Outline for rules

[logan9a]

I'm thinking about starting to put together the rules and have made a rough outline. Wondering what else should be included within this outline.


ORGANIZATION OF RULE BOOK


Introduction to roleplay [insert same useless padding text that every other fucking roleplay book you’ve ever had has and is ignored by most of the people]




How we do roleplay in this group

Be in character - always.

Bad: “My character does…”, “He heads out to the park.”, “I tell Bert’s character…”, “Look at that great roll!”
Good: “I shoot!”, “I head out to the park.”, “Hey, Ronnie -…”, “You are kicking ass!”

Don’t fucking metagame.

Fred: “Do I know astrologically what the Maya think about this?”
GM: “Roll your astrology.”
Jim: (Rolling his astrology)
GM: “Jim, WTF are you doing? Just because Fred looks thoughtful doesn’t mean you suddenly get to roll your astrology skill.”

Metagaming = knowing or doing thinks your character would not know or do or talking about out of game shit.



WHAT MAKES PLAY IN THIS GROUP DIFFERENT THAN WHAT MANY MIGHT BE USE TO

Many people like to play what I call ‘chess D&D’. They move minis around a grid and take on opponents who are more likely than not ‘level appropriate’. Though I’ve heard many GM’s say they ‘don’t always run level appropriate encounters’ in my experience this is usually a defensive lie. Within most D&D, your character is meant to have the ‘strength of arms’ (or magic, whatever) to be able to power their way through a dungeon of monsters.

In this game, the characters are much much weaker. They cannot withstand prolonged combat. It will kill them. With a maximum hit points of twenty and a pistol able to do half of that on a hit, simple math should tell you that compared to many games (where in the characters often seem to be a replacement for a penis) they are super weak here.

Going at problems ‘head on’ is not desirable. Finding ways around combat helps players survive.

Generally, people seem poor at planning beyond ‘kick in door, kill everything’. Even those that make a better plan seem stumped when their plan falls apart. To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Even fewer groups have a simple back up plan like “This is our fall back point.”

This game will help educate people to develop those skills.



HOW TO CREATE YOUR CHARACTER

There are no classes, occupations or levels. Everyone starts out with the same number of points.

Before thinking about where to put your points, it is advisable to envision your character and their background. It is strongly recommended that everyone put lots of points into the bold faced things as they are considered (by the players) to be the ‘skills that no adventurer can live without’.



MALE VS FEMALE

Stats for both are exactly the same. The GM is a simple creature and asks everyone to play their own sex. Partially to be able to easily tell, partially because after four decades of gaming I’ve not seen anyone able to convincingly play the opposite sex.



NAME

If you don’t come up with one, chances are good the other players will assign you one then you may wish you’d come up with one.



AGE

Pick somewhere between 18 and 50. People outside of that age range are generally not believable as adventurers. Note that in some campaigns (or parts of the campaign) a character’s age may be briefly outside of those ranges for plot reasons.


WHEN ARE YOU FROM?

Within this campaign, it is possible to be from a wide variety of time periods. Be sure to generally state when your character is from. Medieval period, 1920’s, Cyberpunk, etc.



FIRST CHARACTER

Too many choices can make some new player’s heads explode. To those people, I suggest making a souped up version of yourself.

For people who are more comfortable with choices, figure out what kind of role you want to do within the party and build accordingly.

For all new players, I suggest making a character from approximately ‘now’ (it’s easy to know what sort of tech and such you are use to whereas if you find say a 1920’s character who is good with computers you know they’ve either been playing for awhile and learned it in game or they are shitty roleplayers) and have both a melee and ranged weapon. While not everyone wants to do combat, it is dull to sit around unable to do combat while everyone else indulges themselves in it.









WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR CHARACTER?

For brand new players, they are allowed to do a complete rewrite of their character after the first session they play.

For players who have played before, a bit of point shuffling is also allowed if they got dumb and forgot something obvious.

Generally speaking, this is a system that allows you to spend your points as you wish without any random rolls. Therefore, if you don’t ‘like’ your character, you shouldn’t have made them like that.



‘READY TO PLAY CHARACTERS’ AND WHY WE DON’T USE THEM

Seriously - once you’ve done it a time or two, making a character is a five or ten minute job.






COMBAT ACTIONS


Full action, simple action, free action

Talking during combat (3 words)


Movement speed



WEAPON DAMAGES


EXAMPLE OF COMBAT



DAMAGE AND HEALING

Why you can’t ‘save for half’ from explosive damage (it’s not fucking D&D)

Falling damage

Healing aka ‘So you’ve survived combat’

Hit points - and why don’t have many



HERO POINTS

Good uses - bad uses






SKILL ROLLS

Learn - what skills start at

Crit/success (half, quarter)/fail/fumble

Stat rolls


CHARTS and why they suck (pacing)

The damage track (got it down to one chart)


THE FUMBLE DECK - the GM finally gets to have some fun






SKILL DESCRIPTIONS


SANITY - and why yours is slipping


TEMPORARY INSANITY - fight, flight, freak



LONG ASSED INSANITY - 40, 30, 20 and why not to hit them.

They need to be pretty detrimental and come up at least once per game session or the GM may assign new and much worse ones.

Why your insanities should only fuck you - and not the party.

Examples of good insanities (no money, no tech)

Examples of bad insanities




PERMANENT INSANITY

When you reach zero sanity left, your character may still be in the campaign but you won’t be running him/her.



MAGIC

Trees, spells.

Making spells - why people who do so get them (ie it helps everyone)



HOW TO GET SPELLS



CASTING SPELLS

All spells use your mouth and hands and it’s obvious you are casting them. No secret spell casting.

Tied up and gagged means no spell casting for you or your enemies.

