I’ve had. another TTRPG idea. but this one is a lot more… funky, insofar as I don’t yet know whether it’ll be quick and easy or long and hard.
It goes like this: We have, generally, 4-ish things that (especially fantasy) TTRPGs encourage: Fighting, learning, sneaking, and talking. So, what if we made those stats? Thus came about Warfare, Discovery, Skulduggery, and Communication.
But what else? Well, a lot of big TTRPGs tend to place some heavy emphasis on fighting over the other parts of the game, mechanically-speaking, with D&D being an evident example. But, in theory, one could have combat be run like anything else—have the simple stuff just happen and only the complex stuff need to be rolled for. You can say “I hit the enemy with my sword” and you just do it, doing a bit of damage—but, if you say, “I stab at the enemy’s throat”, now you’re trying something with risk, but also reward, and thus can roll. So, now everything you can do in the game is at kind of an even playing field, mechanically.
How does success work, then? How is it determined and what are its effects? Well, you roll what is currently just a d20, add your stat, and compare the result to your Success Target. If you met it, cool, you get a Weak Success. If you got 5+ over it, great, Moderate Success. 10+ over is a Strong Success.
My current thinking is that the different levels of success do different amounts of “damage” to Obstacles, things which get in the party’s way and have 4 health-bars matching the 4 stats. Well, not necessarily 4; a door is unlikely to be openable via Communication unless it’s a magical talking door, while a ghost may be hard to beat with Warfare, unless you’ve got some kind of special exorcism sword. Then, the players get to use their agency to decide by which avenue to tackle the Obstacle (and maybe I’ll have that if one player goes against one health-bar and another targets a different one, the other maybe gets a bonus, like +1d6 to their roll, to balance out that they aren’t helping to bring down the other health-bar).
Other than that, however, very much up in the air.
As for a name… working title: Four Fantasy. Four because the 4 stats, Fantasy because that’s the general genre I’m imagining for it right now.