Time to throw my hat into the ring

Heroic OSR

All the talk recently about reducing lethality in OSR games got me thinking about "A Quick Primer For Old School Gaming". One of the Zen moments mentioned in the primer is Heroic, not Superheroic. I find a lot of OSR games focus on mud farmers growing over time to be monarchs and sorcerers. I personally don't like this as free time is becoming more and more scarce. I won't be able to run enough sessions to get players to the end goal of monarch, sorcerer or homeowner. I like ruling not rules, I like that problem solving outside the sheet is important, I like the avoidance of game balance but I don't want to play mud farmers all the time. This looks like a job for me.

 

From Land of The Blind

A game that has what I am going for is FIST by Claymore. The only issue is it is more modern and I want to run fantasy. Break!! by Grey Wizard and Madrinan, from what reviews I have read, gets closer but it is unclear about how I am supposed to play the game. All other sources recommend hacking Savage Worlds to bits and that's not ideal. Some projects do give hope like Taron Pound's Vagabond and Chris McDowall's Mythic Bastionland (mythic may be out already but I can't find it.) and Hexy Studio's Slay The Dragon. The thing is, the perfect system doesn't exist so I need to make it myself. 

 

Design Goals

  1. Be B/X compatible. I got a couple adventures for B/X I want to run and I would like to use this system to play them. 
  2. Characters should feel like glass cannons, where they can do cool things but die very easily.
  3. It should be fast to resolve. 
  4. The system should be able to go from character gen to play quickly as possible.
  5. This game should be able to support 1 to 2 hour sessions. 
  6. Be new player friendly as they are the bulk of people I play with nowadays.

From Wizards of the Coast
 Basic mechanical ideas

An idea I have is to make the system roll over on a d20. Characters are generated by a standard array of three stats, STRength, DEXterity and WILlpower.  You can use an array, or roll 3d6 and try to get a low number. A high strength character would have a STR of 5 while a low strength character would have 15. I am leaning towards array because rolling stats are only fun if the character is good or average. This way, it's fast to resolve as there are less stats to generate and the difficulty is already on the sheet so the GM only has to come up with bonuses. It is new player friendly as "bigger number is good" is very intuitive. Lastly the array is a lot faster than rolling nine dice. It is an option for those that want it however. 

From Shouting into the Void

 

The main idea for rolling isn't for rolling to see if you do it, it is more can you do them better or worse than expected. For example, a Thief always can pick a lock, it's just a matter of whether unlocking it is loud or if it is quiet. I don't like in games where play can slow down as these professional adventurers get stuck for 40 minutes in game and 10 minutes in real life trying to open a door.

Plans for the future

This system will be an evolution of the lands of legend and will be a little bit of my own fantasy heartbreaker. This will have bits and pieces taken across all the games I have read and found something cool inside. I will try to post more about this if I have time. 

Clickables!

I Cast Light shows us a cool regional event table

Goodman Games are having a sale.

Widdershins Wanderings talks about fates worse than death.


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