Would anyone be interested in a fast paced, universal rpg system that is based around realism while staying simple?

Would anyone be interested in a fast paced, universal rpg system that is based around realism while staying simple?

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yes

I'm making one
Rn it's called Lamentum and I've been playtesting it with friends, it's been going well

>realism
the dumb kind or the dumb kind?

Care to post what you have? I can always appreciate a new system for one-shots.

AFMBE
they ya go

I dont want to post the whole manual because I want to make this legit and I dont have any legal protection, but it has locational damage, sanity, ailments, carry weight, dodging
It's a d20 system that doesn't have DCs, instead you are always rolling towards 20 by adding skill modifiers to rolls.

So how do you account for varying difficulties of actions?

That doesn't sound fast paced or simple, and your reluctance to post what you have makes me think that it's garbage.

number of rolls and skills involved in the action. Skills are more based off character abilities and what the GM deems reasonable.

I dont want to post it because I think it's really good and want to keep it out of circulation untiI it's my intellectual property

You do know that we're going to steal it anyway, right? Well, if it ever comes out and you're not full of shit. Which I suspect you are.

Im going to put the pdfs on the website for free
why are you being such a dick about this?

>number of rolls and skills involved in the action.
That would account for the differing capacities of characters, but how do you account for differences in the difficulty of actions? Especially for characters with low skills, how do you differentiate between the act of something like picking a flimsy lock vs picking a very intricate lock, if the condition for success is always trying to roll a value of at least 20?

>Skills are more based off character abilities and what the GM deems reasonable.
If the GM has the ability to arbitrate the influence of character skills, isn't that just a DC by another name?

Because you're being phenomenally stupid and I have very little patience for that sort of thing. Now post your shit or get out.

>Flimsy lock vs picking a very intricate lock
I'm still working on small stuff like this, but I'm thinking of having checks being made several times to complete the action.

>...DC by another name?
to determine if a player is even allowed to check for something, like jumping 100 feet in the air or charming a king to give up his whole kingdom.

GURPS?

I think I'm being very reasonable and making it very clear why I'm not posting it

do you have any questions about the state of the system or the actual mechanics?

I played gurps and didn't like the 3d6 system and thought it went too far in the realism aspect

>Hey guys I've made the holy grail of RPGs
>No I won't post it
Is this bait?

It's not finished and I don't want it in circulation until it's my intellectual property

How would I build Luke Skywalker, Bilbo Baggins, and the Hulk in your system?

Then don't post about it on Veeky Forums?

This doesn't seem very difficult.

>realism
>simple
choose one

I have a shadowrun-like d6pool shitty homebrew I use for mechanics, while I just fake the realism (dice fall how they may, but the flavor text's adhering to realism as much as it can).

It's a very shitty system that's basically only good for 2-3 session diablo-clones (megadungeon included) and nothing else.

>having checks being made several times to complete the action.
Again, this seems like more pseudo-DC. If a low-skill character has to make multiple rolls to succeed, it's leading to a very similar outcome of a system which incorporates DC. The lack of variable DC in your system may also restrict the freedom of GMs to express difficulty beyond the range of 1-20.

>to determine if a player is even allowed to check for something
And if the GM has the authority to deny or outright fail a player's attempts based on their assessment of the situation, rather than through rigid mechanical comparison, you may have players feeling as though the agency of their characters is being restricted.

>Luke
High fitness and focus then put points into gymnastics and melee skills

>Bilbo
High perception, Fitness and intuition then put points into charm and stealth

>Hulk
Fitness and Brawn, then put points into unarmed

In it's current state there isnt a magic system but Ill probably make a universal magic system and then different ones if I get the oppurtunity to make different settings

I would like to ask why you thought it was a good idea to waste everyone's time with your literal nothing system.

I would also like to question what you think intellectual property means. Because I don't think it means what you think it means.

I'm just getting the word out before I get the kickstarter and website up

its advertising 101: have an audience before release

>fitness and brawn
What about science skills?

utterly retarded assumption that you can lay claim to a series of dice rolls aside, has the right idea

Yeah but now I can't be interested out of spite.

Congrats mate, you've alienated your audience by playing a cocktease. Reasonable or not, that's how this site works.

Fucking newfags need to lurk moar.

>Hey guys, I have this super cool thing that I want to give you!
>Cool, can we see it?
>NOOOOOOO IT'S NOT READY!!!!

