First RPG you designed?

Dethklok

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What was the first rpg you designed?

The first one I designed had some ten attributes like "skill" and "perception," rolling them up on 3d20. Weapons had attack speeds given in seconds, with rounds lasting 30 seconds long, so that a 5-second weapon attacked 6 times per round at 5, 10 15, 25, and 30 seconds, and an 8-second weapon attacked 3 times at 8, 16, 24. There were various character classes like fencers and evil paladins, and long spell lists with magic point costs. Also the alignment system had gradations of law, chaos, good and evil, so that someone could be "very chaotic - slightly good," for example. It was bloody awful.
 

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(snip) It was bloody awful.

I think that's a fundamental requirement! :)

I tried rewriting AD&D a few times in the 80s to be a bit more coherent but completely failed, of course. And then there was another rewrite based on the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying which was also an epic pile of suck. After those attempts I basically decided just to play the games.

However, in 1996 I wrote a game based on a 2d6 system much as had appeared in the Fabled Lands game books. It actually made a lot more sense and didn't completely suck.
 

I'm not completely sure if it was the first, but I vaguely remember one I created when I was in my early teens. It had a model of the human body split into 100 sections, and you had to roll d100 to see which part you hit in combat - if you were using a slashing weapon, you'd roll a second time and draw a line between the two points. The mechanics were mostly based on d10s if I recall correctly, and there were some strange races that used various weird weapons.

It also included a rune-based magic system. The runes were assembled a bit like a programming language, and you could do literally anything with them, but there was no concept of game balance. If you understood how the rune language worked (rather than just parroting a few predefined sequences for fixed spells) you were effectively immortal - you could bind your soul to your body so that you couldn't die, or even bring yourself back to life (as runes worked in the afterlife as well).
 

The very first RPG I made was DD&D (or Doddi's D&D) when I was nine years old. It didn't have very robust rules, as much as it was comprised of lists of things I remembered/understood from D&D.

I think there were some in between, but when I was twelve I created a cyberpunky game called 2100. The base mechanic was d20+Ability+Skill vs. a target number. A few years later, when 3e came out, I thought I was a prophetic genius.
 

Depends on what you mean.

The first RPG I designed on a mental level was a Christian themed RPG with 3 attributes for your character - Faith, Hope, and Charity, and a list of virtues for skills: joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, righteousness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, generosity, leadership, etc. This was back in the early to mid 80's in response to the occult scare. Game play as I envisioned it would be something like the game Fiasco, only with the goal of ending the scenario in a good place. Unfortunately, there were two fundamental problems. First, I was like 11 and I'm not sure I had the skills to do the project then - though I still feel the simple mechanics I was going with were pretty sound for a game of its type. And secondly, and more importantly, the game scared me. I found its themes far too serious, the need for a storyteller to take the role of God to be outright blasphemous, the fact that as GM I'd essentially be taking the role of a spiritual life coach to be overwhelming, and it questionable whether anyone who had the maturity to play the game the way I intended wouldn't be better off living life for real rather than just pretending to. In context, I decided that maybe fantasy polytheism wasn't so bad for a game after all precisely because a game shouldn't be serious.

The first RPG I actually started to commit to paper was a fantasy heartbreaker attempting to fix the realism problems I had with D&D combat mechanics. Unfortunately, I was 17 and didn't have the skills to complete the project, the mechanics were a mess because I hadn't yet realized that realism wasn't a good goal in and of itself, and the whole thing ended up being so complex that it could only run on a computer - at one point I started coding it for a MUD combat engine. I look back on it now and realize that my 11 or 12 year old self was making a better more sophisticated game.

The first RPG I actually designed to a more or less completed state was basically a fork of D&D 3.0 based on my attempts to fix the problems I felt the game had with balance, etc. It's roughly as different from D&D 3.X as Pathfinder is, but its since 60% or more of the game is someone else's design, it's really no more than house rules for D&D rather than a separate game. It's really good in my opinion, and I love the results and think that its getting to be quite polished, but it's not an independent RPG.

The first original RPG I actually designed is a game I call SIPS - for Simple Imagination Play System. I designed this game for my kids to play. It's a reasonably nice little rules light system meant for the challenges of being a child. The original SIPS game involved fairy land. Right now we are playing a slightly more advanced version of the rules called SIPS for Hogwarts, which is basically the same game with a magic system meant to emulate Harry Potter's world replacing the usual superpower system.
 
