I have written a few roleplaying games in my life, some I'm not proud of and others I am still sitting on. One of those games is a rules-light-to-medium sort of game. Being inspired by more than a few games I came up with a rules set that I was really enjoying. It was played in the Samhain Vale and I think I wanted it to be the main system. I moved away from it chasing inspiration from games like EZD6, OSE and AD&D 1e/2e. I have gone back and forth with turning Samhain Hearth & Horror into its own game. On one hand there is the buisness side. I could reach more people if I use a license from OSE or Shadowdark. That might make business sense, but then some people have expressed interest in having a unique system for this campaign setting.

As it is, the Mugwort: Welcome to the Samhain Vale is suggesting to use "B/X D&D and its Clones" as the main engine and that is what I am currently using in my weekly games. Basically a mash up of AD&D 2e and B/X with ascending armor class from OSE, it's easier on my current players rather than using THAC0. If you read the current Mugwort: Welcome to the Samhain Vale you'll notice a lot of rules tweaks some of which are:

• No classes
• Choose an equipment kit
  • Your gear shapes your "class"
  • Slot based system, base of 13 plus STR & CON mods
• Advantage/Disadvantage instead of +2/-2
  • Called Determination/Despair
• No clerics
  • No healing spells
• Everyone can attempt to cast spells
  • Roll to cast, BTW
  • There are four types of spells
    • Folkcraft
    • Witchcraft
    • Wizardcraft
    • Unbindings
  • Damaging spells do 1d6 dam. You can choose to incerese damage output but the difficulty to cast goes up
• Everyone has a chance to succeed at theif-like abilities called cunning skills
• Natural 1's and Natural 13s, instead of Nat 20s
• The Hearth & Horror mechanic which is the foundation of play in the Samhain Vale
• and more

Some would argue that the above is enough to consider Samhain: Hearth & Horror its own system, and you're probably right. But I am still thinking in terms of D&D with much of it like using a d20 for instance. I like the d20, the d20 stays!

The things I wound want to include in the fully fleshed out system:

• Hits or Strikes instead of Hit Points
• New attribute titles what I've used in the past
  • Might (STR)
  • Cunning (DEX)
  • Folklore (INT)
  • Essence (CHA)
  • Bones (CON)
• Bonuses only for the attributes not need for redundancy of X STR / +X Bonus
• Special traits that are gifted from the harvest master
• Side initiative
• blah, blah, blah...
  

All that to say, I am using the system as is right now and focusing hard on writing the core concepts in Mugwort: Welcome to the Samhain Vale and then subsequent Mugwort zines that will be based on each hexatic county of the Vale. Once I get further down that road I will decide if I should just bite the bullet and write a rules set. Time will tell.