... There for the Cons & Pros: Cypher System

 

Content available on Monte Cook Games

The Cypher System is the brainchild of Monte Cook, a relatively famous modern TTRPG Designer. He was the editor of the Hero system, worked on D&D through 3rd edition at both TSR and Wizards of the Coast, helped create a d20 version of one of the other major TTRPG properties, World of Darkness, and returned to D&D for 5th Edition as lead designer for a time, until he left due to differences with WotC (which, you know, fair).

Cypher is really interesting because it does a really good job at re-imagining the modern D20 roll-over system. The normal d20 roll-over formula goes like this:

1. Roll d20
2. Add applicable Trait Modifiers, Innate Modifiers, or other modifiers to that roll
3. Generate Total
4. Speak Total to GM
5. GM compares Total to Secret Target Number
6. GM Declares Success/Failure.

Each turn, each check, follows that same formula, over and over. In a game like D&D with static Target Numbers in time (like in Combat), players will eventually discover what the Target Number is, and that will speed up the back and forth slightly. Cypher takes that formula and flips it on it's head:

1. GM states Target Number
2. Player consults Traits and skills to reduce (or increase!) that Target Number to create final TN
3. Roll a d20. At or over final TN is success, under is failure. 

This "Reverse d20" system does a number of different things to streamline everything. Instead of creating a subtotal ahead of one's turn and then adding it to the d20 later, all of the math is done ahead of time. This also gives a benefit that, on occasion, a player could a Target Number to 0, which would remove the need for rolling altogether.

Other Pros of the system:

The Replacement of Static Stats with Stat Pools is amazing for emulating a "realistic" scenario where attrition of some variety is present. In other systems, you run into that feeling that the player characters can go at 100% until they lose their last hit point. In Cypher, you trying to aim your bow or gun is drawing from the same source as Dodging - the Speed pool. Swinging your hammer and getting hit by a hammer both impact your Might pool. It's an amazing system for emulating any type of drain, be it fatigue, becoming unfocused, and so on.

Cypher streamlines all bonuses and penalties to the same value - Three. A Creature's TN is 3 x their level. If you are trained at something, the TN is eased (goes down) by 3. If you have an item that makes the thing easier, it goes down by 3. If you're bad at something, the TN is hindered (increases) by 3.

The XP system is simple and intuitive, but also breaks up the "levelling" process into disparate parts. XP can also be used to purchase instant benefits - rerolling dice, refusing GM intrusions, and short-term or highly niche benefits ("I don't know much about living in the woods, but my grandparents took me camping in these woods for multiple summers in my youth") - as well as long-term advancement. Maybe you're training a skill, or increasing your pools, gaining a profession, purchasing an Artifact (any type of reusable game-altering item), or picking up abilities from your focus or archetype. Instead of rigid leveling requirements where each player gets prescribed benefits at roughly the same time, each PC gains abilities and skills at the pace of their choice.

There is no prescribed skill list. This allows the system to be really solidly genre-neutral - The skills you'd need in Old Gods of Appalachia (set in the late 1800s through early 1900s) are going to be very different than the skills of Numenera (set a billion years in the future).

The Cons of Cypher:

The promise of the game is often at odds with the execution of the game. Since the first release (Numenera), the promise of the Cypher system is that the game is focused on exploration and discovery. You are supposed to be gaining XP not for fighting monsters, but rather unearthing secrets. That sounds absolutely awesome... and then you read the abilities. While some are relatively nodding in that direction (trained in polite conversation!), reading through the archetypes is, more often than not, a list of combat-oriented abilities.

While the skill system is completely blank in theory, that isn't necessarily true in practice - being trained in weapons, dodging, armor, and certain types of attacks are all relatively the same across the systems. Those things can also only be increased or otherwise impacted when referenced by the archetype or other part of the character concept. When choosing skills, those skills are prescribed by the setting you're in - your archetype might have a list of interesting skills, but have one missing for no apparent reason (Skilled Exploring allows me to be skilled in Navigation or tracking, but not cartography). Also, there's a very fine line between "Trained" in something (which eases the check) and "Practiced" in something (that is, you're allowed to use that thing without a penalty).

