screw up combat too much.

I've already spoken a bit about the first problem, but I'm going to say more about it because I can. Now, being able to bypass the exploration system completely isn't completely the magic system's fault. The exploration system is based mostly on the skill system, which, for the most part, feels tacked on and useless. Most of the time, you have one person in your party that can participate in the exploration system to a fair extent, and even then, that person is probably specialized to specific roles. If the exploration system was the main part of D&D, rather than combat being the main part, more characters would be able to take part in it, just as everyone, except the monk if you're past level 5, is able to participate in combat. Characters would have better class abilities aimed at navigating exploration, rather than having a bunch of crap exploration abilities and relying on the skill monkey (until the caster gets his spells) and the caster (after the caster gets his spells) to ostensibly do all of the exploration.

Point is, the exploration system sucks for the majority of people in the party, that's why the caster basically gets ways to negate ever having to deal with the system at all through his or her spells. Spells, in this instance, are just shoring up a crap system. (Now, I'm not saying that the skill system and the exploration system are a crap concept, I'm just saying that the way they were incorporated into D&D was crappy and ruins the entire system.) These spells are only there so you don't need a skill monkey to bypass everything for you and find the easy way out. They are the easy way out.

On the other hand, combat is ostensibly supposed to be the part of the game that everyone lives for. But here come spells again, and they've ran drafty holes through that idea. There's a big problem when spells basically give you an easy out to the part of the game that you're supposedly putting the most time into gearing up for and optimizing around. There's more time spent prepping to make sure you're combat ready in the game, and yet here are a few spells that make that so stupidly simple as a single die roll. Voop! Disintegrated. And end scene. Spells should not allow for alternate win conditions that completely negate what most of your materials in most of your rulebooks and such are for. We came for bloody combat, just give us bloody combat!

And even when they're not completely avoiding combat, spells are still screwing up combat. They screw up combat by giving players too many choices to logically choose from them within a short amount of time. Everyone I've ever played with who has played a caster, pseudocaster or anything like a caster of any kind that has had to deal with spells or psionic powers or whatever, including myself, has always taken ages upon ages upon ages upon ages to sort through and tactically choose what spell would work best. They ruin the combat by providing too many choices to make than is humanly possible to deal with. Perhaps if you could only have a small few spells at any time, people would make these decisions in character creation rather than every round of combat.

Heck, spells even screw with things in-game with combat. If a caster who's suited to buffs just decides to use them on himself rather than his party members, he can often be severely out-preforming a non-caster character in that character's role, even if the character has the same buffs as he does. Why? Because he's got spells to keep himself from failing because of little tricks that the enemy throws at him, unlike the non-caster, who's often S-O-L if somebody does so much as throw sand at his eyes. A caster will have some spell that can give him a loophole, even with the problems thrown at him.

If I sound bitter, it's probably because I am a bit bitter. The notion of unbalanced levels needs to either go by the wayside, or it needs to be presented in a less cruddy way than 3.x has presented it.

In parting, I feel strongly that in 5th Edition D&D, they really need to learn from the mistakes of 3.x. And they also need to learn from the mistakes of 4e, which actually fixed a lot of the problems I had with 3.x. Unfortunately it introduced a host more of them that I have with 4e. (Despite it all, 4e is, objectively, the better designed system.) Also, I may be a bit tired of both the fluff and crunch of the spell-casting systems that we've had in 3.x. I do believe that I'm going to try a much different sort of fluff and crunch in my own system, and people can take it, or they can leave it.

Designing a New Roleplaying System

As many other fellow Roleplayers that I've met online and in person, I am somewhat disgruntled about the systems I've had to work with. Dungeons and Dragons 3.x (Which includes D&D 3.0, 3.5 and Pathfinder), the main system I've dealt with, has some severe problems in balance at all levels, and the entirety suffers from very inelegant design choices. It makes it very hard to do any good homebrewing with the system, as the main body of the system is nearly collapsing under a pile of nitpicky rules that nobody has the time to keep track of and which often conflict with each other or overlap. All of it gets in the way of having fun with the game. Even other versions of  Dungeons and Dragons have their own problems. 4e combat turns into a horrid slog at higher levels. 2nd Edition was confusing to simply carry out basic combat with THAC0 (or that was my experience with it). 5th Edition isn't out, yet. And the others don't represent current-day gaming sensibilities.

So, I've been thinking about how I would be able to design a system that world work for me. So, I've come up with a few points that I've having serious problems with in the systems I'm familiar with, so I can address these problems in a new system.

