Author: Emmett O'Brian

Emmett O'Brian is a science fiction role player, GM, imbiber of dark-hued beverages and father of two. Before he was even a teenager he'd been looking for and trying to design that perfect system that scratches all his itches (he'll let you know when he finds it). As his boss is fond of saying, "Don't worry, he looks scary but he's harmless." You can find his projects at theartifact.net and steampunkfitters.com

Thinking About A Homebrew Game System?

If you’re thinking of making your own RPG, you probably have an idea of what dice you want to use, what characteristics you want to model and how heroic you want the characters to be. Those are important to think about, but where do you go from there? Let’s look at some guiding principles that will help you make a system that flows.

Simple
RPG systems can get complex really quickly. When designing a system, you want to keep things as simple as you can while still keeping the level of function where you want it to be. There are a few tools that will help you to do this. The first and most obvious is the unified mechanic, if you want every interaction in the game to be handled by one set of rules. Once the players learn that set, they can do everything the game is designed to do. The main consideration is to keep things consistent so the players don’t have to look up how something is handled, they just know because they’ve learned the core mechanic. GMs will tolerate looking up material, but the more you can reduce the GM’s mental load – the more creative they can be.

Now think about how many individual steps you have in your mechanic. From the start of a round to the end of a round, count up how many dice rolls, equations, calculations and steps the players will have to slog through. Are all of them needed? Can you cut some of them out and still keep the same functionality? Is a slight reduction of function still enough to get you where you want to go? Your first answer is probably going to be that they’re all needed or that taking some of them away will take away some feature of the game you like.  However, if you allow yourself to kill your darlings and reconnect the dots without them, you may just end up with a stronger system.

Do your numbers have to be so big? If characters have 10 hit points and most weapons do at least 5 damage, couldn’t you make it so that characters have 2 HP and weapons do 1 damage? If payers roll 1d20 and the average difficulty is 10, is there a difference if you reduced things to 1d6 and the average difficulty is 3? There very well could be a reason for the higher numbers, but try to reduce them if it’s practical.

The last thing to consider is your math. “Do you need all that math?” would be the obvious first question. Could you provide a non-math approximation of what you’re trying to accomplish? If that’s not practical, try to change the type of math you have to do. Mentally, not all math is equal. Comparing two numbers is about as simple as you can get. This means looking at a number and saying if it is more, equal or less. Adding small numbers is the second simplest math operation you can have. Subtracting small numbers is actually slightly harder for your brain. Multiplication and division are probably not acceptable in the middle of play, unless you’re doubling or halving numbers. Small changes here add up over the course of a game. As a player’s mind is taxed to do repeated equations, they’ll slowly tire and become less creative. The more load you have on them, the more they’ll just follow the most obvious path.

The other question about math to consider is when will the players have to do it? A player that is going to get a big payoff from the math will more happily crunch numbers or at least more happily reach for the calculator. If the math is for something mundane or even harmful to them, it’s going to impact their enjoyment of the game.

This doesn’t mean you have to have a rules-lite system. The emphasis here is reducing the number of steps that have to happen in each round and reducing the mental load of the players. Extra steps are often acceptable for special effects that add spice to the game, but happen only occasionally.

Flexible
Now that you have your core mechanic, try to think of how many ways it can be used. Does the same system that you used for combat apply to social conflict? Could it be used in a survival situation? What about when computer-hacking? How does a doctor heal characters using the system? Can a character maintain a troop of minions with the system and still have turns go quickly? Try to push the boundaries and find exceptions.  If you haven’t found them, you haven’t looked hard enough.

Once you find the exceptions, examine what’s causing them. Is it the lack of a rule, or the existence of a rule? Either way, try not to add a new rule or step – see if you can modify the existing rules to encompass the exception. Sometimes when you’re able to do this, you blow open a whole new set of things your game can do, so really go after this whenever you can.

Think about the steps and rules you currently have. Can they be expanded to cover circumstances that you didn’t originally intend them to? If you’re already play-testing, a way to get some feedback on this is to pay attention to when a player misuses or misapplies a rule. They’re making a connection you may not have been thinking of as being a good thing. The player obviously thinks it is, so can you adjust things to fit the rest of the game?

Bullet Proof
Next think about how the mechanic can be abused. Is there an exploit that will make a character unstoppable? This may not happen right away; it often does happen as the PCs gain experience. Is it a bad thing? Can the challenge be moved somewhere else so that the PC is still fun to play? If you are going to migrate the challenge, make sure it happens slowly and that the players and the GM know that this is the direction the game will move in. This is vital so the players don’t get blindsided by the change and not understand how to keep enjoying their characters.

