Your TTRPG Design Principles?

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Below is applicable to designing something D&D-like only. If I were to make a system that does not try to play at all like D&D I would go more wild than I do below.

1. PCs and NPCs should be designed using completely separate systems. The system used for NPCs should be as simple as is possible. The PC creation system should also be simple, but it mustn't be too simple or it is boring.
2. Meta currencies should be used only if they are necessary. I don't personally mind them, though.
3. Multi classing is to be avoided, but something like gestalt classes are fine.
4. Classes should be focused on a few limited things. There should be nothing like the D&D Druids or Wizards.
5. I'm a fan of degrees of success on checks

 

[clearstream]

Plenty of rpgs avoid real-world politics so this is nonsense.

I suspect we have slightly different senses of what counts as political. For example, for a long time the colonialist implications of D&D went largely unremarked. The treatment of orcs, for one example, was not regarded as "political." Of course, it was: it's impact was the usual one of normalisation through cultural artifacts. So we're likely disagreeing in the first instance on definition.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suspect we have slightly different senses of what counts as political. For example, for a long time the colonialist implications of D&D went largely unremarked. The treatment of orcs, for one example, was not regarded as "political." Of course, it was: it's impact was the usual one of normalisation through cultural artifacts. So we're likely disagreeing the first instance on definition.

Yeah, that was my thought. Politics means somewhat different things to different people. Honestly, no one person or small closed group is likely to understand all the things that are going to be read into their text, that are latent within it.