Category: RPG Ideas and Projects (Page 39 of 42)

    The Bridge Hack: Day 5

Changed Race and Class to be Archetype. For Old School D&D folks,an archetype is similar to the idea that race and class are essentially the same thing.

Archetype also briefly describes baseline motivations for characters. Here are two examples:

Human Sorcerer

Human Sorcerers are driven by change. Their gift allows sorcerers to see the universal force connecting all things. This force

Goal: Understand realities and magic
Approach: Transform or heal problems that arise.
Challenge: Consumed by their gift

Abilities
Combat: 2 points damage per successful attack
Cleromancy: Sorcerers can manipulate magic to cast spells without limits. (See magic section for more details)

Soulfire Assassin

Soulfires feel like refugees from a forgotten world. They have no memories of their life before appearing in this world. Living like this makes them cynical, but they will work well with others to meet their objective. Some in soulfire society attempt to go back, but most are resigned to their fate.

Despite their cynicism that led them to be a killer for hire, soulfire assassins have a deep empathy for people that feel lost or alien in humanocentric society. The mix of empathy and cynicism drives them to sparsely populated areas or exploration missions.

Abilities
Combat: 3 points damage per successful attack
Death Strike: Assassins can deal 8 points of damage in a surprise attack with GM approval and a successful DEX test.

    The Bridge Hack: Day 4b

There are no predefined spells, but there are four verbs and five nouns to broadly describe the intended spell effect. The player describes the effect of the spell and the GM sets a number of successes required to cast the spell.

As stated in the previous post, the player draws a card when attempting to do something that has a chance of failure. For casting a spell, it is no different. Draw four cards and lay them down face up. Count all cards that are less than the character's INT score. If there are as many or more successes required by the GM, the spell works. If not, the spell fails.

Now count the number of cards that match the suit of the character's INT attribute. Take that number of random cards from the discard pile and put them at the bottom of the draw pile.

Example please!

Gurt the Great has an INT attribute of 9 Clubs.

Gurt wish to detect the presence of magic within a Far-Away range. (About 100 yards)

This is a Sense Magic type of spell. (Sense one of the four verbs, Magic is one of the five nouns.)

Normally a Sense spell only requires one success, but due to the Far-Away range of effect, the GM rules that Gurt requires two successess.

The player draws four cards. The results are: 3 Hearts, Jack of Clubs, 9 of Diamonds, 7 Clubs.

There are two successes (3 Hearts and 7 Clubs) so the spell works!
There are two cards that match the suit of the INT Attribute (Jack of Clubs, 7 Clubs), so the player shuffles the discard pile and takes two cards and places them at the bottom of the draw pile.

After the 14 day challenge, I want to do more with this so that it is more than a rewrite of Fudge Four by Five Magic.

    The Bridge Hack: Day 4

Finally got a manageable magic system that follows the constraints of no predefined spells.

Since the mechanic of my game relies on playing cards, some background before the crunchy details.

Any action that has a chance of failure requires you to draw a card to see the result. Once done, the card is placed face down in a discard pile. Physical damage done to a character requires the player to move a number of cards from the draw pile to the discard pile. If, for any reason, the player has no cards left on the draw pile, the character is exhausted. The character can do nothing.

That said, healing of any kind allows the player to take a number of random cards from the discard pile and return them to the draw pile. To make the selection random, the discard pile is shuffled before selecting cards. Cards that move from the discard pile back to the draw pile are placed on the bottom.

Still With Me?

This took longer than I thought. Next post will have the magic system.