The character creation seems interesting at first - it gives a 3-part mad-libs-style selection of Descriptor, Type and Focus, using the phrase "I am a _____ _____ Who ______": a Hardy Explorer who Explores Dark Places, a Driven Speaker who Moves like a Cat, and so on. However, what it means instead of choosing 1 class, like you'd see in other games, you're always choosing 3. The Types are the simplest, as there are only 4 - Warrior, Explorer, Adept and Speaker. They're sometimes called other things in other setting books (like the Glaive instead of Warrior in Numenera), but they're just reskinned versions. The Descriptor is some sort of adjective, from Appealing or Brash through the alphabet to Virtuous or Weird, each giving some stat bonuses and a small ability. The most confusing is the Focus, the "Verb" of the sentence. Many of them are really straightforward (Murders, Leads, Fights Dirty, Slays Monsters, Crafts Powerful Objects) but have a tendency to make not a ton of sense: Fuses Mind & Machine (i.e. is a cyborg), Howls at the moon (is a werewolf), Focuses Mind over Matter (is telekinetic), Abides in Stone (is a golem), and the silliest, in my opinion, is Carries A Quiver (because archery is clearly more than just a weapon). In practice, it's a whole bunch of different places to look to build and/or level up a player character. It's incredibly frustrating, because the thing I dislike the most from TTRPGs is having to look multiple locations for basic abilities.

Lastly, Why is it called the "Cypher System"? Well, because there are Cyphers, of course! In the system, these are single-use magical items or abilities that PCs can only have a limited number of (typically 2, but up to 4 for certain types). They are a sort of blend of Inspiration/hero points and spell scrolls, ranging in power from subtle Cyphers (like Dumb Luck and Remembering) to manifest Cyphers (like Gas bomb and Interstellar Teleporter). The idea behind them is that because they are single-use things that are supposed to be received with regularity, it will encourage the players to use them, and also that balance isn't a concern. In practice, they are easily the weakest bit of the system - they aren't necessarily always applicable, and players don't really want to let go of unused ones to pick up new ones. The fact that they can range in power from "a reroll" to weapons of mass destruction doesn't help this. 

Choose Your Own Adventure: Resolution Mechanics

 

Album Cover, Virgin records

There are a whole collection of different ways people resolve things in TTRPGs. Dice, cards, tarot, jenga blocks, dominos, points, candles... it's absurdly diverse. Since we're trying to make RPGs, it would make sense to take a look at some options before making our decisions. Me, personally? I love dice. I'm a dice goblin, my wife is a dice goblin, all our friends are dice goblins... it's going to be dice.

Originally, war games used d6s only - they've been around for thousands of years, and even now, when most people think "dice", they think of d6s. When we entered into the era of what is now considered TTRPGs, those were stepped away from relatively quickly. The first era was that of linear dice - these are dice resolution systems that emulate some amount of easily-computable percentage statistics. Dungeons & Dragons, rather famously, used the d20, where each face has a 5% chance of being rolled, and other systems such as Palladium followed suit. The other early games, such as Basic Role Playing (BRP), it's spinoffs (Call of Cthulu, Runequest, and so on) and Warhammer, used a d100 - a pair of d10s, one representing the 10s place, and the other in the 1s place, where each digit is 1%. Other dice were still being used for any number of other things

Relatively quickly, that started getting spread around. Tunnels & Trolls replaced the linear resolution method with one that contains a "bell curve" - 2d6. This got spread around even more with systems like the General Universal Role Playing System (GURPS), with their 3d6 system handling more and more nuanced systems.

