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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5227231" data-attributes="member: 42582">@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: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).</blockquote>

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