The reason why I went for stats as the base dice pool size was two part. One, it made stats (which will be much more expensive to increase then skills) give a big bonus for doing so. After all, there is only so strong a human can get. Extra dice is extra chances for success. But it also factors into the unskilled attempts at tasks.

Somebody with a high agility (which would be used to fire guns because it is based on quick precision as opposed to brute force) would have more dice and more chances for a natural 10 to get blindly lucky and pull off a shot. Probably not a very good one, but still a chance. Where as a klutz with crap agility would have a significantly lower chance to accomplishing the same thing due to a smaller dice pool.

One of the other things to keep in mind is that stats and skills are not static numbers in RPGs. You do not simply make a character. Character progress is a large part of the fun. It is not just about facing challenges, but improving and facing tougher challenges. Consider The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Clearly every character who was in the first book was a way bigger bad ass by the end of the 3rd. Experience point gain, which is then spent to raise attributes and skills, simulates that progress for the characters.

To that end, putting in fractions and such is WAY complicating the math on something I am actually keeping VERY rules light. Other RPGS do some serious real life emulation in their rules and get very complicated. I am trying to keep Tannhauser fast and loose to simulate both the style of the setting (Pulp Heroes, Sci Fi, Weird Tales kind of stuff) and the board game.

Thanks for the feed back though. It is stuff to think about. And even if it's an idea I can't or don't use this kind of feedback might get me approaching this from a new angle. I appreciate it.

I wanted to make one last go at this because it's something I believe in, so here it goes.

I think that the dice pool should be locked at three d10s multiplied together that will give you any number between 1 and 1000, I think.

Then the Stats could be any number 1-100, multiplied by the Skill a number 1-10, that will give you a difficulty score of a number between 1 and 1000.

So all you have to do is roll 3 d10s and multiply them, then if the number is lower/= then you difficulty score it's a "hit" and your apply the effect, damage, etc.

There should only be a few stats, like the 4 in Tannhauser already, these represent the systems of the body. Then you can have lots of different skills, like for guns magic, etc, that way even if a character has a high mental stat, if their Hermetics skill is 0 they won't be able to use "magic".

I drew up another character sheet and threw some stuff on it just to start to look at things. Then I started rolling dice, to get a feel. It seems to work Ok.

Now let me say I really like this idea, and I'm going to continue it's development, but your welcome to ignore it, I won't mind. Thanks for your time.

So how does "damage 10" translate into damage to the player?

I haven't decided yet, one step at a time you know.

Here is my current working model for damage,

Step 1 is as above, say it is a hit.

Step 2 is for the target to determine how much damage was caused, at first I was using 10 as a straight percent off the player's 100% health, but that doesn't give the target any chance to dodge, or shake off the wound. So then I thought about TH's shock roll, but how to fix the dificulty. I thought about the Stamina Stat X the Physical Training Skill, in this case that gives you a 70. Roll three d10s and get 10, 4, 7, that's 280 so the target failed the roll and would suffer 10% damage. If the target rolled 1, 4, 6, that would be 24 a success.

Now the question is does a success block all the damage or only some? Right now I'm using the Physical Training Skill, an subtracting it from the Damage, so 10 becomes 8, then I subtract the total DFS value from the armor section, in this case 5, so now the damage recieved by the target is only 3.

I'm worried this is too complex, but I don't know how complex it should be.

Now there could be Abilities or Equipment the change which Stat x Skill combo is used for the "shock roll".

Again use only what you want.

Back to being a dad, later.

What an interesting little project....

The other problem you might run into is with your idea to multiply stuff. Multipliers are dangerous territory. Things grow exponentially out of control.

What happens when a person with 1 skill shoots at a person with 7 skill? What kind of chance do they have to accomplish anything at all?

What happens when someone with no guns skill picks up a gun and tries to fire it?

Gameplay has been defined as a series of interesting choices. If the no skill person has a chance to do damage even if it's a low chance then it's an interesting gamble. If the person has no chance, or so low a chance as to be nothing, or so low a chance that any damage they could do is just plain negligible at it's BEST then it's no longer interesting. It's a waste of an action.

Using multipliers has, in my experience, been the quick way to make a power gap between characters and creatures that cripples the interesting choices players can be faced with.

