Incidentally, I compiled a list of design and development books for the roguelike game development wiki a few weeks ago, and wanted to find something about designing the stat and resolution rule systems in tabletop RPGs from a game design standpoint. Found nothing at all in books, and no online resource that seemed to go much beyond “these are the house rules I like based on this established system I like”, as opposed to actually getting into the theory of why have stat systems to begin with, how the math works for the different variants and what the world simulation, human usability and game design implications of different choices of system are.
At one point, I started to project to do something like that, listing and describing the rationales for various rules. I never got much farther than just listing the rules and writing some brief descriptions for some of them, though. See here for the bare list of mechanics and here for the version with (some) descriptions.
ETA: And man, that long version has lots of typos and bad grammar. I should fix that.
Interesting, thanks. Listing and categorizing the various existing mechanics for various resolution categories does look like a nice starting point for a more thorough review.
Incidentally, I compiled a list of design and development books for the roguelike game development wiki a few weeks ago, and wanted to find something about designing the stat and resolution rule systems in tabletop RPGs from a game design standpoint. Found nothing at all in books, and no online resource that seemed to go much beyond “these are the house rules I like based on this established system I like”, as opposed to actually getting into the theory of why have stat systems to begin with, how the math works for the different variants and what the world simulation, human usability and game design implications of different choices of system are.
At one point, I started to project to do something like that, listing and describing the rationales for various rules. I never got much farther than just listing the rules and writing some brief descriptions for some of them, though. See here for the bare list of mechanics and here for the version with (some) descriptions.
ETA: And man, that long version has lots of typos and bad grammar. I should fix that.
ETA2: Okay, it should be considerably better now.
Interesting, thanks. Listing and categorizing the various existing mechanics for various resolution categories does look like a nice starting point for a more thorough review.