Step one: knowing what you want from a system

From the get-go I’ve wanted to make something strangely new but still well within the parameters of fun and not crazily complicated. The corresponding list are some of the major features of the game, with some explanations as to what the aims of them are as well.

No Class: Anyone who’s ever played a tabletop RPG has probably had the dilemma of choosing his or her class, and then figuring out who in the party will take what roll. We’d like to do away with that lock-in mechanic of your RPGs, give everyone a chance to play to their own style and desires. To this effect the game is classless, no character classes or titles, no constraints to what you can be or do with your character. From the start you will have freedom to choose what skills, abilities, spells and so forth your character knows with only certain limitations and restrictions. If you want to be a caster wearing heavy armor, by all means go for it!

Skills: Being classless is an interesting concept, there would be no rigid gridlock in what you can do with your character. There is however a need for some sort of structure, after all, you don’t want your players to have a super powerful spell at a low level, that would be ludicrously unbalanced. At creation and as you level you will be awarded with two three things: Ability points, Combat Skill points, and Non-Combat Skill points. It was decided that combat and non-combat skills should have separate pools of points to govern their respective skill sets. With combat skills alone going to about 40 so far, putting all your skills in one pool would make people have to choose between combat effectiveness or non-combat effectiveness, we’d like players to have the ability to be effective in more than one way.

Stats: As with skills, you’ll be gaining Ability Points each level and at creation. Ability Points are what will be going into your primary stats (strength, agility, intellect, willpower, charisma) and will interact with skills to determine what your character can do in game. If you’ve ever played Diablo II, this will function almost exactly like when you put points into your scores directly to increase them. A point buy system where you put point for point into your scores with no restriction on which stats you dump them into.

Prerequisites- spells and abilities: Now that I’ve mentioned s bit about skills and stats and how they work, it’s time to mention a bit of what they’ll be doing. Aside from generally assessing your prowess with a certain skill or stat, both your abilities and skill training will be what sets your character along the path of what they will be able to do. Spells and Combat abilities will come with a set of prerequisites that you have to meet to use them. A certain attack might require you have a Strength score of 15 and skill in two-handed weapons to be able to use, or a spell might require intellect 25 and 3 ranks in fire spells. How you place your scores will determine what you can do and use, which means you’ll be building your character to be able to do what you’d like.

Hit Points and Resources: You’ve run into combat with a huge mythical beast only to find yourself realizing that you’ve only got three level 3 spells left to cast.. we’ve probably all been in a situation like this, magic is usually very powerful, but when it runs out, the character becomes pretty useless in a snag. One of the mechanics (still being worked on a bit) is going to be a resource system, in addition to having your life sustaining all important Hit Points, you will have Mana and Stamina. Mana will be your magical resource, and stamina a physical one. When you use a spell or ability it will incur a drain on one of your resources (sometimes both), and each resource will have ways in which you can replenish them even while still in combat, to make sure nobody suddenly becomes useless in a situation.

Customization: A very key concept from the beginning has been one of customization in the game system. You can build your characters any way you want, in any direction and feel, but if you both have the same spell, it’s still the same, right? Wrong! Most RPGs give you abilities and spells and they all function about the same as anyone else. We’d like to offer a higher degree of specialization however, no two people write exactly the same, nor should they sling a spell or swing a sword exactly the same. Without going into too much detail about it, we want to give they player the ability to modify how their spells and abilities function, not meer power attacks or meta-magic, full modification of the abilities functionality. From changing the type of damage, effects, duration or even what it does, we’d like to let the player make that spell their own.

These are a few of the major key features of Experience Ltd. and personally I think some of the best reasons to make a new game system as well. Leave comments or questions if you’d like to let me know what you think, I’m always eager to know how other gamers and devs think of things.

I don't think a character should ever become completely useless. That's not a good use of the player's time, even if it's their fault for not conserving their resources.

Prerequisites seem to run counter to the idea of not having classes and allowing characters to be built any way they want. Players who want to be able to do certain things would have to create and develop a character who was able to hit those prerequisites as soon as possible. And wouldn't "customization" mean that the character could just develop a technique to do what they wanted without the usual prerequisites?

Good luck.

I've always liked the idea of classless systems. The ability to do whatever I want skills wise would be cool. I just wonder how the progression of prereqs on more advanced skills would look, linear or web like.