These types of systems are all about comparing numbers, and fall into 3 categories: 

• Roll-Over - the rolled number is compared against a Target Number (the difficulty level) provided by the Game Master, and if it's above that number, it's a success.
• Roll-Under - Instead of receiving a number by the GM, Roll-under systems have the Target Number there on the Sheet (If my sheet says 10, for example, I need to roll and the total needs to be at or under 10). There are two of these executions - first, the modifiers effect the dice rolled, like the above, but are in a state where negative numbers are better (TN 10, I roll a 12 but have a -3 in the trait, for a total of 9); alternatively, the modifiers effect the Target Number, and thus math is done first and the dice rolled second (TN 10, I have a +3 in the trait, so the actual target number is 13) 
• Contested - One of the above systems, but instead of a static difficulty, the player's dice and total are compared to the dice and total rolled by the GM

The next innovation was that of a 'dice pool' system - where dice are rolled, certain numbers are labelled as success, others as failure, and then a number of successes are counted. First with Ghostbusters (1986), which used a d6 pool system, the largest game that used such a system was the gothic monster games in the World of Darkness storyteller system (using d10 dice pools) and the Fudge d6 system, with their custom d6 dice that contain two "+" , two blanks, and two "-" signs (which are abbreviated as "dF"). Star Wars Roleplaying 2012, later released as Genesys in 2017, took that a step further, uses "narrative dice", a custom set of polyhedral dice that are used.

Dice pools are interesting because you have multiple "levers" to twist - not only is there a number of successes that can be generated, but what defines a success can be leveraged. In some Shadowrun editions, a d6 pool system, 5s & 6s are successes, but since the number of dice can get really large, there's an alternate rule that you can just automatically gain 1 success for every 4 dice that would be rolled (outside of combat, that is). In some of the World of Darkness editions (d10 pools), typically 6-10 are successes, 2-5 are null, and 1s are failures... but in some cases that number that defines success could get higher (7-10 or 8-10, for example). 

The next innovation was the fixed Target Number, introduced through the games that would become Savage Worlds in 2003. That system used a linear resolution (a single die and modifiers), and a fixed target number (4), but also added the concept of "exploding" dice - that is, if you roll the highest number on the die (a 4on a d4, an 8 on a d8, etc), that die is noted and then rolled again. Because of this, otherwise impossible resolution calculations, such as 1d4-2 vs a TN of 4, could be accomplished. While this solved many issues that linear resolutions had, the desire for low numbers to trigger additional "explosions" often meant resolutions make take quite a while - roll, and then roll again, and then roll again.

In 2010, Apocalypse World  took the RPG space by storm, eventually spawning hundreds of "Powered By The Apocalypse" games in its wake. They main innovation of the PbtA-style systems is that they took that fixed difficulty model, and used it to mirror both sides of the interaction - using a 2d6+ roll-over system (originally), the player would roll their dice, add a modifier and compare it against a chart:

• 1-6: Failure, and the GM makes a move
• 7-9: Partial Success (or Success, with complications), with the GM having a relatively fixed number of options for that complication
• 10+: Total Success

This shifted the balance away to an entire liminal setup - the GM doesn't roll at all, just presents a threat, the players act, and the GM reacts. There are also variants of this with other dice sizes (such as Monsterhearts & Kult which use 2d10). In 2013, this concept was ported over to d20 systems with Numenera, which eventually became the Cypher System, attempting to be a combination of both worlds.

An off-shoot of the PbtA craze was the game Blades in the Dark, which uses a combination of dice pools and the above system - Referred to as "Roll and Keep". With this setup, there is no (or very little) math involved. In this setup, you create a pool of d6s, and use only the highest result. 1-3 is a failure, 4-5 is a partial success, and a 6 is a total success (multiple 6s is considered a critical success). In TechNoir, a d6 pool system, 4-6 is a success and 1-3 is a null, but "Hurt Dice" can be added which remove the numbers rolled from the pool (so if you have 3 successes with a 5, 5, and 4, but one of your Hurt dice rolls a 5, those are negated, and you're down to a single success). The various Cortex systems are similar, where you roll a number of dice (but of various sizes), and you "keep" two of the dice for your total. In 2022, the concept was iterated on again, with the Breathless system - No modifiers, only dice sizes, and each time you roll a die, you keep the next smallest die. 1-2 is a failure, 3-4 is a partial success, and 5+ is a full success. This combination allows for the Stakes to constantly stay high, as each time a check is needed, whatever die that check is using will step down the die - It's really easy to roll over a 5 with a d12, but then it's a d10, then a d8. The lowest die that can be used is a d4, which means the checks can still succeed, but always at a cost. 

