jimboboz ([info]jimboboz) wrote,
@ 2008-06-28 20:42:00
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The Six-Letter System
The Six-Letter System (that's a wiki) is a roleplaying game harking back to the simple days of gaming. All you need is a pencil, some paper, and five six-sided dice per player.

 GAMERS [600k pdf, 8 pages] is the generic version of the Six-Letter System, a series of games with the same mechanics, only the names of the basic six attributes changed, and all given six-letter titles which are mnemonics for those attributes.

 Basically it's the approach old Classic Traveller took: tasks are 2d6 + skill vs some target number, and in combat there are no hit points, you just take damage directly to your attributes. You can have physical conflicts and lose from the physical stats, or mental conflicts and lose from the mental stats.

There are six attributes, optionally six "features" (to cover the Dis/Advantages of many systems), and thirty-six skills. You can have specialties in each, you just get +1 to that specialised area.

At the moment, the only character generation options are random, and I may keep it that way.

I've not yet playtested it, but I've playtested Risk Dice which has the same 42 attributes/features/skills, so I think that number works, your character can fit on an index card and it's quick to roll them up; Risk Dice also has the same "lose attributes, not hit points" thing, and that works though can be a bit abstract.

The playtesting would then be of the character generation, and parts of the combat system.

Any thoughts? Anything you think is missing from the basic GAMERS rules? Any obvious problems?

JimBobOz
Army 1 term, Common Scum 3 terms
976758
Brawling 1, Fire (Rifle) 1, Handicrafts (Cooking) 1, Liberal Arts 1, Speech 1, Survival 1, Tracking 1, Writing 1

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[info]whswhs
2008-06-28 04:05 pm UTC (link)
The definition of psyche seems odd. You appear to believe that everyone who is mentally healthy is an extrovert with highly developed social skills and/or that everyone with highly developed social skills is mentally healthy. I don't see any room in your descriptions for either the well balanced loner or the charming, persuasive sociopath. I think you need two different dimensions here—or you need to pick one.

I don't get the distinction between steam age and coal age. I would suggest having the wind/water age (basically, medieval and Renaissance) between the iron age and the coal age.

Isn't it kind of odd to put Diplomacy under persuasion skills, and then say that you don't use it to persuade people, and need to roll against Speech, which is not a persuasion skill?

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[info]jimboboz
2008-06-29 12:39 am UTC (link)
You have to couple it with the skills.

Psyche represents how much you're able to relate to others and yourself, it's your empathy and self-insight. It's a "gut" sort of thing, the intellectual part is in the skills.

From the skills, Psychology lets you understand others, Diplomacy lets you make them comfortable, Speech lets you be persuasive, and so on.

A well-balanced - by which I assume you mean "can get along with others" - loner would be Psyche-4 or 5 with Diplomacy-1. A charming, persuasive psychopath would be Psyche-2 with Diplomacy-1 or more, Speech-2 or more, and so on.

Loners or strong introverts who are able to get along well with others had to put some effort into learning to do so; putting in effort over time is often expressed in game systems as "learned a skill". And they have to make the conscious effort to do it day-to-day, which also looks like application of a skill rather than something instinctive.

Likewise, not all psychopaths are charming and persuasive, they have to learn to do it, and be conscious of it. If they don't learn or bother, then...

I intended the "steam age" to begin with wood, as it did historically. But I do like the wind/water age suggestion and will use that, thanks.

Well, Diplomacy is the set-up for the persuading... and Speech is not just for persuading people, it's also for speaking well in public, oral storytelling and so on.

That's the thing with categories, nothing ever fits perfectly... I took the twelve categories from S John Ross's Risus Companion, where he describes the dozen basic things adventurers all do. I was thinking, what's the shortest skill list we can get away with? Well, just those 12 would be not a skill list but character classes. Splitting them into 2 each was difficult, 3 seemed to work. I tried for 5, or at least an average of 5, but then you start being tempted to have different skills for automatic and semi-automatic firearms and then... well, we already play GURPS, we don't need another one ;)

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[info]whswhs
2008-06-29 01:56 pm UTC (link)
Well, the thing is, "how well you can get along with yourself and others" is not a single category. If you look at the modular intelligences people, they have "interpersonal intelligence" and "intrapersonal intelligence" as two different modules, like language and numbers. And I think that's right. Personally, I seem to have substantially higher intrapersonal intelligence than interpersonal; it took me years and years to learn to read people's signals at all, or to deal with social situations.

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