Been MIA due to work and studies, but will chime in here with a few thoughts and suggestions. My email is long and reflects my personal approach to game design, as well as some thoughts on RPGs based on my (limited) experience with them. I enjoy them, but do not currently have an RPG group, and have not played one in years. Back when I did have a group, I got to try DnD 3rd Ed (and some of its variants) and the old West End Star Wars rules. I also helped develop or played with a couple of homebrew rules. 

To start with, I think some of the French fans already made an RPG based on the Tannhauser world. It might be worth it to see if you can find it (and run it through Google translate) to see what they tried before.

Next, some thoughts on game design. It looks like a lot of scattered ideas have been thrown out there already, which is great because it helps the creativity process. At the same time, I recommend that you also take a step back and take a "bigger picture" approach as well. Basically, its a good idea to get a better idea of what you want your game to do. Of course, that bigger picture will be a flexible one, and will likely evolve as you develop your rules.

Anyway, some initial questions to consider... What is your goal? What do you want to capture, and how does it differ from other RPGs? These should be broad ideas, not specific mechanics since you can flesh them out later. Some examples:

• Scope of story. Do you expect your rules to accomodate massive campaigns which last for years, or will it be designed for shorter storylines? Some games allow you to take the characters from simple peasants to Gods. Those might require many levels of advancement. Other games might be designed for shorter campaigns, in which case a few levels of advancement could be sufficient. I'm sure your planned scope will affect other areas as well. 

• The world you want to capture: since TH is a game about soldiers in WWI, you may want to ask yourself what mechanics will help you capture that. For example, you might incorporate a morale system to help determine if NPC soldiers will follow a player who is the leader of his unit. Or you could have specific tactics that a unit might train in and learn, which allows the team to work together better, rather than the usual RPG approach where each character and NPC trains separately, and work together automatically. Tannhauser already has some tactics anyway, so this could be a neat way to incorporate them into an RPG. 

• The spectrum you want to capture: some games may focus on a snapshot of a world. Tannhauser itself is an example of that. It focuses on small group missions. Will your RPG be limited to the same scale, or do you want it to include more? A realistic RPG might do fine with rules which focus on humans and some normal animals with a set of limited stats, ie, 1-10. A fantasy RPG which needs to incorporate demigods and dragons would probably need a more open system, ie, in DnD, you can add 2 to your roll, or 12, or 100... In terms of a Tannhauser RPG, one of the major questions to consider is whether you want to accomodate tanks and other vehicles.

• The detail you want to capture: Do you want to keep the RPG-lite on random details or will you incorporate charts or other mechanics to add extra events and encounters to the game. For example, in DnD, the game master often rolls on a chart to determine if you'll have a random encounter when you travel. Do you want to have similar mechanics built into the game, or will you let the game master decide to add those as needed? See also my comment about game master control vs automation below. 

Another big picture type of question that I would consider is how you want to approach the general mechanics of the game. I'd consider your audience here as well. Some basic approaches:

• Mechanics which resemble those found in the Tannhauser game. It looks like your initial ideas followed this approach. One major advantage is that it helps the game feel familiar to TH fans. You do need to take a close look to determine what will set the RPG apart from the board game though. 

• Mechanics based on another RPG. This is a very common approach; you basically take the mechanics from a tried and true RPG, and then customize it for TH. This approach provides you with a set of rules that has already been playtested by others, and allows you to skip numerous steps. It may also appeal to people who have played with the chosen RPG rules before though it could potentially decrease accessibility to TH players.

• Mechanics which are more or less novel. Miah's idea for a triple multiplier would be an example of this. This route is probably the most difficult since it will involve a lot of thought and testing to create a complete set of balanced mechanics. Your audience is also likely to be more limited, at least initially. If done well, this approach can be very rewarding. If done poorly, it can lead to a set of rules which are neither fun nor unbalanced.

Obviously, the three approaches above are not mutually exclusive, and your final rules will probably incorporate some element of all three approaches above. Some other "big" mechanism considerations:

• Different games have different balances between game master control and automation. How big of a role do you want the game master to have? For example, do you want a 6 on the D10 to always succeed, or do you want to have the game master pick the "success" number? Another example, do you add random tables or do you let the game master decide on encounters? Or do you incorporate both, and let the players decide what they want to use?

• KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid. Remember that complexity for the sake of complexity is not fun for most people. If you can find simpler rules that do what you want, its probably a good idea to use them! 