So, with all that out on the table, what do I want to actually use?

One of my largest gripes about RPGs in general is that difficulty is abstract, and the system revolves around having a Target Number. In some cases it's really straightforward - if you're fighting a creature, that creature typically has some sort of stats, and then the Target Number is derived from that. In D&D, it's numbers like the Armor Class (AC) or Saving Throws. In Cypher, it's the difficulty level multiplied by 3 (A level 4 creature has a TN 12). But outside of those predefined things, that abstraction is even more made-up - If you're falling and want to grab a ledge, how hard is that? If you have peak human strength, and want to lift a car up, how difficult is that for you? If you're trying to jump between moving carriages, what is the Target Number?

For that, the Roll-Over systems are largely devoid of value. There's always a table of some variety, some collection of "easy" to "hard" to "nearly impossible" with some numbers, but they're always devoid of context, and have no background information on how to make that work. The only Roll-Over system that works well is the PbtA model of game, where there is a constant Target Number. Roll-Under System seem to be the way to go for that specific complaint.

As a game master, I tend to be tracking a lot of things - while each player has a lone character, maybe a second one, the GM is tracking everything and everyone else. I like mass conflicts, I like things that are complicated and interesting. Because of that, I want enough of an abstraction where I'm not constantly having to track every little thing. That being said, I also don't want to go too deep into the realm of PbtA, BitD and Cypher - I still want to be rolling dice, and playing the game, just on a more reduced scale.

Instructions Unclear, Roll-Under seems hard

Roll-under seems like the way to go - having the bulk of the difficulties right there on the page would make things run really fast for the most part. Definitely the version where all of the math is done on the front end, though, manipulating the target number instead of the roll itself. That being said, many of the roll-under systems are linear instead of bell-curve, so that's a problem. Ironsworn (a solo-focused 2d10 system) and the Modiphius 2d20 systems (for games like Mothership, Conan, Fallout or Dune) are the only ones I know of. More research will be required.

I particularly like the degrees of success that is used in Hollows, a d20 roll-under, as the presence of enemies is represented as adding a second, lower Target Number, and the ideal roll is going to be at or under your TN but above the enemies'  TN. Gotta thread that needle really smoothly. That being said, I also enjoy that lower-equals-better from Modiphius, though - where rolling double 1s is an amazing roll. 

However, if there's a particularly asymmetrical version of contested rolls out there, that might also be interesting. Ironsworn, mentioned above, has a somewhat-contested roll, in that the Target number is determined by the Stat on the sheet added to a 6d. The Cortex dice-pool system, such as in Tales of Xadia, has difficulty levels are based first on dice pairs, but the contested pools are augmented by things like location distinctions and the character's own complications. For example, Recovery is against the base difficulty of 2d8 - so if you're bleeding d10, you would roll against the combined two highest numbers from 2d8+1d10. That also some serious potential. 

I am in Symmetry

KateMaxPaint, DeviantArt

Symmetry is one of the rarely-referenced parts of TTRPG Design. You'll hear about balance the most - that is, how the choices made for player characters compare to each other. Symmetry, in this context, is how the system looks from either side of the table - from the players' perspective and from the gamemasters' perspective. This is before anyone has sat down at the table (literal or virtual), before the characters are created. It's not something that can be easily fixed by any one group or table, because it's a series of assumptions baked into the design of the system at it's core.

A Symmetrical system is one where the players and game master are governed by the same collection of assumptions. This isn't specifically about the resolution system (in most cases, that's going to be relatively the same across the board) but about how the people playing the game relate to the game itself. The most stark example of this, to me, is "3.P" - that is, the blend of D&D 3 & "3.5", and the Pathfinder 1e offshoot of that system.

