Attributes and Archetypes

Okay. So the heart of the system we're trying to put together relies on d6s. There are a couple of reasons for this. First off, we'd love this to be a system that's easy to teach to whomever, and easy to play wherever. The d6 is hands down the most ubiquitous die-type, which makes it likely you can put your hands on some no matter where you are.

There are some interesting by-products to playing with d6s. The first is that for larger variation, you end up rolling multiple dice. This is important, as it weights the results. When you roll a d20, you're just as likely to get a 1 as you are a 10 as you are a 20. When you roll 2d6 you are way more likely to get a 7 than a 12. When you roll 3d6 you are way way more likely to get a 10 or 11 than an 18.

The second by-product is that the number 6 is naturally attractive as a guide for other parts of the rules. For us, the other two 6s which matter are the 6 archetypes and the 6 attributes.

Archetypes

Dungeons and Dragons relies quite heavily on its class system. Because we were interested in having rules that easily govern a wide range of scenarios (fantasy, sci fi, modern, wild west, lovecraft, whatever...) we decided it would be better to divide up characters by Archetype rather than class. Our six archetypes are:

1. the HERO
2. the MADMAN
3. the GENIUS
4. the SAINT
5. the MIMIC
6. the HAPLESS

Originally, these Archtypes were meant to evoke the holistic role of the character. However, given that we also settled on having six attribute scores for each character, we decided to make them correlate.

Attributes

1. PHYSIQUE
2. QUICKNESS
3. INTELLECT
4. WISDOM (or WILL)
5. CHARISMA
6. LUCK

Each of these attributes is rated on a scale from 1 to 6, where 1 is horrible, 2 is average, and 6 is god-like. Right now the plan is to have each archetype correspond to one attribute, so the Hero would get +1 PHYS, and the Madman would get +1 QUIK etc, etc.