Dare to Be Stupid

Here are some game ideas that are probably stupid ideas but I never claimed to be a genius.



D&D types: experience points are hit points

Dump hit points; instead, all damage is taken from experience points, and if you lose enough experience points you can also lose levels. For example, a third level Lamentations of the Flame Princess fighter who drops to 3999 experience points becomes a second level fighter. There is no healing. To recover from your injuries, you have to go out and get more experience points.

To avoid starting with characters that are already dead, consider starting at second level, or maybe rolling hit points as normal to determine starting experience.

Call of Cthulhu: professions instead of skills

In the latter half of 2016 I was running a Dracula Dossier game using a variant of the Call of Cthulhu rules, and over the past couple of weeks I've been playing in a Call of Cthulhu game using a variant of the newish Delta Green rules; in both games we have put together a bespoke skill list rather than using the default skills, and that got me thinking about simplifying the process. Then I thought about how skills in 13th Age and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay work, about the weird random skills CoC non-player-characters sometimes get, and all of that led me to this.

All characters start with 55 SAN and 11 hit points. They then get 120 build points to spend on professions, hobbies, hit points, and Sanity. Professions are loose descriptions of what the character does, but not too loose; "professor of archaeology" is good, but "academic" is rubbish. Instead of having a list of skills, someone with "professor of archaeology" can do things that a professor of archaeology could do; they'll be good at history and geography, they probably know a bit about digging holes, and may know a bit about architecture and languages, but they are probably not going to know how to fly an F-15 Eagle.

That's what hobbies are for. These aren't the character's main profession but side interests, or previous jobs, and work in the same way. "Former soldier" is as valid as "member of snooker club" or "bakes on weekends".

There's going to be a bit of back-and-forth between player and GM about what is reasonable for a character to be able to do, but as long as everyone is sensible it should be fine.

I suggest limiting the main profession to a maximum of 80, and single hobbies to a maximum of 40. Starting SAN can be increased to a maximum of 99 by spending points at a one-to-one rate, and hit points can be increased to a maximum of 18 by exchanging five build points per hit point. If you want, you can sacrifice SAN and hit points, at the same rate, to gain build points; minimums are 3 hit points and 5 SAN.

(I did consider dropping hit points and SAN and having all damage -- physical or psychological -- apply to the character's hobby or profession scores, but perhaps that's a bit too abstract.)

Any: don't roll to hit, go straight to damage

I thought of this in terms of D&D type games but it could work with any game in which there are separate die rolls for hitting and damage. Instead of rolling to hit, just roll damage. Simple. It does mean that every attack hits but it also eliminates the disappointing naffness of rolling a 19 to hit then rolling 2 damage.

It could penalise some characters in some systems; for example, a fighter in LotFP loses one of their key advantages, the increase in attack bonus. If that sort of thing poses a problem, perhaps add the attack bonus to the damage roll, although that may be too much of an overcompensation in some systems.

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Now I've put those stupid ideas into words they will perhaps exit my brain and leave space for something more useful. I haven't tested any of them-- I probably wouldn't have published them if I had -- so instead I release them to wreak havoc on someone else's game. Sorry.

They Keep Killing the Dragons

Despite the relative negativity of my previous post about 13th Age my group and I have been playing it each week since then, give or take a couple of breaks due to player absences. The starting adventure is a mess but the central conflict between the Three -- a triumvirate of powerful dragons -- and the Elf Queen -- er, the queen of the elves -- has given us a good spine for the campaign, as the players find themselves embroiled in a cold war between the Icons that may about to tip over into something a bit warmer. This has led to something of a mission-based structure as the player-characters zip about the map on black ops, er, operations for the elves, although the last couple of sessions have seen a bit of a digression as they have been pursuing a plot thread about a treasure buried on a distant island.

The party consists of Jordan Young, a bard and former pirate and the instigator of the treasure quest; Sartheen, knife-chucking rogue and the only red dragonspawn in the world; Rarity, a tiefling barbarian who remembers legends everyone else has forgotten; Ne-0n, a robotic sorcerer who is able to perceive the underlying structure of reality itself; and Amras, an elf wizard who is the reincarnation of the Devil.

The way I've been running the campaign is to use the player-characters' One Unique Things as the ongoing background plots -- Sartheen's background in particular ties in well with the aforementioned cold war -- and in the first few sessions I was using their Icon relationship rolls to give me an idea of what sort of things may occur and which non-player-characters may be involved in each session. I am still doing that but as we've got more used to the game the players are becoming more confident in claiming those Icon rolls themselves and using them to shape the narrative; in our most recent session Sartheen's player Stuart used his Prince of Shadows relationship result to tell us all that Sartheen knew of a smugglers' hideout nearby and that the smugglers there -- being part of the Prince's network -- would be able to assist the party in outfitting a ship with the crew and equipment needed to go sailing after this mysterious treasure.

I don't know if it's necessary to have this kind of thing built into the rules mechanics but it's quite fun being surprised when the players roll their relationship dice and then I have to find a way to involve their Icons in the next session. It's sort of a random encounter roll for the GM and I'm sure it's sharpening my improvisation skills.

Anyway, in the first adventure -- the dodgy one from the rulebook -- the player-characters witnessed an attack on an elven fortress by a blue dragon and other minions of the Three; although the party's cleric was half-eaten during the fight -- and the other half was later consumed by Sartheen as a "sign of respect" -- the party did kill the dragon and they were welcomed into the Elf Queen's court as heroes. A bit of nudging from the Diabolist -- as a result of Amras' relationship roll -- led to the party speaking out in support of retaliation against the Three and so they were sent to a town under the dragons' control to assassinate the mayor, who just happened to be a white dragon.

They laid out an elaborate plan reminiscent of my old Shadowrun days -- and as I don't get to play Shadowrun any more this was quite a welcome piece of nostalgia -- and infiltrated the town, killing the mayor and half of his hobgoblin bodyguards while disguised as undead minions of the Lich King, hoping to implicate Old Boney in the assassination. After that they returned to the elven court and waited around for a bit before deciding to follow up on Jordan's stories of treasure, their first stop a series of elven ruins on the coast and the ships rumoured to be hidden there.

Over the next couple of sessions they found and explored the ruins and the secret underground harbours beneath them, fought some banshees and skeletal dragonspawn and a giant psychic crab, discovered a magical helmet that seems to allow communication with a temple in the Three's capital city, and befriended a gang of sahoowagin sawaugin sahuagin, in a scene that I found familiar.



The player-characters now have an ancient elven ship and a somewhat reluctant crew who will only sail with them into the uncharted east if they can find the infamous Captain Morgan -- oh dear -- to lead the expedition. The only problem with that is that Morgan is said to be under lock and key in Highrock, the Archmage's flying prison island. I hope there are no dragons up there.