In Symmetrical systems, everyone is approaching things the exact same way. When a player creates a character, they do the normal character creation things in a D&D-like: create stats, select things like class, race, background, class features, feats, spells, and equipment. That's a well known setup. The Game Master, when they're creating a non-player character, does the exact same thing. This seems relatively straightforward, and almost common sense. The problem lies in the imbalance of work between those two people. A player creates a character slightly more than once per game, on average - maybe slightly more in a particularly lethal system or unlucky streak. The GM, however, is populating the rest of the 'world' those PCs are playing in - each bandit, each beast, each guard, everybody. That's where the system breaks down... Where you have each minion, lieutenant and wandering monster that has a complete stat block, complete with feat chains, equipment, spells (or supernatural abilities) and maybe even class levels.

Example NPC from Technoir

This problem is then multiplied beyond belief because of the sheer amount of content that was created for the system. There were so many supplements and additional texts for these games (that didn't all communicate with each other, as there were multiple different publishers) that the norm for players to be limited to two core books and only one supplement... But no such limit for the GMs, which had an ever-expanding library in which to draw from.

Having Symmetry isn't a D&D exclusive thing, either. The World of Darkness games, Technoir, and several of the d100 games are all symmetrical. 

So what does an Asymmetrical system entail? That would be one where the system works differently for the GM then for the player.  My favorite example for this is the Cypher System. Also a d20 system, Cypher doesn't have the GM roll dice at all - when the players engage with the world, they roll to effect it; when the world effects the player characters, those PCs roll to evade or otherwise endure it. Because of this, they're created in completely different ways. Each Player Character has 3 pools to represent their stats, but each monster or non-player character is mostly contained in a single number. This creature is a level 4 character, so to hit it, you need to roll at or above a 12 (as everything in Cypher is in sets of 3); to find it when it's hiding, roll a 12; if it's attacking you, you have to roll a 12 to get out of the way. There's a bit more to it than that - you might have a particularly stealthy creature that is a step up in difficulty if it's sneaking, or a particularly large, powerful creature that counts as a lower level when being attacked, because they're so big.

Blades in the Dark SRD

This type of resolution system is very common in the more narrative-focused games. The Powered By the Apocalypse (PbtA) and Blades in the Dark (BitD) systems are probably the most well-known of this type of game. The resolution system of those includes degrees of success, and the GM makes their "move" when the dice say that they fail. There are some systems that are somewhat asymmetrical, like the relatively new Daggerheart - the players have relatively complex setups and use a 2d12+mod roll-over system, while the GM uses more simplified stats and a d20+mod roll-over. 

The benefits of an Asymmetrical system is that by simplifying some of the game, that frees up the GM to focus on other parts of the game. It also speeds up the game - There is no "mother may I" back and forth with the GM. That is the "Roll, Add, Declare Total to GM, GM says yes or no, React" flow that trad-RPGs are built around. Rolling an Asymmetrical System means whoever is rolling can look down and instantly know exactly where they land.

Between the two, I am 100% going to make this system asymmetrical. 

...There for the Cons & Pros: D&D

Dungeons and Dragons is easily the biggest name in the TTRPG space. The original D&D, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's 1974 release was a sequel to Gygax's previous work Chainmail (1971) as well as Avalon Hill's Outside Survival, changing the simulationist wargame into a system of individuals fighting in a fantasy world. The system was full of inconsistencies, and was heavily modded and discussed for 15 years in the social media of the 70s - the zine. Those changes got collected by Gygax in 1989 with AD&D 2nd edition. If you're interested in the history of the early editions of the hobby, check out this amazing (albeit long) video from gaming legend Matt Colville giving a breakdown of Jon Peterson's The Elusive Shift (2002):  

