neat20: the "yet another d20system variant" to rule them all

Since 2019 or so I've been toying with a project of an RPG system for medieval fantasy shenanigans ala D&D, but better™. Surely I'm the first with this idea, amirite?

I also wanted to write it in spanish (my native language) for reasons I can't really explain -- most of my creations are written in english. Why? Not sure, maybe because it's the language I'm most used to read RPG stuff in, or because publishing any RPG product in english makes more sense (better reach and demographics I guess?). But once or twice I decide to create something in spanish, perhaps because I'm envisioning the thing being played by my friends and acquaintances (all spanish-first speakers) before strangers from the internet.

Anyway, this was the case for this system that I called "Aventura & Fantasía" (which translates to "Adventure & Fantasy", but the ampersand is a wink-wink because it's not really used in spanish).

At first, A&F was born as a sort of expanded hack of John Harper's World of Dungeons. Kind of like if you were to write a 30 page manual for WoDU but translated to spanish, with art and a nice layout (not entirely true but that was the objective).

Eventually I found Ben Milton's Maze Rats and Knave and started dabbling in the OSR and Nu-SR scene, devouring anything I could find and stealing--I mean borrowing--any idea I found cool. So some random tables got in my game and it started to take shape. But it was a weird shape. In the end, it was totally playable, but also a mix of PbtA-lite and OSR flavors that left me with a strange taste. Would I play this more than once or twice? probably not. Was a nice time-sink of a hobbie. Ok, next project. And I forgot about it for a few months.

Ben Milton's Knave was one of the influences on my system.

After a while of different projects and tinkering with other ideas, I went back to A&F. I tried to make a system similar to Shawn Tomkin's Ironsworn (what I was playing at that time), with lots of moves and oracles, designed to be played either Solo, GMless Coop or Guided with a GM (which, at the time, thought it was the future of RPGs). I recycled some of the ideas I had for A&F (even the aesthetics), but when I had something ready to playtest and tried it, it kinda sucked. Well, it didn't exactly suck but it didn't amaze me. So it went back to the backburner.

Fantasy Roleplaying Treasure.

Fast forward a few months, and I'm seeing more cool stuff from the OSR scene (gotta give'em credit, there's something really interesting in their simplicity and "common language" that begs stealing--I mean borrowing. Knock! magazine and Mork Borg captivated me with their visuals. There were also deep dives from Adam Koebel and Chris McDowall on youtube that were enlightening for RPG design, that also informed all of my future creations. Also at this time I discover Hankerin Ferinale and his ICRPG. That game does some things with perfect precision that I couldn't stop thinking about... but still, I felt that they were not exactly there for me... like, why use hearts for HP (totally awesome) if you are then going to fraction them in chunks of 10 hit points and make me subtract like D&D? But all these things I was feeding on were starting to creep in the back of my mind. Occasionally whispering "use me, use me in your next RPG system". 

Another huge influence: ICRPG by Runehammer.

So one day I wake up wanting to run D&D (like, proper D&D) in a west-marches style campaign (it was the buzz of RPG online chatter, and it still is). I even had like 10 friends wanting to play in that style. But while I'm preparing my Foundry VTT to run it, I remember that GMing 5E is a pain in the ass. So I thought "how can I make 5E better?" and there was no easy solution, I mean... it's easier to create a simpler system from scratch. What did you say? create something? I might have some ideas about that... But I didn't do anything at that time. Not yet at least.

Then, one evening my wife has to leave and I'm alone with my then 2-year-old daughter, who wants to play with daddy's colorful piles of RPG dice. Thinking 2 years is old enough (?) I nod with gravitas. I grab my Descent: Journeys In The Dark box and let her choose a hero miniature (she picks the elven warrior). I give her 3 hearts, "this is your health". So we sit at the table and I make her create a character with the 6 core Stats, a "sword" and a "silver shield" that I write in all caps in a piece of paper. And off she goes to hunt non-scary monsters in a magical forest with children-friendly combat in which every creature runs away when their hearts are depleted. Note that I gave her all the dice so she can pick whichever she wants, but she falls in love with a jumbo d20 and won't touch any other. So the system only uses d20 rolls, note that for later. She roleplays every action with fascination and with very limited vocabulary, and 3 minutes later she is distracted and wants to play something else, so I put everything away and take her to ride her tricycle. But the lesson was learned. This is the way.

glorify the icosaedron!

