As a personal project I am working on creating a tabletop game based on one of my favorite childhood shows. The show is ReBoot.
One of the things I am having a rough time designing is a simple stat system that works well with the nature of the show. In the show the characters spend a fair bit of the time in the city of Mainframe. However time to time, gamecubes drop in and the characters need to enter the game and beat the user.
This means the city portion of the game will need a basic stat system for simple combat, logic, strategy, and interaction. When in the gamecubes, the characters will ReBoot into a random class(based on a table for the game) and have game specific stats and boosts(which stack or use the basic stats).
Some of the game types I know I will be playing with include:
- Hack n Slash(essentially D&D)
- Racing(advance around a board)
- PvP Combat(Mortal Combat & Pokemon)
- Adventure
- Co-op Shooters
This means there will be a bunch of different stat templates that need to interact with the basic stats. I'm not focusing on the classes portion yet.
Is there any games that use a similar stat system or guides to creating stats I could reference that would help?
Also one more thing to keep in mind: Pong is a game that is part of Mainframe(Phongs favorite game) that will have to be played to get help/information sometimes.
Edit
While I don't want to go full out stats like D&D, stats will also play part in character advancing their format(ex: Sprite(simple format) -> Guardian(advanced format)).
Formats in consideration:
- Sprite (System and Game)
- Guardian
- Hacker
- Rogue
- Web Rider
- Virus (via infection)
Best Answer
Though they aren't class-based systems, dice-pool systems like Risus, the White Wolf StoryTeller system, and the One Roll Engine may provide some inspiration for how to handle this elegantly.
Let's assume you're using the One Roll Engine. There's a bit to learn there, but the main thing is that your base stats represent a number of dice that someone can roll when attempting something that requires that stat. More dice means better chances of success.
With this setup, each of those sub-genres could have their own collection of skills that players would need to employ to win the game. Depending on the results of your table, each player would get certain bonuses to relevant skills when they enter the game.
So, for example, let's say your character is Dan the Guardian. His base stats look like: Body (4) Mind (3) Social (1)
You could replace those base stats with whatever you think is appropriate for Reboot- this is just an example.
Then he enters a hack-and-slash RPG game. The relevant skills in that game are Melee, Spells, and Bow. Dan gets randomly assigned the barbarian class, so he gets the skill Melee (4)
When he wants to fight, he would roll Body + Melee, or 8 dice, meaning Bob is pretty well prepared to handle the game! However, if he'd been sucked into an Adventure game and been assigned the Diplomat class (Negotiating +4), he'd be less steller rolling his 5 dice pool of Social + Negotiating.
As for Pong, I think it's a simple enough game that you could get away with making it a test of the base stats, possibly rolled as a pool or average to test how well rounded your character is. So, when playing against Phong, Dan the Guardian might roll 2 dice (if you use an average and round down), while his more well-rounded friend Dongle (Body 3, Mind 3, Social 3) would roll 3 dice. This is really only meaningful if it's harder to get higher numbers in a particular stat than it is to develop them evenly.