I also really like your idea of resource based spells, if that's HP, mana, or resourses or a combination of them. That would be cool to implement though could be a pain in the arse for number management.

The idea that "every player needs to shine" isn't -to me- a function of rules to dictate, every character has strengths and weaknesses even if they are only evident in background or roleplaying. A character is as useful as they put the effort into being for any given game. Weather that's a font of knowledge or an asset in combat doesn't make a big difference as long as they enjoy playing their character, and as long as the GM makes sure the options for character to do their thing.

For this instance, the characters will receive both skill points for combat and non-combat separately. This will allow a player to invest in both aspects for roleplay and combat scenarios without having to choose between which they are dedicated to.

The prerequisites for abilities are there as a balancing mechanism. They are primarily skill or attribute requisites, this being that in order to learn a specific thing, you need some basic related skill or attribute to base it from. They exist to keep a measure of power and a guideline to things. Skills gain passive bonuses to related things, and unlock abilities that use such related skills. For instance, having a rank in small weapons (daggers, short swords,etc) leads to being able to wield medium weapons, that goes into larger weapons. The thought is that realistically, a person doesn't just pick up a great sword and start swinging it around without first learning the basics with a smaller, lighter weapon.

Prereqs will be a combination of linear and hybrid actually, some things will require more than one skill for instance to acquire use of (like a steam spell would require fire + water magic skills).

Customization will allow you to modify and change your spells and abilities, as well as choosing bonuses from skills. In this way you may have the same spells and skills as the guy next to you, but you function completely differently in how they act. Creation of abilities and spells is a goal as well, but that's not going to be in the start, it would bog down the core ruleset.

So far, the resource system and it's corresponding regeneration mechanic are fairly simple to use and keep track of :) i've had my group playtest it a few times. The trick will be in keeping the resource cost scaling appropriately as you gain more of a pool.
The regen mechanic is based on the size of your pool as well.

The idea for this stems from when casters in any given rpg run out of spells and become useless in a fight. Last session of d&d for instance, one combat that lasted less than 3 minutes depleted both wizards and the cleric of their spells for the day. This goes back to everyone feeling useful. Sure, a fighter may only be useful swinging his sword, but he's more useful than a wizard without spells when they get attacked setting up camp in most cases.

First of all "I don't think a character should ever become completely useless" is not the same as "every player needs to shine," if that's what you were trying to say.

Games can, in fact, dictate that a character is rarely, if ever, completely useless. Lots of modern board games and roleplaying games strive for this, with decent options that are always available. Other games give players control over what "cost" they want to pay for using their abilities. In Dungeon World, as I recall, a wizard player can give up the ability to cast spells, or they can take other penalties while retaining their spells.
A fine ideal, but generally rather a mess in practice. At least make it clear that the game doesn't intend for players to be useless at times, so that if they ever are everyone will see this as a problem rather than assume it's an intended function of the game.
Combat is roleplaying. Did you mean "interaction"? (Combat is also interaction, but at least that term doesn't co-opt "roleplaying" for a single aspect of a larger game.)
Again, good in theory, but less so in practice, at least historically. If the GM regularly tries to attack the characters while the casters are empty, in order to make the fighters feel useful, the players will merely shift their tactics so that the casters can still participate (as that character, not as that character stripped of powers) in every situation. On the bright side, that might mean that they rely more on the fighters for the rest of the day, balancing things out, but it shouldn't take finagling by the GM to arrange that - the game should arrange it itself. It's possible to do. Take 4th Edition: everyone always has something decent they can do (except for the odd case of the ranger who has run out of ammo), even if they've used up their very best options.

Avoid balance that relies on the assumption that really good limited options are the same as so-so at-will options. That has really never worked, in decades of game design.

Hate to say this, but what you described....that is GURPS! No classes, skills that anyone can take, experience that you can spend anywhere, stamina or fatigue points....fully customizable character creation, including quirks and disadvantages. I have been running GURPS for years and it is exactly what you described.

Now I will say this, the combat mechanics can be clumsy and complicated, but when you get used to it, you find the short cuts,mother things that can be ignored to make it flow better (and that is encouraged). It is one system that I like because it has a DODGE roll, where no matter good you are, you could trip defending yourself and still get hit by a novice swordsman.

