Well, I haven't yet tackled that issue, but it did give me an idea for something new instead - a game system where magic was the central theme, where it could be bent and changed on a whim, where everything was customizable - from the damage that the spell did, to the effects that the spell had. I then took it a step further - what if it was possible to super-power those spells temporarily, at great risk to the caster? Isn't that the stuff that stories are made of, trading terrible power at the expense of one's health?
From that was born Wildly Inadvisable. It's a bit unwieldy to get into at first, but one of my major inspirations for it was a homebrew d10 system that a friend of mine helped create: the To Aru no Railgun RPG. Weeaboo as it might be, I thought it made for an interesting base system that really appealed to some of my inclinations - a simple, single dice-roll system. The one thing I disliked was that it was a d10 Roll Under system - meaning that you roll the die, and subtract the result from your relevant stat ability for a total number that is your 'margin of success'. The reason I dislike it is because defenses are much the same way - whoever has the greater margin of success wins.
But knowing that the people I game with are extremely phobic of THAC0 (and let's face it, this isn't that much different from that very same model), I wanted to try to stick with something that didn't cap at 20 for every stat. I wanted a model that had no real ceiling, but which at some point, that ceiling becomes pointless to attempt to exceed. Instead of a d10 Roll Under, I'd make it something a bit easier to grasp and utilize: the d10 Add system.
Essentially, the d10 Add system is just like how the d20 system operates - roll the die, add the skill modifier, and whoever has the highest number wins. Simple, easy to grasp, and doesn't require two different mathematical operations.
Once I figured out that was the way I wanted to go, I made a list in my head of everything I wanted the system to do.
- I wanted something that was lightweight and easy to pick up
- I wanted something that would be quick to play, with as few die rolls as possible
- I wanted a high-stakes combat system that allowed for a great deal of badassery to occur
- I wanted a system that allowed you to customize nearly any attribute
It was an ambitious project, but it wasn't the first time I'd attempted to create a gaming system - I'd learned from many of my previous mistakes for the first time I tried something along these lines. Knowing that the entire game would hinge around magic, I had to really ask myself what was the most important parts, and that the magic system was going to carry this thing the entire way.
So I started by separating spells into their most basic components: Damage, Range, Area of Effect, and Spell Effects. Separating it into its most individual components, I wanted to showcase that two people can use the same spell in different ways - someone with a high attribute in their Intelligence or Magic stat, for example, could use their powerful abilities to get more out of the same spell by taking a 'drawback' that to them was no drawback at all to use the spell.
Spells are created by the user - whatever you can imagine, odds are fairly good you ought to be able to create it. Most spells center around either buffing the caster or causing harm to another - it is extremely combat oriented. Non-combat spells (teleportation spells, magic rituals, item creation) are things that should take a great deal of time, and require a large amount of preparation to utilize. Therefore, anything that is not a 'combat spell' has mostly been glossed over - that's really not the point of the game. If you want to fix a building, then go ahead and fix it with your magic! You don't *need* to have a spell written on your sheet to do something interesting, you just have to have enough control over the magic to be able to manipulate something along those lines.
Another thing I am a great fan of are sub-stats. You have your primary attributes, which determine all of your secondary attributes. In most systems, you can easily get some kind of 'dump stat' - let's take d20 for example. If you're playing a barbarian, you don't need Charisma, and Intelligence and Wisdom are optional at best. Heck, you can even ignore Dexterity somewhat. I dislike this train of thought, myself, because I don't believe that a single attribute should control only a single aspect of a character - usually there are combinations of this. So many of the sub-stats, such as HP, Fatigue, or Speed, are determined by two or more attributes - that way even if you only focus on a single stat, you get some benefit out of attempting to balance some of the lower stats - additionally, if you focus on specific stats over others, you are sacrificing the potential for a physical aspect over a mental one - causing your power for one to skyrocket over the other, and granting you an actual mechanical benefit.
The key is balance. I'm a huge fan of balance, and to me this is a better approach than most other games, because it means you can sacrifice just a little bit on your Constitution, but if you have a lot of Strength, it can help compensate your HP so that you don't become just a glass cannon in a fight.
Next comes the advancement system. I've eliminated 'levels' - honestly, I've felt that it's a humongous pain in the ass to attempt to 'balance' classes - especially if you start looking into that 'multiclassing' thing. Instead, I like to allow the player the freedom to advance however they wish. To that end, after nearly every session, players should be granted "Character Points", which they can use to advance their character, by either increasing base attributes, or increasing their skill prowess, or to purchase specific abilities for their characters. Additionally, CP can also be used as a fallback option for when they get into a tight spot - a player may expend unspent CP to grant them a sudden bonus in combat, for example - great for when they're having really crappy nights, and need to get out of a pinch. This is better than experience drain, in my mind, and it's a lot easier to envision. Once spent, CP can never be refunded - after all, if you've used it, then it's no longer available to you. No backsies.
Lastly, skills are more or less shuffled into a bracket for each attribute. Every attribute powers a specific skill, so the higher that stat, the better your base potential for that skill. Skill ranks (purchased with CP) factor into that, so that your total of training and base potential show how good you ought to be at something. This is great, to me, because even a starting character can be the best at a single skill if they wish to be - literally experts in their field - but at the expense of their combat abilities, which are also determined by skills.
