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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9276427" data-attributes="member: 4937">Absolute needs1) Combat system that provides some tactical granularity such that fictional positioning matters.2) A challenge system, often implemented as a 'skill system' though that's not essential, the essential components of which are too complex to describe here but include such features as independence, space spanning, distinct, balanced, and casually realistic.  I put this as distinct from the combat system in that elegance is not a positive attribute of a system because the different sorts of challenges that can occur each have distinctive features that make them dissimilar from each other.  Social challenges don't work in real life like combat challenges.  With some things margin of success matters because success can be quantized.  Other things it doesn't because success is a quality and not a quantity.  And so forth.  Since these things are not symmetrical so if your resolution system is symmetrical then ultimately things will feel off.   While this problem can haunt even good challenge systems, it's more of a problem if it tries to model everything as combat or tries to model combat the same as everything else than if it tries to model a Lore test the same as a Jump test.  3) Chargen and progression system which should be space spanning, balanced, and evocative.4) Strong examples of play.  By that ideally, I mean "Here are multiple adventures that can be run as is by someone new to the system that will produce enjoyable play and we've play tested the scenario enough to know what can go wrong and since this is for beginners we'll tell you how to work through it."  But it also means that the fluff of the rules text actually strongly corresponds to what can be produced in play, say the way that in Order of the Stick the author is taking care that his panels do correspond to situations that can be produced by the game being played.  Your rules text needs to include walkthroughs of how the rules are intended to work in fun social play using examples that aren't trivial.  I've gotten to the point that if I see any fiction in your rulebook that doesn't appear to have been produced by play in the system it's such a red flag that I will immediately put down the book and consider you so unfit as a designer as to never look at your work again.  Do not put micro-fiction in your rules that represents the story you want but which clearly isn't the product of social RPG play.  Don't put examples of play in your text where the story works because of a series of unlikely rolls that given the scene a wonderful narrative structure.  I'm much more impressed by what Gary did in his extended example of play that includes the system one shotting a PC in a horribly unfair situation the player couldn't really have seen coming and Gary absolutely implying "This is how my game works.  This is the intended play."Wants that border on needs:4) Travel rules.5) Chase rules.6) Vehicle rules.7) Unless equipment is purely abstract in your system balanced equipment gear lists with appropriate prices.  8) Mass combat rules.9) Crafting/Trade rules.The systems I like tend to not tell you exactly how to play or what the game is supposed to be.  I don't like being in a situation as a GM where the players are telling me what they want to do but the system doesn't provide for that.  And I don't like a system that through silence implies to the players that the scope of the imagined universe is as small as the game is.  When I play we aren't primarily playing a game. You the player are inhabiting via an avatar a shared imagined universe and the game is there to help bring that to life so that what happens with the universe feels like what should be happening if it were real.  So I need what it takes to make that happen.</blockquote>

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