So looking over GURPS for a moment, they have similar aspects but they're hardly the same thing.
No classes, sure, and skills that are picked by the PC not a class to go with it yep. This system doesn't have you spending your exp, it's used as a measure of power/leveling only. Stamina is used for in combat as a resource - doesn't measure tiredness or hunger or being unable to go on, simply that swinging a sword 50 times in a row takes a bit out of you in prolonged combat and you'll need to take a breath or go on guard. No quirks or disadvantages so far, might make some starting traits to help pick backgrounds out tho not sure.

The system has some fine points from a lot of successful games, but it's different enough from them as well that it can't blatantly be called one of them. It has mechanical influences from D&D, Warhammer, Warhammer RP, Legend of the Five Rings.. and some of them are wonderful to boot! I'm taking some of what works and shedding things that don't work.

I want combat to be epic and flow, where casters and fighters stand on equal but different footing. The Abilities and Modifiers see that balance is maintained even at radically different build types (have tested several times, no guarantee in winning with one build over another). I opted out of a DODGE mechanic -- if every roll requires an opposed roll then it bogs combat down and causes arguments over weather or not a hit should have occurred. So instead I worked an Evasion bonus into the equation for hit so it's d20+hit-evasion. This plus when you roll on a hit-chart instead of just vs a number means you can get 4 different results from any combat roll, and missing is pretty hard to do in all actuality (1-5 on chart that goes to 20).

So saying it is 'exactly' GURPS would be incorrect, they have similarities, but what RPG doesn't pay homage to another game before it that helped pave the way? Besides, it needs to be close enough to thing people have played and like without being the same, while being different enough so people are intrigued to play but not scared off :)

But then again, saying you've been playing GURPS for years means you like it, and saying this sounds like GURPS is technically a compliment so I'll take it lol.

Well said.

Thanks :)
If you have any other feedback, questions, input I'd be more than happy to hear them from you or chat about stuff in general btw. Only way I can know I'm doing stuff right/wrong/at all is if people tell me right? :)

Have you looked at Warrior, Rogue, and Mage? I heard about it just the other day and found it rather innovative.

• No classes. The 3 core "classes" are really attributes.
• Skills are typically 1 rank, or skill + advanced skill, that grant +2 to your attribute.
• Traits are kind of like Dungeon World or Edge of the Empire traits. Some grant +2 bonuses, special rules (like Blood Magic), etc.
• Fairly lethal, with room to fudge character death if the story demands they survive.
• Fate points, a non-renewable resource derived from the Rogue attribute used to prevent death, reroll or +2 bonus, or even a minor game world detail. (It regenerates only when the GM decides you've played your PC well or have achieved one of your PC's goals.)
• Mana points, a resource derived from the Mage attribute used for spell casting.

I especially like the no class, attributes as class, and level-less skills combination in this game. If I ever find the spare time, I think it'd be fun to play sometime.

I figured WR&M might have some ideas worth borrowing.

Ooh, thank you for the handy link to find it!!! I'll check this out cause I haven't heard of it before.
From what you mentioned about it, it seems like it does have some of the base concepts I've got going on as well (see look at all these good ideas for RPGs! ;D ).

I'm familiar with the fate point idea from playing WFRP/Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy etc. It's a fun little thing to use and has merit, so I haven't really decided on if they are something that should be included or not yet ( i know for something like sneak attacks there will be a way to avoid instant death like ESP or the like).

Mana! Yes, using that! And Stamina for physical combat/abilities so they are on even footing with how many times they can attack/cast etc (spells per day make magic users so limited :/ ).

Hmmm so far, all my combat related skills have 10 ranks, and non-combat ones have 5 ranks..though a lot of them have at least 2 options for passives they give you (like light armor skill lets you get +1ac or +'max dex' to the armor every 2 ranks). I'll check out the skill system in there for sure though. I still need to rework all the non-combat skills to be less specific in places.

Query RustInPieces:: how do you feel about having a steady health pool (starts at say 25hp) but healing magic isn't usable in combat? Would it still feel lethal for you without making you also feel super squishy?

Part of what you're suggesting soundslike Numenera. The three attributes, might, speed, and intellect, also serve as hit points and resource pools for actions.

