Custom ruleset options/limitations?

[Avarion]

Hi,
I'm considering buying this program, but I want to know if a few things are even possible before investing time and money into it.

I'm developing my own set of home rules (and have done so for a lot of years), and if I purchase this program I want to be able to create a ruleset for my own rules. However, those rules are nothing even near to the regular D&D rulesets, and I need to know if the program can support the following options:

1) creating attributes with non-numerical values.
In my system, you don't have STRENGTH 10 or CHA 18, you have "average strength" or "legendary beauty". There are internal values and effects, but the player should only see the named values, and there aren't any attribute rolls in the entire game system.

2) comparing/duelling and open ended dice rolls
Each skill roll is additive (dice plus skill value plus action bonus plus other values), and the target for those rolls isn't fixed, it depends on other actions or GM's difficulty settings.
For example, in combat the attacker has an attack roll and the defender a defense skill roll.
The attacker rolls first, perhaps creating a (d20+skill+player-purchased bonus) 17+10+4= 31.
Then this 31 would be the target of the defense roll, if the defender rolls lower he's hit - if equal or higher then he isn't hit.

This would require the engine not only to allow for an input how many extra points (endurance points) the player wants to use up for a higher roll, but it also needs to store the higher roll from before for comparison.

3) are there any limits on the number of skills, spells or character options for character creation?
My system is rather open, allowing for the creation of a lot of different skills depending on what a character has learned - if there is a limit like for example "maximum of 100 skills to be defined", that would be bad - most players will have only one or two dozen skills, but they will differ widely...

4) if I purchase the ultimate licence, does that allow me to host games for players that do not have purchased the game themselves?
(just to be sure I understand the wording correctly, because that seems to be the difference between the full licence and the ultimate licence)

There is no problem if creating this gets technical (I'm a professional programmer), but if I have to create everything myself on the lowest programming levels, then this program wouldn't be worth the price for me.

Thanks for your answers

[Dr0W]

To create a ruleset you need to know how to program. If you have no idea what's programming about you will have a very bad time and you will achieve nothing. But if you do, you know anything you can put on code you will probably make it work on FG.
1- This is easy. Yea it would. If you know Savage Worlds where the attributes are Dices and not numbers you'll know FG2 can handle this.
2- It does. But it will require extra work putting this on code. Again, savage worlds have open ended rolls. About endurance, depending on how it works players usually add a bonus before rolls and have them on shortcuts for easy use. It would be a matter of adding the right bonus before the roll.
3- There are not. As you see FG supports gurps and many other systems with hundreds of lines for you to write.
4- That's right. The difference between GM and Ultimate is that players don't have to buy it to play, they can use the FG Demo and play. Right now all GM licenser are working as if they were Ultimates because of FGCon. You might buy full license while it's 25% off and later buy an upgrade to ultimate on their website.

[Smiteworks]

The ruleset creation process allows a nearly limitless set of options. The engine itself is very flexible. We have systems which use playing cards for initiative instead of numeric values, we have a mini Texas Hold'em poker game implemented in Deadlands, open ended rolls, percentile dice rolls, fudge dice, etc.

With that said, creating a ruleset is not one of the features we consider to be easy or targeted at all to the standard user. The layout for the graphics are all done in XML and the automation to handle the mechanics you mention is done in LUA scripting. All of our rulesets are open for viewing and re-use in your own ruleset, but it takes an experienced developer anywhere from 1-6 months to put together a complete ruleset.

[Avarion]

Smiteworks eredeti hozzászólása:

With that said, creating a ruleset is not one of the features we consider to be easy or targeted at all to the standard user.
but it takes an experienced developer anywhere from 1-6 months to put together a complete ruleset.

As I said, I'm a programmer myself - 25 years ago I even wrote an assembler program...
So you don't have to consider me a standard user, and the info that a complete ruleset needs up to six months to be done is an info I can work with.

[Smiteworks]

Good deal. I just wanted to make sure that anyone reading it doesn't expect that it is something we expect the normal user to undergo -- or need to. Thankfully, RPGs seem to draw people who are also graphic artists or programmers by trade. :)

[Ardem]

The programming side is in LUA and xml. I had not picked up either of these languages two years ago and would not consider myself a programmer, however a a fair bit of tech background.

I started off modifying a ruleset, in making a rolemaster FRP version of the classic version. I have now also finally finished off my first complete new ruleset. Now to be honest it did not take 2 years, to get to that stage to be able to do my own ruleset. Just that long to dedicate the time and I learnt bit and pieces over that time.

It was all in chunks. With CORERPG as your base you can put together a ruleset is a month or two. A week if you want to work really hard, well the code side atleast.

Hope that helps.

[Trenloe]

The CoreRPG ruleset that comes with FG for free is a ruleset agnostic ruleset that has the core VTT functionality - story entries, map/image sharing, tokens, combat tracker, NPCs, items, notes, library, etc.,etc.. You can play your own game within this environment - it just won't have lots of automation specific to your own ruleset, you'll have to do a bit of manual calculations - just like you would if you were playing with your friends face-to-face.

As Smiteworks have mentioned above, the rulesets are open for you to view and modify as you wish. So you could take the CoreRPG ruleset and slowly, over time, build up your specific needs on top of this (the CoreRPG ruleset is designed specifically for this). So you could get gaming with your friends online pretty quickly and could slowly introduce your ruleset specific developments over time...

A really nice feature is that only the GM needs the ruleset -the players download the latest ruleset when they login to the GM's game. This lends itself to developing a ruleset over time and slowly adding in more functionality - the next time the players connect they get the new features automatically.