Designing PbtA without Harm or HP

#41

OSR S&D meets Splat the boardgame? Lol

#42

I’m not sure how far you want to stray from “normal” PbtA games, but one suggestion to support more deadly play without getting too crunchy as far as character sheets and tracking stats is to have your resolution mechanic support more outcomes. For example:

When you do a move in a dangerous situation, roll 2d6:

  • 12+: unexpected success, success beyond expectation
  • 10-11: expected success, goals accomplished
  • 7-9: partial success, success with a complication or new risk
  • 3-6: failure or success with a dire complication
  • 2-: incredibly bad result (e.g. pc dead or dying)

The idea with this system would be that players want to minimize the number of rolls needed (since any roll has a 1-in-36 chance of killing them), or maximize the advantages they can bring to bear (since even a +1 makes it impossible to die on that roll unless it already involved lethal stakes). I think you could use these rules to run a game with a very lethal feel and relatively few stats or numbers.

I just threw this together but the statistics here are:

  • 2-in-12 chance of success without paying a cost
  • 5-in-12 chance of partial success but with a complication or cost
  • 5-in-12 chance to fail (with about 7% of those failures being fatal).

Even without HP, stats, or counters you could run a pretty successful classic-feeling adventure where players try to use their wits to get past obstacles and use the dice as a last resort. If you want more failure increase the 3-6 range, and if you don’t want +1 bonus eliminating the chance of instant death just raise the 2- range.

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#43

I know I haven’t been around for a while, but I thought I will post an update on where I ended up with this game. Hopefully a bit of thread necromancy is not against the rules :skull:

So, I moved away from a pure PbtA, and more towards BitD and Trophy (rolling a number of d6s) and taking some inspiration from Fate/Freeform Universal (using traits and not numbers) and stealing bunch from OSR and Andersonian play style. The rules as they are now work for GMing style and my group. What I am most happy about that the game does not really require writing on or checking a character sheet during the game, so it is friendly to blind and sight impaired players.

Anyway…

There are no stats or skills. Nothing with numeric value. Characters are described with traits. Those are similar to Fate’s Aspects, Risus Cliches or FU’s descriptors - just short description of some aspect of the character - we kinda follow the Adventure Point formula of sound bite followed by short explanation. Characters start with two good traits (kinda like background, and special trait/edge) and can get get another if they also take a flaw.

Dice are rolled only when things are uncertain AND there are clear risks. You get one die if the task is within the realm of possibility of an average person. Then you get dice for each advantage and disadvantage. Those can come from character traits, environment or fictional positioning. Advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out, so you always roll X dice and checking either for highest or lowest, depending if you ended up with disadvantage or not. We follow Trophy’s spread of 6 being full success, 4-5 mixed, 1-3 fail.

We use @Paul_T’s idea for combat/monsters, so you need to “defeat” aspects of an enemy before you can “kill” it. If you roll anything else than 6 on your attack, you usually will get hurt in some way (following PbtA/DW GM’s moves).
Enemies also have threat level (also courtesy of @Paul_T), and if you roll equal or below it, GM gets to make a deadly move (as in the post above). Most mundane enemies are threat level 1, huge/magical/deadly beings have higher. Some also get +1 threat for an aspect, so disabling that aspect takes a thread down (to minimum of 1). [when I say roll here, I mean the number you end up with by rolling all your dice]

Getting hurt gives the player a wound - another trait, more or less temporary, doesn’t have to be a physical wound - mental stuff, being exhausted, etc. are also fine. A wound can (and usually will) give disadvantage on your rolls (following narrative positioning). Wounds can accumulate. If you ever roll equal or below the amount of wounds you have - GM gets to make a deadly move (following the narrative, in those cases I usually use “out of action”). The player can also concede at any time, and just “faint” so they can avoid me making a deadly move, or decide not to roll if they think it’s too risky, and offer a compromise by choosing to avoid part of the danger and suffer the rest.

The secret sauce is creation of dis/advantages. Having right equipment, better narrative positioning, being prepared or having a clever plan gives players advantages (extra dice!) Those are used to balance disadvantages you might get from environment etc. Thanks to that the game becomes more about planning and clever solutions than rolling. Especially that if you get enough advantages on non combat actions, you just succeed (those I usually handwave).

So, the game has moved much more into OSR territory. I kinda abandoned the idea of collaboratively adding more rules/moves during the game. I still like the idea, but it doesn’t really come up that much in my games. Maybe I will revisit it in the future.

Right now I am happy with this system enough to actually release it. Just wanted to share here for those that were following. Feedback and questions more than welcome.

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What are you working on right now?
#44

Sounds like a worthwhile project and I would appreciate a look at it!

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#45

Well done! This sounds rather excellent.

I would imagine that the “secret sauce” in this system is very much in the way you are GMing it, so I hope you can use some clever writing, or good examples, to convey that. I would be very happy to see the resulting product!

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#46

This part sounds like Over the Edge RPG. I haven’t read all of 3e OtE; but sounds very much like 1st edition - PCs are just a bunch of traits - short sentences that describe some aspect of the character.

#47

I guess it’s high time to check Over the Edge. I never got into it, but now I will hunt down 1ed book to see if I can mine it for more ideas :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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#48

From what I remember, Over the Edge’s traits don’t have anything unusual or terribly different from what we’ve discussed so far, but there’s lots of interesting stuff as far as the setting is concerned!

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#49

Sorry to come late to the party (I only came across this thread while searching for something else, but it engaged my interest!), but could I suggest taking a look at Saga of the Icelanders by Gregor Vuga, published by Red Moose games? It’s a PbtA game that uses a system that seems to fit with what you are (were?) looking for. My guess is that people with sight impairment could play the game pretty much as written, with a bit of working out personal aides memoires (for things like keeping track of bonds with other characters).

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