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Unbound Tales is a new TTRPG I am working on, that has the following features.
First, the rules are fairly light, requiring more judgement calls by the GM (called the Director). There is an emphasis on collaboration, both between the Director and the players, and among the players. In addition, resource management is emphasized in a lot of ways. Resources include both traditional expendable resources (such as hit points and ammunition) and regenerating and escalating resources. Every successful encounter earns the party a Victory, and their regenerating resources (such as aether for spellcasting, or inspiration, panache, insight, grit, whatever, for the martial types) start equal to their current Victories at the beginning of each encounter.
Every time a party completes an encounter, they gain one Victory. When they take a short rest, one Victory is lost, but one Milestone is gained. Every time the party takes a long rest, all Victories become Milestones. All characters except the Berserker gain their expendable resource at the start of each encounter, in an amount equal to their Victories. Barbarians instead start with temporary hit points based on their Victories.
Character advancement is through the selection of Features, and a milestone system is used to meter said advancement. Completing stories, significant character development and Victories all add to milestones. There are five upgrades that can be purchased with these milestones, and each can be purchased only once per level. When all five have been purchased, the character goes up in level.
The game has six attributes (Agility, Body, Charisma, Dexterity, Education, Foresight) and twelve classe. For each attribute, there are two classes that rely heavily on it. Classes are also split into four general categories: Attackers, Defenders, Supports, and Controllers. Each class has at least three sub-classes, though these sub-classes frequently have different names, such as Combat Style, Order or Discipline.
Skills receive a training rank, from +1 to +6. When a character is offered the chance to improve a skill, they cannot improve it if it is already higher than their current level. The same restriction applies to attributes, but a character can start the game with an attribute as high as +3. (This just means they won't be improving it again until Level 4.) Certain features can grant a permanent bonus to a skill, but because it's not a training rank, it means that the skill can be raised to +7 or even +8 effectively, without impacting when it can be increased during normal training. There are no “Tool Proficiencies”; tools either add a bonus to a skill check, or impose a penalty if you do not have the appropriate tool. Weapons, on the other hand, are treated as skills.
Unbound Tales uses the metric system, rather than the imperial system. Each square is one meter across. Speed is given in meters per second.
Skill checks are made with 2d10 plus the skill's total bonus (which includes an attribute). Attribute defences, on the other hand, are a flat 10 + attribute. Agility, Body and Charisma are the most commonly targeted defences. Often, a skill check will be made against a fixed Target Number, or TN. An average TN is considered to be 13 + Level. There are no critical results - no critical hits, no fumbles, no perfect success; just success or failure. And even on a failure, you still get some small measure of effect.
“Favour” on a skill check means “roll one additional d10, and then discard the lowest one.” “Slight” means “roll one additional d10, and then discard the highest one.” These cancel each other out: Two favour plus one slight add up to one favour. They can also stack: Two favour means “roll two additional d10, and then discard the two lowest.”
Levels are named, and features and spells also have levels. The level names are Hero, Champion, Elite, Paragon and Legend. When a character gains a new feature or spell, it will be of their level, and that “slot” can be filled by any feature or spell (as appropriate) of the same level or lower. Features and spells tend to have the adjective form of the level name: Heroic, Champion, Elite, Paragon or Legendary.
The action economy is fairly straightforward. On their turn, a character can take two simple actions or one complex action, and can also take one quick action. They can also move a distance equal to their Speed, and can split this movement up as they desire. A simple action is available that doubles their movement speed, and it can be taken twice, for four times movement speed.