So I sit to write. And think. I'm a sucker for "elegant" systems, like Fate, in which some core mechanics inform most of the game, and that you can use its framework for almost any situation. How can I make a game that feels like D&D, with the d20 and levels, but that is formulaic rather than arbitrary? So I go back to Knave. What Ben Milton did with the Stats is awesome: The Stat Score is used for defense (basically the DC of an opposed roll) and the modifier is used for attacking (or for any active action, basically) against the opposition's Stat. That's genius. Stealing that. Actually, you know what? I'm basing all the system on that little thing.

So I have the classic Stats, but hey, I never liked the separation of STR and CON (too close and redundant for me) so let's join them into VIGOR. And also what the hell is WISDOM? No other RPG that doesn't inherit Stats from D&D uses that. If you are going to use it as WILLPOWER, then let's name it WILLPOWER and leave all character knowledge and prior experience under the INTELLIGENCE stat. Yeah, that's better. I also added PERCEPTION as a Stat. Yeah, sue me OSR grognards, I make my players roll for perception checks all the time. No, really, it's there mostly because in this game ranged attacks are not made with DEX, they are made with PER. Making Rangers diversify, you know.

What else? Ah yeah, Advantage and Disadvantage is probably the best thing 5E did. Let's put that here. Also nobody likes lots of modifiers ala D&D3.5, so in my game you only add up numbers (no subtraction) and you only ever add up two single digit numbers for your d20 rolls. Remember, I want this game to be played even by little kids (well, no 2 year old will add +3 and +5, but yeah, 8 year olds might). I also decided to go all the way with Advantage/Disadvantage. Everything in the game that's not a Boon (the main modifiers of the game, more on that later) basically gives Adv/Dis. And they are cumulative (but cancel 1:1 and end up reduced to 1, so don't worry there).

"You don't need WotC to play D&D" -- a wise man

For the final touch of genius, I decided that everything has a Level. PCs, NPCs, monsters, traps, everything can have a Level. There are no different monster stat blocks, just templates (very simple ones) in which every stat extrapolates from its Level. So you want to come up with a monster on the spot? sure, define its Level and consult the desired template. Boom. You want it to be "balanced" against the party? Give it their same average Level. Done. Fucking genius, I told ya.

I mentioned Boons earlier. Boons are basically anything a character has that is not a core Stat. Items (weapons, armor) are Boons. Skills (like archery or spellcasting) are Boons. A Dragonborn fire breath weapon might be a Boon. How do they work? A Boon has different levels, it can either be a +1, a +3 or a +5. Items range from common (+1), to masterwork (+3) and legendary (+5). Skills go from Adept (+1) to Expert (+3) and Master (+5). With this little framework you can represent and simulate anything a character might have in a typical D&D adventure.

I lied when I said the everything has a Level was the final touch of genius. I have another one. For real, this is the last one. The Level Up mechanic makes me so proud I could cry. Read this, right from the rules: characters level up when they finish a number of adventures equal to their current Level. Now look at how that's represented in the character sheet:

If that's not the best level up mechanic in the history of roleplaying games, I don't know what is.

And then there's the "damage rolls". You might ask "how do you do damage rolls if you only use a d20?". Good question. The answer is I don't have damage rolls. That's too cumbersome and takes too much time. Also, you don't need other dice, the icosaedron is the best of the Platonic Solids. Everybody knows that. In this system the "damage" (it's called Effect here, because it might apply to non-violent actions as well) is calculated by how great your roll is. Amazing, right? If you roll over the difficulty, you succeed. But if you roll really well, you succeed more. Each 5 points over the difficulty makes you deal another point of Effect. So you always want to roll as high as possible, even when the difficulty is mediocre. Because everyone likes to see big numbers, and I oblige.

Art by @andyromanchik.

ANYWAY, pardon my rant. Moving on: I decided to call this system "neat20" because it's neat. I think it is elegant and consistent. Formulaic instead of arbitrary (no XP advancement tables, no spells per level tables, no specific HD for each class, and so on).

I published the system as a website (another experiment I wanted to try). And the game has a Creative Commons BY-SA license, because everything should be open-source. You can check it out here.

Aventura & Fantasía is being developed as a PDF; a more classical approach of a booklet you can read and refer to in the gaming table (in A5 size, because metric system). But that's in spanish, so I don't know how useful it would be for the readers of this blog. I'll post it here anyway once it's in a publishing-ready state. Promise.

neat20 is supposed to be a collection of modular rules, so you can mod a different take on it by using some of the pieces and leaving out others that you don't like. I plan to make more hacks (mods) with neat20 in the future, but for now A&F is the main example of the engine.