In the year 2000, 3rd edition came in and created the style of D&D that we're most connected to today - the D20+mod roll-over system, modern interpretations of terms like "difficulty check" & "armor class", the beginnings of a standardized setup for what a creature stat block or spell looks like. D&D 4th edition, in 2008, took that standardization even further - streamlining all character classes (and creatures!) and abilities into discrete chunks, making things very precise with "game-y" language, instead of the more narrative style text. This wasn't particularly popular, and caused the creation of Pathfinder, which was an extension of the 3.5 modified rules by a different company. 5th edition came out in 2014, keeping some of the streamlining that was introduced in 4th edition, but otherwise reverted back to the more familiar 3rd edition differentiation. That ruleset was supposed to be rebooted in 2024, but the changes were relatively mild, leaving some existing issues open, while creating brand new ones. Even now, erratas are being leveled on the brand new edition as it came out with a whimper. 

The various D&D editions have a couple really interesting things that have kept it in the public eye. First, there's a ton of content - the simple inertia the biggest game stays the biggest because it was always the biggest. There are now decades of adventures, classes, spells, settings, monsters and everything else - while the various editions and spin-offs are slightly different in execution, they're always close enough for reference. The gaming license allowed 3rd-party publishers to also be churning out content. Secondly, with all of the issues that the game has, the core concept is pretty simple - you follow the directions, create a character of a bunch of numbers, then most things come down to "roll a d20, and add that number". Finally, it kept the core conceit of the hobby with the Tolkien-style Fantasy adventuring, while opening the system up to a wider public, inspiring multiple executions into superheroic and scifi settings.

Pros:

It's relatively simple. It's usually simple addition of a static number and a number no bigger than 20.

5th Edition combatted the "modifier bloat" from previous editions by boiling it down to Advantage (Roll twice, take the highest) and Disadvantage (Roll Twice take the lowest). 

D&D is so enmeshed in the cultural zeitgeist that the average person just "gets" it to a certain extent. The wizard acts wizard-y, the Barbarian smashes stuff, the fighter fights, the rogue sneaks, etc. The average enjoyer of fantasy media will have enough information to piggyback off of to get into the vibe.

It's also the game that is most tied to RPGs in the media - it's own blockbuster movie (in 2023, not the hilariously bad bomb in 2000) and the animated series Legends of Vox Machina, references in shows like Community, Gravity Falls and Stranger Things, emulated in video games (Knights of the Old Republic, Divinity: Original Sin, the Baulder's Gate and Neverwinter series), and is publicly adopted by celebrity actors like Vin Diesel, Deborah Ann Woll, and Joe Manganiello.

The popularity of the game has created an entire ecosystem of third-party products and accessories. Beyond the expected items like dice and character sheets, there are trackers, cards, condition markers, swag (like pins stickers, shirts and other apparel), digital apps, dice towers, miniatures, battle map miniature accessories (like terrain and dungeon tiles), and DM screens that are available for any price point, from cheap & plasticky all the way up to high-quality hardwood.

Cons:

The games are heavily powered by the GM. The Creature Level system falls apart beyond a certain level, the economy leaves a lot to be desired, and while there are many adventures that are created for the systems, they are wildly inconsistent in description and how to interact with when the players go "off script".

As mentioned in the above embedded video - there's no one 'correct' way to play D&D. Some tables are there for the thrilling heroics where the players are awesome all the time, others are gritty survival games where each pound, arrow and torch is important; Some games contain deep & narrative roleplay involving politics and intrigue, while others are just playing tabletop Diablo, hacking and slashing to paint the town red. Going into a game with a new group blind, you have no idea what you are getting into.

Dungeon Master's Guide, 2014

There isn't really a definitive way to determine how hard something abstract is. For creatures it's relatively straightforward - their stats and equipment determine things like their Armor class or how well they shrug off psychic influence. But for traps, hazards, and more off-the-cuff encounters (jumping from a moving carriage, clinging to the side of a wall, etc) are left completely open. There are suggestions (to the right) but it's completely arbitrary - is jumping off a horse to tackle someone medium or hard? Very hard? It is completely arbitrary. And doesn't scale well - an average player character begins with a +4 in something they're half-decent in, but can end beyond +9 without serious investment. Things you're proficient in gain a +2 to +6 over time with a 0 in the stat, and between expertise and stat modifiers, can get up to +17.

