2007: The Character Sheet Is The RPG Challenge II

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

If I was teaching a class on RPG design, a one page game would be a required assignment. It really encourages economy of description and ease of mechanics.

Furthermore, it brings up an interesting question about layout. Given the limited space - how important is orginization? On one hand, since there is very little to go thrugh, just cramming as much as you can on the page seems to be an acceptable soloution. Then again - since you have so little to present, it must be as clear as possible since you don't have chapters or much space to expand upon. Both styles seem to be present in the contest.

Days of Plunder uses my more or lesss standard layout, and manages to be mostly normal 12 point font. (The optional rules are 10.5) Sputnik Lost is a bit odd, since I was trying to replicate a government document, so itsdeliberatly in all monospaced courior font. (Government standard untill a few years ago.) Still, I didn't mind using plenty of line breaks and bold to set it apart.

[bal3000]

I've been working on expanding Troll-Blade as a game over the last few weeks and hope to put it up on 1km1kt shortly (ie - anytime before christmas!) WHEN i got a burst of inspiration that led to a game system that I was able to both fit onto a single page AND (quite by accident managed to complete in a 24 hour period.

It's called FREYO and it's here -

by it's own admission it's an "Omni-genre clotheshorse" of a game and I imagine any decent referee could set out a few campaign guidelines around it and be off and running. I could actually see myself running a "straight" wild-west or spy campaign using FREYO, 2 genres I'v never even considered before.

[ravensron]

I REALLY like Trollblade, and am looking forward to whatever expansions you do for it - and by all means have Christmas come early this year. FREYO was interesting, the idea of "hinderance" dice is a good one (my favorite use of it is in the "Over the Edge" rpg where the referee can use them when the players have their characters do something boring). Only problem (if it is) is that eventually we end up with lists of contingencies for "when do you get hinderance dice, and how many?" with lists of "when do you get to avoid hinderance dice (E.g. "the +1 two-handed sword"), and how many?" and the lists will be more pages than the game.
Was slightly confused by a couple of points:
1) If you're shooting at something 120' away you need three successes. If you get four successes, do you roll 4D6 for damage or did you "use up" three to account for the range and only get D6 damage?
2) When you roll damage dice, is each counted separately or added? That is, if the wound threshold is 4, and you get hit for two dice, one with 3 showing and one with 2 showing, did you avoid damage because neither was 4 or did you take damage because added they're 5. Latter seems much more logical.
a) Is there only one "slot" at each wound level? That is, if the wound threshold is 4 and you roll 5 you get a light wound but if you roll an 8 then you go directly to medium wound? If you already had a light wound, any roll of 4+ inflicts a medium wound and any roll of 8+ inflicts a severe wound?
b) When rolling for armor, there's a threshold question of "is it effective at all" (E.g. if you're wearing chainmail but the incoming is machinegun fire your armor is moot and you don't roll "armor dice")? If the armor can be effective, you roll as many armor dice as damage dice no matter what kind of armor (E.g. if a good archer gets X successes, the target rolls X armor dice whether wearing chainmail or leather tunic)?
3) Shields would be hinderance rather than armor?

[bal3000]

[bal3000]

..and here it is. TROLL-BLADE 2nd edition in all it's 13 page glory.

[bal3000]

Guys,
we have 10 entries so far.

FREYO
Trollblade
Sputnik lost
Simple supers
Mace lite
Fear on four
D+v
V+d
Dawn of the dumb
..and Tranzistor Zenith.

Great work so far . Lets keep it up. It's only July, Y'know!

chop. chop.