Monstrous abilities might still work when people are tied up and gagged - best just to kill the monsters quickly.



ACTIVATING MAGIC ITEMS









POSSESSIONS

10/20/40kg.

Extended shopping trips often lead to time spent buying equipment that is often ignored and abandoned.

Why carrying more than what people usually do is not realistic unless it is ‘tool up time’.




CHARACTER DEATH

What to do - what not to do - when your character dies.







GM NOTES


NPC’s - how to make and stat them.
How NPC’s are different than PC’s





The Warehouse story (aka ‘why levels suck ass’)





THE CARDS - HOW TO USE THEM

PLAYER SIDE

GM SIDE



GM PHILOSOPHY - do I have one?

Logan’s Rules



PREP - how logan does it
Scrivener
Scapple

[PotatoJedi]

All of those seem really good to me as there's quite a few things there I still don't know yet. Some things I might suggest adding:

How long is a round considered to be in game time
"initiative" i.e. when it's the PCs' turn do they decide who goes when or is it determined in some other way, or is it all simultaneous
MP and how it's regained
Round cards and how they work (or whatever the cards drawn at the start of every round are called)
Drawing Cards (always need to discard first before playing something, can trade with other players whenever, etc)
End of session card draw

Just a few things I've been wondering about.

Edit: I realise a lot of those things are scattered around in different topics. I was just mentioning what to add as a whole to the rulebook.

[logan9a]

Excellent, thank you.

[logan9a]

ORGANIZATION OF RULE BOOK


Introduction to roleplay [insert same useless padding text that every other fucking roleplay book you’ve ever had has and is ignored by most of the people]




How we do roleplay in this group

Be in character - always.

Bad: “My character does…”, “He heads out to the park.”, “I tell Bert’s character…”, “Look at that great roll!”
Good: “I shoot!”, “I head out to the park.”, “Hey, Ronnie -…”, “You are kicking ass!”

Don’t fucking metagame.

Fred: “Do I know astrologically what the Maya think about this?”
GM: “Roll your astrology.”
Jim: (Rolling his astrology)
GM: “Jim, WTF are you doing? Just because Fred looks thoughtful doesn’t mean you suddenly get to roll your astrology skill.”

Metagaming = knowing or doing thinks your character would not know or do or talking about out of game shit.



WHAT MAKES PLAY IN THIS GROUP DIFFERENT THAN WHAT MANY MIGHT BE USE TO

Many people like to play what I call ‘chess D&D’. They move minis around a grid and take on opponents who are more likely than not ‘level appropriate’. Though I’ve heard many GM’s say they ‘don’t always run level appropriate encounters’ in my experience this is usually a defensive lie. Within most D&D, your character is meant to have the ‘strength of arms’ (or magic, whatever) to be able to power their way through a dungeon of monsters.

In this game, the characters are much much weaker. They cannot withstand prolonged combat. It will kill them. With a maximum hit points of twenty and a pistol able to do half of that on a hit, simple math should tell you that compared to many games (where in the characters often seem to be a replacement for a penis) they are super weak here.

Going at problems ‘head on’ is not desirable. Finding ways around combat helps players survive.

Generally, people seem poor at planning beyond ‘kick in door, kill everything’. Even those that make a better plan seem stumped when their plan falls apart. To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Even fewer groups have a simple back up plan like “This is our fall back point.”

This game will help educate people to develop those skills.



HOW TO CREATE YOUR CHARACTER

There are no classes, occupations or levels. Everyone starts out with the same number of points.

Before thinking about where to put your points, it is advisable to envision your character and their background. It is strongly recommended that everyone put lots of points into the bold faced things as they are considered (by the players) to be the ‘skills that no adventurer can live without’.



MALE VS FEMALE

Stats for both are exactly the same. The GM is a simple creature and asks everyone to play their own sex. Partially to be able to easily tell, partially because after four decades of gaming I’ve not seen anyone able to convincingly play the opposite sex.



NAME

If you don’t come up with one, chances are good the other players will assign you one then you may wish you’d come up with one.



AGE

Pick somewhere between 18 and 50. People outside of that age range are generally not believable as adventurers. Note that in some campaigns (or parts of the campaign) a character’s age may be briefly outside of those ranges for plot reasons.


WHEN ARE YOU FROM?

Within this campaign, it is possible to be from a wide variety of time periods. Be sure to generally state when your character is from. Medieval period, 1920’s, Cyberpunk, etc.



FIRST CHARACTER

Too many choices can make some new player’s heads explode. To those people, I suggest making a souped up version of yourself.

For people who are more comfortable with choices, figure out what kind of role you want to do within the party and build accordingly.

For all new players, I suggest making a character from approximately ‘now’ (it’s easy to know what sort of tech and such you are use to whereas if you find say a 1920’s character who is good with computers you know they’ve either been playing for awhile and learned it in game or they are shitty roleplayers) and have both a melee and ranged weapon. While not everyone wants to do combat, it is dull to sit around unable to do combat while everyone else indulges themselves in it.









WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR CHARACTER?

For brand new players, they are allowed to do a complete rewrite of their character after the first session they play.

For players who have played before, a bit of point shuffling is also allowed if they got dumb and forgot something obvious.

Generally speaking, this is a system that allows you to spend your points as you wish without any random rolls. Therefore, if you don’t ‘like’ your character, you shouldn’t have made them like that.



‘READY TO PLAY CHARACTERS’ AND WHY WE DON’T USE THEM

Seriously - once you’ve done it a time or two, making a character is a five or ten minute job.




THE CARD DECK

How many cards vs how many players

When to award cards. Why cards are awarded - instant praise in card form.

Can you take away people’s cards? Why you shouldn’t.

