D100-system charter

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Oh, not including Mongoose after all, then?

OK cleverclogs, I've changed it now.

[peterb]

Originally Posted by soltakss

The minimal characteristics would have to include both Mongoose RQ and BRP. They would probably have to include systems such as Blood, GORE and SimpleQuest. Clearly the charter couldn't refer to those games explicitly, but the wording would have to be so that those games are not excluded.

So, you would have to have, at the very minimum:

• D100 being the prime die when resolving situations
• Characteristics being based on a Dice Roll but not solely random
• Human characteristics typically in the 3-18 range
• Hit Points being derived from Characteristics
• Damage being weapon + personal - armour
• Previous Experience being Background/Profession based rather than Class Based
• No Character/Race Classes
• No Experience Levels
• Percentage based skills
• Incremental experience
• Skills resolved by rolling below a skill target on a D100

Sounds good. The "d100-Compatible" definition should, just as Simon says, be kept to a minimum IMO. The reason being that it's better to be somewhat to inclusive than to exclude. And as Simon wrote in another post, and as several others have pointed out, I agree that the "big" companies would probably not be particularity interested in such a logo. But that's not the main purpose. My idea was to create a community standard and a logo that the community, fanzines and hobby-publishers can use to indicate what type of game they are supporting.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by peterb

My idea was to create a community standard and a logo that the community, fanzines and hobby-publishers can use to indicate what type of game they are supporting.

So, can I use it? Can I? Please?

[peterb]

Of course you can use it. The logo is not of the very best quality, I do have a logo in higher resolution (also in PNG format) that you may have if wish. As I think of it, maybe I should release the logo under a CC license (or even public domain) just so that people understand they may use it freely. To be frank, IMO, the logo lacks originality and is therefore public domain. I see what I can do about a PD-declaration...

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by peterb

The logo is not of the very best quality

That's OK, neither is my site

[peterb]

OK. Here is a suggestion for a very basic d100-charter, based on Simon's post up-thread:

***********

This publication is d100 compatible. That may not mean much to the reader, which is why the d100-Community has created a d100 charter, a document detailing what the community believes is meant by a “d100 game”.

A d100 compatible game contains game mechanics that, at the very minimum:

• Uses a D100 as the prime die when resolving situations,
• Uses Characteristics that are based on a Dice Roll but not solely random,
• Defines human characteristics as being typically in the 3-18 range,
• Uses Hit Points being derived from Characteristics,
• Defines damage as being weapon + personal – armour,
• Defines previous Experience being Background/Profession based rather than based on a Class,
• Uses no Character/Race Classes,
• Uses no Experience Levels,
• Uses percentage based skills,
• Make use of incremental experience,
• And resolves skill rolls and task resolutions by rolling below a target number on a D100.

[RosenMcStern]

I would rather say "in the 1-20" range. We want to give an idea of the order of magniturde, not the dice rolled to generate a character. The concept of weapon+personal-armor is poorly explained. We should split it in two:

- Defines damage done by a hand attack as the sum of weapon damage and personal damage bonus (or malus) [note that this applies to D&D too]
- Describes the effect of armor as decreasing the actual damage done and not influencing the chance to do damage

[frogspawner]

But AikiGhost's "d100 Rules System" (linked upthread) uses characteristics in the 1-100 range. It doesn't seem right that a system even more d100 than usual would be excluded.

Instead of drawing up regulations dividing (perhaps only slightly different) rules-sets, I'd rather efforts were spent uniting them. Devising mechanisms as easy as possible to convert between systems would be a better use of our time.

Obviously starting with conversions to BRP, because they should be the most used...

[soltakss]

A lot of systems use D100. MERP and Rolemaster use 1D100 but they couldn't really be classed as similar to the BRP family. I've never seen AikiGhost's "d100 Rules System" but it strikes me that a 1D100 Characteristic system isn't that compatible with BRP-style D100.

Going out on a limb, the D100 marker should really apply to games that are similar to Chaosium's BRP-style games, including RQ, Other Suns and various derivatives that I haven't seen but other people have.

Other games that use 1D100 should only be included if they are similar in concept.

However, it should depend on the publisher as to whether they want to include the D100 Logo on their products. What I wouldn't want is some D100 Committee sitting and declaring from on-high that such-and-such a game is not worthy of the D100 Logo.

[Dredj]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

But AikiGhost's "d100 Rules System" (linked upthread) uses characteristics in the 1-100 range. It doesn't seem right that a system even more d100 than usual would be excluded.

Instead of drawing up regulations dividing (perhaps only slightly different) rules-sets, I'd rather efforts were spent uniting them. Devising mechanisms as easy as possible to convert between systems would be a better use of our time.

Obviously starting with conversions to BRP, because they should be the most used...

Some adjective-oriented rpgs, such as FUDGE and Mythic do this. Here's the FUDGE conversion for the "typical" D100 game with stats ranging from 3-18. You can judge if this fits BRP well, as I think that's the system they most had in mind.

ADJECTIVE / PERCENTAGE / STAT
Superb / 98-100 / 19+
Great / 91-97 / 16-18
Good / 71-90 / 14-15
Fair / 31-70 / 12-13
Mediocre / 11-30 / 9-11
Poor / 4-10 / 6-8
Terrible / 1-3 / 5 or less