In Rolemaster, you generate each of the 10 attributes as percentiles by rolling three separate d00s for each attribute. Discard the lowest, the middle is your starting attribute, and the higher is your potential. When leveling, you roll randomly to see if your temp attribute increases closer to its potential.

Rolemaster is also almost entirely skill based. Each level, you get skill points to spend on things. Even hit points are only increased by spending skill points on them. Classes in Rolemaster really only determine how much different skills cost... For example, a fighter can buy spells if you wish, they are just more expensive in skill points than, say, melee weapons.

Interesting! Haven't played Numenera either, have heard about it a few times though. Guess I'm happy to know it sounds like different games that are successful! That's always good I think. I have 5 stats here, dropping HP into level based but gaining bonus from Strength & Willpower both - so it counts from both physical attributes as well as mental strength (which is good for casters).

10 Attributes seems like a lot (without playing it of course). and d00's means that it can be a pretty high range of value as well. With a random roll each level though, you could get really unlucky potentially and never have your attribute increase, and that's a shame :(.

Skill based can be very fun and let you have many varied builds as well if done well. How do you feel about having say 32 different combat skills you're able to invest in and enough skill points over 25 levels to put some into all of them if you wanted?
--in this instance, i've got 32 combat skills that could all be at 2-3 in rank at max level, but none would be maxed out, while if you only maxed some out, you'd have about 8-9 max skills.

Um, that's probably good at low level, yes. However, as fights escalate and become more impressive I think health should increase less (than traditionally) and either weak or expensive healing magic/means should become available. This would keep the "knife's edge" of lethality in the later fights, and allow an expensive but incentivized ability for PCs to heal in a fight. I think it would make most players feel helpless if they couldn't heal, but I don't think it should be required that one player gets to play the squishy cleric (who does nothing else).
I like that idea, but I dislike that you are required to gain HP by spending skill points. It does make sense though.
You could also add a resilience skill that aids in poison resistance, staying conscious, and provides a bonus to HP. I know a lot of games that have a formula like "XdY HP + BONUS" per level. But, I like the idea that HP could be "LEVEL HP + BONUS + SKILL". It would make the bonus flat, but would also incentivize buying up Str/Will and any applicable skills. Then if someone wanted to be a tank they could specialize in Str/Will/Resilience to maximize their bonuses. Just a thought.
I'd like to see the skill list if you don't mind.

I think that's overkill, to have 32 combat skills, but if the primary conflict mechanic you're designing for is combat it could be reasonable. In my opinion, I like the idea of less ranks available if you have that many. For instance, build a tree from generic to specific:

Melee (===__)
  Swords (===__)
    Longsword (=====)
    Greatsword (==___)

This way a fighter could be generally competent, but have a specialty. If that produces too large a tree, just remove the "swords" focus from the skill list. If you have each possible weapon specialty on its own top-level branch it'd feel rather overwhelming. "Does my longsword counter his spear proficiency, or do I apply shield first then longsword?"

I think currently health increases at about 3hp per level not counting any bonuses from Str/Will (which aren't cumulative each level, so +1hp from str is permanent, then +1 the next time it increases and so on). Definitely thinking about some weaker healing abilities for in-combat, but as you mentioned, I don't want someone being 'designated healer' or just spamming heals to win fights. Healing is mostly going to be natural or through ritualized magic that take more than a few minutes to cast and work.
I like this idea :) it could be a bonus received from something else as well like knowing alchemy or plant-life or poison based magic for instance. It's gonna be a flat formula, so people of the same race will be similar in base aside from their bonuses. You hit the nose on the head, a 'tank' would specialize in str/will/resil or even in agility and light armor so they can't be hit easily.
Of course, these are just combat skills mind you, non-combat are being counted separately so players can make PC's that can dabble in both and not have to choose between specializing in combat or skills outside of it .

Well, I have a slight bias in how skills work, so this list does look overkill to me. I believe that K.I.S.S is a great principal, but also like Einstein warned don't try to go any simpler. Logically, I don't see either damage groups or categories being appropriate as skills. I do like to have a taste of realism in skill choices, but I feel like this is too granular.