The way the game is created, it's very reference-intensive and segmented. There's very little freestyling and remixing available in the game - if you're going to be a barbarian, here are the 4 barbarians you can be. If you choose this background, you get these skills. If you're playing a caster, you have X number of spells available that you must pick from this limited list. If all players have a comfortable understanding of the system, and access to tools either online or their own books, this is great. But nothing makes me cringe more than a new player picking up a druid - Not only do you have your own race, background, skills, equipment and spells to choose, you should look over all of the possible creature stat blocks you can transform into! The previous editions of the game also had the wildly annoying habit of making individual classes gain features at different levels. This was finally corrected in the 2024 "5.5" edition, tying subclass advancement to levels 3, 6, 10 and 14, and class advancements in all of the others. 

In a very new-player-facing way, it is a game that seems to require a large financial investment. A casual perusal of what is available can be overwhelming - dozens of books, legions of miniatures, dice sets costing over $50, and professional-quality gaming tables made for RPGs and board games that cost thousands of dollars. DnDBeyond, the official app from the creators of the game Wizards of the Coast, requires either a monthly subscription to use, or for players to pay for each digital book at about the same price as a print book.  Someone who is in the hobby knows that all of those are frivolous and extra, and the game can be played using the cheapest dice and scrap paper, but someone looking in from outside, it looks an unscalable wall.

Lastly, the popularity of the system's name has gotten so ubiquitous that it tends to suck the air out of the room. People new to the hobby don't want to play "Tabletop Role-Playing Games", they want to play D&D. This is a giant issue for anyone wanting to find new players for smaller systems, as the bulk of players want to only play the "real thing" and not other systems, even though another system might be more appropriate for the story at hand. In addition, there are massive amounts of terrible information all over the internet that is D&D related - bad takes on forums and Reddit, giant databases of hilariously unbalanced homebrew on websites like DnDWiki - while WotC tries to keep their IP as far behind a paywall as possible, so it's really easy for a quick google search to take a curious new player down a completely idiotic rabbit hole.

What we're going to borrow from D&D:

Honestly, not much. While it is easily the system I know the most about, it's much more like a 50-year version of the quote "I have not failed - I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" that is attributed to Thomas Edison. Some of the things I would want to avoid would include

• Leaving Abstract issues up to the GM discretion
• Refusing to flesh out world-building elements like economics & crafting
• Requiring the players to look up multiple references to get simple things done.
• Containing interesting mechanics that are locked behind specific subclasses
• Limiting the players' interpretation of magic or ingenuity to a tighter list. 

The Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic as a way to easily give a bonus is probably the most applicable thing that can be ported over to other games. While it was used in the system to combat a bloat of modifiers, it also caused a new problem - nothing stacks. If I have advantage from one boon based on circumstances, spells, or something else, there's no point in trying to use another ability to get more of an advantage.

Designing a New TTRPG

I want to fix the RPG space. I know it's a fool's errand, as the RPGs are as diverse and varied as the people who play them. But I've played a bunch, been the game master of a bunch of them, read even more, and I think I have some ideas.

Instead of putting another hack of another system on the books, I think I'll walk through my thought processes and figure out how to make the perfect RPG. For me, at least.

Pile of Books, Baulder's Gate 3

We all have to start somewhere. For me, it was video games first, then being in introduced to Pathfinder 1e and Geist: the Sin-Eaters in my early 20s by some guys at the call center I was working at. Since then I was a GM for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition and Pathfinder 2e, have played Vampire: the Masquerade, Kobolds Ate My Baby, Ten Candles, and am helping my wife run Old Gods of Appalachia, which uses the Cypher System. 

A myriad of different systems, different themes. I've read through dozens of others, and found many things lacking, but good stuff all over. I'm thinking I can take the strengths of certain systems and mix them together without the weaknesses and make something new.

Here goes...