General Discussion

[Siosilvar]

"Old School" is a working title, of course. But it neatly sums up my design goals in words that make a decent title:

• Create a permissive ruleset. Say "Yes you can, and here's how!" instead of "Not unless you took the feat last level!"
• Focus on playing the game, not the rules. Building the most optimal character you can shouldn't matter. What should matter is how much fun you derive from playing.
• Magic comes from the character, not from his/her Christmas tree of items. (Magic means two different things in that sentence, in case it wasn't clear.)

There's a decent enough description of "old school" that can be found here; I won't fully embrace all of those ideas.

I'll see if I can't get the core rules I have typed up and posted by tomorrow.

There's probably going to be a lot of my "design process" (if you can call it that) showing through; this is by no means a finished product.

[Siosilvar]

Other Miscellaneous Notes
Characters are assumed to have most necessary equipment. GM can veto any incredibly specific or technical equipment that doesn't make sense for the character. GM can also veto stuff that would be too big to carry.

Initiative, if used, will be used only to buy abilities used during combat. Players take turns in the order they think of stuff, then the GM goes.

Want a mechanic to encourage RP and description.

I don't have a mechanic for character advancement yet.

[Draz]

Just a quick comment here -- your other threads (specifically the Ability Scores and Core Mechanic) make it clear that you've already got some more specific ideas going. But if it weren't for those, I would read this thread and quickly recommend "Risus" to you. It covers pretty much everything you write as a Design Goal, except maybe a mechanic to encourage RP and description. It even has the "whoever decides first, wins initiative" rule (AFAICS).

It would also be nicely compatible with your elemental-flavored spellcasting system. You'd just make four different types of spellcaster cliches available to characters: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Casters.

[Siosilvar]

Just a quick comment here -- your other threads (specifically the Ability Scores and Core Mechanic) make it clear that you've already got some more specific ideas going. But if it weren't for those, I would read this thread and quickly recommend "Risus" to you. It covers pretty much everything you write as a Design Goal, except maybe a mechanic to encourage RP and description. It even has the "whoever decides first, wins initiative" rule (AFAICS).

It would also be nicely compatible with your elemental-flavored spellcasting system. You'd just make four different types of spellcaster cliches available to characters: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Casters.

Hmm... I've read Risus but didn't think too much about it. May have to go back through and look at it again.

[Draz]

Hmm... I've read Risus but didn't think too much about it. May have to go back through and look at it again.

It's one of the few systems I've actually played besides D&D. I loved the ease of character creation and the intuitive rules for character advancement. My complaints with it were:

• Crazy, over-the-top tasks were a little too easy for characters to pull off, which led to battles that were a little more "cartoony" than the feel of the game that I wanted.
• No initiative system to determine order of turns, which left less aggressive players out of the action.
• A couple bad rounds at the beginning of combat could leave you too disadvantaged to continue fighting, since taking damage automatically decreases your offensive abilities.
• More rules-light in general than I wanted.

[Siosilvar]

Currently reworking pretty much everything. Taking suggestions for what to do.

Think I'm going to hew more closely to the core mechanics of d20 games.