Dreams of an Ideal System----And HERESY

Some ideas on my direction:
I fantasize about building a decent system for running RPGs almost as much as I fantasize about everything else. Here are some of the ideas I've been nursing:

Bellcurves are Beautiful. The perfect system should use a bellcurve for its core mechanic, because it gives players and GMs a reasonable expectation of an outcome. Real life works with bell curves. If the real world worked with straight-line probability as in d20-based systems, then even the Iron Chef would dismally fail every 20th time he tried to fry an egg. Yeah, yeah, Crits and fumbles aren't exactly written in the rules of DnD. But every single group I've ever played with has played this way.

 

 Thanks wikipedia!

To Map or not to Map: The edition which I play breaks down when combat is not mapped with miniatures on a grid. This means a lot of complicated rules and quibbling which ruins any sense of fast-paced excitement. Obviously, the One True Way to play a game of the imagination is in your bloody imagination. I know this to be true.  Except mapping combat is a hard habit to break. I mean; you probably already made the map, and you want your players to be able to play with tactics, and you already have those little pewter idols you love so much. So its hard not to want to find a use for them.

No system-based rules to govern personality or morality: Alignment breaks down when you start to think of it, and is extremely arbitrary. 5th Edition's bond/flaws/ideal system is a patronizing straightjacket. A player needs nothing more than a rough concept of their character's personality and motivation to run with it. It naturally develops from there.

Quick to run, simple to understand: Can't be bogging down the action with a bunch or rolls or modifier crunching and rules checking. Nope Nope Nope.

And yet, with potential for depth in a variety of fields: Different systems tend to serve different interests for the players. We could get out  Broadswords&Barbicans, with the rules for combat maneuvers and naval and air battles. Or we could use Mystics&Mythology, with its free-flowing and creative magic system. Or we could play Drama Theatre 3k for the plotchasers and method actors. But practically speaking, It is going to be hard to find four friends who all want to play the same one for a whole campaign. The ideal system should be able to accommodate any of these styles.

All genres, seamlessly mixable: A system should have the potential to take players from the stone-age to the end of time, with all the weirdness in between. Genre-savvyness is the enemy of immersion, danger and mystery. A fixed setting soon devolves into a set of unjustified and boring tropes.

Classes and Level need to Go: They only make sense in a universe where these ideas are built into the cosmology. The development of a character should be naturalistic and stem from actions in game. Not an arbitrary set of class abilities.

Hit Points too: Nobody has every been able to make sense of hit points or satisfactorily describe what they are. How many HP did Julius Caesar have? (around 57) How about Abraham Lincoln? Did John Wilkes Booth crit his to-hit roll? How about Rasputin?
 
Dagger does d4 damage, avg 2.5. Stabbed 23 times by some accounts. 
 
 Death of Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini


HERESY OF THE DAY:
It should only use d6s: We gamers have a a truly odd fetish for our Platonic Solids; A fetish which we totally take for granted after a while. But the curious dice are among the first thing that people notice about the hobby, and they react with either fascination or confusion. Also, they are a specialty item and you have to know where to look to find them. Difficult for people just entering the hobby.

From Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum: The d10 is not among the Platonic Solids.


The d6 is the way to go. With a little creativity, they can produce a wide range of probabilities. And you can find them at a decent convenience store. You could play on a desert island. What else would you have to do but finally plot your magnum opus campaign?