Designing a fully-functional RPG

For example, the only RPG that I can think of, off the top of my head that has rules for materials is Role Master.

I'm not telling you to cut it, but if, for example, you want to only have three classes to start, or if you want to save races for the second time around, we will still respect you.

Many of these sections would only be useful for certain settings anyway.

If you're aiming towards something universal, I have some constructive criticism.

You see how you've organized races? Organize other things like that. Under races you don't list categories like fae races, deep races, outsider hybrids, xenic races, etc. But for Energies, you do list Solar, Wind, Nuclear, etc.

The problem is when you list Solar, Wind, Nuclear, you forget Geothermal, Tidal and other Piezoelectric, maybe even Magic (bound demon, bound elemental, necromantic, etc.) or Psionic or whatever a setting might need.

So instead, think of:

In my RPG mechanics how will (blank) differ from each other?

How will people differ from each other?

• Raw attributes or talents or whatever?
• Skills or character class or professions?
• Race Gender (if that race has genders)
• Alignment? Culture of origin?

How will weapons differ from each other?

• Damage and non damaging maneuvers (entangle, disarm)
• Ease of use
• Effectiveness against protected targets
• Range, usefulness in parries or other defensive moves

How will power plants differ from each other?

• Size Mass
• Energy provided
• Need for fuel
• Efficiency

This way, individual GMs can leave off or add different types of people, weapons, energy production, etc. as they need them for each particular setting.

And lastly, what I would do is provide some sort of way to balance these things (power plants that need no fuel [wind, solar, geomantic, psionic, etc.] can only provide so much energy, or [nuclear, bound demon] they can provide a lot of energy but cost a lot and the entire apparatus must be replaced periodically), to avoid the kind of thing that happens in Rifts where they publish a supplement and everything is simply better than the core rules and all previous supplements.