You're a piss poor advertiser. If you actually took a class for this shit then I'd have your teacher beaten with a goddamn rope.

How would the airport fight scene from Captain America: Civil War play out in the system? If you're not familiar with the movie, just imagine a battle between two teams of 5 superheroes of your choice.

>Choose one
I'm trying to strike a nice balance

I think you are giving too much credit to DCs. In this there is no arbitrary number that gets made up by the GM, characters that focus on certain skills are marginally better than characters that don't focus on them and the players always understand what they are rolling towards.
That being said, characters have armor class but they have seperate armor classes for static defense, bolstered defense, dodging and retreating.

From what I understand, it means no one can take my system and monetize it or claim any ownership without my permissio but once it comes to legal stuff I'm going to learn more about it

>this is a hard lock. You need to roll 5 times
>pass pass pass fail
>quick and easy

>fast
>universal
>simple
>able to model realism
Give me one reason I should use your system over FATE.

>nice balance

yeah right; listen here you pretty boi, your system can either be complex or simple, focused or wide. You have more burning questions to tend to, like how'd you like to make money off your product; splatbooks? editions? Making RPGs doesn't make much money, so this better be a fun hobby for you and not much else. If you wanna make a small, simple system, it should be as small as possible. One page games are the best product here. If you want to go simple+wide, you're gonna have to copy GURPS, and they have a lot of manpower behind their books and rules. If you wanna go complex and focused, that's D&D; the only thing D&D does well is D&D.
Complex and wide is a horrible monster that maybe only FATAL does.
Wide, unfocused systems are really hard to do; have you published before? How successful were you?

Now, for the "how much realism", you godda decide how your game does health damage, disease, fatigue, stress, and other "actor is out of action" parameters. D&D is "if HP==0 then unconscious", Shadowrun's wounds make characters roll less dice...
When you have a nice list of things that can fuck an actor over, you can work on how that actor fucks others over, be it with focused fire, double taps, stuns, wide swings, cleaves, magic, full auto fire from a variety of different calibers, barrel lengths, powder charges or fire rates... You're not giving any info about what you're working with, and you'll get haphazard advice.

The target number is 20 . That's the dc.
If you have to roll 20 3 times . Then that's a success dc, like in shadow run.
If the skills are D20 vs 20. Then each skill point is 5% increase in chance not marginally . Depending on how many skills points you can put into somthing. It may make skills useless.

Quick and easy, but has 4 check to see if hits.

You should play somthing other then dnd before writing your own system. And I'm not anit dnd like most people are on here.

max 3 rolls I'm thinking

Sorry I couldn't pique your interest

I'm trying to advertise to Veeky Forums because I feel like reddit normally gets all the news from startups because it's a safer site. Veeky Forums is also daunting to advertisers because it has a valtile community, but I think if you give them a quality product they will rally behind it.

I'm sorry I couldn't give you the manual but I have legitimate reasons for keeping it under wraps right now. Treat this more as a dev AMA.

Tech and medical

>Treat this more as a dev AMA.
Dev for what though? There's a reason people don't usually do shit like this until they have a product to show off.

Stop posting, lurk some more, you fucking faggot.

current plan is to make money off of patreon, advertising and donations. I'm going to make a kickstarter to pay for legal aspects, web design, editor, and artists

The current major flaw I can see is that the system only accomodates humanoids.

I've GMd GURPS, Star wars: EOTE, Dnd 3.5, 5e, and call of cthulhu and I'm taking my favorite aspect from each one and building a system with them in mind

>3 d20 checks for a hard task
Still not quick or easy mate.

>I think you are giving too much credit to DCs.
As a method of allowing GMs to demonstrate variable difficulty in the context of their own games, while allowing for the influence of skills, items, and situational advatages/disadvantages, there really is no better way to square mechanical simplicity with as much realism as desired. From the outset, you seemed to indicate that was what you were going for.


>In this there is no arbitrary number that gets made up by the GM
I think we need more info on how your system works, because you've alluded to the GM deciding that extra rolls might have to be made, or that they may not even have the opportunity to roll, which -is- arbitration on the GMs part, unless you're also going to provide a near-limitless list of difficulty scenarios in your rulebook.

user here reiterates some of the issues, especially with low-skill characters. Low-skill characters need to be able to succeed, which means hit a value of 20, but also need to be differentiated from high-skill characters.

Doing something like this:
isn't a very elegant solution, as it's just piling on additional rolls, when one could have simplified the whole process with a single roll plus skill/situation modifiers. Sums aren't hard.

