Let's build an RPG together.

me too. Wouldn't it be fun to look at a map of your own city and decide where you were going to build your HQ.

Hmm, yeah, though its probably because they get outdated quickly... Heck, even the old Cyberpunk decker concept is kind of ridiculous when you think about it using today's standard. Some near-future sci-fi games can have a simialr problems. I remember in the late 90s playing some GURPS Cyberpunk, and all the computers described in the sourcebook had less memory than computers from the late 90s... XD

Would you play a game set in the real world based on the stuff that's going on in the news right now? THAT would be a crazy game.

I'd rather not be reminded of that in my games. We play games for escapism after all...

good point.

Also, this would also make the game become dated quickly as per my point above... Unless the whole point of the game is the the action happens in one of the past decades...

How about this? You're in the real world. There are demons, invaders and people from other dimensions.

Our Heroes can see the baddies with:
Science
Magic
or
Psychic powers

or they can use cats

"Trust my cat boy, he's like a bloodhound for the undead."

Equipment world become stale quickly, if you bothered to fully stat it out. Otherwise, if you leave that stuff vague, the user can supply names for gadgets.

Yeah, like you can simply say "top of the line computer", and the players can assume it has whatever HD/RAM/cores/etc. a top of the line computer of whatever year the current year is...

I think the trick would be to make it so that you could stat anything easily on the fly so that you could tell players, "Okay you have x dollars, and you can use Ebay, Craigslist and Amazon (or modern equivalents) to outfit your character.

What are you thinking for mechanics? Personally, I like rolling dice.

I think we all do, however, it seems to be an unavoidable fundamental principle of RPGs that the more die you roll, the more it tends to slow the game down. So I tend to try my best to limit the die rolls as much as possible when I create new games... Also, lately, I've been challenging myself in creating systems which doesn't use the d20...

I think it would be cool if you could sell a PDF, and somebody could basically raid their board games for everything they needed to play. Of course if you're selling an indie RPG you can assume that your players probably already have all of the DnD dice

Using only d6s is good for newbies as you're guaranteed almost everyone already has those. It,s also good for the players on a budget, because they don't need to buy 7 different types of dice, most likely 2-3 of each... and also, they probably already have d6s at home...

Diceless?

That would be cool. I feel like 5d6 is the max. Anything beyond that is too much.

No, I mean that I try to give some love to the other die types, d4 to d12... I never played a diceless system (aside from systems which uses cards, but I don't really consider those "diceless"), so I really don't know how to make one...

Check this out:

What if you let people roll 5d6 for physical stats, but anything short of 30 would go towards their magical/psychic/whatever stat?

By the way I have no ego attachment to any of these ideas, so don't be afraid to say no to any dumb thing I say. That goes for lurkers too, don't be afraid to contribute. I have a tendency to be a bigmouth in brainstorming sessions, but really it's just because I LOVE the creative process.