I'm sure there are other big considerations that I could think of, but those come to mind at the moment. From there, I'd focus on the overall mechanics of the game before you delve too far into the details. Ideally, you'd have a simple adventure prepared which will let you playtest the rules. The adventure might have just a few characters, items, etc so its easy to re-stat them for every ruleset that you test out. Once you find an overall mechanic which feels right, you could then start to look at the specifics in the game, and add them to the adventure to test out as you go. Obviously, there will be a lot of back and forth here, and the mechanics may be vague at first, with more fleshing out and testing later.

Finally, the FFG forums may not be the best place to develop a set of rules. The forums have very limited features / tools, and you're bound to lose some ideas in the jumble. It might be a good idea to start a Google / Yahoo Group as a way to better organize the ideas and people for your project. That way, you can continue to post updates, ideas, and look for general feedback here, and use the Google group for more detailed discussions and etc.

Thanks for the thoughts.

I am shooting for the rules to make a game and run it in the simplest fashion. Random encounter charts like DnD offer are nice.. ish. If you have a full blown monster manual and all that stuff. What i would liek to do is create all the rules needed to make a wide range of character options including the 5 characters that are the base characters in each faction (3 heroes and 2 troopers). Then, make a character sheet for each of them to show how the rules translate from the board game into the broader rpg system.

This gives enemies right off the bat. If your union, I bet you will fight shocktuppen and strosstruppen.  Well, there are their basic stats. Use them. Modify them as you need. But the Unisystem had a great way of simplifying the run of the mill enemies you fight and I wanted to steal something similar to that in the form of "NPC Cards". Little index card sized sheets that just give the basics you need to run a fight with the guys.

Charts outside of whats needed for character creation likely wont be done by me. I'm providing the tools. DMs provide the story for their players.

Yes, I intend to have rules for vehicles. It's silly to have a game at that time period and never expect the players to run into some kind of demon tank.

Finally, right now I am compiling a list of the gear from the game converted for pen and paper usage and perks/drawbacks to finish a first draft of character creation. I figure once basic character creation can be done it's time to play test the thing.

 Hey thought I'd chime in on this since I ran a Tannhauser RPG for maybe 8 sessions.

I utilized 4 stats to most resemble Tannhauser- the biggest changes here were:

• rolling the movement stat into the 'combat stat
• adding a charisma like stat (since we needed rolls for interacting- lying and deception were a big thing)
• letting stamina double as what you're referring to as a might roll, since we figured tough guys tend to be the bruisers

This left me with

• Agility
• Toughness
• Intellect
• Charisma

or some variant in names (it's been a while since we did this)

I felt like I needed more characters since I wanted to build up to the major characters of Tannhauser, so I added new factions, and ran the major factions as more or less background while letting the heroes and the smaller factions interact more.  For example the Matriarchy and the Reich were fighting on fronts, but small groups like Rasputin himself or the research team behind Project Deathray (Zorka) would act as minor factions with separate agendas.

For rolls, I used a "test" system, although it felt very incomplete as tests in tannhauser often result in at least 1 success.  Not sure what I'd do differently, but I am not a fan of adding more dice- maybe put penalties on their stats for more difficult tasks.  I ended up requiring at least 3 successes for most tests (if it merited a roll I demanded a better than 2 out of 4 successes.

Contested rolls worked much like duels do in the board game.

On command points- I would recommend not giving some to every player, especially not 3.  Think about how you want to run your game, do you want your combats to take an hour at a time? If you only want to do combat, it'd be much easier to make custom characters and play Tannhauser itself.  If you're running a role playing game in this awesome setting you probably only want long combats for important battles- so players can get back to exploring and interacting with the amazing stuff going on in the world.

Spendable things are fun, but meaningful decisions will happen more if the team has to decide on things like command points- IMO.  Give your players other things to spend.

I should get to sleep, but I'm really glad to see this topic brought up again!

Thanks for the input!

Glad to see someone else had the same idea I did.

Rolling stats together makes sense. the way you did it. And I may decide to drop the stats down into 4 myself. For the moment I am going to test the 6 though. 6 works in other systems pretty well and while less can be more I am not sure how comfortable I am with 4 stats covering everything. It seems like a lot would get dumped on your mental stat (spells, searching, many "profession" skills, etc etc...).

My plan for difficulty was going to be 3 part.

1) If the task itself was hard because of the position the player was in then he would get penalties to his rolls. Never anything more then a -3 or 4. (Each die would be whatever you rolled -1,2,3,4 depending on how hard it was).