Drawing Cards (always need to discard first before playing something, can trade with other players whenever, etc)

Combat and how the card deck is used during it

What are preferred actions



End of session card draw.
Do the players always get an end of session draw? 95% of the time unless your players suck.










COMBAT ACTIONS


Full action, simple action, free action

Talking during combat (3 words)


Movement speed

How long is a round, approximately?

Initiative or ‘who goes first’


Parry vs dodge
Multiple incoming attacks
Mainly attack vs mainly parry





WEAPON DAMAGES


EXAMPLE OF COMBAT



DAMAGE AND HEALING

Why you can’t ‘save for half’ from explosive damage (it’s not fucking D&D)

Falling damage

Healing aka ‘So you’ve survived combat’

Hit points - and why don’t have many



HERO POINTS

Good uses - bad uses






SKILL ROLLS

Learn - what skills start at

Crit/success (half, quarter)/fail/fumble

Stat rolls


CHARTS and why they suck (pacing)

The damage track (got it down to one chart)


THE FUMBLE DECK - the GM finally gets to have some fun






SKILL DESCRIPTIONS


SANITY - and why yours is slipping


TEMPORARY INSANITY - fight, flight, freak



LONG ASSED INSANITY - 40, 30, 20 and why not to hit them.

They need to be pretty detrimental and come up at least once per game session or the GM may assign new and much worse ones.

Why your insanities should only fuck you - and not the party.

Examples of good insanities (no money, no tech)

Examples of bad insanities




PERMANENT INSANITY

When you reach zero sanity left, your character may still be in the campaign but you won’t be running him/her.



MAGIC


Magic points
How long to get them back?



Trees, spells.

Making spells - why people who do so get them (ie it helps everyone)



HOW TO GET SPELLS



CASTING SPELLS

All spells use your mouth and hands and it’s obvious you are casting them. No secret spell casting.

Tied up and gagged means no spell casting for you or your enemies.

Monstrous abilities might still work when people are tied up and gagged - best just to kill the monsters quickly.



ACTIVATING MAGIC ITEMS









POSSESSIONS

10/20/40kg.

Extended shopping trips often lead to time spent buying equipment that is often ignored and abandoned.

Why carrying more than what people usually do is not realistic unless it is ‘tool up time’.




CHARACTER DEATH

What to do - what not to do - when your character dies.







GM NOTES


NPC’s - how to make and stat them.
How NPC’s are different than PC’s





The Warehouse story (aka ‘why levels suck ass’)





THE CARDS - HOW TO USE THEM

PLAYER SIDE

GM SIDE



GM PHILOSOPHY - do I have one?

Logan’s Rules



PREP - how logan does it
Scrivener
Scapple

[M.]

Logan, under hero points you may want to add the difference between Active/Pooled (or whatever you decide to call the two different groups), the cap for active and how the pooled points work in regards to cool new powers.

[Fantômas]

Maybe mention that a char will start the game with a spotty memory of their past, so no need to go into a detailed backstory. More have broad brushstrokes of your char past, ie time period what they likely did for a living, that sort of thing.

Also no PVP.

[logan9a]

Oct 11, 2018 2:13:04 GMT Fantômas said:

Maybe mention that a char will start the game with a spotty memory of their past, so no need to go into a detailed backstory. More have broad brushstrokes of your char past, ie time period what they likely did for a living, that sort of thing.

Also no PVP.

I was going for the rules for the system; I can put in specific stuff to this campaign at the end I suppose.

[logan9a]

ORGANIZATION OF RULE BOOK


Introduction to roleplay [insert same useless padding text that every other fucking roleplay book you’ve ever had has and is ignored by most of the people]




How we do roleplay in this group

Be in character - always.

Bad: “My character does…”, “He heads out to the park.”, “I tell Bert’s character…”, “Look at that great roll!”
Good: “I shoot!”, “I head out to the park.”, “Hey, Ronnie -…”, “You are kicking ass!”

Don’t fucking metagame.

Fred: “Do I know astrologically what the Maya think about this?”
GM: “Roll your astrology.”
Jim: (Rolling his astrology)
GM: “Jim, WTF are you doing? Just because Fred looks thoughtful doesn’t mean you suddenly get to roll your astrology skill.”

Metagaming = knowing or doing thinks your character would not know or do or talking about out of game shit.



WHAT MAKES PLAY IN THIS GROUP DIFFERENT THAN WHAT MANY MIGHT BE USE TO

Many people like to play what I call ‘chess D&D’. They move minis around a grid and take on opponents who are more likely than not ‘level appropriate’. Though I’ve heard many GM’s say they ‘don’t always run level appropriate encounters’ in my experience this is usually a defensive lie. Within most D&D, your character is meant to have the ‘strength of arms’ (or magic, whatever) to be able to power their way through a dungeon of monsters.

In this game, the characters are much much weaker. They cannot withstand prolonged combat. It will kill them. With a maximum hit points of twenty and a pistol able to do half of that on a hit, simple math should tell you that compared to many games (where in the characters often seem to be a replacement for a penis) they are super weak here.

Going at problems ‘head on’ is not desirable. Finding ways around combat helps players survive.

Generally, people seem poor at planning beyond ‘kick in door, kill everything’. Even those that make a better plan seem stumped when their plan falls apart. To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Even fewer groups have a simple back up plan like “This is our fall back point.”

This game will help educate people to develop those skills.



HOW TO CREATE YOUR CHARACTER

There are no classes, occupations or levels. Everyone starts out with the same number of points.

Before thinking about where to put your points, it is advisable to envision your character and their background. It is strongly recommended that everyone put lots of points into the bold faced things as they are considered (by the players) to be the ‘skills that no adventurer can live without’.



