Doom Singleplayer Pen & Paper RPG

[Super Jamie]

Hello all. I'm somewhat of an avid fan of the 1993 video game Doom, it's one of the few games I can still be bothered playing on the computer today.

A recent on a Doom forum I frequent got me inspired to make my own Pen and Paper RPG based on the Doom universe. There is already a based on Doom, but I chose to implement mine from scratch.

I don't really have anyone else to play with, so I made it singleplayer. Maps and pickups are dice-generated within rulesets, I drew some ideas from hosted on this site. I haven't owned D&D dice since I was a kid, so I ran down to the local Magic shop and got a set this morning. Rather than make each map static, I've tried to make it very random and different every time you play, my first time out I got slaughtered first encounter, second try I'm doing alot better.

I've intentionally tried to keep it as short and simple as possible, no abilities or anything, just hit/dodge and damage plus regular ammo/armor/health pickups. It's supposed to be fast-paced, rather than getting bogged down in details, skills, saving throws, etc. I expect the balance in mid-tier and boss monsters is still way off, but the first few enemies seem survivable with a challenge.

After playtesting I've revised my first ruleset. If anyone is interested in having a look and offering comments, criticisms, questions or suggestions I'd be most grateful. I've never made a game like this before so any feedback at all would be great.

(PDF 84kb)

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Welcome to 1km1kt.net. I'm also a fan of Doom - I've played the original two games, the rouge like, read the novels (though they get a bit weird after the first two) and suffered through the movie...

If you search the net, there is an old game called . Its sort of a hybrid RPG and wargame as it plots movement and blast radii on a hex map. Most of the character interaction is handled by percentile rolls - skill percents derived from the attributes. Weapon damage is taken mostly from the original source - a bit of a problem since you get figures like (1d4x5)x1d12 for the shotgun.Its not the most professional looking game, but its a decent attempt to write something set a number of years after Doom II.

On 1km1kt itself, we have , which is a solo game, but is more aimed at the feel of Doom than mapping and actual weapon abilities.

Of course, this hardly fills the nice for a Doom RPG, and you're off to a good start. Its nice to see such a tight focus on the source material rather than trying to add a plot that wasn't there.

There is a lot of room for improvement of course. I think first and foremost, some more forms of player interaction are needed. While I understand that you want to keep this simple and catch the run and gun nature of doom, at the moment what we have here is rather fatalistic. Roll for room, roll for inventory, roll for initiative, roll to hit - the only real player choice at the moment is what weapon to use.

The easiest to add would be a concept of stances/tactics - ie you can chose to run which trades chance to hit for an increased likelihood the monsters will miss as well. Other possibilities could be: reduced chance to hit multiple enemies, taking additional damage in exchange for a chance to incite monster in-fighting.

One possible way to reduce the act-roll, roll, roll, - act sequence would be to have all the rolling for room location/level design up front. (Quick aside - given the shareware releases, shouldn't a boss be every 9 levels - unless you find the secret one?) Pre-made levels and adventures might not be quicker for you personally, but would be the way to truly capture Doom's Spirit. After all with the limited AI of the time (and now...), the game was far more like a personal challenge with Romero than struggling against the game characters. A free game called could be a very useful source on inspiration for this project.

Another idea would be to give an advanced rules section that gives the marine(s) a bit more personality. Say a few RPG stats like intuition (for solving the infamous puzzles) or engineering (repairing weapons etc).

As it stands, blast radius weapons always do some damage, which seems to make them a little over-powered. Perhaps they should operate like the shotgun - so you can have a clean miss, splash if you roll at least half their defense, or direct hit. As with the video game, really tough monsters ignore splash.

The formatting could use a little work as well. Placing tables on their own page and avoiding information split by page breaks would be nice. A double column format might make the text rules along with the Boss and Monster Tables a bit more presentable - avoiding quite a bit of widowed space in the latter.

I certainly hope you find this helpful, and I'll be here if you want any more help.

[Super Jamie]

Wow, what a post! There's heaps there to look into, thankyou so much

The last two novels are odd hey, and that movie *facepalm*. I'm also not much of a Doom 3 fan, it's so different to the first game, I'm definitely a classic fan. You may be interested to see the I've collected over time.

I agree the game is a bit of a roll-roll-act grindfest, after a couple of levels even I find it a bit boring. I love your ideas of running and incorporating infighting. I've been trying to think of somehow doing barrel frags too, perhaps using them when rolling a 20 on To Hit. I considered doing a double-damage Critical Hit, but that's very D&D, though the idea of 20 doing "full potential damage" could work.

I've seen the TNC game before though it seemed very long-winded to me, all the extra NPCs and massive rulebook turned me off (which is part of the reason I crammed this into 4 pages, though I agree my layout could do with being alot prettier). I've never heard of Semper Fidelis or Dungeon Plungin before so I'll definitely check them out closely!

DP's idea of partial prefabs (perhaps based off parts of the original maps and randomised per level with dice) looks good. I've had a couple of comments in other places that my ruleset seems more like a boardgame, so that would work in well. (Actually, I'd like to program my rulset into a roguelike computer game, but only having a very basic grasp of C kinda limits that so I'll just concentrate on what I actually can do.)

The idea of 8-level episodes like Doom 1 or a 30-map progression like Doom 2 is something I hadn't thought of. I've tried to make it a never-ending progression with increasing difficulty but that would eventually just be unwinnable. The idea of a shorter and forseeably finishable (though difficult) game seems alot more fun than just never-ending inevitable death so I daresay I'll implement that in some way too. Good call!

Thankyou so much for your post, I really appreciate it, you've given me heaps to think about and look at and got me all motivated! I will post back with updates as I develop more versions, rules and ideas.

[Kinslayer]

You could completely invert the Doom concept. Rather than have mechanics for accuracy, health, etc. assume that any space marine will top out those categories. Instead, focus on the other aspects of the Doom universe, and the lives of the marines who live and fight within it. Give characters their own MOS (military occupational specialty), backstory, motivations, and so on.

Another option is to make this a head-to-head two player game. One player is the normal Doom bloke, and the other runs all of the monsters. This second player is not the GM, but rather a competitor. You could do pre-made maps, and have rules for players to build their own. For example, each player would have a certain number of points to spend on the map. The marine spends points on health, armour, weapons, and ammo; while the monster player spends points on critters, hidden rooms, radioactive floors (or whatever the green ooze that caused damage was), and locked doors. The trick is the marine player places the monsters, et al. and the monster player places all of the weapons and other goodies.