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Kitbashing
January 19th, 2022
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Sometimes it is beneficial to steal ideas from others.
Creativity can be seen as taking some existing idea and
combining it with another existing idea to create a
brand-new composite.

One of the pasttimes that I've been thinking about a lot
recently are table-top RPGs (TTRPGs), such as the famous
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) or Pathfinder series.  I've been
lucky to play with numerous groups of people who all
(literally) bring new ideas and styles of play to the table.
I've similarly acted as a player character or referee across
many of these games.

This has given me an incredible vantage point to critique
many of the rules and their interactions within my group of
friends and the systems we use to run our games.  Most of
the time we run the D&D version du jour because of ease of
access of resources and familiarity -- after all, we're all
people with day jobs, kids, and other demands from life
beyond being unemployed teenagers when many of us started
playing TTRPGs.

However, I've long had an itch to design my own set of rules
that streamlines what I think are the best parts of TTRGPs:
the unfolding nature of narrative that arises from multiple
people crafting a story together.  When it's pulled off, it
feels primordial like our ancestors who have gathered around
a fire on a stark midwinter night to weave a tale together.

But there's a lot that interrupts the attention of everyone
playing: rules.  A strict adherence to rules are the
hobgoblin of player's minds.  Some become obsessed with them
in a ritualistic sense and can't function if an infraction
is not called out.  Others see the aim of "winning" as
bending the rules to their advantage.  Others, mostly newer
players, are often befuddled by the rules and interrupt the
flow of narrative to clarify the rules.

So my primary goal for this new system is to strip out the
bits of the system into a bare-bones set of rules.  More
like abstract rule systems.  Then, if a group of players
wanted more crunch -- more combat and tactical-ness in their
game -- you could bolt on new rule systems or modify an
existing rule system to match what ultimately helps the
story move along.

Any story, albeit a TTRPG or a novel, needs to have a way to
give rise to and resolve conflict.  Without a core system to
do this, you don't have a story.  So the core system for
this new RPG is rules for how conflict is resolved that is
common to all other systems that interact with the game.

From there, it's a matter if designing little micro-systems
that (hopefully) harmonize with the core conflict resolution
system depending on what the style of game needs to tell a
good story.  I have a basic skill system cooked up, a wild
magic system, etc, that can all be bolted into the core game
as needed.

If this sounds like the GLOG[0] to some of you, then yes,
that's the main inspiration, although I pull what I think
are a lot of other nifty abstractions from other games into
my kitbash RPG.  I'm not stealing many features directly
from the GLOG other than this concept of interchangeable,
abstract, and bolt-on-able systems.

One of the core inspirations for combat is a modified
version of the Frostgrave[1]/Stargrave[2]/Rangers of Shadow
Deep[3] (all with the same main author/designer) which are
systems intended for 28mm wargamming that I'm redesigning
for theater of the mind play that can also be adapted back
to miniature play as a visual aid.  The concept that I
really enjoy from these games is that combat is reduced to
two twenty-sided dice, and that damage done to an opponent
comes down to some minor stats and the results of the dice
rolls.  It simplifies a lot of choices about weapons, combat
stats, and combined with a theater of the mind approach that
removes the 'stickiness' of D&D battles to allow for more
varied storytelling and less war of attrition of stats.

A general goal of mine in regards to combat is to make turns
go fast.  Slow combat in other TTRPGs is a death knell;
sitting waiting around for a wizard to check on spells, or
watching a fighter do dozens of mental math calculations for
multiple attacks saps the energy out of the other players.
Spells and attacks should be simple and straightforward.
You'll do less on a turn, but your turn will come back to
you quicker than in other games which will ultimately keep
everyone more engaged.

I'm pulling lots of ideas from Dungeon Crawl Classic[4]'s
magic system of rolling a twenty sided dice plus some
modifiers to determine how a spell reacts.  This adds a lot
of randomness to spells that makes them wild and surprising
for all.  Magic will be powerful to encourage people to take
the risk to use it, but the costs will be high when it runs
amok to keep the element of danger and wonderment present at
the table.

I'm stealing the concept of classless players characters
from a bunch of different systems.  While classes are a nice
feature for helping to ensure that everyone has a specialty
to focus on during play, more often then not players develop
strategies for overcoming challenges that don't make use of
the full party's compliment of skills.  What I'd like to do
instead is to provide all of the abilities, skills, feats,
etc that typically make up a player character but let a
player build their own set of abilities via a point-buy
system.  This can give a player of feeling of control and
growth over a character that isn't preordained by a class.

There's several more features that I'm planning to use as
abstract systems, most importantly inventory slots instead
of calculating weight as well as Usage Die from the Black
Hack to track anything that can be considered consumable
(even magic items such as rods, weapons, armor, etc).  I'd
like to have an optional item crafting system as well an
optional system for potion brewing to encourage new forms of
play.  All of these system's designs will be focused on the
goal of creating interesting and emergent storytelling.

This new game is a massive, wonderful, twisting bunch of
Lego blocks that I've scattered over the floor to kitbash
into something that is uniquely personal for me.

I'm not planning on ever releasing the rules because of the
massive amount of stealing that I've done, but if something
like this resonates with you, I'd encourage you to follow
down my same footprints.  Start with a core system that
mostly works for you and then think about how that system
can be broken down and rebuilt.  Think about your main goals
and find ways to reward everyone at the table for creating
wonderful tales together.

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[0] - https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-glog.html
[1] - https://ospreypublishing.com/frostgrave-second-edition?___store=osprey_usa
[2] - https://ospreypublishing.com/stargrave
[3] - https://www.modiphius.net/collections/rangers-of-shadow-deep
[4] - https://goodman-games.com/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg/
[5] - https://the-black-hack.jehaisleprintemps.net/english/

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