MALE VS FEMALE

Stats for both are exactly the same. The GM is a simple creature and asks everyone to play their own sex. Partially to be able to easily tell, partially because after four decades of gaming I’ve not seen anyone able to convincingly play the opposite sex.



NAME

If you don’t come up with one, chances are good the other players will assign you one then you may wish you’d come up with one.



AGE

Pick somewhere between 18 and 50. People outside of that age range are generally not believable as adventurers. Note that in some campaigns (or parts of the campaign) a character’s age may be briefly outside of those ranges for plot reasons.


WHEN ARE YOU FROM?

Within this campaign, it is possible to be from a wide variety of time periods. Be sure to generally state when your character is from. Medieval period, 1920’s, Cyberpunk, etc.



FIRST CHARACTER

Too many choices can make some new player’s heads explode. To those people, I suggest making a souped up version of yourself.

For people who are more comfortable with choices, figure out what kind of role you want to do within the party and build accordingly.

For all new players, I suggest making a character from approximately ‘now’ (it’s easy to know what sort of tech and such you are use to whereas if you find say a 1920’s character who is good with computers you know they’ve either been playing for awhile and learned it in game or they are shitty roleplayers) and have both a melee and ranged weapon. While not everyone wants to do combat, it is dull to sit around unable to do combat while everyone else indulges themselves in it.









WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR CHARACTER?

For brand new players, they are allowed to do a complete rewrite of their character after the first session they play.

For players who have played before, a bit of point shuffling is also allowed if they got dumb and forgot something obvious.

Generally speaking, this is a system that allows you to spend your points as you wish without any random rolls. Therefore, if you don’t ‘like’ your character, you shouldn’t have made them like that.



‘READY TO PLAY CHARACTERS’ AND WHY WE DON’T USE THEM

Seriously - once you’ve done it a time or two, making a character is a five or ten minute job.




THE CARD DECK

How many cards vs how many players

When to award cards. Why cards are awarded - instant praise in card form.

Can you take away people’s cards? Why you shouldn’t.

Drawing Cards (always need to discard first before playing something, can trade with other players whenever, etc)

Combat and how the card deck is used during it

What are preferred actions



End of session card draw.
Do the players always get an end of session draw? 95% of the time unless your players suck.










COMBAT ACTIONS


Full action, simple action, free action

Talking during combat (3 words)


Movement speed

How long is a round, approximately?

Initiative or ‘who goes first’


Parry vs dodge
Multiple incoming attacks
Mainly attack vs mainly parry





WEAPON DAMAGES


EXAMPLE OF COMBAT



DAMAGE AND HEALING

Why you can’t ‘save for half’ from explosive damage (it’s not fucking D&D)

Falling damage

Healing aka ‘So you’ve survived combat’

Hit points - and why don’t have many



HERO POINTS

Good uses - bad uses

Up to 20 - after is the ‘overflow’ - what the GM can choose to do with overflow
Why not allowing more Hero points than 20 is a good idea - element of danger





SKILL ROLLS

Learn - what skills start at

Crit/success (half, quarter)/fail/fumble

Stat rolls


CHARTS and why they suck (pacing)

The damage track (got it down to one chart)


THE FUMBLE DECK - the GM finally gets to have some fun






SKILL DESCRIPTIONS


SANITY - and why yours is slipping


TEMPORARY INSANITY - fight, flight, freak



LONG ASSED INSANITY - 40, 30, 20 and why not to hit them.

They need to be pretty detrimental and come up at least once per game session or the GM may assign new and much worse ones.

Why your insanities should only fuck you - and not the party.

Examples of good insanities (no money, no tech)

Examples of bad insanities




PERMANENT INSANITY

When you reach zero sanity left, your character may still be in the campaign but you won’t be running him/her.



MAGIC


Magic points
How long to get them back?



Trees, spells.

Making spells - why people who do so get them (ie it helps everyone)



HOW TO GET SPELLS



CASTING SPELLS

All spells use your mouth and hands and it’s obvious you are casting them. No secret spell casting.

Tied up and gagged means no spell casting for you or your enemies.

Monstrous abilities might still work when people are tied up and gagged - best just to kill the monsters quickly.



ACTIVATING MAGIC ITEMS









POSSESSIONS

10/20/40kg.

Extended shopping trips often lead to time spent buying equipment that is often ignored and abandoned.

Why carrying more than what people usually do is not realistic unless it is ‘tool up time’.




CHARACTER DEATH

What to do - what not to do - when your character dies.







GM NOTES


NPC’s - how to make and stat them.
How NPC’s are different than PC’s





The Warehouse story (aka ‘why levels suck ass’)





THE CARDS - HOW TO USE THEM

PLAYER SIDE

GM SIDE



GM PHILOSOPHY - do I have one?

Logan’s Rules



PREP - how logan does it
Scrivener
Scapple





This specific campaign:

Every 50 points of hero point overflow = a special power; if you play a lot you tend to get one per season if you hoard your hero points.


No memories or spotty memories when you start.

No PVP - though messing with each other a bit is normal

[Fantômas]

Oct 11, 2018 9:31:40 GMT logan9a said:

I was going for the rules for the system; I can put in specific stuff to this campaign at the end I suppose.

Because you had campaign specific stuff such as "When are you from", I assumed you were doing campaign specific rules.

[logan9a]

Oct 11, 2018 13:14:14 GMT Fantômas said:

Oct 11, 2018 9:31:40 GMT logan9a said:

I was going for the rules for the system; I can put in specific stuff to this campaign at the end I suppose.

Because you had campaign specific stuff such as "When are you from", I assumed you were doing campaign specific rules.

Ah shit, you're right!

