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I've been sick, in waves, for the past week. I thought it was a cold, but maybe it's a sinus infection. I'll spare you the details, but yuck. Ick ick ick. The first time I've had more than sniffles in a couple years, though, so I guess I shouldn't complain that much. Also, softlykarou has been the best wife ever. Even though she's a bit sick too, she's prepared incredibly tasty meals and went shopping by herself yesterday (not a marvel except that we walk and usually we get enough that I need to carry it). <3
Despite saying that I wouldn't like Runequest in a previous entry due to not liking percentile systems, but having actually looked into it a lot more, it has basically everything I'm looking for in a fantasy game: hit locations; gritty combat with more choices than just "I stab them"; pre-medieval setting (it's more Bronze Age); multiple magic systems including low-power ubiquitous folk magic, D20 monk or Shadowrun physical adept-style enhancement magic ("Mysticism"), summoning spirits, calling on the powers of the gods, and traditional robe-and-book sorcery; mutations caused by the inimical power of chaos; Luck Points as a meta-game mechanic; and it's skill-based.
But...it's still based on a percentile system. The average person only really feels like they're starting to get competent at something if they succeed more than half the time, and since most percentile systems start skills at 15%-35% or so and move up from there. It's possible to mitigate this by only rolling during really stressful situations, or by assuming that base difficulty is "really hard" and giving +20% bonuses to routine actions, which are both tactics that the Warhammer 40K RPGs take, but that still doesn't create a curve.
(Insert jokes about curves here)
Instead of trying to convert everything and going through a ton of work, I'll probably just hack in a curve by allowing the players to pick the tens and ones dice after the roll. That doesn't make it tons better if skills are low--someone with that skill of 15% has a ~19% chance of success under this scheme--but with higher skills, it helps a lot. A skill of 50% lets the user succeed 74% of the time, for example, and Luck Points further cushion lower skills.
I'll still be writing Dungeons & Design, though, because it's good to get the ideas out and work them out on the page. So to speak.
Edit: 74%, not 66%. 1-50, 51-54, 60-64, 70-74, 80-84, and 90-94. The exact percentages for the given skill levels are here, in 10-level increments. 0 is the chance to fail and 1 is the chance to succeed.
Despite saying that I wouldn't like Runequest in a previous entry due to not liking percentile systems, but having actually looked into it a lot more, it has basically everything I'm looking for in a fantasy game: hit locations; gritty combat with more choices than just "I stab them"; pre-medieval setting (it's more Bronze Age); multiple magic systems including low-power ubiquitous folk magic, D20 monk or Shadowrun physical adept-style enhancement magic ("Mysticism"), summoning spirits, calling on the powers of the gods, and traditional robe-and-book sorcery; mutations caused by the inimical power of chaos; Luck Points as a meta-game mechanic; and it's skill-based.
But...it's still based on a percentile system. The average person only really feels like they're starting to get competent at something if they succeed more than half the time, and since most percentile systems start skills at 15%-35% or so and move up from there. It's possible to mitigate this by only rolling during really stressful situations, or by assuming that base difficulty is "really hard" and giving +20% bonuses to routine actions, which are both tactics that the Warhammer 40K RPGs take, but that still doesn't create a curve.
(Insert jokes about curves here)
Instead of trying to convert everything and going through a ton of work, I'll probably just hack in a curve by allowing the players to pick the tens and ones dice after the roll. That doesn't make it tons better if skills are low--someone with that skill of 15% has a ~19% chance of success under this scheme--but with higher skills, it helps a lot. A skill of 50% lets the user succeed 74% of the time, for example, and Luck Points further cushion lower skills.
I'll still be writing Dungeons & Design, though, because it's good to get the ideas out and work them out on the page. So to speak.
Edit: 74%, not 66%. 1-50, 51-54, 60-64, 70-74, 80-84, and 90-94. The exact percentages for the given skill levels are here, in 10-level increments. 0 is the chance to fail and 1 is the chance to succeed.