That said, I think that most systems authors need to start with a paragraph or two about "why this RPG engine is necessary, instead of making it work as a plugin to GURPS / Fate / d20 / Apocalypse world." There's a lot of good reasons to do this, but there's also a lot of cruddy systems with half-baked rules that are ripe for rules-lawyering and just bad implementation details (looking at you, FFG Star Wars). Writing a well-crafted, minimal-bug RPG engine is similar to writing a front end framework or something along those lines.

I slightly disagree, only inasmuch as I like to see exploration and innovation. Sometimes you're right it really doesn't work, But setting specific mechanics are important, sometimes essential, if very difficult to get right. Call of Cthulhu never worked in it's d20 incarnation, imho. Sometimes, I think, it is better to try and fail, than to take the safer route.

Even then, though, I often back stuff on Kickstarter at the PDF level knowing full well what I'll really be doing is mining the product for ideas, setting, and story rather than mechanics.

Then again, I'm probably just like one of those people who says, "why would you write code in anything but LISP?"

Thanks!

The confusing symbol math needed to decode a roll (there are what, six major symbols, some of which count as other symbols, others which cancel in pairs) is annoying enough that I imagine every dev who has played this game has written their own die roller.

While the story and fluff behind character generation is pretty good, the three talent tree thing feels again like a cheap attempt to appeal to video game semantics, but ends up introducing balance issues (it is extremely worthwhile to dip a tree to gain cheap skill updates and the low tree upgrades, given cost scaling).

Character generation also makes it way too easy to make a really cruddy character by accident. In this case, "cruddy" is defined as someone who is significantly less likely to succeed at resolution rolls in a variety of situations. In particular, because attributes play such a huge role in skills and are hard to increase outside of chargen, it is waaay better to invest initial points directly in those.

This is exacerbated by the fact that while it feels nice to add specialization to a skill, it does not actually increase the odds of success by all that much. You are a better pilot with three green dice than with a green and a yellow. This problem combines the funky and hard to understand statistics of the resolution system with permanent mistakes that can be made during character generation, where a novice player can spend a lot of their resources making a character who is 15% better of a pilot than anyone else, but is terrible at everything else, which usually results in unsatisfying gameplay.

There are a lot of other bugs in the system - the weapon / armor add-on system is ripe for exploitation if the game is combat-heavy and the GM is foolish enough to allow people to easily purchase custom stuff. There are so many moving parts and ways to minmax, it is hard not to. I mean, an under-barrel flame thrower is a reasonable option here. FFS, FFG.

Ultimately, I enjoy star wars RPGs, but that is despite the mechanics, rather than because of them.

Ob- my roller. https://stuff.spherical.fish/roll3/

I guess you'd call that RPG the equivalent of INTERCAL.

Oh and the author has incredible command of English so it read like poetry, and she has PhD in Computer Science and it shows - the games are modular, the algorithms are precise, etc.

James Wallace (of Hogshead as was, who published Nobilis, and other really groundbreaking games like De Profundis, and his own Adventures of Baron Munchausen) has been slow-motion (i.e. mostly failing at) releasing an interesting game "Alas Vegas" via kickstarter for a few years now. Given the esteem he was held in at one point, it's a shame to see so many folks who felt burned by the kickstarter. His publishing decisions definitely helped get the hobby where it is today. Nobilis being a particularly good example.

I see that The Dark Eye does use rolling for combat, but it calculates armour differently, in a more predictable manner (for example, in D&D armour makes you less likely to be hit, whereas in The Dark Eye it makes you take less damage) which I think demonstrates the different tendencies.

D&D especially since 4e, is very much by conscious design centered around structured resource management (that in 4e this was done in a very heavy-handed metagame way by way of, e.g., encounter/daily powers, I think, contributed to a lot of the complaints against; 5e’s short/long rest system is nearly equivalent in effect but ties the mechanic in a more organic way to the fiction.)

> I see that The Dark Eye does use rolling for combat, but it calculates armour differently, in a more predictable manner (for example, in D&D armour makes you less likely to be hit, whereas in The Dark Eye it makes you take less damage)

This is extremely common in American TTRPGs that aren't D&D or deliberate mechanical clones.

I'm not passing judgement or saying one style is categorically better than the other, but there's definitely a huge correlation between continent-of-origin and level-of-chance-involved.

I love it. But I would choose different languages:

AD&D: C

D&D 3.5: C++

D&D 4: Java/C#

D&D 5: C++11

Fate Core: Python

:)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Drago...

But to extend on your point - maybe Original D&D is like Forth in this analogy?

If you've never seen how a particular game works and want to get a feel, search around and watch an episode or two of the game online. Rollplay on Youtube has a good channel that covers a lot of different types of games. You can also find games on Roll20's channel as well, and many more on Twitch and other channels.

