I've been working on The Paradise Incident for a while now, and every time I've come back to it it's felt like it's just getting more and more disjointed from a design perspective.
I want TPI to feel like a gateway drug between a boardgame and a traditional RPG, and the ways that I can do that have generally been escaping me. I knew for a fact that I wanted it to be fairly mechanic-driven, unlike The Quiet Game, which I love but I really don't want to rip off.
Then an entirely new system hit me. I don't want to go into too much detail, because it's still rattling around in my game, but it's a card-based system. The problem is that it won't be compatible with a standard deck of cards, but you'll be able to print-and-play with no problem or order a print set from DriveThruRPG (this will also give us a premium option to try and make some money).
In any case, the rules are fairly simple. You make a character, or take a pre-made, then describe how you interact with events. There are player actions, but also character actions.
A player action is something like "Add a new location card to the deck, and shuffle it in." There are rules to how this happens. Each turn each player gets one action.
The characters are super-simple. You need to be able to get through character creation in 15 minutes for the game to have a reasonable run-time, and we'll include a handful of pre-made characters for groups that aren't as into the roleplaying aspect or want to jump right in.
Characters get multiple actions each turn, which are limited to interacting with the cards that make up the game.
Characters may "scout" a new location (drawing a card from the deck) or "plunder" a previous location to gather more resources.
Each location both has resource impacts, with three main resources (Food, Survivors, and Tech) that get used up during play and must be replenished.
There's also time pressure, and skill tests for each of the challenges that characters face, with a focus on playing up unique elements of characters, rather than just numbers.