A Game of One's Own
Over the weekend, I started thinking about what type of game I would really like to play. Personally, I love faerie stories and love to play characters that swing a sword, so it's likely to have some of those elements to it. I also enjoy fostering creative solutions to problems. Just because I can solve problem x by using a sword doesn't mean I want to feel like that's the only way to solve it. So I came up with some brief thoughts. All of this is subject to change, but thinking it through helps me learn. This is mainly a thought/learning exercise.
While I understand why D&D uses character abilities such as intelligence, wisdom, charisma, etc to define the base of the character, I don't feel the need to keep that in my game. This isn't meant to be a war game and, to me at least, those abilities don't help new players understand their characters.
What I'm considering right now is the following. Have sources of power such as nature, martial, empathy, faith and academics/arcane. Instead of forcing a rigid class structure, all characters start with 1 base source and then they can climb the skill tree for that base source, pulling in skills from other source trees (similar to Civ's tech tree). So, if I want to be a druid, I would want to pick a lot of skills from nature and empathy. The skills would be similar to 4e powers but they would build on each other.
Like 4e, overall damage output would be tied to character level, not how they've progressed through the tree. My hope is that this would allow generalists and specialists in the same game, but it's way too early to know if that's possible. Individual skills might increase that damage or augment attacks in other ways, such as increasing the radius of a fireball attack. Other skills might increase defense or give PCs the ability to solve conflicts using non-violent means.
Finally, I really like 4e's system of HP and healing surges. I plan to modify it a bit though. HPs would still represent more or less physical health, but healing surges would become your overall drive or desire to continue on. When a character runs out of desire, he or she can be persuaded to give up the fight. In particular, I like this for NPCs. While it can be done by giving a different explanation of HP, I like thought that characters could "attack" in a non-violent way and that the mechanics reinforce the separation. Perhaps a bard's song really could cause people to put down their swords. Also, separating them means that some characters would be easier to defeat with non-violent means while others would require battle.
Empathy is a big change for me. I love it so much better than charisma. One of the paths I'm envisioning is learning plant lore (maybe a tie in to potion making), plant empathy (communicate with plants and get information from them), and then some sort of plant request skill so you can do things like ask trees or vines to grab and restrain enemies.
That's where I'm at so far.
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Intriguing. I can't tell from your descriptions whether the mechanics you describe will work well together (and it doesn't sound like that is your focus at this stage) but it all sounds interesting. Keep us updated as to how you go. I hope these thoughts leads to you playing something you enjoy at some point.
Thanks! I actually love playing D&D, so there are games out there that I enjoy.
Oops, that's not how I meant it but reading my comment I can see that's what it looks like. What I meant was that I hope your thoughts lead to a game at some point. Not that I thought you weren't happy with anything else.
Sounds like a fantasy heartbreaker, but everyone should make one of those in their gaming career.
It's an interesting concept, an no small feet considering the amount of work it would take to fill out that tree.
One issue that I don't really get is how you are describing your healing surges? Might I suggest breaking hp into two different stress tracks, something like physical and mental? Then you could still keep healing surges basically the same, but they could be used to enforce your ability to overcome pain, or strength your will to continue on.
Although as I look at this, I am wondering if this might actually be better applied as a setting for a game with some explicit house rules that alter the core system, because really that is kind of what it sounds like.
This is mostly for play. I learn better if I hack at things so that's what I'm doing. :)
I wasn't clear enough. I'm actually suggesting breaking into physical and mental, with possibility of expending mental to gain more physical.
You might want to check this out, it can help provide some context for design:
http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=554
You might consider checking out FATE. I think it can do a lot of what you are looking for and can provide building blocks for further design. You might particularly like the separate stress tracks which allow characters to be "taken out" or concede in different ways.
Thanks! I've played some fate. It doesn't have what I'm looking for as a whole. Also, making my own stuff will help me learn.
I find it interesting that you are crossing the same bridges my brother and I did a few years ago. We never did anything, so I might as well share it with you in case in sparks any ideas for you, better that then it sitting on a shelf moldering.
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"Have sources of power such as nature, martial, empathy, faith and academics/arcane."
We came to the same conclusion of eliminating class. If someone wanted to play a ranger you would take martial and nature. A paladin, martial and faith/divine. Under each category would be power components. Expend a few build points in Martial and pick up AoE Melee or Ranged, a few more close burst 1 etc. Spend a few points in divine and pick up Damage Type Radiant etc. You could have AoE, Damage, Damage Type, Status effect, and action type tiers of expense.
With a standard set of build points nearly any type of power could be constructed based on how many points you spent and what they were invested in. At varying levels you would receive points to build powers make you more specialized with a big bang power or giving you multiple powers for multiple situations but at a weaker power thresh-hold. The struggle is figuring out the foci points in the balancing act.
I really like your thoughts on separating damage into mental and physical. Would definitely help with things like will/charm/psionic attacks. I see a whole new set of RP and Tactics opening up on this change alone.
This sounds like a cool idea and one I would definitely try at some point. Regarding your advancement tree idea you might want to look into games that function in a similar manner. Dragon Age springs to mind. As to your handling of the healing surge mechanic, I feel that it would certainly make the game a bit more believable. There is an ongoing joke at my table that our warlord yells at people to make their limbs grow back and I feel that this feeling would be mitigated by your systems take on it. Finally, how do you think you will handle skills and other actions that just about any character could attempt, but few can do well?
The second I saw, "fairie" and "swing a sword", my mind was instantly derailed by images of the Zelda series. :P
I'm finally getting caught up on your posts and it seems like this post and your previous one are the exact same path my mind was going down a few months back. By pure luck, I stumbled upon Dresden Files RPG and I'd highly recommend it or another FATE-based game. Heck, if you wanted to maintain a high fantasy setting (instead of urban fantasy), it would be very easy to accomplish using the DFRPG framework.