If the task itself was hard because the the TASK was difficult it would require more successes. But success would be cumulative and they would just have to spend another action each round working on it until it was completed. Picking locks could be this way. So could breaking down a door. A crappy hollow wood door could be kicked down with a might test with 1 success. Knocking down a steel door would require more success and the player might be hitting it over and over again trying to break it down.

Finally, I thought some situations might have dice penalties based on circumstances. Like the steel door. Maybe it's not so much that you need more successes but that because it is steel your might matters a little less and the dice pool is reduced.

I think those are bad examples... but I am tired at the moment. But those are my 3 options for making a roll more difficult and I was intending on clearly defining why each type of penalty would be used. Which also means when those things are in your favor you might gain bonuses.

My experience with command point style systems has been that they speed up combat. Allowing players to make heroic strikes and such just adds a level of cinema to the fights which I think the feel of the setting benefits from.

Lance845 said:

"Current trouble area: Magic. I have some hitches I can see coming from magic in the game. Things like the 7th plague need to be possible in Tannhauser but it needs to be difficult."

I assume that you are referring to the Ninth Plague of Egypt mentioned in the text for Hermann von Heizinger. Magic like this is really a question of scale. In the context of the background material, the plague of darkness was pivital in winning a battle against 11 regiments of amphibious battleships, and lasting just under 48 hours. By contrast, the Tanhauser boardgame usually involves opposing teams of 5 individuals and a span of time that would probably represent less than 60 minutes. For the scale of the board game, if Herman were to quickly summon the magics of the Ninth Plague, the effects would only extend to a single path. Anything greater than that would be a special condition of the scenario, not an in game use of a token.

As most roleplaying games also focus on the individual characters over the larger organizations that they may be a part of, I would suggest limiting the focus of the magics to the personal scale, and leaving the grander effects for plot devices. If the scenario calls for the players to stop Hermann and his plague of darkness, they will either be racing to do so before the ritual is complete, or trying to get close enough to disrupt it after it is already complete. Either way, determining the actual mechanics of what Hermann has to do to perform this magic on a larger scale is unnecessary since its success or failure is going to be determined by the player's actions, not Hermann's.

That should help minimize the amount of work that you need to put into the magic system. 

And for those kinds of situations you are correct. But one of the big things in these kinds of games is the player wanting to do that and freedom of the player to do that. The players don't have to be union. What if the game in question is the players being Reich? What if they got access to a spell of similar destructive proportions? The mission then would be performing the needed steps and buying time for it to be completed.

This can be acomplished with a character or group of characters doing an extended roll gathering the needed successes over time while the other players fight to defend them. Or maybe the ritual casters have several tasks to complete. Either way. Codifying personal scale magic and ritual scale magic is a quick way to do that. Defining what is needed for ritual that makes it so damn hard and general more trouble then it is worth is also good. If you need a place of power to cast it from then you cannot just go running around dropping plagues on everyone willy nilly.

Again, I would say that what you are describing there is a structure for a scenario, not a magic ritual. If the players can aquire components A, B, and C, and hold of the enemy for # rounds then the described effect will occur. Components A, B, and C could just as easily be mechanical, and the # rounds could be the time required to assemble them. Or, components A, B, and C could be captured documents, and the # rounds the time required to decipher them. The formula could have any number of permutations, but the end results are essentially the same. Unless you really want your players to begin EVERY mission by blanketing the area in darkness, components A, B, and C are going to be rare and collecting each component should be a scenario unto itself. This gives the players a sense of the magnitude of what they are undertaking. Successfully accomplishing a task that they have to invest several game sessions into is going to be a much more rewarding experience than telling them to make a difficult roll on the ritual casting skill (or equivalent).

I think we are saying the same things back and forth to each other. I agree. Basically ritual magic should be like a scenario. But it can be expanded into weaker rituals as well. Consider 3rd edition dnd paladins. Detect evil. Holy crap did it make the game lame to have every potential betrayer, every spy, every anything that could be more then a thug thrown at the party to fight outed by the paladin sitting in the same room as him. Does that mean detect evil had to go? No. I mean detect evil had to be made into something that took time and effort to use so that it was not practical to use it on a constant basis.

That kinds of abilities can fall under the same rules as ritual magic. Putting those rules down allows for big rituals to act as the center point for a scenario or to give the players an interesting tool they can put effort into making effective at the right moments. It's a tool in their hands to make a choice to use instead of something the DM throws at them and tells them to complete.

I will have a fairly big update by the end of the weekend. Just got busy with work and such. But at least the majority of character creation should be good to go when I update.