"Why Don't You Just Play D&D?"

I've been asked this question so many times in my 39 years of gaming that I thought I would attempt to actually answer the question as completely as possible.

Dungeons & Dragons - TSR

Before I even begin to jump in on this somewhat controversial question; a little background. First, I love Dungeons & Dragons for a lot of reasons, and I still play D&D to this day. My introduction to tabletop RPG's was when I learned how to play D&D as my year-long project in my 6th grade Gifted & Talent class. In fact, I still have the original Red Box game. I have played every single version of D&D, and I've DM'd every single version except for 4th & 5th Editions (that was the time I started working on my own game).

DragonQuest - SPI

My first exposure to a tabletop RPG that wasn't D&D was when I bought 1st Edition Dragonquest by SPI, which I initially bought purely for the cover, and a curiosity about someone else's take on fantasy RPG's, which was around 1982. Over the years I've played and ran dozens of RPG's, but D&D will always have a special place in my heart. D&D is awesome at what it's trying to be, which is a high fantasy world where you kill monsters and acquire wealth, but I was looking for a different experience; one that captured the essence of my favorire genre, Sword & Sorcery. I'm NOT disparaging D&D for being a game about killing monsters and acquiring wealth. I'm actually complimenting the game because the game knows what it is and how it's intended to be played. It's also very good at doing the things it's designed to do.

That being said, I've fantasized about creating my own tabletop RPG since I was a junior in high school (1986ish), but I didn't develop the guts to actually give it a shot until around 2008. After running a couple of D&D 3.5 campaigns that each lasted a couple of years, I was itching to play a game more strongly focused on the Sword & Sorcery genre. I was initially looking at Mongoose Publishing's, "Conan, The Roleplaying Game", which was essentially a modified version of 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons. I LOVE this game, and the amount of companion material they created for it is staggering, even by today's standards. However, it was built on 3.5 D&D, and I really wanted something much more streamlined and with much faster resolution mechanics. So, I went online and started researching as many games as possible to figure out how I wanted to approach designing a Sword & Sorcery RPG.

Fudge RPG - Grey Ghost Games

It was during this research that I discovered the Fudge RPG system. For those of you who might be unfamiliar, FUDGE is the game engine that was used to create Fate, which also spawned some amazing games like Spirit of the Century, Dresden Files RPG, and Atomic Robo, just to name a few. It was love at first sight to someone who wanted to design their own RPG, and it really hit these buttons for me:

• FUDGE is really more of a game engine than a conventional RPG, since the original concept was that the group playing the game could literally play any genre and style of game they could think of. It's a generic system of core rules, with a ton of supplimental rules for just about any genre you could imagine.
• FUDGE uses a bell-curve (normal distribution) dice mechanic, which I greatly prefer to linear distribution, particularly for games where the relative degree of success or failure matters
• FUDGE won me over instantly with the Adjective Ladder concept. Attaching adjectives to numerical values appealed to me as it reduced meta-game discussions at the table, and it gives players a way to think less about their characters as a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper
• Gifts & Faults (which were later combined to become Aspects in Fate) blew my mind! A mechanical trait that helps to better describe who my character is as a person was very appealing

In addition to having very appealing base game mechanics, FUDGE also afforded me the ability to try and craft a game that captured my favorite elements of the Sword & Sorcery genre. My initial primary design goals were:

• A high-action game using streamlined game mechanics that allow for fast conflict resolution that lives in the background during play while allowing the players to remain in 'roleplaying' mode, making things like combat and chases play more quickly at the table
• A way to track harm to characters that allows for more description and gives the players a clearer idea of the impact and details of any potential harm, rather than deducting points from a stat until the character can no longer act
• a system that gives you the ability to create a free-form magic system that can also have mechanical aspects to the flavorful elements you want to include in your game to reinforce the Sword & Sorcery genre. Magic that is slow to perform but potentially very powerful, isn't guaranteed to work, where failure can have serious consequences for the spellcaster, and a system that has a balance between the increase in power and the detrimental effects of corruption
• a system that makes it easy for GM's to run with minimal prep, allowing the GM to improvise on the spot in order to give the players more freedom with their actions

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever seen with regards to game design is to, "create the game you wish to play". Well, this is shaping up to be precisely the game I've wanted to play for 30+ years, so I think I'm on the right track. 

I think most GM's have played around with the idea and many have even attempted the process of creating their own RPG. This is my first attempt at such an endeavor, and I largely have Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and all of their friends who helped them develop Dungeons & Dragons to thank for inspiring me to finally try and realize a childhood dream.