[logan9a]

ORGANIZATION OF RULE BOOK


Introduction to roleplay [insert same useless padding text that every other fucking roleplay book you’ve ever had has and is ignored by most of the people]




How we do roleplay in this group

Be in character - always.

Bad: “My character does…”, “He heads out to the park.”, “I tell Bert’s character…”, “Look at that great roll!”
Good: “I shoot!”, “I head out to the park.”, “Hey, Ronnie -…”, “You are kicking ass!”

Don’t fucking metagame.

Fred: “Do I know astrologically what the Maya think about this?”
GM: “Roll your astrology.”
Jim: (Rolling his astrology)
GM: “Jim, WTF are you doing? Just because Fred looks thoughtful doesn’t mean you suddenly get to roll your astrology skill.”

Metagaming = knowing or doing thinks your character would not know or do or talking about out of game shit.



WHAT MAKES PLAY IN THIS GROUP DIFFERENT THAN WHAT MANY MIGHT BE USE TO

Many people like to play what I call ‘chess D&D’. They move minis around a grid and take on opponents who are more likely than not ‘level appropriate’. Though I’ve heard many GM’s say they ‘don’t always run level appropriate encounters’ in my experience this is usually a defensive lie. Within most D&D, your character is meant to have the ‘strength of arms’ (or magic, whatever) to be able to power their way through a dungeon of monsters.

In this game, the characters are much much weaker. They cannot withstand prolonged combat. It will kill them. With a maximum hit points of twenty and a pistol able to do half of that on a hit, simple math should tell you that compared to many games (where in the characters often seem to be a replacement for a penis) they are super weak here.

Going at problems ‘head on’ is not desirable. Finding ways around combat helps players survive.

Generally, people seem poor at planning beyond ‘kick in door, kill everything’. Even those that make a better plan seem stumped when their plan falls apart. To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Even fewer groups have a simple back up plan like “This is our fall back point.”

This game will help educate people to develop those skills.

Not an adolescent power fantasy.




HOW TO CREATE YOUR CHARACTER

There are no classes, occupations or levels. Everyone starts out with the same number of points.

Before thinking about where to put your points, it is advisable to envision your character and their background. It is strongly recommended that everyone put lots of points into the bold faced things as they are considered (by the players) to be the ‘skills that no adventurer can live without’.



MALE VS FEMALE

Stats for both are exactly the same. The GM is a simple creature and asks everyone to play their own sex. Partially to be able to easily tell, partially because after four decades of gaming I’ve not seen anyone able to convincingly play the opposite sex.



NAME

If you don’t come up with one, chances are good the other players will assign you one then you may wish you’d come up with one.



AGE

Pick somewhere between 18 and 50. People outside of that age range are generally not believable as adventurers. Note that in some campaigns (or parts of the campaign) a character’s age may be briefly outside of those ranges for plot reasons.


PICK SKILLS APPROPRIATE TO THE CAMPAIGN




FIRST CHARACTER

Too many choices can make some new player’s heads explode. To those people, I suggest making a souped up version of yourself.

For people who are more comfortable with choices, figure out what kind of role you want to do within the party and build accordingly.

For all new players, I suggest making a character from approximately ‘now’ (it’s easy to know what sort of tech and such you are use to whereas if you find say a 1920’s character who is good with computers you know they’ve either been playing for awhile and learned it in game or they are shitty roleplayers) and have both a melee and ranged weapon. While not everyone wants to do combat, it is dull to sit around unable to do combat while everyone else indulges themselves in it.









WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR CHARACTER?

For brand new players, they are allowed to do a complete rewrite of their character after the first session they play.

For players who have played before, a bit of point shuffling is also allowed if they got dumb and forgot something obvious.

Generally speaking, this is a system that allows you to spend your points as you wish without any random rolls. Therefore, if you don’t ‘like’ your character, you shouldn’t have made them like that.



‘READY TO PLAY CHARACTERS’ AND WHY WE DON’T USE THEM

Seriously - once you’ve done it a time or two, making a character is a five or ten minute job.




THE CARD DECK

How many cards vs how many players

When to award cards. Why cards are awarded - instant praise in card form.

Can you take away people’s cards? Why you shouldn’t.

Drawing Cards (always need to discard first before playing something, can trade with other players whenever, etc)

Combat and how the card deck is used during it

What are preferred actions



End of session card draw.
Do the players always get an end of session draw? 95% of the time unless your players suck.










COMBAT ACTIONS


Full action, simple action, free action

Talking during combat (3 words)


Movement speed

How long is a round, approximately?

Initiative or ‘who goes first’


Parry vs dodge
Multiple incoming attacks
Mainly attack vs mainly parry





WEAPON DAMAGES


EXAMPLE OF COMBAT



DAMAGE AND HEALING

Why you can’t ‘save for half’ from explosive damage (it’s not fucking D&D)

Falling damage

Healing aka ‘So you’ve survived combat’

Hit points - and why don’t have many



HERO POINTS

Good uses - bad uses

Up to 20 - after is the ‘overflow’ - what the GM can choose to do with overflow
Why not allowing more Hero points than 20 is a good idea - element of danger





SKILL ROLLS

Learn - what skills start at

Crit/success (half, quarter)/fail/fumble

Stat rolls


CHARTS and why they suck (pacing)

The damage track (got it down to one chart)


THE FUMBLE DECK - the GM finally gets to have some fun






SKILL DESCRIPTIONS


SANITY - and why yours is slipping


TEMPORARY INSANITY - fight, flight, freak



LONG ASSED INSANITY - 40, 30, 20 and why not to hit them.

They need to be pretty detrimental and come up at least once per game session or the GM may assign new and much worse ones.

Why your insanities should only fuck you - and not the party.