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We were 9 years old, and hadn't started playing D&D yet. We started with Melee and Wizard. All I remember about it was there was some lightning spell and our "gold pieces" were called Golden Gonrupees.

PS
 

A buddy of mine and I made The Greatest Game System Ever! (tm) Versions 1 and 2 (heh, some irony right there).

V1 had the following attributes:
  • Used percentile
  • Had several skill ranks (apprentice, journeyman, master, etc),
  • The Grand Differential Table (so a Dagger could kill you no matter what level you are)
  • Continuous Action System (movement takes so much time, casting, attacking, etc)
  • I do not remember what we called them, but things akin to Feats/Manuevers
  • Fix HP, and you had skill in both attack / defense. Resisted rolls.
  • A dynamic spell creation system - leading to the Infamous Vacuum Lung Death! (don't ask)

It failed utterly in play - the fixed HP with escalating attack/defense skills is perfectly logical but utterly boring - "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, Dead". It made me appreciate the D&D approach (all those little HP markoffs are more like misses, but not as frustrating). I also appreciated why D&D had spells - trying to balance a free form magic system is a nightmare.

V2 had the following attributes:
  • This was influenced by d6 Star Wars and the dice pools
  • Only used d6s to do things - each attribute and skill had more d6s the better you were
  • Roll and count up 6s. In a fight, it was resisted. Lose the difference on your skill during the fight (so when you ran out of d6s in the skill, you "lost"). A sort of death spiral.
  • Just used D&D spells and you need a number of successes to cast
  • Wild die - one of the d6s was a different color. If you rolled a 6, you could roll again and count it in the total. It could keep going each time there was a 6 rolled.

Overall, it ran pretty well. Fast in combat and not overburdened with skills (we had like 5 attributes with no more than 4 skills under each). But it became wearisome to "fill in the cracks" - for example if someone wanted to Turn Undead, or how to make a certain type of monster. Too much time fleshing out the game vs. just playing.

Thankfully, D&D 3.x came out about then. I enjoyed the time with GGSE and learned to appreciate the design elegance of core D&D. I was tired of making the patchwork run.

But then I found Savage Worlds. Its was the perfect fusion between what I liked (or what I liked about what we were trying to do) between V1 and V2. I have threatened to sue them for taking my ideas and making them work :p
 

[w]hen I was twelve I created a cyberpunky game called 2100.
"2100?" I am sold.

A dynamic spell creation system - leading to the Infamous Vacuum Lung Death! (don't ask)
Swisgar: I don't needs to; it's de best tings ever.

Nathan: Yeah man, that's awesome!

All: Yeah, yeah

Murderface: Hey. wait a shec - who drank all the ****ing booze?!

Cutaway to vacuum sucking away on an empty bottle of Smirnoff lying on the floor

Murderface: Awwwwww ****.

It failed utterly in play - the fixed HP with escalating attack/defense skills is perfectly logical but utterly boring - "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, Dead". It made me appreciate the D&D approach (all those little HP markoffs are more like misses, but not as frustrating).
...Except that you don't end up with "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, Dead" in the first place unless you try to use D&D-style starting HP.
 

I've designed and hacked quite a few, though none have been "completed" yet.
My #1 one I call Aether, is a game made with the Archmage Engine that 13th Age uses, though I have changed quite a few things. I wanted a scifi game that felt like a fantasy game and nothing out there was what I wanted to I made my own vision. Other than that I have a Zelda RPG that uses a roll and keep system similar to L5R, I have a Mana RPG that is completely unique and is a skill based system, lastly I have a Final Fantasy RPG I have modded from Dungeon World. I call it Crystal World. Since DW is a really simple system I'd imagine that Crystal World is the most "complete" of my systems. I even have a companion book to the main RPG that contains information on how to run games from every final fantasy game to date using different magic systems (materia, espers, sphere grid etc).

So yeah... when I'm in the mood I just work on one or the other. If anyone is interested in anything email me or message me. I'd love help.
 

So yeah... when I'm in the mood I just work on one or the other. If anyone is interested in anything email me or message me. I'd love help.
Good luck, man. I'd offer to help out myself, but I have my hands full trying to make our family's game (and turn this shiny new degree into a job).
 

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