A Fantasy RPG: What's Required?

[Mallus]

Let's see... at the bare minimum, a fantasy RPG --really, any RPG-- needs two things: a method of describing objects in the game-world --ie player characters, monsters, castles, cunning traps, angry cats imperiling neophyte magician's lives-- and procedures for acting on or with those objects --ie resolving a PC's attempt to skewer a monster, sneaking into a castle, disarming a cunning trap, calming angry cats and turning them into trusted familiars.

It helps to decide if the game attempts to model a imaginary, but physical world or if it explicitly treat the game world as a kind of fiction, where task resolution is really negotiations over who currently has narration rights.

It's also handy to decide if your resolution mechanics operate primarily on the task (smaller-scale) or goal (larger-scale) level.

(actually, in both of the previous cases, it's better to say you need to figure out what mix of the two to use).

While you're at it, it's also nice to figure out who the intended audience is. You can cut out a lot if you assume the audience shares your own knowledge base. If you have to explain what are RPG or an orc is, brevity isn't really an option.

Another related question: is the text of your game meant to inspire people directly, or are you going to assume the readers have plenty of external inspirations -- this is one even experienced gamers/genre fans disagree about.

 

[Minicol]

Elves !

It's not fantasy if there are no freakin' Elves !

Can be, Wood Elf, green Elf, Salad Elf ...

Nuff said !

And I can play half-elves if my other half is an Elf too !

 

[Ariosto]

I think that if you shoot for between 64 and 128 pages, you can come up with something that is at once remarkably concise by today's standards, and yet neither cramped in content nor hard on the eyes.

Try 96 pages, perhaps.

 

[Wolf1066]

If you have to explain what are RPG or an orc is, brevity isn't really an option.

That's a very important point. All the game systems I've ever read wax lyrical for a varying number of pages explaining what a role-playing game is - if there's one out there that assumes you already know that, I haven't encountered it yet.

Skipping a lengthy "In a role-playing game, you play the part of a character in an adventure..." and "the games master (or GM) has the job of deciding..." section could dramatically reduce the number of words/pages required for your system.

If you do skip said explanation, perhaps it might pay to start off with "this book assumes you are familiar with the concepts of role playing games and games masters. If you are not, I suggest you at least Google "Role Playing Games" before continuing..."

 

[Ariosto]

All the game systems I've ever read wax lyrical for a varying number of pages explaining what a role-playing game is - if there's one out there that assumes you already know that, I haven't encountered it yet.

The original D&D set did not even mention "role-playing game". The basic assumption there, and in the early Basic D&D sets, and in other early games, was that it was enough to give instruction in the procedures of play. The assumption was not that one already knew what an RPG was, simply that -- as in the case of any other kind of game -- one would learn what one needed to know about "that kind of thing" by playing the particular example at hand.

RuneQuest started off by answering the rhetorical question "What is a Fantasy Role-playing Game?" with a rather silly paragraph. However, it was just a paragraph.

The 1st ed. AD&D books, especially the DMG, were long winded about a lot of things. I expect there has been a lot of Gygax-imitation since.

Then there are the fellows who seem intent on "proving" that not only are you doing it wrong, but you (along with everyone else over however many decades) have been dead wrong about what FRP is.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think a lot of those "What is a RPG?" missives are there at least in part in response to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s.

 

[tenkar]

Castles & Crusades Quick Start Rules from the 2010 Free RPG Day.

6 classes, 4 races, 3 levels of spells, 2 spell lists, 1 page for equiptment, 6 levels of advancement and a 2 and a 1/2 page sample adventure.

19 pages when you take out the OGL/Header page - All you need is a few pages of beasties and your set

RPGNow has it for free DL in PDF.

Swords & Wizardry Quick Start is an option too, but no advancement is included, 20 pages (larger font then C&C)

 

[Mark]

Just to be clear, I am not trying to distill D&D (any edition) to 10,000 words. Rather, the theoretical project would be to produce a complete fantasy adventure game in 10,000 words.

There are probably more fantasy adventure games that run close to your restrictions than there are fantasy adventure roleplaying games. Once you add that nebulous element, it becomes a struggle, I suspect, to explain in fewer words than is normally done.

 

[fanboy2000]

That's a very important point. All the game systems I've ever read wax lyrical for a varying number of pages explaining what a role-playing game is - if there's one out there that assumes you already know that, I haven't encountered it yet.

Skipping a lengthy "In a role-playing game, you play the part of a character in an adventure..." and "the games master (or GM) has the job of deciding..." section could dramatically reduce the number of words/pages required for your system.

While I don't think the section is necessary, I think it could easily be reduced to a paragraph.

If you do skip said explanation, perhaps it might pay to start off with "this book assumes you are familiar with the concepts of role playing games and games masters. If you are not, I suggest you at least Google "Role Playing Games" before continuing..."

I like the suggestion to Google it. If the game is distributed via PDF, you could literally like to the entry in Wikipedia.

 

[pemerton]

@Ariosto - a lot of good examples there. For doing a "traditional" fantasy RPG in 10,000 words, Basic D&D should certainly be added to the list that I gave of games to look at for inspiration.

Another "modern" game that sets out is mechanics in comparatively few pages is Maelstrom by Hubris Games. It's probably over 10,000 words as written, but with a good edit and making a few more assumptions about readers' background knowledge it could almost certainly be pared back.

Turning to the issue of system mechanics:

The bare essentials of a Fantasy RPG are, to me: 1) a task resolution system.

Success and failure should be measured objectively, with the players being able to spend game resources to define their character and how it interacts with the world.

how I wish there was a simple universal system but there is not, what you want is one that best covers action, skills, damage and magic, that a lot more. Yep, something may work with combat but for magic, not there, then you have all the stuff that comes up, like skill checks, creating magical items. You have to have a system that is not too complex and flexable to handle it.
[*]Stats

I think these posts are all making unargued assumptions about what must be in an FRPG system. For example, stats are not obligatory - given that even in many traditional games stats more often factor into skills or to-hit tables rather than do any work on their own, it is quite conceivable just to drop them in favour of going straight to the skills and attributes that actually factor into action resolution.

And then, of course, there are quite viable and fairly simple FRPGs that don't draw any mechanical distinction between stats, skills, attributes, spells, relationships, items etc (eg HeroQuest), and that focus on conflict/challenge resolution rather than task resolution (HeroQuest is an example of this too, and so is Maelstrom).

If you're trying to pack it all into 10,000 words, you want to at least consider the range of options available - for example, you could have a list of descriptors - Fights Well, Nimble, Demon Summoner, Loyal to the King, Divinely Inspired, Magic Sword, etc - and permit each player to choose (say) 3 for his/her PC, allocating a certain number of points across them. If you want to emphasise particular archetypes, you could give bonus points for players who choose thematically connected descriptors. Alternatively, you could have an augmentation mechanic which would naturally lead players to build PCs that reflect archetypes: both Divinely Inspired and Loyal to the King can probably be used to augment Fights Well in a lot of standard fantasy encounters, but are only rarely going to augment Demon Summoner, so the augment mechanic already creates an incentive for players to build paladins and knights rather than wizard/priests and Conanesque court sorcerers - both of whom presumably are villains rather than heros in the typical fantasy story.

As Mallus said, you'd then have to decide whether to feed those descriptors into a task resolution system or a conflict resolution system, or something that mixes elements of both (Burning Wheel and 4e both involve mixing, each in a somewhat different way).