B.u.r.p.s.

[RFisher]

I was thinking the BURPS name had already been used by somebody...

Back when GURPS was my game-of-choice, I--at one point--became disillusioned with the bell curve. I was even more annoyed by the screwy percentages associated with critical successes/failures. So, I made up a system to use an open-ended d20 roll instead of 3d6.

It's probably lost to history now, but it was probably something like this:

Roll d20. If you roll a nat20, roll 19+d20. If you roll another nat20, roll 28+d20. &c. i.e. each nat20 is worth 19 plus another roll.

If your roll is 10 less than your effective skill level, it's a critical success. If it's 10 more than your effective skill level, it's a critical failure.

It seemed to work fine. Certainly changes the probabilities, but we were OK with that.

 

[WizarDru]

Thanks, Dogbrain.

I thought I was the only one to come up with such an idea!

I'm not sure if your charts and tables worked out in the post. They don't come up on my screen.

The BURPS title is mine, though. You can't have that.

You might have some unpleasant associations with the Boring Universal Role Playing System, SJG's self-parody from a few years ago, where you got to play civil servants and mall workers.