For instance, a halberd can be used as blunt (with the butt), pierce (with the spear point), and slash (with the axe piece) damage. It doesn't make much sense to say that the PC is more experienced with slashing, when obviously they'd train with all usages of the halberd if they attempted to learn the weapon well. In that case I see a Two-Handed skill + Halberd skill focus being more logical and flexible. And if they want to throw it then make them use Thrown + Halberd.

And weapon size I don't see useful as a skill at all. I see that more as a weapon characteristic that reflects weight, and therefore ought to depend upon strength. A great-sword (zweihander) weighed only 4.4 - 7.1 lbs (2-3.2 kg) historically, by comparison an M16 weighs 8.8 lbs (4kb) when loaded. These things are in the middle of the traditional "weaponry weight" bell curve. It's hard to use a weapon you struggle to lift, and no amount of training will make using that weapon free handed any easier if you don't get stronger. So Two-Handed + Impact + Large for a weak guy wielding a heavy club doesn't make sense.

With that out of the way, I would reorganize the list by removing damage groups/categories and make them skill focuses (either for a family of weapons like swords or spears, or for a given weapon only). Then I'd probably do the same for magic groups (but that'd depend on your magic system) but make it a more universal combat/non-combat skillset by making some situational.

That's my personal take on it. I'm not really fond of large skill lists of any sort.

Back to the various incarnations Rolemaster, a skill based game, they had individual skills for each weapon (dagger vs. broadsword vs. two-hand sword). Each weapon skill would be a subset of a weapon category (melee, thrown, siege engines, firearms, directed spells, etc.) and each character would have one category that was easier to learn than the others (i.e., you would prioritize the categories during character creation). In some editions of RM, you could also level up the whole category, so you would become better at using all melee weapons, but this was much more expensive than simply putting skill points into a single weapon.

If you are interested in seeing how RM handled tons of skills and skill points, the beta test files are available to registered users at www.ironcrown.com. You need to register for the forums and then the playtest forum will appear in the list when you're logged on. Look for Character Law for the character options ruleset.

OK so I should probably mention a bit about the damage/size skills I suppose.

I wanted to make skills that were more general than specific for using weapons - training in a longsword is nice.. but say you lose your longsword and have to use a shortsword you have no skill points into being trained with one. Well, in that instance you'd be screwed, even though they have the same basic training behind them aside length, you still use them in the same manner.

That's where the damage groups - slashing, piercing, impact, precision - come in. A weapon will fall into one of these categories, and in some cases like the halberd, more than one. It's up to the person using the weapon to decide in which method they are going to use a halberd in however. The idea is that training in a general group will allow a PC to be able to use most weapons of a given category without needing to dive into specifics of which they can and can't use properly.

The Weapon Category comes in to play with this as well, say you've only ever trained in one hand weapons like daggers, small and fast, but totally different than using that halberd you got. These skills represent your training in different combat styles with whatever weapons you use.

Weapon Size was an idea I wanted to use to balance things out a bit. Most games have weapons either do a set damage or all weapons do the same damage die +/- a number (1d10-2 or the like). This makes no sense to me however. Why should the person using a dagger only do 1d4 damage no matter how trained they are in using the dagger? If I'm a master in the arts of dagger combat and you've just picked up a great sword for the first time, which one of us should be able to do more damage - the person with no idea how to use the blade, or the one of us who has spent countless hours training and knows exactly how to use that blade to tear open the vein in your neck with ease... anyways, the idea is that the more trained you are with weapons in a specific size category, the more damage the weapon will be capable of - weapon damage scales with your skill. So that dagger only starts by doing 1d4, then increases to 1d6, 1d8, etc. Each category starts at a different base value, but can be increased with your skill. This helps to balance out your damage between people using different weapons even at higher levels, and lets you continue to use whichever weapon you desire to use without being underpowered by it as well.

---both of these last two groups have some prerequisites, so you can't take dual-wield abilities if you've never trained with one handed weapons, nor should you probably be using a giant sword if you don't know the basics with a smaller one as well.

If this makes any more sense with this information for you, or if it seems like a good or bad idea to you guys lemme know. It's one of the areas I have playtested with both a few newbies and veteran players and they seem to like how this functions at least. That is not to say that the skills couldn't use tweaking either.. I know my non-combat list is going to need some dire re-working but that's neither here nor there atm lol