Having read and played various RPG systems over the past month, I thought I'd jot down some of the rule principles that I really like. Why? Who knows - but these are the things that occur to me, even if some of them are slightly contradictory.
1. Stats should matter.
A strength of 12 should be significantly better than a strength of 11. So I prefer systems that use the stats themselves, rather than modifiers derived from them. That's the major strike against Dungeon World for me. I've no quarrel with systems that just have modifiers as stats. The "roll equal or under" or "roll under" systems of Whitehack, The Black Hack and Into the Odd handle provide a great way of using the character sheet to the full. I like the Mythras/RQ system of adding stats together to get raw percentage abilities too.
2. Shields should matter.
I've rambled on about this extensively, but for me it's a crucial part of making an ancient/medieval combat system feel realistic. Shields should be sufficiently useful that the choice of a two-handed weapon presents a risk/reward dilemma - unless the character is decked out in full plate like a fifteenth-century man-at-arms. Shields are cumbersome, of course, so there should also be risk/reward decisions on whether to attempt climbs or leaps with them.
3. Encumbrance should matter.
As I've said before, no one would fight with a backpack on if they could help it. Carrying stuff is a pain, and should also involve risk/reward, tactical and resource-management decisions. If you're looting a dragon's hoard, you're probably going to have to leave some of your gear behind so that you can carry more plunder. Now, most games have fairly detailed encumbrance systems - but so, so many of them get ignored or forgotten in practice. Encumbrance can only matter if the system is clear and up-front. Major props to The Black Hack here.
4. Hit points work best as a barometer of fatigue and morale
Hit points are obviously an abstraction and are probably best kept that way. For all my RuneQuest bias, I increasingly feel that the erosion of hit points in a specific location is actually quite unrealistic. In real life, the accumulation of cuts and bruises to a limb in successive combats wouldn't be equivalent to getting that limb gradually sawn off - but that's how it can go in RQ and similar systems. So, perversely, the more abstract systems can often give a more realistic feel than the "gritty" ones.
Now, obviously, what applies to limbs also applies to whole bodies - unless hit points are blood loss, I suppose. For that reason, treating falling hit points as representing increasing fatigue or flagging morale seems the most sensible approach to me. "Fatigue" can incorporate all sorts of minor wounds too, of course. But the Into the Odd approach - where STR starts to fall and saves are required once HP are gone - handles this very well. The Fantasy Trip's STR as HP does a similar thing, of course. And The Black Hack's table of out-of-action results is good too. With Whitehack, we always roll a saving throw (vs death!) when HP fall below zero - I forget whether that's the official approach or not - with precisely zero representing unconsciousness.
5. Weapon damage should be swingy.
Now that I think of it, a fatigue/morale approach to HP makes this one less crucial, but I don't really like the idea of minimum damage above 1 HP. In Whitehack, I rule that one-handed weapons do 1d6, spears, longswords and battleaxes do 1d8 when wielded in two hands and dedicated two-handed weapons (greatswords, poleaxes, halberds) do 1d10. So players get an incentive to use big, nasty weapons, but they're not guaranteed a lot of damage (a poleaxe is a thoroughly nasty weapon, but it could still just scratch you as a one-handed warhammer might, if you managed to get largely out of its way).
6. Damage by character class is a good thing ...
At the same time, I think there's a lot to be said for abandoning weapon damage in favour of character-class damage - as The Black Hack does (I think the concept has been around for aeons, though). I like the idea that a trained fighter armed with a dagger is a lot more deadly than a pasty scholar armed with the same. And even if you give that pasty scholar a poleaxe, the trained fighter with the dagger is still likely to cause more grievous wounds if they go head to head.
7. But character classes are a bad thing.
This is the RQ player's classic sneer. But I do think character classes are, by and large, a terrible idea. Whitehack has the best presentation of them I've seen, as the Strong/Deft/Wise classes are so flexible (you might well have all three represented by knights in a party, for example). I've always loathed class-based weapon restrictions, though. While RPGs don't generally do a great job in emulating fantasy literature (and books based on RPGs merit their own circle in Hell), stuff like wizards being unable to wield swords, battleaxes or maces is just abominable. The same objections I had in primary school still hold up: um, Gandalf? Elric? Jagreen Lern? The Witch-King? Thulsa Doom if we throw in film references - and so on. And don't get me started on clerics not using swords (Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, Friar Tuck ...).
8. Stats can benefit from condensing (or correlating).
I've always been suspicious of WIS and INT. And I'm more than a little cautious about STR and CON - which is why I like the Fantasy Trip/Into the Odd STR-as-HP approach. More on that here. After all, DEX seems to cover a wider span than STR and CON (and SIZ in RQ): actual dexterity, agility, speed of thought, reaction time ...
Into the Odd, with just three stats, scores highly here.
9. Skill systems are a bore.
OK, there are exceptions here. RuneQuest handles this sort of thing pretty well. But on the whole, I think it's smoother and slicker to just rely on stats. Whitehack, with its groups system (write down your vocation/species/affiliation next to a stat or two and tell us why this means you're good at whatever you're trying to do) is really elegant here.
10. Magic isn't to be trusted
I don't like magic as technology. But I do like technology as magic (Into the Odd's arcana; ancient energy weapons; that sort of thing). And there's something about "magic systems" that I don't really like (least of all in fiction!). I'm generally inclined for magic to be something that players only access through artefacts (made by dwarves or whatever) and is otherwise wielded against them but not by them. But Whitehack does handle things well by allowing spells to be negotiated with the GM in advance and by having them cost hit points. That latter point is very simple, elegant and powerful, I think: if you must cast spells, they should come at a corporeal price.
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