The point is to have something lightweight enough that people can tell stories together on a bus or in a car, or while drinking, or at a bar. You lose the art, and the dice, and all the accessories that come with pathfinder or D&D, but gain valuable flexibility for long running groups that mostly like hanging out, solving problems, and fighting monsters.

Also, yes, a lot of this combat is inspired by Betrayal at House on the Hill which is the best game I've ever played.

@Maenad Seems pretty good. Seperating Combat out as its own stat is a nice idea too:

Is the system skillless too? Just roll with stats and good RP? I could be down for something like that (with the right group of course. Cue flashbacks to a game of Dusk City Outlaws I was in <____<)

@Gyrfalcon2138 yeah, I was thinking skillless + RP for minimizing bulk aspects. I'm down with RPing skills in, though - "my character loves puppies and volunteers at the animal shelter" could result in an animal companion. "My character really wants to learn guitar" could result in performance: guitar, etc. (In other words, downtime is valuable and can be spent acquiring skills).

@Gyrfalcon2138 but I would rather an index card with a character description and 5 stats than a 3 page packet with detailed number crunching.

@Maenad Yeah for sure.

One thing I liked from FATE based systems was Aspects: you get a small bonus if you can somehow apply one of your aspects to a scene (or, the GM can apply a small penalty based on those aspects)

That could add a little extra flavor to characters and it could maybe give a quick +/- 1 (which is huge in your system)

@rak magic is the biggest hole I can see with this system and I think will only work with good players? I want players to be able to RP ridiculous spells they'll cast. For example:

"I use talking and magic to tell a joke so funny the BBEG laughs himself silly so we can get away... knock knock" *draws high*
"who's there?" *draws low*
"who"
"who who?"
"I didn't know you were an owl"
"the BBEG giggles even as he starts growing feathers from his shoulders. He chokes a bit from laughing and you see an opportunity to slip out the side door as his henchmen turn to make sure he's okay"

@rak Tasha's Hideous Laughter does that at a certain level in 5e, but I think RPing it and letting it be flexible is more fun, personally.

@Maenad

I've been doing some suuuper preliminary thinking about a framework for players to build their own powers/abilities (of any type) from scratch, where the rules just provide limits on overall power level (not flavor) to keep things from getting out of control.

This would be for more preparation-intensive campaigns, deeper character creation outside the bounds of pre-made classes, though -- not so much for on-the-fly stuff.

I'll probably dump more thoughts here eventually... 🤔

@cute_weeds yes, I was thinking of regular playing cards. I was thinking 2-14 and using the CDHS hierarchy for numeric ties (consistent with bridge ordering).

There are probably some more sophisticated things you could do with using cards instead of dice - hand building, etc, especially for limiting abilities within a period of time, but I think the simplicity is key here.

@Maenad My love of bad puns is interacting with the rest of this stuff in the geekiest ways. I'm thinking of characters having an ace up their sleeves, having their strong suits, not playing with a full deck...

@cute_weeds I go by "strongsuit" on a lot of sites. My preference for cards over dice is not an accident >.>

And yes, puns forever.