Examples of good insanities (no money, no tech)

Examples of bad insanities




PERMANENT INSANITY

When you reach zero sanity left, your character may still be in the campaign but you won’t be running him/her.



MAGIC


Magic points
How long to get them back?



Trees, spells.

Making spells - why people who do so get them (ie it helps everyone)



HOW TO GET SPELLS



CASTING SPELLS

All spells use your mouth and hands and it’s obvious you are casting them. No secret spell casting.

Tied up and gagged means no spell casting for you or your enemies.

Monstrous abilities might still work when people are tied up and gagged - best just to kill the monsters quickly.



ACTIVATING MAGIC ITEMS









POSSESSIONS

10/20/40kg.

Extended shopping trips often lead to time spent buying equipment that is often ignored and abandoned.

Why carrying more than what people usually do is not realistic unless it is ‘tool up time’.




CHARACTER DEATH

What to do - what not to do - when your character dies.







GM NOTES


NPC’s - how to make and stat them.
How NPC’s are different than PC’s





The Warehouse story (aka ‘why levels suck ass’)





THE CARDS - HOW TO USE THEM

PLAYER SIDE

GM SIDE



GM PHILOSOPHY - do I have one?

Logan’s Rules



PREP - how logan does it
Scrivener
Scapple





This specific campaign:

Every 50 points of hero point overflow = a special power; if you play a lot you tend to get one per season if you hoard your hero points.


No memories or spotty memories when you start.

No PVP - though messing with each other a bit is normal



Within this campaign, it is possible to be from a wide variety of time periods. Be sure to generally state when your character is from. Medieval period, 1920’s, Cyberpunk, etc.

[logan9a]

I'm just going to keep posting up what I've got as it gets done. I'd appreciate any feedback both from the gamers that have been doing it for awhile as well as the new players.

[logan9a]

ORGANIZATION OF RULE BOOK


Introduction to roleplay

If you don’t know what it is, your chances of picking this book up are almost nill. Since this is covered in literally every other rule book, I’m skipping it.




ADVANCED ROLEPLAY

Be in character - always.

Bad: “My character does…”, “He heads out to the park.”, “I tell Bert’s character…”, “Look at that great roll!”
Good: “I shoot!”, “I head out to the park.”, “Hey, Ronnie -…”, “You are kicking ass!”


Don’t metagame. Metagaming is acting on knowledge your character doesn’t have.

Fred: “Do I know astrologically what the Maya think about this?”
GM: “Roll your astrology.”
Jim: (Rolling his astrology)
GM: “Jim, WTF are you doing? Just because Fred looks thoughtful doesn’t mean you suddenly get to roll your astrology skill.”



HOW THIS GAME IS DIFFERENT FROM D&D

Why is this section in here? Because most people who have done table top roleplaying games have done D&D. In fact it seems that there is a significant percentage of players who seem unaware that other games even exist. Hence, this section.

D&D is an adolescent power fantasy in which ‘killing solves everything’. If you still have a problem after killing, it is because you haven’t done enough killing. Your character becomes stronger and stronger from fighting.

In this game, enough fighting will drain your Hero Points (see below), leaving you weaker for future fights. Do this often enough and you will be totally drained and probably die in the next fight.

Also, many people play what I call ‘chess D&D’, moving minis around a grid and taking on ‘level appropriate’ opponents. Though I’ve heard many GM’s say they ‘don’t always run level appropriate encounters’ in my experience this is usually a defensive lie. Within most D&D, your character is meant to have the ‘strength of arms’ (or magic, whatever) to be able to power their way through a dungeon of monsters.

In this game, the characters are much much weaker. They cannot withstand prolonged combat. It will kill them. With a maximum hit points of twenty and a pistol able to do half of that on a hit, simple math should tell you that compared to many games.

Going at problems ‘head on’ is not desirable. Finding ways around combat helps players survive.

Generally, people seem poor at planning beyond ‘kick in door, kill everything’. Even those that make a better plan seem stumped when their plan falls apart. To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Even fewer groups have a simple back up plan like “This is our fall back point.”

This game will help educate people to develop those skills.

GM’s who attempt to run this like a D&D campaign will probably find the characters dead, players frustrated and campaign in a shambles.





HOW TO CREATE YOUR CHARACTER

There are no classes, occupations or levels. Everyone starts out with the same number of points.

Before thinking about where to put your points, it is advisable to envision your character and their background. It is strongly recommended that everyone put lots of points into the bold faced things as they are considered (by the players) to be the ‘skills that no adventurer can live without’.

Talking to the group ahead of time about your character is never a bad idea.




PICK SKILLS APPROPRIATE TO THE CAMPAIGN

This is a generic system meaning that it can be used for literally any historical period. The GM may of course add skills appropriate to their game as well as having other skills not able to be purchased. Example: In a 1920’s game, computers would probably not be an appropriate skill.

Bold faced skills - if you don’t take them, you’ll either be unable to participate in certain things or be a huge drag on your team. Example: Stealth, for obvious reasons.




STARTING WITH SPELLS

In some campaigns, the GM may choose to let the players start with spells - ask the GM.



OTHER STRANGE SKILLS

Anything you can think of (”Painting lore: Dutch Masters”) can be a skill. Check with the GM before buying anything not on the character sheet. They may allow it, they may not.




FIRST CHARACTER

Too many choices can make some new player’s heads explode. To those people, I suggest making a souped up version of yourself, adjusted for whatever time period the campaign is taking place in.

For people who are more comfortable with choices, figure out what kind of role you want to do within the party and build accordingly.




WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR CHARACTER?

For brand new players, they are allowed to do a complete rewrite of their character after the first session they play.

For players who have played before, a bit of point shuffling is also allowed if they got dumb and forgot something obvious.