• The whole magic system in 3.x is wack. (Wiggity-wack)
• Allowing too many options for actions within a single turn mucks everything up and slows down combat to the point where it's painful
• Ranged Combat doesn't integrate very well with Melee Combat balance (Then again, it didn't do so well in real life)
• Part of the problem is the fact that Melee Combat is the basis for the system, and it's abstracted a bit oddly
• Speed of Combat is screwy in both 3.x and 4e
• In 3.x, while technically the combat itself goes quickly, for characters that have classes that don't suck (e.g. Not Fighter and Samurai), there's so many options to sift through each round, and so many implications of how the combat will turn out for each option, that the actual speed of combat slows to a crawl (getting through every character in a half hour is about the average).
• Another problem at higher levels of 3.x, combat devolves to basically throwing nukes at each other and hoping that you make every save and the enemy fails at least one. After the enemy fails one, they're unable to fight, anyway
• Higher level combat in 4e is reminiscent of old and badly made bosses in old and badly made bosses which takes nearly ten-hundred billion turns to kill anything at all. Really quite boring to sit through and takes just as long at a 10-turn combat in 3.x
• In 3.x, there's a high amount of "trap options" which are very, very bad, or they're very, very situational. Unfortunately, there's absolutely no way to tell what's bad, what's situational, and what's actually good in many situations without basically mastering the system, or understanding what bonuses affect what
• This one gets on my nerves, because it would really be easy to note that certain feats, spells or even classes are massively inferior to others in every field, or are simply there to master a single aspect of the system, while other classes master or come close to mastering every aspect of the system
• Adding mounts or other factors in any part of 3.x or 4e seems to massively screw with the balance of the system
• This one I have seemingly had the worst problems with. Adding situations that aren't basic melee combat to the system create huge delays in combat, or are simply left out and forgotten after one or two rounds
• HP seems to be worthless at higher levels of play in both systems
• When a character can take tons of really heavy wounds in a single combat, then the abstraction of HP seems to be really, really odd
• Also, in 3.x, there's the "rocket tag" problem of HP not mattering because people are throwing tons of options that bypass HP around is rather serious at higher levels of play
• Armor adding to your ability to dodge and avoid damage has always confused me
• I've always thought that armor should be more like damage reduction; for example, you can hit the big guy easily, but your hits don't do a lot to him, on the other hand, you can't hit the agile guy at all, but when you do, it hurts him a lot
• Exploration isn't fun, takes time, and often is full of problems that are either impossible without the right skill, or are way too easily bypassed by utility spells
• Though this might be overcome by having good DM's who can make puzzles that have an end goal but not a single solution (sort of like how in Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, they give you rooms in the dungeons that have a general goal, and then you can pretty much do it with any of the tools you bring with you instead of having to have one single tool), a good deal of the blame for this rest on the shoulders of the system. Exploration in 3.x is often miserable or completely avoided at higher levels where scry-teleport strike raids are the best way to do things. Exploration in 4e was simple and avoidable to the point of being stupid. The biggest problem is that the rules make it hard for people to really explore anything.

So, I've taken a few ideas from this ripping apart of systems I've grown tired of, but are still pretty good systems. They've helped me learn more of what I want in a game.  Anyway, here are the points I would like to imbue into this new idea of a system.

