I'm not a huge fan of universal RPGs but it might not be a bad goal to make a system that is universal but has genre books that describe how to use the system for your chosen setting (a la GURPS).
I was working on a mechanically simple system for an RPG but found out that Fantasy Flight essentially beat me to the punch, while making the system unnecessarily complex. So it was back to the drawing board.
I think I have a kernel of an idea but I'm not there yet. If anyone wants to pipe in if this inspires any ideas, I'm all ears. Here's the system so far.
First of all, I'm trying to get a game with no writing involved. To that end, your character is a deck of cards. It could be as few as one card or as many as ??? (I haven't figured that out yet). But will probably start out at one or two.
To make this a free game, I'm going to constrain the design to a standard card deck. Face cards (J, Q, K, A) are character trait cards.
Having a Jack in your deck means you're a fighter.
A Queen means you can protect/heal
A King means you can manipulate (Drive a car, fly a plane, or maybe persuade NPCs)
An Ace means you're good at stealthily/sneaky things
Normal play goes like this. Each player is dealt a hand (5 cards I think, will have to experiment). The GM turns over a card in the deck to get started. The first player that can place a counting up or down card wins initiative and declares an action. The GM responds by counting up or down from the player's card. If the GM can count up or down from the player's just placed card, the action is blocked. The player gets to try and count up or down from the GM's card and so on.
If the GM cannot block, the player can keep placing cards, counting up and down until their hand is empty. If they can no longer place a consecutive card, their turn is over.
The number of unblocked cards you put down does something (Don't know exactly what yet). If you place all your cards, you get a critical success. Again, I don't exactly know what that means yet but it's a fun mechanic.
If you can't consecutively count up or down with your cards, your turn ends the next player that can place a card gets to go. At the end of a round, the players pick up cards to replenish their hand. The GM keeps picking up whenever he puts down a card. When the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and a new starting card is placed.
So I need to figure out how to measure the effect of each unopposed card. There also has to be an effect of the character's face cards.
Maybe you can use one of your face cards to prevent a block? After a face card is used, it's placed sideways on the table until the next round.
Anyway, I need to have the number of cards you put down mean something. I'm not sure about that yet.