Rules development

[Wraith]

Red Ork
Sent you some rules.

[Wraith]

Sigh.

I know this is a game, but I dont find it a stretch to think if your PC has spent 10+ years training in say...weapons...then  making it through a few modules where the PC probally only spent another hundred rounds wont appreciably advance their firearm skill.

I propose to use the  "Isnt it true that..." Kharma option of my rules to cover things that they might have learned during the campaign.

Ergo: The player decides to call upon a skill that they think their PC would have gained some proficiency in during the campaign.

Player offers up a Kharma chit to the GM with the following " Isnt it true that since my character has been working at the Marine firing range for the last year that he knows how many rounds the magazine in the bad guys weapon holds?"

GM decides the thought is reasonable and accepts the Kharma chit and tells the player the answer.

Or: Player offers up a Kharma chit to the GM with the following " Isnt it true that since my character has been working at the Marine firing range for the last year that he has got in a lot of practice with his 1911, therefor he is a better shot?"

In this case, if the GM decides the request is reasonable, he accepts the Kharma chit and gives the player a +1 to his shooting roll.

[Wraith]

These rules have evolved and are coming along quite nicely though the page count has been climbing.

In a few weeks I am going to run some playtesting senarios for some gamers that I have never met or gamed with before and I  will see if they can make sense of the rules as written....then, a few weeks after that I am going to run a full blown game for another group I have never met.

Wish me luck!

Wraith

[magokiron]

Good luck!

And please, keep us informed about your playtesting results.

Best wishes.

[Flockalicious]

I've been on a kick about simple rulesets lately too. I like what you have framed out here, and I really like your kharma chit idea.  It's a real nice link between RP influencing game outcome. keep us updated!

I'd also recommend looking at the new Savage Worlds ruleset.  My gaming group is gearing up for a Necessary Evil campaign as we speak.  It appears like it will be pleasingly simple...we'll see.  To portray skill-ups, you increase the die thrown as X skill level increases.  You go from d4>d6>d8>etc. to beat a set value to pass the test.   Nice, simple, & no tables to look up.

Another thought....last year I whipped up some real simple old west skirmish rules (I actually whipped them up to be extremely simple, because I wanted to introduce my pre-teen kids to tabletop gaming).  The rolls are typically just d6 roll off between opponents.  Higher wins and the results are drawn from custom made card decks.  The odds of a shot being a kill are thereby governed by the dice-off and the odds of pulling a kill shot from the deck.   I made up a few different decks: shoot deck, fight (melee) deck, duel deck, and also a deck of each character to determine play order.   Here's a sample of some of the 'shoot' deck cards:

[magokiron]

Sounds pretty interesting Flockalicious!

Any chances you give us a more detailed review?

(But I think maybe that will deserve it's own thread, as this is about Wraith's rules, and perhaps at "Old west" forum).

Best wishes.

[Flockalicious]

I certainly didn't want to threadjack, but I can put something together and post on the Old West forums...for the entertainment value!

[Wraith]

Been a while since I posted about my rules, so I thought an update was in order.

The rules have expanded to 12 pages which is more than I origionally wanted, but it takes lots of verbage to describe something to someone.
I have added a way to have simple leveling if the players desire to play that way, but the characters themselves are still really simple.

I have a few playtesting sessions coming up that i hope will iron some things out.

I will be playing at a buddys house , and this fellow has tons of terrain that I love to use, but that in itself seems to raise issues when i am trying to hammer out the rules and the way the characters are built up and use of skills etc.

It seems like when there is a well laid out scene that players are moving their figures through  they like to just move without thinking and it degenerates into a kind of wargame! instead of roleplaying as opposed to the standard no miniture roleplaying session that has the players thinking about everything and really thinking about their characters skills, etc.

Sigh...writing rules isnt as easy as it first seemed.

Wraith.

[Wraith]

Quite a few playtests behind me at this point and the rules have evolved.
They work quite nicely and simply, but the GM has to have a real sense of imagination.

Wraith