If you can let a PC max out any stat of their choice and the game is still fun and challenging, you have a robust system. If you can give them any piece of equipment they want and it doesn’t break the game, you’re doing pretty good. If the PC can be unstoppable in one aspect, but still vulnerable in another, you’re on to something.

Whenever a player tries something that has no effect in-game, you have a problem. When a player wants to do flips into a fight and the system doesn’t handle that, there’s a hole between what the player wants to do and what the system can handle. When the player wants to jump on the back of a beast and stab it in the neck, and nothing special happens, there’s a problem. When the player wants to start off with a horse and is willing to sacrifice other things for it, but they can’t, there’s a problem. Let them know how the change could effect the game and ask them for input on how the issue could be handled. It may require a lot of rethinking, but you’ll have happier players for it.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

People have options when it comes to how they want to be entertained. If you’re anything like me, one of your first choices is your favorite RPG. The question is, how can we get more people to share that choice with us? As there are more players, there is more energy, talent and money that is invested in the community. When that happens, we get better games, better art and better writing. Who wouldn’t want that? In short, the more interest in RPGs – the better the hobby becomes.

The biggest obstacle is how we try to sell RPGs to a friend. For the longest time the sales pitch has gone something like, “Have you ever wanted to be the protagonist in a book or a movie?” At this point your friend’s eyes just glaze over – that pitch may have worked for a select few years ago, but it was never a very good one. If that’s not how to get people interested, what is?

The problem is that we don’t really have a simple way to show why we play. Board games show the family on the box smiling and looking at the buyer. What’s the message? “Play this game for a happy family.” Collectible card games have an intrinsic message, “Build the greatest deck and you will be the best.” Video games have the dual advantage of the unlimited possibilities their graphics deliver and that they are simple to pick up and start playing. What is our message?

If you want to convince someone to play an RPG, you have to be able to tell them up front why they should pull themselves away from Mass Effect or Skyrim and you better tell them quickly before you lose their attention. What are you going to say? We need to figure out why we play RPGs, and one of the ways we can do that is to understand why we don’t just use another form of entertainment. Let’s look at an RPG’s competition for attention.

In the early days of RPGs, they were the only way you could go on your own adventure without leaving the house. We’ve lost that message, video games do that more easily and (in some ways) arguably better. RPGs took a big hit as video games got better graphics and better writing. Many people thought table-top RPGs would just go away after a while. They didn’t, though, and that’s interesting because it means that they offer something else that a video game doesn’t.

Then CCGs came along and RPGs took another hit. They were social games that you could get together with your buddies and show them who was the best. Again, people thought RPGs might go away and again, there was something that was different about them that some people still stuck to.

The dust has settled for the most part. People have decided how they will be entertained and the answer isn’t video games or board games or CCGs or RPGs. It’s usually video games and the occasional board game and maybe a CCG. If types of entertainment aren’t mutually exclusive, how can we get more people to include an RPG in that mix? We need our message to explain why an RPG gives a different experience that they might want.

I’ve never heard a concise and convincing pitch for an RPG.  I think that’s because we thought we understood what the reward was that we’re getting out of playing, but we always got it wrong. Sure, there’s exploration, mastery and agency, but you can get those things in any of these other games. Ask a role player and they’ll tell you, the experience is just different.

Think about this from a different perspective, what would you call a situation where one person prepares for several days (maybe even months) for friends to come over. Food and drinks are served or brought by the visitors and they just sit around and talk? Yes, we would call that getting together to game. To a non-gamer they would call that a party.

But this isn’t like a regular party. In this party there is a focus of attention on a game and only your close friends are invited. Everyone is hoping for the same outcome but the results are unclear. Say that to us and we’d say it sounds like gaming. Say that to the average Joe and he’d think he’s showing up to watch a football* game.

The main difference between an RPG party and a football party is that the buddies that get together are there to watch the game and they are the team playing. Now that’s different from any other entertainment. You could say a multiplayer video game is kind of the same way, but it’s more frantic and less social. In an RPG, you get to experience all of the players play the game like you were watching all the players in a football game. You discuss the whys and hows as they happen as a observer, while you are (at the same time) a participant.

We need to understand and appealingly communicate that. We get together for parties to connect with our friends as a team to play a game. This is the uniqueness of the RPG experience, and in this I suspect is also the reward for why we play. When we can clearly explain why we value that experience, we will be able to draw in new players. That’s when the tide comes in.

* Football might mean different things on either side of the Atlantic, but it still fits!