>Calls it a Dev AMA
>Only responds to half the questions
Alright

Ok. But how's are you advertising anything. There is no info, no name. Nothing. I don't care about system, but even if I did. I wouldn't even know what to look for,

+ why you kickstaring m what do you need?

>make money off of patreon, advertising and donations.
Why? Doesn't seem like you have an actual working system. Did you playtest it? I've been playtesting my shit for 4 years and I'm not gonna publish it for money.

>The current major flaw I can see is that the system only accomodates humanoids.
This is kinda fucked up, you seem like you have quite a long way to go.

I'm the Dev for the system I'm building
I'm not trying to kill you with kindness or anything here, I'm genuinely trying to spread awareness for the system and you may be irreversibly turned off but I want you to know I think this system is fun to play and good for many settings, but if you want to hate it before you've seen it you are free to do so

But the system isn't OUT yet. We have no reason to believe it'll ever even get finished, or that it'll be any good once it is.

>universal rpg
Fuck no, rpgs are complex and varied enough that I can get my fix for whatever genre/aesthetic i want. I don't understand why people ever want a universal system

This.

You've provided us a name and some vague machanics, that's it. I've watched systems with way more going for them than that fail horribly, there is absolute NO REASON for me or anyone else in this thread to assume your ideas have any merit.

That makes you pretty shit at your job as a marketer, and I mean it with the best intentions when I say you need to cut this short and come back when you have an actual product to show.

thats just what I'm thinking about, that is not the final system at all, that was just the first thing that came to mind

Multiple rolls wuld be a rare thing if in the system at all, if a character has a skill of 8 in gymnastics and they want to jump or climb they will succeed on the roll of a 12 or above

>thats just what I'm thinking about, that is not the final system at all
Please come back when you have an actual system. If your system can't handle tasks of varying difficulty, it's not a system.

The word is "volatile" mate, work on your English or get someone to look it over for you

Second post in the thread, It's called lamentum, I didn't want to do heavy handed advertising because I'd probably get more shit than I'm already getting

I'm planning on slightly modifying health to accomodate quadrapeds and other things, but the limbs are really the only thing that needs to be modified
This is true, but now at least 15 more people know about it than when I started the thread

So to climb a 5 foot wall or a wet cliff in the they have 60% chance of failing

>all advertising is good advertising meme
Fuck off.

if its something incredibly minor, then you don't need to roll

>if a character has a skill of 8 in gymnastics and they want to jump or climb they will succeed on the roll of a 12 or above
So once again, how does that account for differences in the difficulty of those jumps or climbs? Leaping over a narrow stream vs a substantially wider chasm? Climbing a slight grade vs a precariously sheer cliff face? Is the extent of one's ability outlined int he skills themselves? A value between x and y equating to a certain qualitative abstraction? You need rigidly defined quantitative limits if you want to meet your mandate of a "realistic" system.

I have to agree.
Because multiple people are finding the same flaws within moments of hearing about your system and its mechanics.

people also have pointed out potential problems, now I can sort out even more mechanics
>yes this thread is an utter failure in creating interest, but I'm trying to stay positive and professional

>This is true, but now at least 15 more people know about it than when I started the thread
No we fucking don't. All we have to go on is some dumb name and vague descriptions of mechanics that aren't even set in stone yet. You haven't given us anything to remember except for your unbridled faggotry. I guarantee you that every user in this thread will forget about this within the hour, two tops. You've given us nothing because you have nothing.

So to climb a cliff or a wet cliff while being shot at they have a 60% chance of failing?

Define "incredibly minor". Is that up to the GM's discretion? Difficulty is relative to the skill of an individual. Does a skill 15 character still have to roll for something that a skill 1 character would?

>people also have pointed out potential problems, now I can sort out even more mechanics
It's beginning to sound like you haven't sorted out -any- mechanics, and that your thread was more about asking how one -would- go about building a universal system which squared simplicity with realism. And as others have pointed out, you generally can't.

I have playtested a couple campaigns and this problem never arose, in roleplaying, I've found focusing on slight differences ends up being more of a nusiance than anything

The system has ended up focusing more on party composition so when specialized get somewhere they will assist the rest of the party in getting there

All I want is grid based and tactical with lots of options, while not becoming too abstracted where it hampers the freedom of RPGs.

yes
in the context of other rpgs, this adding up to 20 system sounds too static to work, but trust me, it simplifies minute aspects of gameplay and lets the party focus on executing actions quickly
while being at incorporates a character's focus and a wet clif will force them to make a brawn check to hold onto the cliff ontop of a gymnastics check

>realism
>simple

I don't believe.

