I decided to password-lock the Tower RP site.

I think I came up with the idea too prematurely to really pull it off, honestly. And after a few weeks I was starting to reconsider the use of Vanilla, mostly because it doesn't satisfactorily deal with private groups. :(

As much as I liked it I think I may have to go with a more conventional forum, or some sort of blend I haven't thought about yet. It was still an interesting site to set up, even if hardly anyone signed up/posted.

I was also getting iffy about using FFRPG rules toward the end, mostly because my and Jon's characters (as I might have mentioned before) don't fit well into a single class system. Hell even dual seems kinda iffy.

So, sorry to the few of you who were looking forward to it. As I mentioned just now in LJ, I now have an entirely different idea in mind for Tower - creating my own RPG system.

(Whew, I ended up chatting with Kalli a lot, and Aes for a while. And I still have this entry to finish... at 6 am! And by golly I'm going to finish it. I was very happy to hear from them both, though, and now that I get Kalli back on the 'net again I can poke at her incessantly and she can continue to stalk me! XD)

So just to write myself a few of my ideas about the Tower RP system:

Basically, the system I want to come up with is one that I hope will cover a wide range of types of characters, without actually becoming painfully complex. It will either be a classless system with some 'builds' made up to start with, or a system with classes that are customizable.

I've not even thought of a dice system yet. I tend to like multiple dice systems, with some sort of base level of success, so you won't fail on something you ought to be good at unless you roll critically bad. The problem with coming up with a system, of course, is that it's hard to come up with one that's actually unique from other stuff that's out there. Like, I tend to like d10s, but I don't want to end up copying other d10 systems unintentionally.

But I don't want to make my system too radically weird, either. Like "let's roll d12s!" or something, arbitrarily chosen cause there really aren't systems that roll d12s (except maybe Tristat). This is something I need to think carefully on still. I also need to figure out how combat turns, combat order and multiple actions/turn are done, too.

There WILL definitely be something Exalted stunt-like, though -- I absolutely love to reward people for clever ideas and good roleplaying.

Anyway, as with most games there will be stats that determine your base aptitude at things (aka traits, attributes, whatever you want to call it) and then skills and powers which enhance those.

Traits, I would prefer anywhere from 6 to 10 of them. I don't like too few, but I don't like too many either.

Generally I want to make skillset pretty small. I dislike having large skillsets, makes it too difficult to decide. Instead I'll probably just come up with some essentials, which can be refined with GM or player-defined specialties. It'll also be possible, potentially, to add skillgroups if adapting the game to a particular setting.

Then, powers.
- Innate/Passive: Powers that come naturally, character is born with them, mutated into them, etc. They are always active.
- Invoked/Active: Powers that have to be activated, these are things like spellcasting, shapeshifting and such.

The Invoked Powers will likely borrow some from the Anima: Beyond Fantasy magic system, which I actually really like. :O A lot. Basically each power will have a particular point value that must be charged per turn, and a character can charge up to x points a turn depending on stats, possibly level (will I have levels? still thinking on it), etc. So it means one could potentially! power up a really strong effect even at a low level, it'd just take a long time and drain you a lot.

Innate powers would more be things that come in racial packages, or come with particular archetypes. Actually I like the word 'archetype' rather than 'class' better. Maybe I will use that. Archetypes will be fluid enough, though, that you can have a base archetype and still be able to dabble in a couple other ones. Just have to determine how that will be possible without horrible game imbalancing combinations occurring.

One idea is basically having access to certain higher level powers determined by whether you've bought a particular innate power or powers. Like if you want to be a magic user you have to buy the Magic Sensitivity innate first. And you could buy it at greater levels for higher strength and/or flexibility -- at higher cost, of course. So your points will limit what you can do. (Unlike Ex. though, I am pretty sure I won't have bonus points and then experience points, there will only be one type of point!)

Last thing I will ponder tonight is about setting. I'll be aiming for three types of setting: fantasy, modern and future. I'll have to deal with how these can mesh without one dominating another. More or less it's a sliding scale, fantasy will depend more on magic and future more on technology. So 'modern' in this case will be more Reborn Again-style modern, with magic and science clashing in some places and blending in others. (I do want to be able to run Reborn Again games with this ruleset too, if possible.)

I probably won't concentrate a great deal on future though, since I am not really all that great with sci-fi. It may be something I'll get into more in the future, but man, having to deal with vehicles makes me cry. ;.; I would rather abstract the vehicle if I can, but knowing me I will probably end up with a detailed item creation system. I have no idea how I'll tackle that yet, but I do think I'm decent at artifact balance in Exalted, so I should be able to do that with a homebrew system... I hope!

Mostly I think items will put bonuses on top of skills, though, I don't want to be horribly complex about it. May be possible for items to give 'temporary' innate powers, but items themselves won't be able to give you invoked powers, just help you invoke them better. :P

OK that's enough of a start for brainstorming. I downloaded GURPS Lite recently because I'm going to be joining a game using it, so I'll eventually delve deeper into 'real' GURPS to check out another system with a lot of customization (and tables, apparently, from what Kraken tells me!)