[ErrinF]

There's a few more one page RPGs that have been created over at RPG Lab. Here's what I have so far, as well as where they are available for download:

Trollblade (1km1kt)
Trollblade Ref's Guide (1km1kt)
FREYO (1km1kt)
Simple Supers (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Fear On Four (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Dawn Of The Dumb (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Dungeons & Vigilantes RPG (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Villains & Dragons RPG (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Tranzistor Zenith RPG (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Tranzistor Zenith RPG: Ze Master's Guide (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Waargh (RPG Lab)
Holy Crap Humans (RPG Lab)
The Last Saskatchewan Pirate (RPG Lab)
Sedimentary (RPG Lab)
Sputnik Lost (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Days Of Plunder (RPG Lab)
Tower Of The Dread Mage (RPG Lab)
Dead & Alive (RPG Lab)
MACE Lite (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
The Hive (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
Search/Destroy (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
His is the Hand (1km1kt & RPG Lab)
School's Out For Eternity (1km1kt & RPG Lab)

You can read more about it at my RPG Lab blog concerning the matter:



Thanks very much for your contributions so far... I myself did about half the ones you listed, and plan to have a few more done by the end of the year. I have 3 or 4 one page concepts to make into RPGs. I hope to do one of them this week or next week, and the rest later on in the year.

[bal3000]

yet ANOTHER entry.

Guys, I'm going to win this on volume if nothing else. and I'm copyrighting OMNI-GENRE as well!

this one's called ArKaNa, which refers to a character, capable of getting stuck in, "wishes" for exploitable circumstances to happen in his/her favour.



Lemme know what you think.

And I didn't say it in my last letter (do'h) but BIG thanks to Keeton.

[ravensron]

Very clever ideas. I've always liked the idea of reducing die rolls, "the less the merrier," and I've always liked that there should always be both randomness (your initial characteritics) and choice (skills) in character creation, and your methods are very elegant. For contingency resolution you've combined simple die rolls with a "bidding" system; I'm not as keen on the latter but I've seen it done in rpgs which used that rather than dice/cards and yours is as good as any. Some ideas and questions:
1) Is there some way to increase values? I gather these are used completely instead of "skills"? Can characters get "better" in addition to whatever improvements they get in their lives within the game-world (E.g. getting wealthier)?
2) I don't understand use of destiny points to increase dice rolls. You say ". . .points that must be spent to increase an ability value equals the combined value of the difference between the 2 values." The example is going from 3 to 5. That's a difference of 2. Yet the example shows a cost of 4 + 5 = 9.
3) Equipment carried doesn't seem to be very much. A character of ordinary or above-ordinary STR, let's say 3, can carry 6 things. If he wears chain and has a weapon,
that's 3 things. If puts on a backpack and hefts a pouch of coins he then wouldn't be able to pick up another weapon or a person.
4) On rolling v. "passive difficulties" the numbers 1-5 are actually number of D6 rolled? If "passive difficulty" is higher than character's value the "world" rolls additional D6 for the difference?
5) Highest single roll wins a round. Clearly the higher the value the greater chance of one of those dice being the highest. But, let's say the lower value contender rolls a 6. Does this mean it is a draw for that round no matter how many dice the higher value contender rolls? Does give characters weak in a pertinent value chance to stave off defeat for awhile. Is that what is intended?
6) If the test allows it, can characters combine values? E.g. Pushing open door with difficulty of 4, two characters, one with STR 3 and one with STR 2 have a better chance than either of them alone. But, leaping a difficulty 4 chasm, each character jumps (and tests STR/DEX) separately.
7) The idea of Arcane is "there aren't any spells, wizardly-types can do literally whatever they want if: (a) they've got the points; (b) they don't directly kill anything with magic" You've actually come up with an innovative magic system just by the concept that "big spells don't cost more than little spells"; either it's magic or it ain't because it's always going to have a difficulty 5 and cost an Arcane point. I've never used a penalty for failing to cast a spell (as opposed to, say, failing to properly conjure a demon..infernal creatures really take umbrage when you sumon and blow it), on the assumption that just waving your hands around and spouting gibberish makes you look foolish but it ain't magic so nothing happens to you. But, given that ArKaNa's system allows incredibly beneficial results to a character for relatively little cost, I can see there needs to be a penalty for pushing your luck.

[tadk]

ok i am so behind the times here, hmm