Combat skills are placed into a few categories - accuracy with spells, power of spells, accuracy with melee/physical attacks, and how well you can resist damage - all of those things are skill-based. Additionally, every single skill has some sort of "Specialty" that you can acquire after you spend a certain number of points - this allows you to specialize in a specific aspect of that skill to become even better. For example, two characters can place the same number of skill ranks in the "Dodge" skill, and they can even have the exact same attribute setups. But one might have studied in the art of magical defenses, and gains a bonus when defending versus magical attacks, while another might have focused on avoiding physical attacks. No two characters need be exactly the same, even with very similar stat allocations - this allows multiple characters in a 'party' to be able to focus on similar skills, but still be able to shine when certain situations arise.
On the outside, it looks like a bit of a mess. But once you look at it, and realize that the very core of the system is an attempt at simplicity itself, then you can start to look at how that simplicity can be utilized throughout the game itself. Roll, determine result, move on quickly.
Now, the system does have its drawbacks. Especially with the skills. One of the things I wanted to maintain was the 'degrees of success', which did not go over as well as I had hoped initially. Combat was a nightmare the very first test session, because one person would roll an attack, the defender would use their base defense skill, and for every X number of points their defense was beaten, they would be dealt additional damage. When the first 'boss' of sorts was using four attacks at the same time, it became a literal nightmare to manage everything - that wasn't even attempting to factor in some of the magical defenses that were active all over the place.
If this were a computer game, where all of these operations would be calculated instantaneously, it would be no small matter. Sadly, this is a tabletop game, so some amount of simplification was desperately needed there, lest we fall into the exact same trap that I was attempting to avoid in the very first place - which was that resolving a single round of combat took freaking forever.
Another thing that was quickly discovered was that some things were just absolutely broken, despite their best of intentions. Being able to fire off multiple projectiles, despite being capable of only dealing a small amount of damage, was still far too powerful, and was immediately removed after that session.
There were things that worked wonderfully, however - the two greatest skills in the system, Defy Death and Diehard, being one of them. Defy Death is the skill that determines at what point you shuffle off this mortal coil - reach a number equal to negative that number, and you die. Diehard is the singular specialty of that skill, which extends that death threshold even further, and because it is a specialty, every point placed into that extends that final death threshold more, albeit at a great price.
Once you go into negative HP, every d10 roll you make takes a hit, making success difficult. Once you surpass your initial death threshold, and move into your Diehard threshold, it becomes even *more* difficult. It worked beautifully, especially in conjunction with the Fatigue.
Fatigue is a stat that determines how much energy you have left. Without Fatigue, you are unconcious. Stamina is linked closely to this - it allows you to reduce any Fatigue damage you take. Every spell requires some amount of Fatigue to be expended, because it takes energy. However, it is entirely possible to cast spells for 'free' - usually, these are less effective, but as one of my players has already demonstrated, it is a perfectly viable way to play the game - and is, in fact, an extremely *wise* way to play. Essentially, if your Stamina reduces any Fatigue damage by 5, so long as your spells do not exceed that number, it takes no energy to cast. If that spell takes 8 Fatigue to use, you only take 3. This is another example of how different characters with the same abilities can be different - a caster with a higher Stamina threshold can cast that very same spell more times before becoming exhausted.
That Stamina value becomes a double-edged sword, however - once your current Fatigue drops to that value or below, you suddenly become exhausted, taking a tremendous -6 penalty to all actions. Combine that with being on a death threshold, and suddenly the tides are turned - those simple spells you were able to easily control before are now becoming far more difficult to maintain. Failure to maintain your spell means that you've just spent Fatigue and gotten nothing out of it - which only makes the situation even more dire.
The other thing that worked wonderfully was the Corruption attributes - the ability to take a chance of losing your mind, at the expense of immediate power. The villain utilized this quite a bit, and boy was that a show to behold. It's a great tool that the GM can utilize not only for his badguys (who often won't live beyond that, and if they do... hoo boy). However, this is not an NPC-only thing, players too can access this potential if they wish - but they too are susceptible to losing their minds as well, if they press too far.
Which brings us all the way back to the title of the game, which summarizes the entire system fairly well; Wildly Inadvisable.
So far, I've heard a lot of positive things from my players. There are problem areas for certain, but those are things that can easily be worked out. I can only attribute the success of this particular system on one thing: selecting a central concept for a system, and then going as far with it as I possibly could.
Anyhow, I think that's enough ramblings for now, so I'll just wrap this up. Hopefully someone can take a bit of inspiration for this when trying to create their own homebrew system - take aspects that you like from other games, and ask yourself: "Why do I like this aspect?" "What do I want this game system to do?" Then once you've figured that out, ask yourself "How far can I take this without it turning into something I hate?"
I'm excited to be working on this in my spare time. One of these days, I'll get around to the next phase of the project, which is making non-magical characters a viable option as well - but sadly, that would require making an entirely different (yet similar) table to the magic casters, which also utilizes the Fatigue system in very much the same manner.
With that, I'll see you on monday! Unless something incredible happens that I must absolutely share over the weekend.
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