Anyone have ideas on their perfect game system?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
PolarBlues said:
If find making your own system is an effective way of "finding" a system that suits your own, peronal needs and preferences.

It also really, really hard work.
Click to expand...

DanDareGM said:
Oh yeah. I pulled in my expertise in lean development, which helps but is no pannacea. I wish I had a team to work with but alas, at the moment its just me. Working on an SRD slowly when my real job leaves me the time and energy. I intend to use the ORC to open that up.
Click to expand...
I feel you both...


And there's a reason why I haven't started work on turning my 25 or so "likes" in systems into a system that stands on its own:shade:.
 
AsenRG said:
I feel you both...


And there's a reason why I haven't started work on turning my 25 or so "likes" in systems into a system that stands on its own:shade:.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Fortunately I saw it through and did eventually complete "my system" (which is just a Fudge hack). It's got plenty of play since, so all good, but there were times I questioned my sanity while I was working on it! :smile:
 
Acmegamer said:
I really like Savage Worlds, though I've never had a chance to play or run in a long running campaign with it. I've often wondered how that plays out. Or is Savage Worlds better for short running campaigns and one shots?
Click to expand...

My group is 4.5 years into a Savage Worlds Adventure Edition campaign and it's still working fine.
 
Hmmm
A perfect system...?
  • Maybe something simple and clean like Black Sword Hack
  • Core characteristic focused - six Characteristics.
  • Using percentile dice for core mechanic (as opposed to D20)
  • No Character Classes, but include some suggestions on how to build typical character Archetypes if desired
  • Personality/Motivation/Passions traits
  • Instead of a sprawling Skills list, I'ld prefer something like 13th Age style Backgrounds - typically three to five Backgrounds
  • Include a Talent/Feat system, but it needs to be trimmed to begining PCs only having one or two trademark talents/feats
  • Add Hit Locations and piece-meal Armour.
  • Armour reduces damage.
  • Combat has combatants making opposed Attacker Rolls vs opponents Defence Rolls (Dodging, Parrying, etc)
  • Have levels of impairment instead of a Hit Point tally (perhaps like Storyteller or Zweihander)
  • Add a Luck Point mechanic, which can be throttled according to tone and genre
  • Character sheet needs to look not much more complex than a Black Sword Hack character sheet
Hopefully something that hums mid-way between Black Sword Hack and RuneQuest/Mythras/ZH/WFRP
This is the game I want to run!
 
Last edited:
My incomplete list would include things like the following::honkhonk:!

  1. An intuitive dice system that doesn't require me to make calculations before rolling (alas, that pretty much disqualifies dicepools with large numbers of dice).
  2. Support for social combat but not requiring it.
  3. As above, for Passions.
  4. Both critical and crit fail leading to fun results, doubly so in combat.
  5. Weapons having less variation in damage, but more variation in how much they aid/hinder your attack or defense.
  6. A pool of actions that depends on skill, with multiple actions raising your odds of success, overloading the enemy's defense (akin to the combat pool in TRoS and Codex Martialis, the multiple actions in Qin and the action points in Mythras).
  7. Doing interesting stuff with initiative/counterattack and not requiring the "I go, you go" sequence (see: Overextend, Riposte and Continuous Attack in Mythras, and the initiative in TRoS, and rolling Initiative for Focus in Myriad Song).
  8. Defense being active, rolled, and beating the attack leading to potentially interesting stuff (from Mythras special effects to Counterattack in Myriad Song and maneuvers like Block Open in TRoS).
  9. Magic systems that ape historical magic and fantasy and not D&D, see instead Animism/Theism in Mythras, Demon Summoning in Stormbringer, magic in Sigil & Shadow, Codex Superno...
  10. Damage being not-HP based, having Status Effects instead (I treat Mythras locations as a "delayed status effect save", instead), whether specific as in Zenobia and TRoS or abstract as in Myriad Song and Blue Planet v2 is a matter of taste.

As you can note, that list pretty much means that the best way to adapt D&D to my tastes would involve rewriting the whole system (or taking it out and mercifully shooting it in the back of the head, then starting from a new base, which I see as a cleaner solution:gooseshades:).
 
Perfect game system.
Click to expand...

The "perfect" game system is one that annoys me the least. It needs to be intuitive, provide a framework, and then gets the hell out of my way when it needs to.

There isn't a single, perfect Rpg system that I would use, because I like some variation between the genres of campaigns I run. I wouldn't use the same system for Fantasy, Scifi, and Horror, because I want different experiences and different mechanical results from each.
 
AsenRG said:
An intuitive dice system that doesn't require me to make calculations before rolling (alas, that pretty much disqualifies dicepools with large numbers of dice).
Click to expand...
My game has a dice pool of d20s, between 5 and 8 get rolled. However we live in a digital age so there is no need for the player to do any calculating: https://util-space-one.w3spaces.com/augdiceroller-v5.html
Works fine on a phone, although I have one player who insists on the physical dice because he says he likes the feel of it.

Anyway the advantage I get is that the inputs (difficulty of the task and aptitude of the actor) can be made up reasonably easy on the fly, and the results are graded into: Disaster, Miserable Failure, Failure, Success, Extra Success and Incredible Success. Its a great deal of fun running games with this for the GM and the other players even without the other systems in the rules.
 
E-Rocker said:
I'm pleasantly surprised that there are more Savage Worlds fans here than I realized.

I've yet to meet my perfect system, and doubt I ever will, but Savage Worlds is the closest that I've come.
Click to expand...
Yeah...I can handily use it for multiple genres, have a strong idea of how to bend it when and where I need to for most things, and actively enjoy it in play.

I read - and sometimes run - other games, but Savage Worlds is generally close enough to perfect for me, at least for the last 15 years.
 
DanDareGM said:
My game has a dice pool of d20s, between 5 and 8 get rolled. However we live in a digital age so there is no need for the player to do any calculating: https://util-space-one.w3spaces.com/augdiceroller-v5.html
Works fine on a phone, although I have one player who insists on the physical dice because he says he likes the feel of it.
Click to expand...
Oh, sure, you can get probabilities from an app or site. But you still need to use the app, instead of looking at your modified score and knowing them:thumbsup:.

DanDareGM said:
Anyway the advantage I get is that the inputs (difficulty of the task and aptitude of the actor) can be made up reasonably easy on the fly, and the results are graded into: Disaster, Miserable Failure, Failure, Success, Extra Success and Incredible Success. Its a great deal of fun running games with this for the GM and the other players even without the other systems in the rules.
Click to expand...
And there can very well be other advantages, too!

In the best of worlds, we'd have both, though...:gooseshades:
 
Okay, so as I'm thinking about it I want Rolemaster Standard System character creation but with a third dimension to the skill category system so you can represent things like the relationship between language and cooking and culture lores. I also want a linear bonus scheme so there is no advantage to maximizing a single stat. I want Spell Law but I want the spell lists to have a spell for each level up to fifty. I think by thirtieth level the magic should be easily on par with D&D magic at tenth level. For combat I want weapons to have a fractional multiplier for different attacks and maneuvers so, like "all in thrust +1/2" for foils or "all in swing +1/2" for axes. The attack tables are pretty good but I really think they should cut it back to maybe a dozen armor types with the amount of coverage affecting the critical results. That way we can put in insulation and kevlar on to all the charts and not need the cludges of modifying tables to reflect modern and advanced armour. There will be a Mundane Law book that covers mystery, investigation, legal, social, and medical game play in detail.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top