Here's An Idea - Our Own Role-Playing System

Hello there! I am he who needs no introduction, (not here, anyway!)

I was tossing this idea around with some other ponies, and I played with it a bit with Clock.

What if... we... Everypony... created our OWN RPS.

Some of you might be like; "Wait a sec, doesn't Eight Star already have one he built?"

Well, yeah, you're right, but it's really a universal system, and kinda complex and hard to get people into because I'm trying to produce it for sales and I can't exactly give the book out by printing all the rules here. That would just be bad.

However, if it's a fan system, I can't produce it anyway, so it would be free to use, of course, like Roleplaying is Magic.

Unlike RiM however, I'm looking to make a system that's a little more clear on how everything is accomplished, and something that has more than... three base stats. Let's face it - RiM is really limiting, what with three choice stats, and everything being based off of 3 stats that can't go over 5, and there's no room for the advancement of your character.

Let's re-iterate; no room for advancement of your character.

So... here's the info I made up in conjunction with some chatter with Clock.

There shall be 6 Base Stats:
Strength - Will affect the power of attacks, mostly melee, as well as carrying capacity and pushing/pulling power.
Resilience - Will reduce the chance of taking damage, getting poisoned, sick, put to sleep, or otherwise knocked out.
Speed - Uhh... duh. Distance traveled, how quickly a pony acts, and some skills.
Perception - How well one perceives the world around them. Basically how keen all of your senses are.
Willpower - The ability to cast magic, use magical items, and resist many forms of magical domination.
Creativity - This affects how quickly a pony can learn and retain skills! The higher a pony's creativity, the larger their repitoire for magic, skills, or general useful knowledge.

The first three are the body, the following three are the mind. Then, we can finish it off with two simple determiners:
Health - How much you take before falling over and going "urgh." Zero health puts you into an unconcious state that doesn't recover until you've recovered to about half. I'm thinking death won't occur unless your health reaches negative twice your resilience, giving you an increasing threshold.
Stamina - Stamina is what gets used up when somepony uses magic, skills, or general abilities. It also goes down when they get hit with stuns, sleep effects, etc. At zero, they need to make a check each turn to stay awake, otherwise they will pass out until fully recovered.

The system, I propose, should use 2d12.

Why?

Well, because 12 is a multiplier of 6, which is how many stats we have. However, using 1d12 would present no averaging, 1d6 would present too little randomization, 3d6 would have too much averaging, 2d6 would still have too low of a value... but 2d12 would allow us to have a good value range, and a slightly higher average rate than 1d20.

I also propose that during average character creation, the player gets 24 points to distribute however they want, spending no more than 8 points in a single stat. This allows them customization on a fair scale.

What say you, ponies?

 

*Pokes back.* Just came up with it. Like, two hours ago. I intend to talk more about it on Skype when I get situated at home later.

You know where to find me, there.

 

My idea is that there would be a few classes to choose from. The classes would basically give you your starting skills, but after that, your advancement would be based on an awards system that would allow you to gain skills and bonuses that would shape your character how you want. I was thinking of maxing it at like, 24 awards.

By awards I mean like; "Charm 20 enemies with the Charm skill."

Once you accomplish your award, it'll give you a bonus like; "+2 Willpower, +1 Skill"

Then you could choose any skill that you meet the requirements of. Like for example: "Charm (Requires 8 Willpower): Caster and Target roll 2d12+Willpower. If the caster wins, the target is Charmed."

That's just an example. What do you ponies think?

EDIT: I need ideas for skills.

 

This pony gets it. Definitely.

Like I said though, classes would be pretty simple, and some would be race-specific, of course.

I think each race should come with a bonus of 1 point to two stats, and one or two skills. Like, all pony races could choose a special talent for one of their skills, but for things like dragons, they'd get flight and uh... fire-breathing.

 

Well, have a lot of quick achievements, and a few big ones. Like "completing your first campaign" could even give a crazy boost of +1 to all stats or something.

 

For those of you interested in the development, I came up with a brilliant change.

Changing Strength to a stat called Ferocity.

There's a reason:
Ponies are innately strong, as are like... all of the species that would be playable. As we can see, they have all shown the capability to pull heavy objects, and at times carry heavy things without much issue.

So hauling is no longer going to be based on Strength. They've all got a base level of things they can pull, and I think it would make plenty of sense to say that the rate increases by how resiliant they are, so it would go up by their Resilience.

Now, Ferocity becomes the general combat stat. That way, instead of saying everything relies on Strength, we can generalize it to Ferocity to handle creatures who have claws, etc, like dragons and griffons.

Ferocity can also handle Intimidation skills a lot better than Willpower or Strength.

What think you, ponies?

 

Okay, so a change in the creation process, too.

Races will each give 6 starting points to the stat, (depending on the race,) and the player would have 18 more points to play with. The maximum a character can start with in any of the main 6 stats is 8, (6*4=24 starting stat points. 4*2=8 maximum. For anypony who cares about system calculations.)

Races will also give 2 starting skills. For the normal pony races, the first skill will be the mysterious "special talent" skill, and the other skill would depend on their race. Pegasai would get flight, unicorns would get magic casting, etc, etc. Dragons would get firebreathing and flight. That kind of thing. The skills are purely bonuses. So for fire dragons, we could give them the immunity to lava, but an apathy to water sort of thing. *Shrugs.*

Obviously, from the main 3 pony races, unicorns would have more Willpower, pegasai would have more Speed, and earth ponies would have more Resilience.

Then there's classes. Class only gives you the starting skills, and your starting Health and Stamina. Probably about 3 skills and a split of about 100 points between Health and Stamina that would usually end up as 50 and 50.

*Mumble, mumble, mumble.* Also, I'm writing the manual as if it's told from the perspective of some helpful mare, but I'm having trouble coming up with an actual character name for her.

 

You mean a multiverse that would include things from other games... like humans?

Well, it's not being designed to do it, but that's not to say that we couldn't find a way.

My original system, TimewarpVortex is designed to work in any situation, multiverses abound, but because it can do anything it's actually a little complex. Easy to pick up if you're just doing one thing, but if you play it for long enough, there's a lot to take in.

This system, EPRP, is being built to handle anything yet seen in Equestria's universe.

Actually, now that I think about it... yes. It can work. Like RiM, it wouldn't be the best system, but it works. To make it be the best system for anything would horribly complicate it, and at that point we may as well play TwV.

Edit: Proposing these stats for the initial races:

Pony: +3 Resilience, +1 Perception, +1 Willpower, +1 Creativity, Cutie Mark Skill, and Worker passive, which will allow them to go longer lengths of work without losing their Stamina, and possibly makes skills have a chance to cost no stamina... not sure.
Pegasus: +3 Speed, +2 Perception, +1 Creativity, Cutie Mark Skill, and Flight passive. Flight comes with the walk-on-clouds thing.
Unicorn: +3 Willpower, +2 Creativity, +1 Perception, Cutie Mark Skill, and Magic passive. Magic lets them... perform innate magic.
Sea Pony: +2 Resilience, +2 Perception, +1 Willpower, +1 Creativity, Cutie Mark Skill, and Water-Dweller passive, allowing them to always swim without penalty. They can also breathe under-water, but can't go long times without water.
Breezy: +2 Speed, +2 Willpower, +2 Creativity, Cutie Mark Skill, Fairy Magic passive. They're also able to fly, but not as high as pegasai, they spend more on magic, making them rest more often.

I'm just thinking off the top of my head. Ideas?