Free RPGs and wargames
I've been reading a lot of The Free RPG Blog and Free Wargames Rules recently, and it's got the nerd-brain ticking. I'm having a go at creating a first game of my own, and so far it's looking promising. I've got an OpenOffice spreadsheet set up to test the mechanics and simulate dice rolls, and I've been following Rob Lang's excellent free guide to organising your RPG as I write out the rules.What I've actually come up with so far is actually much more of a wargame than RPG, but it certainly has elements that will be familiar to RPG players. It's a hex-based small squad tactics game, somewhere between the tactical combat of fourth edition D&D and say, Warhammer 40,000, with an added simple card game element that lets you support your own units or penalise your opponent's.
Combat and challenges are resolved using 1D6 + modifiers, aiming to beat 6. By scaling some of the numbers up during character creation I could move to D20 system, which would allow for a greater variety of character builds, but for the time being I'm keeping it simple and on the smaller D6 scale.
I also have some less fleshed out ideas about how to link battles together into a campaign and weave some roleplaying into the overall structure, allowing players to get involved in the grand schemes and politics that prompt the individual battles, or just play one-off battles with no story or RP elements at all.
Once it's all finished and playtested, I'll be releasing it here as a free PDF (naturally) and probably at-cost through Lulu as well. I'll try and keep the fluff and mechanical discussion here on the blog, and out of the rulebook!