Generally speaking, this is a system that allows you to spend your points as you wish without any random rolls. Therefore, if you don’t ‘like’ your character, you shouldn’t have made them like that.




‘READY TO PLAY CHARACTERS’ AND WHY WE DON’T USE THEM

Seriously - once you’ve done it a time or two, making a character is a five or ten minute job. The hardest part for experienced players is often figuring out what kind of character they want to play.




THE CARD DECK

How many cards vs how many players

One player gets eight cards. If there are two players, they each get six cards. For groups of three or more, four cards each. Note that this is the maximum amount of cards any of the players can have at any one time.

Hence, if the player gets a card they wish to play at once, their remaining cards should be one under the maximum they can have after that is one less than the maximum they are allowed.

Example: Johnny has a great hand of four cards but pulls a ‘play when you want’ instant hero point card. He could trade that card to someone else discarding whatever he is given or discard one of his great cards in order to play the instant hero point card.

Drawing a ‘play immediately’ doesn’t cause any of your cards to automatically be removed from going over the number allowed, however the card itself may cause you to discard some or all of your cards.

Example: Johnny draws a card that causes everyone at the table to discard two cards. Johnny will have two cards remaining of his four.



When to award cards.

The GM’s can and should give cards for anything they consider praise worthy within the campaign. Good roleplay, being clever, being funny, helping to set the right mood, etc. In a normal session with three good players, going through 150+ cards is not at all unusual.

The reason for this is that it subtly gives an instant gratification reward to players who are doing things which the GM approves of.

Do not give out cards for things like ‘good rolls’.

Cards can also be given to subtly mislead a party. When someone begins to go in totally the wrong direction, the GM can begin giving that person cards to mess with the players.

It is also possible to get cards in combat - see below ‘preferred actions’.

When giving the players cards, it is recommended to do so in such a way that it does not break their flow. If they are in the midst of planning and being very clever, a good GM will simply add cards to players stacks



Can you take away people’s cards?

Although cards are given for positive things, it is not recommended to take them away for negative things. Players who come up with poor plans and such will simply not receive cards. If you have people who are humorless, poor roleplayers and destroy the mood you have been working on setting the question would be ‘why do you game with such people?’ Let them have a card drought.

The power level of the characters decreases without a constant influx of cards.



TRADING CARDS

Any time the characters are able to communicate they can trade cards. Hence, if all of the characters are together they can trade cards freely. Other examples include such things as being on the phone, psychic communication, possessing each other, etc.

Any time there is the ability to freely communicate, players can trade cards.

This is a great mechanic for incentivising ‘keep the party together’.



PREFERRED ACTIONS

Another time players (even the bad ones) can get cards is during combat.

Within most TTRPG’s, usually the only tactically sound thing to do within a round is ‘shoot’ or ‘move’. There are a few other rare things like ‘take out a different weapon’ or ‘reload’ but if the players are clever these don’t come up often.

The cards allow another thing to become tactically sound - the preferred action.

At the bottom of all of the cards is the ‘GM area’. This will read something like:

N: H V
H: V H
Falling down

Under initiative, we will explain the rest of the card however in this case ‘falling down’ is the preferred action. When reading off the round (see below) the GM tells the players ‘falling down is approved’.

Hence, if the players fall down rather than do any thing else during the combat round, they get a card.

Falling down - in that round - is a tactical action as it gets a card.

Some actions require successful rolls to be made to get cards and so forth.





Drawing Cards (always need to discard first before playing something, can trade with other players whenever, etc)

Combat and how the card deck is used during it

What are preferred actions



End of session card draw.
Do the players always get an end of session draw? 95% of the time unless your players suck.










COMBAT ACTIONS


Full action, simple action, free action

Talking during combat (3 words)





How long is a round, approximately?

Although it would be neat to say ‘long enough to pull a trigger or stab someone’, if you need to compute time it’s generally around five seconds.

Though it is known you can shoot or stab someone a lot more during that time, you only get one try during a round.

During a round, the player may do one full action, one simple action and one free action at maximum.

A full action includes such things as attacking someone, pushing the big red button to set off a bomb, looking around, etc. If you choose to attack someone, you can have attack/parry (see attacking and parrying below) or you can spend your entire round diving out of the way of whatever is trying to kill you using your ‘dodge’ skill.

A simple action is exclusively movement - see ‘movement speed’ below.

A free action includes such things as ‘dropping something you are holding’, falling down, etc.

In addition to full, simple and free actions, the character may say three words per round. Note that some of the combat sections of cards allow the players a couple sentences, usually in the form of a short monologue.




Initiative or ‘who goes first’

With rare exception, figuring out who goes first is completely unnecessary. The only important thing is who goes first - the PC’s (and their allies) or their foes?

Figuring out the order of PC’s going is unnecessary and slows combat to a drag. If someone has in mind some special action that will affect the entire round and other PC’s actions, they can inject a quick ‘anyone mind if I go first this round?’

Example: Jarvis is going to set off a bomb. As the last round is brought to a close he says to his fellow PC’s “Anyone mind if I go first next round?” They agree and he does. This is - and should be - rare.

The best way to keep the combat speedy is for the GM to simply go around the table, point at each player and say ‘What do you do’. If they hesitate for more than five seconds, the answer is ‘nothing’ - they freeze up and stand there. That happens often in real combat. If the player has questions about the field of battle (”How far am I away from the crane?”) they spend their time piercing the fog of war - nothing else. The player must declare quickly what they are doing and preferably already have their dice results done.

Example:

“I shoot the nearest bad guy for eight points of damage.”

Many people (especially war gamers) will find this rapid fire combat style stressful. This is realistic as combat is highly stressful. It also allows huge combats to be resolved within minutes rather than hours.




