How many of you have made your own RPG?

[Afrodyte]

Games I've created: Kathanaksaya, X-mas, Dramatikos. Used to be available online until I did something dumb and deleted my Comcast website. X-mas and a lite version of Kathanaksaya published in Random Order Comics & Games Issues 4 & 5. I ran a 2 GM Matrix game using this system, and everyone had a blast!
Systems I've tinkered with: Decipher's LotR RPG (for my Silmarillion game), old World of Darkness, new World of Darkness, D&D 4e, Unisystem

I've never really been into creating a System To End All Systems. Play styles and play goals are far too diverse to do that. However, I do like to improve systems until they do what they do best. In the case of Kathanaksaya (now Dramatikos), that's character-driven conflict resolution. In the case of D&D 4e, it's high action fantasy roleplaying. For the First Age material I wrote using Decipher's CODA system, it's truly epic deeds. And so on and so forth.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Oh yeah, I've written up quite a few. Started with Melee & Wizard, trying to turn them into a proper RPG before In The Labyrinth came out. (In fact, at least half our group at the time did so, with much swiping back and forth for rules. And we played one or another of them for some time.)

The last one I did that anyone else saw I ran for a year. We had fun with it, but it was obviously broken. So I've revamped it couple of times...

 

[jeffh]

Oh lord.

The first was when I was about 12. It was a sci-fi game based on a series of novels I was writing (yes, at that age; one of them got more than half finished, too). It had 12 or 15 stats depending on the version, a three-level damage system that come to think of it would work really well in a computer game, but would suck at the table, and I'm quite sure you could easily make starting characters of such diverse power levels that any legitimate challenge to the high-end ones would kill the rest.

I've done quite a few since, two of which I'm working on right now. One is meant to be a very fast-playing game in a JRPG style, you even have a "battle board" where your characters line up on one side and the monsters on the other like in an older Final Fantasy game. The other is a detailed rewrite of D&D 3.5. The latter is playtestable but highly disorganized at the moment, the former has a pretty solid combat system but is currently hung up on some problems with character creation.

 

[White Tornado]

I created a generic fantasy RPG and a Zelda RPG when I was younger, and I forced my cousins to play it. I didn't have any D&D material or experience back then. One of my cousins was pretty mad when he wanted to kidnap a young girl to get more loot, and I ruled he needed a kidnapping skill to pull it off. ^_^

 

[kitsune9]

I think I was like the OP in that I did planning, but never really got it off the ground. I know that my brother and I playtested a very lethal version of Top Secret/S.I., but pretty much the rules for Top Secret were intact.

 

[Minigiant]

I made a few when I was younger. I'm planning to truly write up the good ones one day: Roguish Notes (high fantasy point buy), Moontunnel (sci-fi level and class based), and Sinking Cities (Assault rifles, Warlocks, Robots, and Dragons)

 

[Holy Bovine]

Heh. Back when I was 12 I really wanted to play a space themed RPG (I had been playing D&D for 2 years) but my local game store, such as it was, only had D&D and some Runequest. It would be 3 years before I found the awesomeness of Traveler so i sat down and began writing a RPG based upon Star Wars and Star Trek heavily influenced by D&D rules mechanics but I used 3d6 to determine to hit rolls and most weapons did d10s for damage. Hit points classes were very similar to D&D except instead of magic-users I brought in the 'droid' class. I spent the vast bulk of my time on this one class as I really loved the idea of a thinking robot like C3P0 (only less prissy). Think HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic. Anyways I never finished or even played it and the notes were long since lost. Never went on to make any other games.

 

[imredave]

Back in the old days when RPG came in white boxes from Lake Geneva via U.S. mail book rate, every G.M. wrote his own rules just to have a playable set. Don't even get me started on the machinations of playing with an Advanced players handbook the year before the Dungeon Masters guide. Some variants were quite intriguing. My friend's system of splitting hit points into core (which were going to leave a scar and all that counted for falling of high buildings or avalanches) stamina (which came back after a day) and fatigue (which came back in ten minutes) predates the fourth edition system by 20 years. I am afraid I am too much of a dabbler to ever get my system published, but have done some intriguing work on point buy magic systems. I am still looking for a copy of the legendary Southern California system with computer printouts for leveling Orcs up to 100th level. My wife saw a copy one of her old boyfriends had, but I have never seen it.

 

[Jack7]

Yeah, I've made up quite a few. Some we've been playing for years.

Course before then I made up a lot of wargames.
Still do.

I'd suspect acts of game creation or recreation are probably pretty common among gamers.

 

[ashockney]

Guilty

I did a quasi-medieval fantasy rpg that was a mish mash of my favorite stuff from D&D, Hero, Stormbringer, and Rolemaster. I referred back to it for the
3e open call rpg world submission.

I think I've got a sci-fi game in me somewhere, as well.

Fun!