You was the one who alieneted the people.
He is building a rule set, upon which other games can be built. At least thats what i understood.

It looks like I'll have it in it's completed first draft in a month and release the basic rules even earlier, depending on how long copyrighting takes

but is was simple enough for a group of 10 first-time rpg players to understand, play and have fun

There will be a universal system and if the kickstarter is successful, Ill modify it for different settings and build optional systems and try to make an easily editable character sheet so people can change it to fit into their specific setting

Lets assume, that i'm interested, what kind of licence type will you use? Buy it and use it type or CC?

>I have playtested a couple campaigns and this problem never arose
You never encountered the problem of obstacles of various difficulties? How extensive were your playtests? Please outline the events that you've run your test players through. Was it limited to low-skill, early gameplay? Have you tested an ongoing game from low to high skill levels?

>The system has ended up focusing more on party composition so when specialized get somewhere they will assist the rest of the party in getting there
It's sounds like all you have is a character creator with no consideration for how your skills actually function. I also can't tell if your test characters have overlapping skills, which may also be limiting your exposure to how characters of differing skill levels operate.

>in the context of other rpgs
You've described this as a "universal" RPG. If it can't accommodate something as basic as varying difficulty, or provide alternative solutions which even -you- haven't been able to succinctly outline as of yet, then why would anyone play it?
>lets the party focus on executing actions quickly
So far nothing you've proposed has been quicker of more simple than a single roll against a determined DC with the influence of situational modifiers.
In any other RPG, this situation would call for a single roll with the potential for a negative modifier due to being shot at. In your proposed system, as seen here:
You require at least two rolls and the incorporation of a "focus" character stat beyond their skill modifier. How is that simpler or faster?

If you actually believe in the voracity of your system, outline its mechanics; because so far it's not clear to anyone here how it actually operates. Or are you clinging to it as a gimmick that you think will set it apart? because I can guarantee nobody would adopt such a system that is repeatedly being shown to complicate action resolution when it purports to promote speed and simplicity.

...

Game design wise, what is the minimum number of separate stats that are necessary to convey a different-enough options for the player?
From like two ends of the spectrum, on the low end a Hearthstone Card, and on the high end, I dunno GURPS or HERO system or something.

CC, but I'm also going to make my own website for it

Making a kickstarter. Oh boy, where should i start... Considering the scams on kick, mentioning this was a really bad idea.

>what is the minimum number of separate stats that are necessary to convey a different-enough options for the player?
10

I haven't tested a long-term game, but incorporating different checks into a single action proved to work amazingly. overlapping skills is a non-issue, it just means that there are more character that are individually capable of that action.
2 rolls is not faster, but it means that players understand what their characters are capable of immediately without the GM coming up with a number in their head and telling players to roll for it.
You have 5 traits that will effect players' skills and there are 8 standard skills and 5 combat skills making a ton of combinations

OP here
Thanks for all the feedback. I'll be back as soon as I have a fully playable manual. If you've been turned off I hope you'll keep an open mind, this system will not dissapoint you.

I am still taking questions, If I did not respond to your comment I apologize.

what's the name of your magnum opus?

Working title is Lamentum
I thought this was going to be the final title, but the reception on here was awful so I'll probably change it

Op again
I'll be back in a few minutes

I agree, you should remove an n from the title

Im back

Lametum?

He was calling it lame_tum
Testing on new roleplayers is not the best idea. How will they know if it's pants or not?

I also tested it on seasoned players
I was using that example to highlight its simplicity

For what its worth, I've had a much easier time playing games with more realism (as in attention to detail and what seem like plausible outcomes in the world) playing rules light games like Dogs In The Vineyard when everyone's on the same page theme wise than with games that try to simulate the world via mechanics. A flexible degrees of success system that doesn't have many modifiers to stack and players who can talk things over with an interest in depicting outcomes rather than winning a game works well.

That's basically what I built the system on, except you can add a lot of modifiers if you like. The energy and sanity systems are very loose and have guidelines in the manual but ultimately operate at the discretion of the GM

I'd be wary of modifiers mostly because if you have too many things to stack it tends to get pointless. If the players get enough things in their favour I'd just skip the roll and go forward, if they're fucked and we're playing with a focus on realism I'm not going to see if they roll a nat20, they're just fucked. But I'm a big fan of not rolling for things if its not critically important.

