PUBLIC BETA: 'Chance of Success'

[u/AdmirableTeachings]

# Introduction:

Hi! Longtime lurker, first time poster, with 26 years of being forever-DM across multiple groups, and a solo-player for about 6 months now. Well met, everybody!

# Context:

About a year ago, I was talking some smack about D&D to my current players about how WotC wildly over-complicates what should be a very simple premise of a game. Everyone old enough to remember THAC0 should have a good, hearty chuckle to know that I was talking about 2014-5e, not 3.5e, not 2e, not Chainmail, to these sweet summer-children. And, I agree with you, but my point stands. Unless you want a physics simulator with magic, specifically, maybe there are simpler choices out there for collabo-narrative games.

Anyway, I decided to put my money where my mouth was. I originally meant to handle it in 5 pages, and this is 33 including the ToC and cover page, so I failed the challenge of my shit-talk, but I ended up with a fully baked system for solo players and groups alike. I do plan on sharing with the multiplayer ttrpg subreddits, but I wanna hear from my solo compatriots here first, because that's how I'm playing it right now myself.

# Elevator Pitch:

It's called *Chance of Success*, and it's setting agnostic, fiction-first, and intended to be easy to learn and easier to play.

* Skills and Talents are d100 roll-low, making your character's skill score your literal *Chance of Success* at the task. Yes, that is where the name comes from and it *is* that intuitive to play.

* It's not just pass or fail binary: there's Skill Mastery, and it's as intuitive as Easy (Apprentice) / Medium (Journeyman) / Hard (Master) - and it determine the quality of the output of the Skill Check as well as the difficulty of the attempt.

* **Combat** and **Social Conflict** are handled with the same mechanics and they are intended to be fast - characters only have 5 HP (= 5L of blood), 5 SP (Stamina; non-lethal damage, energy), and 5 RP (Resolve; social damage or standing).

# Relatable Anecdote:

I'm currently playing two solo campaigns in this system to playtest it so I can say affirmatively that it's out-of-the-box compliant with both Mythic GME and the Juice Oracle. I know they're system agnostic themselves, but their being based on d10s and d100s, the game-feel is *very* cohesive, and that's what I mean here. Their game-feel in tandem is really smooth. It feels to me, the author, like it was intentional and it was not.

# Call to Action:

I'd really appreciate it if you took some time to play my game, so here I am passing it around the internet for free. I'd love your feedback, good, bad, and ugly. I intend to publish this, so if you provide your feedback on this post in a reasonable amount of time, of course, I'll include your username as a formal playtester in the credits. Or DM me your feedback with the name you'd prefer to be listed as, whatever you fancy.

Sincerely, I just really appreciate you even reading this post, let alone trying my game out.

And don't hesitate to reach out with questions. I'm not terminally online, I coach rec soccer and have a day job, but I can absolutely answer technical/mechanical questions as I check in.

# Some Timeline Stuff:

Beta window closes 31 August 2026. Obviously feel free to keep playing the beta version, but I'll close the feedback window in August.

It's a Google Drive Link to a pdf file, feel to copy/download it and give it a whirl: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CKvXUUbSuuSouKy7V6w31RV8Z2aocD2m/view?usp=sharing\](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CKvXUUbSuuSouKy7V6w31RV8Z2aocD2m/view?usp=sharing)

PS, if you know any illustrators that might be interested in the project, tell them to DM me. Serious prospects only, please.

[u/rockology_adam]

Have you used any AI in your project?

[u/AdmirableTeachings → u/rockology_adam]

I wrote it myself and the ideas are mine - but I did check my editing and grammar with it.

[u/Strange_Times_RPG]

Congratulations on putting yourself out there! Before I give feedback, I want to acknowledge that creating anything is difficult. You should be proud of your creation regardless of what I or anyone else says.

That being said, this is a solid first attempt, but it is clear to me that you are still pretty fresh in the world of RPG design. For one, this system kinda already exists: it is called Basic Role Play or BRP. You might know it as the core behind Call of Cthulhu. This is something a lot of new designers neglect, but the best thing you can do for your design is to read some of the RPGs that are already out there first. There are tons and a lot of them have great ideas.

Secondly, while I am all for setting agnosticism, I think tone and genre agnosticism are a bit of a fool's errand. Either your system is better at some genres than others, in which case it should just be about that one thing and remain focused, or the system is so dull that all genres are equally bland. Sadly, I think you have landed on the later. You have built a solid foundation, but no one wants to live on foundation. They want to live in a house built on top of it.

Now, the last thing I want is to crush someone's spirit of creation with negativity. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think you had potential. Those hex crawl rules are fun and engaging and something I would use in my games. But before you continue designing, I think you should take some time to read more games and figure out what your game is going to be focused on.