As for game types, many of the ones listed here are very tailored games meant to play a very specific kind of game. I'll try to give you a summary of some of the popular ones.

Apocalypse World (AW) is a game, as you'd expect, about playing as a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting.

Night Witches is a varient of AW about a female bomber squadron in WWII.

Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about faithful 'God's Watchdogs' that go around Mormon-esque towns helping the community and enforcing the judgments of their religion.

Fate Accelerated or Fate Core is a mostly generic system meant to tell a lot of different kinds of stories. Fate Accelerated specifically is a very short and very flexible rulebook for whatever you could imagine.

D&D or Pathfinder are games about playing a group of adventurers in a tolkien-esque fantasy world, generally combat focused but you can play a lot of kinds of campaigns in D&D.

Dungeon World is a 'rules-lite' version of D&D based on the AW ruleset, which basically means it has a lot less rules and is more focused on the collective narrative.

Shadowrun is a game about telling cyberpunk heist stories in a fantasy/cyberpunk futuristic city run by megacorporations.

Blades in the Dark is a game about a scoundrel crew building their gang up from scratch in a city roughly based on the Thief or Dishonored games.

There's many more out there, it just depends on the kind of experience your group wants to have. Many of these rulesets are wildly different and the rules are tailored to create a specific kind of experience. Some of these rulesets are more generic and meant to be used to play a wide variety of games. Some are 'rules heavy/crunchy' which involve a lot more mechanics while some are 'rules light' and deliberately involve much less. D&D, Fate, Pathfinder are examples of more generic rulesets, whereas Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Night Witches, or Dogs in the Vineyard are much more specific.

In "My life with Master" the party play the henchmen of an evil master. It explores ideas of culpability, fear, self-loathing, humanity and, possibly, redemption. It is the only role-playing game to give me heart ache. Literally, pathos I felt as a physical reaction.

"The Clay that Woke", another by Paul Czege, concerns a race of Minotaurs, more physically powerful but utterly subjugated by humans. It explores themes of racism, power, imperialism, and ethics. Not quite as good MLWM, but very much worth playing.

I added "The Beast" to go all in on a game totally unlike D&D. It is a single player game, using cards and a diary, with an erotic theme, and dark overtones. I haven't finished my play through, and I'm not sure I recommend it, quite, but it has got under my skin.

"Hillfolk" is Robin D Law's 'Drama system', essentially game mechanics built around generating interesting interpersonal conflict. The setting is Iron Age subsistence, but it includes several other settings, from horror to modern life.

If you want a game with lot of encounters with monsters to defeat, getting more and more powerful to defeat even harder enemies, with combat system that is not overly complex but still tactical, you definitely could (and maybe even should) base your game on D&D

Heroic fantasy works. I could imagine Witcher, or Monster Hunter, even aliens style sci-fi reskin, fighting monsters in derelict space-ships should work... but i.e. Shadow of the Colossus would be harder, and Game of Thrones style political intrigue might turn into really simplistic dice-rolls.

But this is probably true of many games, i.e. I heard that Fate is really good if you want to do something with a structure of action-adventure tv-show, but probably not a psychological horror :P But doing i.e. politics in that system might be more fun than in i.e. base 5e D&D.

Probably the most succesful engine I have seen is in the powered-by-the-apocalypse games. Apocalypse World invented a really simple base machanic, where if your character wants to accomplish something, you roll two 6-sided die, sum the numbers, and if it is 10/11/12, you just do the thing, if it is 7/8/9, you do the thing, but something bad happens, and if it is 1 to 6, you don't do the thing and something bad happens.

Probably my favourite system I have played so far :-)

Seems too similar to my real life experience. That's uncanny.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_World

The thing about it I think is so strong is its 'move' mechanic: the way it neatly and obviously separates role playing from game action, and helps players immediately feel like they're playing in the setting. It onboards newbies really well, and sets the scene without relying on the need to read a short story.

I'm not trying to say I'm-right-you're-wrong, it's just fascinating how things resonate with different players. I guess Vincent Baker's genius runs deeper than I thought!

But I have seen hacks/systems with critical success on 12, (or more than 12, if you have i.e. modifiers for your character stats).

But having critical failures sounds like fun, go for it :D

You could easily add it to i.e. World Of Dungeons [1] probably the shortest rule-set for RPG I have ever run :)

[1] http://www.onesevendesign.com/dw/world_of_dungeons_1979_bw.p...

I've reached the conclusion it's a bad idea though. The more generic a system it is, the less appropriate to the specific game it can be, and vice versa. So I much prefer systems that are very dedicated to their particular game experience. E.g. I absolutely love The Mountain Witch, which is a game that feels like a samurai movie, and everything in the system supports that: there's a special mechanic for duels, another for betrayals, all conflicts interact with your personal history/issues...