DIY RPG

When I am looking to run a roleplaying campaign, the first thing I do is decide on a story. I write the beginning (usually the first 3-4 sessions) and the end (or at least how I would like it to end). I leave the details of the middle sections vague so that the players are free to move from A to B as they see fit. And only once the story outline is done do I start to think about what system I want to use.

Generally I like systems that provide the players with lots of freedom and choice, but at the same time I like those choices to be resolved quickly. One of the problems I have always had with D&D is that although it provides the players with lots of actions that they can perform during combat, the combat sessions would generally drag on. In 2009 I decided to run a Cthulhuesq horror game set just after the death of Queen Victoria (I didn't want to run Call of Cthulhu because that mythos is already well known which can lead to metagaming and take part of the fun away). I considered several systems for use, for example BESM (because it can be used with any game), Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and World of Darkness. But, in the end I decided that what this game needed was its own custom system.

I wanted the system to be quick and simple, with very little time spent reading dice rolls. I also wanted combat to be treated in the same way as any other conflict and not need its own rules section. Towards this end I decided that every conflict should be decided by a single dice role and that only PC's should role dice, with the target number they needed to beat being the average result that would be rolled by the NPC. Each player only had four stats (physical power, physical finesse, mental power, and mental finesse), they also had two advantages, one disadvantage (although depending on the situation an advantage could act as a disadvantage and vice versa), and some items/equipment that it would make sense for them to own.

The stats were a dice type, with an average person having a d6 in all stats; but because a PC is better than average they were given two upgrades, so they could either increase one stat to a d10 or have two stats at d8, if they desired they could also decrease one stat to a d4 giving them a third stat increase. Each character also had ten hit points and ten sanity points, but these were kept hidden for reasons I will explain later. When a conflict occurred the players would need to state what they were doing and what they hoped to achieve by doing so. For example, not wanting to be interrogated by the players a NPC pulls a knife and begins to back away towards the door, now rather than the player just saying 'I attack the thug with the knife' they would need to specify what they were attempting to gain, for example 'seeing as the thug has a knife rather than wrestle with him I will attempt to quickly knock him unconscious and stop him getting away'. This also provides the implication of what would happen if the roll failed, player is stabbed and thug escapes. The actual role would involve taking the player rolling physical power and adding any appropriate bonuses from items and/or advantages, in this case the target number would be 4.5 ( 3.5 being the average result from rolling a d6 and +1 for the knife). In situations where a conflict might involve multiple NPC's the target number is determined by adding the two NPC averages together, for example if there were two men with knives in the above situation then the target number would be 9. If the target number was outside the range of numbers a player could achieve then no roll was needed.

The game also included a magic system which involved the players gaining runes, with rather poor translations of what they meant, from which they had to form sentences. Depending on the runes used different magic effects would occur. The use of poor/ambiguous translations was so that player wouldn't be 100% certain the first time the cast a spell what it would do, for example would 'give, fire, other' cause the target to catch fire or become enchanted?

The final aspect of the system were the hit points and sanity points. Players start with 10 of each and these were represented by stones, black for hit points and white for sanity. The stones were kept out of sight in plastic dishes but because of the nature of the material players could hear when one or more was lost or gained. Keeping the details of the exact number of hit/sanity points secret added to the feeling of the unknown, and also provided me with a way to 'confuse' the players. When a player became low on sanity the way I as GM interacted with them changed, simple things such as calling them by the wrong name, passing notes with ambiguous meaning, and picking up and dropping some stones back in the dish are simple examples of ways I tried to let the players feel the mental strain their character was under.

This should give you a general overview of how the system works. I encourage everyone to at some point try and either design their own or modify their favourite gaming system, you learn a lot about what does and doesn't work, and don't worry if things don't go all that well as you can always change or tweak the system. When I first presented this system to my players there was some concern over their not being enough to differentiate the characters stat-wise, but I asked them to try it with the promise of changing to a different system if it didn't work out, and due to some good roleplaying and back-stories on their part all the characters did act and feel very different.