Fables of Folly and Legend (FOFL; working title) is a d20 TTRPG system. The system itself is not entirely dissimilar from the likes of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, being setting agnostic, with rulesets covering a wide variety of scenarios.
My goal for this system is to allow for a player to always have a variety of ways to approach a situation, while obviously still allowing for specialization and the fulfillment of key party roles. I also hope for the system to be fairly genre agnostic, which is why I've built the system around the concept of Special Action Systems, which allow different player classes to have unique and interesting abilities, without having to relay on one particular mechanic (i.e. magic) for anything beyond standard talking or tool use.
The action economy of the system is also built with the idea of player variety in mind, allowing for players to take on a diverse set of skills and abilities, without allowing them to fulfill every role in the party at the same time. This way, even an individual character can fulfill multiple roles within the party, but must choose to either be a little bit worse at all of them, in the moment, put all their energy into a singular role.
Special Action Systems
Every class in the FOFL system, start the player off with access to a particular Special Action System (SAS). Each SAS represents a specialized set of skills that a character may possess. For example, SAS' include Spellcasting, Stamina & Combat Techniques, Rapport & Social Maneuvers, Psychic Abilities and Advanced Crafting. The classes, and subclasses, then provide different bonuses and benefits that suite utilizing the given SAS in a particular way. For example, both the Bard and Scoundrel use the Rapport & Social Maneuvers SAS, however the Bard's class features primarily benefit a persuasive, performative and manipulative play style, whereas the Scoundrel's features encourage a deceitful, intimidating and sneaky approach.
The system does not support full multiclassing, like other systems might, but instead allow for players to gain access to additional Special Action Systems, meaning that you can take on the core mechanics of other classes, but you will always have the class features which most favour your starting SAS.
Action Economy
There are five categories of action within the FOFL system. Offensive, Defensive, Utility, Reaction and Social & Skill. During combat, on each turn, a player may make one offensive action, one defensive action and one utility action. They may also make a single reaction between the start of their current turn, and the start of their next turn. Any of ofensive, deffensive or utility can be substituted for a Social & Skill action. They can each also be substituted for a movement, moving up to their movement speed, with an exception that a utility action can only be substituted for one third of their movement speed, rounded down.
Action Exclusion
To prevent a character from doing too much on a given turn, some action come with an exclusion. For example, a more powerful attack action, may require you to open yourself up for an attack from an enemy (i.e. a wild swing of a greataxe) causing it to come with an exclusion against defensive actions. This means that you cannot make a defensive action, on the same turn that you use that particular offensive action. When there is an exclusion on an action category, you also cannot substitute the excluded category for movement, or a social & skill action.
This allows for players to choose between doing a wider variety of actions (which a support player may opt for) or making a high performance action.
The World of Qelmar
The initial setting that I am developing for play is the world of Qelmar.
This setting is a diverse fantasy setting, allowing for the inclusion of all manner of fantasy races, varieties of magic and other abilities. The history of the world of Qelmar is long and stories, allowing for campaigns played in times of varying magic levels, and a far flung future where technology has taken a stronger hold. I plan on developing 'setting guide' type of content for each of the five major eras, each marking a different level of magic, technology and the shape of the universe itself.