Elegia

I just found a nifty free game called "Elegia." It is intended as a hybrid between a simple old-school game (think 3LBB) and 8-bit console RPGs. I never really played console RPGs, but I still found the implementation to be charming. It looks like a solid, simple, and playable system. I was hooked when I saw that the author also chooses to use stones for enc! I was also happy to see the movement rates and such which line up nicely with my thoughts on Hexploration. It also shows a four-attribute system implemented pretty smoothly, and the skill list is not bad.

I was originally disappointed by the magic system, which focuses on flashy evocation. However, the author's notes later in the text explained the reasoning, which does make sense.

But video games actually have one noteworthy advantage over the traditional
model of tabletop RPG, and it all boils down to those oft-derided limitations.
In video games, the magic system is simple and focused. Wizards are good at
raining down fiery death upon their enemies, but they lack the game-breaking
spells that allow them to solve any challenge easily and one-up the other
character classes at every turn. Wizards can’t divine for secrets, polymorph
themselves or their opponents, fly or teleport past physical obstacles with
impunity, or end the adventure with a single well-worded wish. And magical items
are rare enough that nobody else can do these things either.
In a nutshell,
the truncated magic system forces players of all experience levels to think
creatively. Even players in control of 20th level characters can’t rely on
spells or items to solve all of their problems. This frees up the referee to use
a wider range of challenges—things that would make high-level characters in
other RPG systems yawn, while the players look to their character sheets for the
half-dozen ways that they can bypass the obstacle with no thought or originality
involved. (Unless, of course, the problem at hand is monsters that aren’t dead
yet. Elegia magic remains pretty darned good at cracking that particular
chestnut.)

In any event, its free and takes only 10 minutes to skim. Could be a fun way to burn an afternoon someday!

I've labeled this as an "indie game," but really just because that's my tag for "3rd party games." This is really more of the "Old School Renaissance" flavor. I need to go add it to the list of retroclones...

Agon

http://www.agon-rpg.com/

I just found this RPG. It incorporates a lot of the mechanics I've been thinking about lately. Well worth a look at the free sample, at least! The combat system seems a bit clunky and I dislike the blackjack-degree of success, but in general it looks pretty fun.

Ironclaw Dice Mechanic

The Ironclaw system uses an interesting variation on dice pools. Multiple dice are rolled, and the result is the highest number showing on any of the dice. With just that, the system would be logically equivalent to a dice pool system where only one success is ever needed.

Where Ironclaw differs, however, is in allowing the dice to be of different types. The interesting effect here is that adding a small die to a pool with bigger dice does not increase the maximum performance possible (the highest number that can be rolled), but does make it less likely that a very low number will be rolled — thereby making easy tasks less likely to be failed.

For example, consider a character with a Dexterity rated as 1d12 (for anyone not familiar with RPG dice notation, it's (number of dice)d(size), so that's one twelve-sided die). The character can perform tasks with Dexterity with difficulty as high as 12 — they'll succeed at such a task 1/12 of the time. On the low end, this character can succeed at a Dexterity-related task with a 4 difficulty on 3/4 of their attempts.

Now, let's give the character a tiny bit of training at, say, lock-picking — enough to give them a lockpicking skill with a rating of 1d4. The character's chance of picking a difficulty 12 lock has not changed. We can say that their training doesn't cover locks that tough, so they have to rely on their innate talent. However, against a simple difficulty 4 lock, the character will now only fail if neither die rolls a 4 or better — giving roughly an 82% chance of success, up 7% from what they had before. A bit more training will raise their lock-picking skill to 1d6, at which point they'll succeed against this lock about 88% of the time.

Ironclaw has a "fumble" rule when all 1's are rolled on the dice for a task — if that happens, then something's been messed up badly. Increasing the size of a single dice doesn't decrease the fumble chance by much; going from, say, 1d10 to 1d12 moves fumbles from 10% of the time to about 8%. However, adding extra dice decreases the chance a good deal; a character going from 1d10 to "1d10+1d4" (that's Ironclaw's notation, even though the dice aren't actually being added) has gone from a 10% fumble chance to 2.5%.

Although Ironclaw doesn't make use of it, such a system also can offer a choice for advancement — expanding the limits of one's ability, or increasing the reliability of it on low-difficulty tasks. That is, someone with, say, a 1d8 skill could have the choice of advancing to either 1d10 or to "1d8+1d4". The former allows the character to do things that they couldn't before, while the latter makes the character's skill more reliable on low-difficulty tasks.

FYI I stole the above text from somewhere else (sorry, no link).

This would be good for an RPG. But it also works great for, say, a wargame (with some modifications). All units on the battlefield might have Attributes: Training, Supply, and Morale. They might have skills like "Bombard" (artillery), "Engineering," "Attack," or "Defense." You could either use the system as is, or flip it around, so you use the LOWEST value -- i.e., an Elite Trained Unit with High Morale is still limited if it has poor supply. Or perhaps the second lowest unit.