Movement speed

On foot, humans go at 3m/10m.

That means they can ‘simple action’ forward at 3m per round or if they successfully sprint forward (sprinting skill) they go ten meters per round. If they attempt to sprint forward and fail their roll, they move only at simple action speed (3m/round) despite using a round to try to move forward.

Example: Melissa ‘simple actions’ toward her target and attacks. She does not need to roll to move, only to attack and moves 3m toward her target.



ATTACKING

If you are using melee (hand to hand) you may both attack and parry within the same round.

The player must figure out if they are ‘using a strong attack’ or ‘fighting defensively’. Declare before you or the bad guys start rolling. If they are strongly attacking, their parry is at half/negative thirty. If they are fighting defensively, their attack is at half/negative thirty.

Example: Beth attempts to ‘attack the crap out of’ the orc. She attacks at full but if the orc attacks her back, her first parry starts at half/negative thirty and her second (if needed) is at a quarter/negative sixty. She doesn’t get more than two attempts at parrying.

Example: Frank is fighting the mushroom man defensively. He attacks at half/negative thirty but his first parry is at full. His second parry (if needed) is at half/negative thirty and his third (if needed) is at a quarter/negative sixty.

You only get one attempt to parry an incoming attack and not all attacks may be parried.

Example: A giant swings his club at Frank. Frank can either attack or dodge this round because a parry of something that size is not going to happen.


Dodge: This is used when the GM tells you parry is not a possibility. Note that there are times when dodging is unwise - you must be able to swiftly move backward or to one side to dodge. If you can’t, you may not dodge. See skill ‘dodge’.


AREA EFFECT STUFF

Why you can’t ‘save for half’ from explosive damage (it’s not fucking D&D)



WEAPON DAMAGES

Listed on the PC sheet. Because this is a simple game, ‘bigger is better’.



EXAMPLE OF COMBAT



DAMAGE AND HEALING



Falling damage

Healing aka ‘So you’ve survived combat’

Hit points - and why don’t have many



HERO POINTS

Good uses - bad uses

Up to 20 - after is the ‘overflow’ - what the GM can choose to do with overflow
Why not allowing more Hero points than 20 is a good idea - element of danger





SKILL ROLLS

Learn - what skills start at

Crit/success (half, quarter)/fail/fumble

Stat rolls


CHARTS and why they suck (pacing)

The damage track (got it down to one chart)


THE FUMBLE DECK - the GM finally gets to have some fun






SKILL DESCRIPTIONS


SANITY - and why yours is slipping


TEMPORARY INSANITY - fight, flight, freak



LONG ASSED INSANITY - 40, 30, 20 and why not to hit them.

They need to be pretty detrimental and come up at least once per game session or the GM may assign new and much worse ones.

Why your insanities should only fuck you - and not the party.

Examples of good insanities (no money, no tech)

Examples of bad insanities




PERMANENT INSANITY

When you reach zero sanity left, your character may still be in the campaign but you won’t be running him/her.



MAGIC


Magic points
How long to get them back?



Trees, spells.

Making spells - why people who do so get them (ie it helps everyone)



HOW TO GET SPELLS



CASTING SPELLS

All spells use your mouth and hands and it’s obvious you are casting them. No secret spell casting.

Tied up and gagged means no spell casting for you or your enemies.

Monstrous abilities might still work when people are tied up and gagged - best just to kill the monsters quickly.



ACTIVATING MAGIC ITEMS









POSSESSIONS

10/20/40kg.

Extended shopping trips often lead to time spent buying equipment that is often ignored and abandoned.

Why carrying more than what people usually do is not realistic unless it is ‘tool up time’.




CHARACTER DEATH

What to do - what not to do - when your character dies.







GM NOTES


NPC’s - how to make and stat them.
How NPC’s are different than PC’s





The Warehouse story (aka ‘why levels suck ass’)





THE CARDS - HOW TO USE THEM

PLAYER SIDE

GM SIDE



GM PHILOSOPHY - do I have one?

Logan’s Rules



PREP - how logan does it
Scrivener
Scapple





This specific campaign:

Every 50 points of hero point overflow = a special power; if you play a lot you tend to get one per season if you hoard your hero points.


No memories or spotty memories when you start.

No PVP - though messing with each other a bit is normal



Within this campaign, it is possible to be from a wide variety of time periods. Be sure to generally state when your character is from. Medieval period, 1920’s, Cyberpunk, etc.


MALE VS FEMALE

Stats for both are exactly the same. The GM is a simple creature and asks everyone to play their own sex. Partially to be able to easily tell, partially because after four decades of gaming I’ve not seen anyone able to convincingly play the opposite sex.



NAME

If you don’t come up with one, chances are good the other players will assign you one then you may wish you’d come up with one.



AGE

Pick somewhere between 18 and 50. People outside of that age range are generally not believable as adventurers. Note that in some campaigns (or parts of the campaign) a character’s age may be briefly outside of those ranges for plot reasons.


Starting with spells:

Nope - though it is super easy to get the other players to teach you a few spells.



For all new players, I suggest making a character from approximately ‘now’ (it’s easy to know what sort of tech and such you are use to whereas if you find say a 1920’s character who is good with computers you know they’ve either been playing for awhile and learned it in game or they are shitty roleplayers) and have both a melee and ranged weapon. While not everyone wants to do combat, it is dull to sit around unable to do combat while everyone else indulges themselves in it.

[PotatoJedi]

Just a small note: when you update this, rather than copying and pasting the whole thing in each new post, just include what changes you made in the new post and then edit the original post with everything in it. Makes keeping track of changes easy for everyone.

[logan9a]

That does sound better. I think I'll start a new thread with that.