Yeah, I am a game designer so, yeah, it is like an illness...why buy a system when I can spend hours and hours making and playtesting one.

So, the motivation here is that I bought my son his first set of dice and he was thrilled but it came down to "What do I do with these dad?". So, here are the parameters:
1. Needs to play minis and RP. Theoden is very visual (7 years old) and just learns better when he has something to view.
2. Needs to be simple. I am thinking something like three stat, Physical, Mind, Spiritual.
3. I want a level of discriminate differentiation. This is what I call when a system has a means of saying a fighter is different than a thief than a magic user. Same for races.
4. Would like to see it flexible enough to go between genres.

Alright, so far I have:
Stats: Different dice depending on race. Humans are 1-20 across the board. An example of an elf would be 2d8-1 for Physical but 3d6+2 for Spirtual.
All checks are on a d20. Bonuses are Stat - 10;i.e. a 14 Physical would be a +4 to any check.

Skills I am open to suggestions.

Classes?

Weapons: These are differentiated by size. All weapons get one attack but damage starts at d4, d6, d10, d12. They also have a bonus to attack of +1,0, -1, -2 for the size of the weapon.

Combat:I have not nailed this one down yet (and am open to suggestions) but an idea would be a contested roll. So, you have some skill modified by the Physical stat or even Mental in some cases and you roll your attack and the defender rolls their defense and whoever makes it by more wins the contest. Another idea would be to have a derived defense stat from the bonuses of Physical and Mental that would modify the attackers roll. Another one would be to have standard difficulties that are modded by the defenders actions;i.e. actively dodging takes the standard difficulty of 12 up to 16.

So, I would really appreciate suggestions and ideas.

Thanks!

Regarding stats, I think that PHYSICAL. MENTAL. SOCIAL. would be a better combination for generic use. In the everyday working world, three categories of competence/enjoyment are usually recognized - those who like working with their hands (PHYSICAL), those who like working with information (MENTAL) and those who like working with people (SOCIAL). I think that having spiritual as a stat will steer the game in a very specific direction, which would make it less generic in its nature.

Sounds good Thalaba. Consider it changed. So, we have for stats:
Physical
Mental
Social

Thanks.

Thoughts on Skills.

I want simple so the best I can think of is a +1 for each level in it. You can take up to 10 level in a skill.

Specializations
I like the idea of specializations. So, say you can take a specialization in your Fight skill with a Saber. I would say, this allows a +2 beyond the Fight skill limit. So, you might have +10 in Fight but also a +2 for Saber so that when you use th esaber you get a +12. As well, with a specialization you can perform near magical stunts. So, maybe you can throw your saber across the room to block the falling stone door if you make a success ful check.

Skill Checks
Skill checks are Stat Bonus + Skill - Mods. So, If you have a +2 in Music +2 Mandolin -2 Becuase you are prefroming in a crowded bar, you would have a net +2. Roll d20. Averager difficulty is 10. This is slightly more difficult because you are attempting to distract the entire room while your theif companion works the crowd so the target is modified to 14.

Thoughts? Seems very vanilla but it also seems pretty straight forward.

Thanks

What's the resolution mechanic, here? D20+Stat+skill+bonus vs. Target Number?
Or is it D20 roll under Stat+skill+bonus? Or something else?

I assume you'll be lining up the skills under the stats?

It could be called Brains, Brawn and Savvy.

I am open to suggestion to be honest. My first thought is to have a set of difficulties (say 10,13,16 and 20 or some such) and then roll a d20 and add skill+stat. That said, I could also see a mechanic where you spend bonuses for effect;i.e. You had a total of 12 in skill, you spend 1 for a "Barely get by success", 2 for average, 3 for exceptional and 4 for OMG! activate your specialty and get a near magical effect. Use up your pool and you are tired which means you need to rest to recover your ability.

Got any others?

Nice - taking it a step further, maybe Brains, Brawn, and Bravado!

I really like the idea of spending things for a bonus.

Since The One Ring is on my mind, here's what they do:

The One Ring has 3 stats (Body, Wits, Heart) and lines six skills up under each of them. Skills are ranked from 1 to 5 and each rank lets you add a D6 to your die pool. When rolling against a skill, you always roll your D6s and also one 'feat die' (a D12 - a roll of 12 is always a success, and 11 always a failure), then total the result. The usual target number is 14. Spending a fate point allows you to add your stat value (typical range seems to be 3 to 9 or so) to the total.

I'll post more if I think of something else.

By way of comparison:
My very own Rules Light game.
It was originally called All For Me Grog. The current rules reflect a Arabian Nights hack I did, but I am editing it to return it to the Pirate flavor. Depending on when you look at it, it may be a mix of both.