• Acknowledgement of an Option's Applications
• Different options should have their intended applications acknowledged in the text that describes them. An option that is intended to help "squishy" characters survive will be noted as originally being intended as such, though it will also be noted that it can be applied in any circumstance where it is useful.
• Non-serious and Serious Damage are Represented Differently
• This isn't going to really solve everything, in fact it'll have it's own problems.
• It allows for characters to have basically an amount of "stamina" -- or vitality, which is what I'm probably going to call it -- which is them barely dodging blows, taking scrapes or bruises, etc. 
• This "stamina" allows for environmental factors to affect it, making the characters less able to defend against serious blows.
• It makes more sense for characters with healing abilities to be able to "revitalize" other characters in combat, rather than healing a severed limb or gut wound in combat. This works with a lot of the "second wind" abilities that don't necessarily use magical healing, as you're basically just giving another character the will to fight on.
• Some special abilities cost stamina, making it a resource for characters that choose options which drain it. This makes it useful for them to have minor "revitalization" abilities to keep themselves from getting shredded.
• It allows for characters to take severe damage along the lines of "wounds", which could cause some conditions which would make it easier to simply back out of the thick of combat for a bit while you tie up that massive gash in your leg and get "revitalized" by your buddies, then wade back into combat.
• The biggest way I see this going wrong is if characters aren't given any way to retreat when damaged, especially guys whose abilities are mainly for bringing the heat down on them. This would cause people to get damaged once, probably from luck, and then they would keep taking damage from the debuffs associated with getting seriously wounded.
• Being seriously wounded causes some debuffs depending on how many times you've been hit within so many rounds. This goes up to being knocked unconscious or losing a limb.
• Running out of wounds causes you to die. And then you're dead.
• Classes are Not Tied to a Role
• Players are not thrust into a specific role by choosing a class for their character. Each class should be able to take on multiple (not all) roles. They would have to specialize into a role, or they would have to take bits and pieces of each specialization available to them. 
• Optimally, this should have each class have a basic ability, and then each "branch" of options for the class should modify the ability so it's used differently for each of them.
• Suboptimally, this would add different abilities for each "branch", allowing the class to fulfill the role.
• Honestly, these two will probably come to a middle ground of having a basic ability with some modification and then some auxiliary abilities which can be used alongside the main ability.
• In-Combat Options are Limited
• Keeping Characters from having overly inflated numbers of options to choose from per action in each turn will help combat run more smoothly. A character should have something around 3-4 abilities he or she can use at basically any time, with another 1-2 that are available in the situation he's facing, instead of having to choose between hundreds of Powers, Spells, etc. or tens of Combat Maneuvers and such things. Point is, there's too many choices to make in a single round.
• The balance to strike here is giving everyone the tools they need to deal with situations that are going to come up without crowding up the number of options available. When a new combat option is introduced in a character's repertoire, it should be a huge game changer and a huge indication of progress (i.e. Achieving the "second stage" of development, or acquiring a hard to enter Prestige Class).
• The combat options for each character should mainly come from their Classes, and these should be modified by the class "branches" and by perks/feats (whatever they're called).
• Weapons, Armor and Other Tools are Simpler to Apply
• Weapons, and the weapon proficiencies of characters, are to be streamlined and made slightly more modular. Weapons themselves are to be created in a modular point-buy system, so that people can have the effects they want from the weapons they get. Weapon proficiencies are to be by Proficiency Groups of kinds of weapons that are used in similar ways (i.e. all pole weapons used to stab are in the same Proficiency Group, as the techniques they use are all the same or very similar).
• Weapons being created in a modular system is something I've wanted for a while, but might be hard to pull off. It does mean that two handaxes might not work the same, but then again, not every handax is equal. Yes, it means you can purposefully handicap players with gear that doesn't match their level, but that's a jerk move. The basic idea is that you'd be able to create what you need. You need a spear that does all the damage? You got it. What if you're more tanky? A spear that has properties that help you use your abilities to keep enemies at a distance and not let them get up in your friends' grill is more your style. So, you pick the category, the type of weapon, and then use the rest of the points to buy abilities or damage. 
• Weapon proficiencies would be grouped into how the weapon is used. So a hacking weapon, like an ax or a khopesh would be in the same group, because they work generally the same and you use similar forms and techniques. Your class will generally have suggested proficiency groups. The weapons from these groups are typically found with the bonuses that help your class preform its abilities better.
• Armors and armor proficiencies are similar to the changes with weapons and weapon proficiencies. Armors and their attributes are now in a modular point-buy system. Armor proficiencies are grouped by type of armor, though this is not much different than the "Heavy, Medium, Light" armor proficiencies of D&D, except with slightly more delineation, due to the new modularity of the armor creation system.
• The biggest changes to armor is that you now have the armors created in a modular system, and that armor is treated as damage reduction instead adding to the ability to dodge damage. The modular system allows you to pick a proficiency group, and then spend points in attributes and damage reduction.
• Proficiency Groups, while still being thought through, might be slightly more or less complex than D&D's system, depending on how things turn out. I'll have to get back to you after I think about it.
• Among other tools, Mounts need to be streamlined a ton. Mounted combat of all sorts (from horses to dragons to flying diesel-powered jet bikes) will be more fully integrated into the typical combat system.
• Mounted combat is confusing as all get out; you add the actions of the mount, except when you move together and.... Yeah. It just gets more complicated after that. So, instead I've been thinking about how to simplify mounts to the point where the information you need for them can be put on an index card alongside your character sheet, and it wouldn't dramatically increase the number of actions your character has.
• Exploration tools are very hard to keep track of in D&D, especially 3.x -- And all the others, too, but especially 3.x --, where tracking the weight and uses of every single thing you happen to have on you is the third-most time-consuming thing in the game (topped only by leveling up and deciphering the grappling rules). To simplify this is going to take a bit of work, most likely the creation of kits, where you have all the supplies you would likely take on an adventure, minus a few big things that cost too much and would have to be bought separately, and you just keep it topped off every time you visit a market, rather than truly having to keep track of what's really going on with your inventory.
• I know some people actually like having an inventory, but, frankly, it's not fun for 99% of people who play roleplaying games. So, instead, you just need to have a few kits for the things you think that you'll need to do. This needs a bit more thought than what I've currently put into it.
• Exploration is Engaging and Fun
• Well, this is a bold claim, but I hope to make Explortaion into a much more engaging and stimulating by re-evaluating the skills and streamlining the system so it's understandable and works correctly. That's going to take more thinking and work than I've got in me currently.

Well, I think that's enough thinking about that for now. We'll get back to this when I've got more think in me. Any suggestions on what else I need to think about would be appreciated, and I will also try to explain more about how the system will work in the next post. So. Stuff and stuff.