Important details RP system.

[Rephath]

I’ve come up with the Important Details system for forum RPG’s. It’s meant to give a sense of achievement and legitimate progress to games, and provide some basic structure without bogging things down in rules. It’s not for all games, but for this game I think we’d be able to make good use of it. Currently experience, abilities, combat victory, gold, and so on is kind of determined as to how much you feel you deserve. I'm hoping adding a few rules makes your accomplishments feel more substantial.

Basically, the system assigns you three traits: level, abilities, and advantages. These add together to create the outcome of any RP you write. Outcome is how much you accomplished. Level is how competent your character is in general, and it adds its full value to the outcome of every RP you write. Abilities are things your character excels at, spells it can cast, skills it specializes, or special things it can do that most beings can’t. Your character has a number of abilities equal to twice its level, and each ability you use to further your goals in an RP adds +2 to the outcome. Finally, advantages are special equipment, magical buffs, and other things the character has acquired throughout its journeys. Advantages add their value to the outcome when you use them.

Okay. So let’s say you’re a level 3 thief. That lets you have up to four abilities, and we’ll give you disarm trap, steal, knife skills, pickpocket, assassinate, and stealth as abilities. If you write a roleplay where you’re trying to steal something, you can write your character sneaking in, stabbing the guard in the back, and stealing the treasure. Your level of 3 adds +3 to the outcome. You also used assassinate and knife skills on the guard, as well as sneak and steal in taking the treasure. Those four skills add +2 each, for a total of +8. So your outcome total is 11. If you had a fine knife of deadly death that grants you a +1 bonus, bringing your outcome up to 12 total.

Outcome is how effective you were in the RP section. Here’s the basic things you can do with it:
Gain Experience: You gain exp. equal to your outcome. We’ll say that experience required to reach next level is something like level squared times 10. So to get to level 3 costs 3x3x10 or 90 experience.

Block: You can set up a block to keep opponents from acting. They must achieve an outcome higher than your block, or they fail. The block persists until it is overcome.

Produce Advantage: You can produce an advantage whose value is the square root of your outcome, rounded down. So if your outcome is 17, that creates a +4 advantage.

Inflict Disadvantage: You can produce a disadvantage on an enemy, usually by injuring them. The disadvantage inflicted is equal in value to your outcome minus the target’s level. Disadvantages add a cumulative -1 penalty for each one the target has, and they also subtract their value from the outcome of any RP the owner of the disadvantage includes it in. Disadvantages grant experience equal to their value to any RP they’re in. Each time the player with the disadvantage uses that disadvantage in an RP, its value is halved and rounded down if necessary. Eventually, it will disappear. Disadvantages can bring your outcome so low, you accomplish nothing but gain experience. You might just roleplay as passed out or some such action. You can also lose an advantage you have to reduce the value of a disadvantage by the advantage’s value. You or an ally may create an advantage on you for this purpose.

Support: You can add your outcome as a bonus to a future outcome produced by an ally, as a one-time deal. This bonus is halved for opposed actions like inflicting a disadvantage or overcoming a block.

[Rephath]

Here's some typical DK actions for creatures:

Forge Weapon/Enchant Item/Craft Armor/Cast Permanent Buff/Teach: This is all produce advantage.

Reveal Backstory: This is also produce advantage, and it adds a bonus when that backstory is relevant.

Create Ammo/Prepare Scroll/Buff Ally/Assist Ally: This is all Support.

Attack/Intimidate/Poison/Cast Offensive Spell/Debuff Enemy: This is all inflict disadvantage.

Create Trap: This is either block or inflict disadvantage, delayed for when the trap goes off.

Shield Spell/ Go on Full Defense/ Bodyguard/ Protect Room/ Stealth: This is all a block of some sort, whether it's being seen or being attcked or what not.

[Rephath]

Dungeon Keepers can gain rooms and NPC creatures as advantages. Gold is mined as a support action, and 100 gold is equal to 1 outcome. So if you get an outcome of 12 you mined 1200 gold. If you spend 2500 gold on a room, you've just boosted your outcome y 25 points, so you've got a room that's at least a +5 advantage, for NPC minions you recruit with that room or for actions the room would support. Gold can also be used to boost outcome for training, so your PC creatures level up quicker.

You can also craft traps as blocks or attacks, or make equipment for your minions. Recruit monsters as advantages. And so on.

Dungeon Keepers have traits as abilities. Things like cautious, greedy, impatient, violent, and so on each add +2 when that leadership style is made evident in how you act through your minions. So if you have an NPC troll as a +3 advantage, level of 5, and the traits industrious and resourceful used in an RP where the troll is preparing a spike trap, that spike trap can function as an attack of 12, delayed for whenever it's set off. Having a couple rating one goblins assist would bring the attack value up to 14.

[Metal Gear Rex]

To save myself the trouble of a really long post unless it's truly necessary, I'm just going to sum it all up and say that you shouldn't handle so many things systematically. It can only take away from the fun and the creativity of RPing. Not to mention, systems don't always work. They can't be too overly complex without being annoying to work with, and if they're not complex enough, then they won't be able to handle some of the more special situations that tend to come by. There's no even ground with this sort of thing, at least not with most RPers.

Currently experience, abilities, combat victory, gold, and so on is kind of determined as to how much you feel you deserve. I'm hoping adding a few rules makes your accomplishments feel more substantial.

Achievements are already there in forms of respect and notice from the Keepers' eyes, in addition to the eyes of fellow comrades. It builds one's reputation. Also, Gold is something that the creatures themselves feels they deserve, not so much the RPer. I'm not sure what you mean exactly in regards to abilities and combat victory being determined by how much an RPer feels they deserve. With Combat Victory, I do kind of understand but I feel like you mean something deeper with that.

[NerdyTB]

I agree with Rex. If you can't really form your character the way and direction you want to, then what's the point? Take for example the Tabletop RPG Rifts. It seems like it limits what you can do by such an extreme margin that all the joy you could have is removed and if you wanted to do something cool with your character you'd have to spend a year in game most times to do it which is almost impossible in group play, and is needless to say, not fun at all.

[Rephath]

I like building rules for RPG's. Sometimes I come up with fantastic rules that are awesome with one small flaw: they remove all fun from the game. I had this system in mind

Technically, the system doesn't limit what you can do. It just limits how well you can do it. But even so, this is one of the best places to try the system out. So if you guys aren't interested, it's probably an idea that needs to die. Or at the minimum be shelved and revamped later, when I'm able to examine it more critically.