Writing a game

I'm writing a game for play (as opposed to "for publishing", even though I might do so later). I'm laying out my thoughts on the blog to have something to write about, and share my approach. No theory discussion on this one, just the nitty-gritty. Thinking out loud, if you will.

I have some vague notions of what I want to detail: 

- Acquisitions - material gain, the pursuit of financial power and stability. A wild fantasy for this one.

- Debt - excellent motivation for the former, binds a group together via something very tangible.

- Survival Horror type violence - compounding harm on characters without taking them out of action.

- Comedy / Silliness as Foil to Horror - not mechanizing it because it naturally occurs from playing tabletop RPGs. Players will release pressure via comedic relief. Some NPCs also will be funny because I do not wish to take myself too seriously.

- Grounded yet open setting - reminiscing about Aedamphia, someone pointed out the layered history feel of the setting, which I also feel strongly is the case. This came about organically as I slowly built the setting bits by bits depending on where the PCs adventures led them, occasionally asking them for input, anti-canon style. You're the hobbit, tell me about hobbits in this setting. Anyways, I want this in a game world that is closer to our time and sensibilities, so human-centric. At the same time, I like fallen london / electric bastionland bullshit where people are people, and people sometimes have a squid for a head or no head at all and a face on their torso, without it becoming a "race". Words in my head for later: the Autonomous (not) Republic (not) of Madra. Big inspiration from Disco Elysium, I'm thinking of the ghost of a failed communist revolution, anarchists dead and oft forgotten, loyalist reactionaries nostalgic of a simpler, more oppressive time, an occupational government and its civilian but police at odds with local organizers, etc. Space for modern day politics, recognizable broad strokes of Europe lost through time. Possibly magic of the occult and eldritch variety. Cybernetics and other fancy anachronistic sci-fi elements perhaps, thinking K Dick novellas' visions for pocketfuls of futurism.

PCs, then, are defined as a Group first (line, veils, debt, debtholder, goal/alignment), and as individuals second (name, age, pronouns, character class).

Stats: roll d6 for each (in order, or assign if you have a concept in mind) - Str, Dex, Wil, Cha.

High is good, low is bad. I usually don't split Cha/Wil, and keep one or the other depending on which seems most likely to be actionable in a given setting of play. My partner suggested the split as I was thinking about HP. Which will make more sense when you know how being hit works (it's dead simple).

Hit Points: 6 + (STR+WIL)/2.  EDIT: I meant 6 + X, not d6 + X
Slow recovery (1hp per day+night of full rest, as per OD&D). 1hp every second day of rest.

My first guess was:

A) d6+6 HP, but I wanted a character's physicality to also reflect survival chance.
B) d6+Str, but I thought it gave too much weight to physicality vs other factors at play.
C) d6+6 (+/-1 for Str 1/6, unnecessarily fiddly for a marginal difference in practice.

Adding a fourth stat does not kill the minimalist vibe IMO. Str/Dex dichotomy reflects two ways to act through physicality, and Cha/Wil reflects a more outward vs inward relationship to the world. I can easily picture when one or the other would help or hinder saving throws.

Attacks: d6 vs AC.  Modifiers at Ref's discretion.

Armor / Target
None / 3+
Light / 4+
Heavy 5+

AC means "how hard is it to cause meaningful damage", HP also does, live with it. It works.
Also, "heavy armor" could mean "super fast and hard to hit" like a war hawk.
Sometimes, you skip the to-hit roll cause a target is vulnerable or exposed and damage is unavoidable.
Sometimes, they're in a disadvantageous position or the attacker is advantaged, and it warrants a +1 or -1 on the roll. I don't want to put it in the rulestext because it feels patronizing, to me, to state it outright. Kind of like saying "if you stab someone who's sleeping, they die" or "high ground is a tactical advantage improving your chances of success." Note: I like tables, but you could just say to Hit is 3+, with -1 for light protection, -2 for heavy protection, and fold it into other potential modifiers. I don't becuse like I said above, "AC" already puts me in that frame of thinking. YMMV.

Optional Hit Location: 1-2 legs, 3-4 arms, 5 torso, 6 head (for limbs, odd is left, even is right)

Damage: all damage dice explode (re-roll and add) whenever they show 6.

Unarmed or hindered attacks deal 2d6 drop highest - on a double 6, keep the worst total.
Attacks with melee weapons deal 1d6.
Attacks with firearms deal 2d6 drop lowest - on a double 6, keep the best total.

Death & Dismemberment: at 0 HP, you go Down. Look at the damage die that brought you down:

On a 1-2, you are out of action, but your life is not in immediate danger. This does not mean you're fine, but that there should not be permanent consequences beyond some scars.

On a 3-4, you are in critical condition and require immediate medical attention. IF someone gets you to a hospital within the hour, you may survive but will be permanently changed. This is the realm of lost senses or limbs and other life-altering injuries.

If it's 5 or 6, you are dead. Nothing short of supernatural intervention will help you at this point.

I went through a bunch of iterations over the last hour or so. Initially, I wanted a rule ala BRP/Mythic Bastionland, where taking too much damage at once would put you down. First it was half max HP, then I realized 4-5-6 might all possibly put you down. Afterwards, it was "when damage die explodes" (min. 7 damage), use the second die as target number to roll over to see if you're still up. Problem was, it creates a redundancy for 7 HP characters who already have been punished for bad luck at CharGen. 1-in-6 damage roll will put them out either way. So I went away with all of that, and modified my death & dismemberment table, which initially only accounted for critical condition (5-) or dead (6+) and used total damage that brought you to 0. Now you just look at the die and that tells you 1-in-3 whether you're dead, dying, or broken. I want to emphasize again: 1-2 isn't fun times, you're still battered, bloodied, and out of action. But I thought it'd be convenient and consistent that 1+HP means you're still standing, 0HP means you're Down, all the time. Easier to then interpret HP loss. It also tells me how ot describe a hit if I know it brings you to 0 HP. Maybe you got lucky, maybe you got your arm hacked off, maybe your head rolls.

Other Stuff - it's not that combat is the heart of this game, it's that most other things I can avoid mechanizing entirely and feel comfortable running in a layered and detailed way; saving throws are d6 vs TN set based on stats, background, situation etc. Context is key. You know all that. If not, my backlog is full of rants, and the bloggers in the sidebar explain it better than I do when they talk theory.

I'm definitely strapping Classic Traveller encounter, reaction, and patron encounter rules.
I wish I could use its starship operations & economics rules but I don't see how the setting I'm envisioning so far would make it work. Maybe the setting could be interplanetary within the solar system, so there's an element of long distance travel through space. I don't see myself handling a persistent world bigger than that. I could make away with speculative trading, and instead of contraband cargo be more valuable but riskier to transport. Ideas bubbling to the surface, but the post is long enough and I am sleepy.