>D20

Why use such a terrible core mechanic?

Because it's cherished and time honored gamer tradition, like Mountain Dew and Funco Pop and PAX

>Would anyone be interested in water that is not wet?
Every time I see someone advertising a system that's realistic/in-depth and also simple/fast-paced, I have to wonder which part they're bullshitting about. Simple, fast-paced mechanics necessitate some level of abstractness which clashes with the promised realism or in-depth nature, to say nothing of the universal nature requiring fast, simple, realistic mechanics for damn-near everything. I have yet to see a system that successfully pulls off all three extremes without sacrificing SOMETHING.

That being said, I hope you're the first to do it, because it'd be nice if such a system did exist.

>youtube.com/watch?v=fS7qb6lbZuo&feature=youtu.be&t=16

Most people who play rpgs or want to play rpgs are famaliar with d20s and like it

what's wrong with d20s?

during playtests, there were rarely modifiers, unless they were in combat. A good example of a modifier that showed up was a player was in a car chase with the police at night and he wanted to fire at one of the pursuers so he had to pass an operate check to keep the vehicle under control and marksman check to fire, the cops had to do the same.

Oh good. Another "My system is super fast can do anything and is hyper realistic just watch and see" person.

Hey OP? You ever designed a game before? Here's my two cents assuming you aren't a troll.

Make a game based around a premise first. Don't worry about whether or not it can cover ALL TYPES OF GAMES just concern yourself with whether or not it can do ONE THING well. Trust me chances are your game's not gonna be any better than anyone's shitty homebrew at whatever the fuck you think it can do so it's best to pick a unique premise and go from there.

>what's wrong with d20s?

To put it simply:

You have an equal chance of rolling a 20 on a d20 as you do a 1.

Compared to say, 3d6 where you have a significantly better chance of rolling an 11 than you do an 18.

not super fast or hyper realistic but it takes realistic things like hunger, sanity and locational armor/damage into account and makes them simple.

I'm starting with a universal system so that it's accessible to anyone who wants to play it and has a vision for a unique campaign in any setting. If my kickstarter is successful I plan on making seperate settings that modify the system to be better tailored to them. My idea for the first setting is based off nausicaa and the valley of the wind and the second would be more generic fantasy

That's an awful example. Instead, argue that you have an equal chance of rolling a 20 (an extremely good result) as you do a 10 (the most normal/"average" result). You're just as likely to do middle-of-the-road mediocre as you are super-awesome (or super awful).

I would rank my dice prefrances as
>d6 success
>d6 add
>diffrent dice, highest
>d 100 roll over
>D20 roll over
>d 100 roll under
>D20 roll under ( I know people like palladium. Just can't get on with it. )

you're right!
but a d20 is more familiar to people, I kicked around the idea of doing something different than d20 but I've played gurps and most people just find it to be weird and intimidating, which is something that I need to consider if I plan on monetizing.

I made a small rpg system in highschool that I played with my friends. It was functional but nothing to write home about

> it takes realistic things like hunger, sanity and locational armor/damage into account

Yea see here's the thing: just because those things exist doesn't make their inclusion "realistic" unless you go full on narrativist "it happens cause things are justified in the narrative" sense.

I've seen plenty of hunger/sanity systems fail because people wind up starving to death when they travel 10 miles away from town (note: that generally doesn't happen unless you're already starving) and sanity systems where encountering a slightly bizarre dog turns normally healthy people into scitophrenics because ???

Also unless there's a good reason for them to be there it's probably just gonna be pointless bookeeping that nobody cares about. A superhero action game for instance isn't gonna give a damn how hungry someone is (I mean it might if it's like a shonen anime series) but as a whole that's just bookeeping nobody's gonna pay attention too.

>I'm starting with a universal system so that it's accessible to anyone who wants to play it and has a vision for a unique campaign in any setting

Dude... I hate to break it to you... there's a loooot of games like that. A lot. Unless you're offering something more than "simplicity" like an ACTUAL MECHANIC THAT'S UNIQUE AND INTERESTING people are gonna pass on it to play GURPS or HERO or something.

You're entering into a saturated market and are not selling me on anything that other games already don't have.

>but a d20 is more familiar to people

That's because people are most familiar with D&D and guess what? People who play D&D aren't gonna play your game. They're just gonna hack D&D.