Designing my first RPG.

[SheikhJahbooty]

Yeah, I also looked at engagement penalties and thought, this requires granularity. I hope it works fine with 2d10, but don't be afraid to move up to percentile dice if you have to, like Basic Role Playing from Chaosium. You can get a quick start of BRP for free, to see how they do it.

I liked the engagement penalties because it isn't too hard to do. Every round, right after initiative, everyone declares who they are going to fight (attack or defend against). If you need to be formal, do it in reverse initiative order. Slow guys have to declare first. Fast guys can change their decision at the last minute to get the drop on someone.

Then do the rest of the combat round normally.

It might be fun to not let your players write anything down during combat, to see if they talk it out, who is going to cover who's back, and see if they forget one of the enemy warriors. "How'd he get behind us? I thought you had him."

Well, see what it can do. I look forward to it.

[Requia]

The engagement phase sounds good, I'm looking at the BRP quickstart now (It has a size stat cover damage instead of strength! I love it already).

[Corone]

I'd suggest you start with setting rather than rules and system.
It is the setting that will inspire not only adventures but people to play your game.
If you work on that first you can then see what sort of rules system the game needs.
There are no real right of wrongs here, as long as the rules system you use helps people play the setting in the right style.
For instance, Star Wars should be fast and furious space opera so it needs a simple and fast system, Stargate might benefit from something more involved given it's military atmosphere etc.

[Rob Lang]

[Requia]

Setting is done.

[Rob Lang]

Requia, cool anything to pass around yet?

[SheikhJahbooty]

OMG, I was completely thinking the same thing.

I know it's only been a week since we last heard from the guy, but I thought, "I wonder how it's coming along. He said he already had a setting and wanted to make a custom game for it. I wonder what the setting was."

[Requia]

It's coming along very slowly.

The setting, for those that are curious, will be based on the lore behind Fall from Heaven 2 (a mod for Civilizations IV).

[tygertyger]

Welcome to 1km1kt, Requia. Hope you survive!

I'm a big proponent of dice as randomizers because a) they're readily available, especially if you only use d6, and b) they tend to be faster than cards. The tried-and-true stat + skill over target number model is simple and makes for fast resolution, but it's not terribly innovative. Dice pools are slow but can work well with the teamwork element that you want to include; the ability to lend dice to/roll dice for an ally is powerful indeed. You can get a similar effect with stat + skill by allowing PCs to influence their allies' rolls (i.e. each ally assisting with the task reduces the target # by x or adds +x to the roll).

One thing that is good to avoid is having multiple players rolling dice to resolve a single action (unless you want combat to take forever, that is). I've been in games in which it took 30 minutes of real time to resolve one turn of combat -- which is generally about 5 seconds of game time. The less dice rolling is involved, the faster combat will go. I single out combat because it tends to be the slowest aspect of game play in terms of how much real time is needed.

Decide early on what experience level of player you want to aim at. People who are new to rpgs tend to prefer stuff that's simple and rules lite while experienced gamers often don't mind a steeper learning curve. I recommend making the rules easy to learn and putting most of the game's complexity in the setting; in my experience most players appreciate the joy of discovering a new world.

Whether character creation is random roll or point buy is a critical decision. Some players (like myself) hate being railroaded into a limited number of pre-packaged character concepts and like building their characters one decision at a time. But D&D, the most popular rpg ever, uses a simple class-and-race model with limited decision-making from the player, and that game has done very well. A game that is designed for extended campaigns can get away with complex chargen, while something that's designed to accommodate one-shots benefits from quick and dirty chargen.

One other thing and I'll shut up for now. Check out some other games on the site, particularly those that are similar in theme or mechanics to what you want to do. See what they did well and where they broke down. Learn from them, especially their mistakes, and your game will be better for it.