The Problem

Here's my train of thought: DnD is really cool. It's like choose-your-own-adventure, but with combat. All you need is pencils and paper, some dice, and some friends. So beautifully simple!

But DnD isn't perfect. As a DM, one of my favorite things to do is hand out cool loot. I don't use a loot table or anything, I just come up with interesting abilities when I think of them. Some of my loot is probably ridiculously broken, but hey. You can just make the encounters harder, right? Well, that's partially true.

You see, I've started feeling like characters get a few too many abilities from leveling up. I think a downside of getting so much power from leveling is that it motivates you less to find cool loot. Ultimately, your players should care about gold and loot kind of a lot, so they can feel some of the greed and ambition experienced by their characters. When the bulk of the goodies come from guaranteed level-ups, it kinda undercuts that motivation.

(On a side note, it's also not realistic to constantly have characters motivated by grandiose altruism, chasing mustache-twirling badguys across entire continents. Realistic altruism is handing back a stolen wallet, or helping grandma cross the street. Grandiose altruism does exist, but it doesn't appear overnight and for no reason.)

While considering this apparent flaw in DnD, I began considering other flaws. For example, I think that it can be inconvenient to have specific monsters tied to specific stat blocks. It's okay if a werewolf is a high-level threat in one campaign and a sidequest boss for a lvl 1 party in another. A werewolf shouldn't represent a specific threat level. From the DM's perspective, the TTRPG framework should provide guidelines for how to make cool monsters of a specific threat level. If that monster takes on the "skin" of a werewolf, displacer beast, tarrasque, or beholder... so be it. The main thing is that each monster has a consistent threat level within each campaign.

Moving on... I looked over the classes and noticed that none of them really scratch the "knight" itch. The closest options are fighter and paladin, but a paladin is a relilgious class and fighter doesn't really capture knightly qualities of chivalry and fealty, for example. So there's no knight class. But If I'm playing a game based on a heavily-romanticized version of the middle ages, you effing know I want to play a knight, right? Right???

The Solution

I think the way to fix this is to just make our own ttrpg.

So here's some ideas I'm kicking around:

• Classes were a good idea, but there should be more of them.
• Classes should be closely tied to backstory. Each class represents a certain walk of life.
• I'm planning on having 20 classes. As you can see, most of these are closely tied to a specific job.Martials: Barbarian, Knight, Mercenary, VeteranNaturalists: Druid, Marksman, Ranger, RiderMages: Psychic, Scholar, Warlock, WizardZealots: Crusader (Paladin Cleric), Inquisitor, Monk, ProphetRenegades: Assassin, Minstrel (Bard), Thief, and Tinker (Artificer).
• The "wisdom" stat should be renamed so that people can stop asking what's the difference between wisdom and intelligence.
• I'm planning on revamping the list of stats entirely: Strength, Speed, Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, Charisma, and Willpower. Willpower is the most unique and is used by both martials and mages.
• Characters should be able to purchase training for weapons and (certain) spells from trainers. This would make gold an integral part of the leveling process.
• Spells and Feats both take up "ability slots". This means that martial classes will have more feats, helping them compete with casters.
• Instead of having a huge book of monsters/stat blocks, DMs should have guidelines that instruct them on how to make appropriate threats for a party of a certain level.

There's more ideas I'm brainstorming. Making a whole TTRPG is a lot of work, but I think it could be fun to try. I'm tentatively calling it "Swords and Torches".

The Part Where You Come In

What do you think? Would you be interested in contributing ideas to a project like this?