Ramshackle rules and roles

While tinkering with the free-form Fighting Fantasy rules, it strikes me that the simple trio of characteristics and basic tests can be adapted with relative ease and speed for a wide variety of worlds. Here's one such adaptation.

Ramshackle

The vast, labyrinthine structure, from Gormenghast to the Hayholt, from the citadel of Nessus to Mampang, is as important a part of fantasy as the underground dungeon. Here, I’ve adapted the Fighting Fantasy rules for playing in places that tower as far above as descend below, anything from immense ramshackle piles to sprawling cities.

Adventurers

Our adventurers use the attributes:

• ABILITY (like Skill, begins at 7)
• ENDURANCE (like Stamina, begins at 1d6+6)
• COURAGE (like Luck, begins at 1d6+6)

Courage works just like LUCK in FF. It represents bravery, resolve, and the character’s readiness to take — and dodge — extreme risks. Courage is worn down by every danger the character encounters, but restored by significant victories, small acts of grace and kindness, and fortuitous choices.

Character standing

One's position, or social standing, is a critical part of your background in the convoluted and sometimes archaic society of the ramshackle pile. 

Choose, with GM approval, or roll a die on the list and take +1 initial Courage for accepting the risk!

1 - Lowly: a scullion, scullery maid, or apprentice.
Staring equipment is shoddy or makeshift. Weapons such as a knife, club, hammer, or pick (1 damage only on.a roll of 1-2). Kitchen staff have access to plenty of provisions.

2 - Servant: footman, maid, valet, gatekeeper, guard.

Have access to workaday but sturdy equipment, Weapons such as dagger, staff, spear, halberd, if their duties permit. Guards may have common armor (1-2 chance of -1 damage).

3 - Staff: Senior or trained household retainers, such as butler, tutor, officer of the watch, falconer, artisan, cook, bailiff, apothecary. Equipment, suitable to the profession, and specialist weapons (swords, muskets).

4 - Household Companion: professionals, usually close to the family and part of the gentry, such as tutor, archivist, chaplain, sorcerer, astronomer, knight errant, duelist, surgeon. 

Well-made professional equipment and specialized weapons that require special skill (rapiers, great-swords, pistols, well-crafted armor).

5 - Scion; part of the ruling family or clan—noble, heir, gentry, magistrate.
Has access to the best equipment, weapons, and armor (improved damage or protection), and considerable personal wealth.

6 - Outsider: an explorer, wanderer, or even a monster; any individual from the outer world (if there is an outer world).
Equipment at the GMs approval, possibly rare, exotic, magical, or dangerous (or all of these).

Missions in the ramshackle halls

Through vast labyrinths, halls, cloisters, galleries, adventurers will find themselves on many missions, often driven by the needs and rituals of the place itself as much as the inhabitants, who are, after all, merely temporary.

Roll a die:

1 - Fetch

Go and recover for her ladyship a bunch of the lost copper roses from the ruined conservatory among the Ash Towers. Beware the argumentative and senile sphinxes that guard the approach.

2 - Hunt

Two wild hippogriffs are hunting in the western galleries. Track and eradicate or drive off the beasts. Ensure his lordship comes to no harm during the hunt.

3 - Deliver

Take this impossibly fragile crown constructed from the bones of extinct birdlife to the Catechist of Ethrain, in the Ninth Ward. Of course we can't tell you what she looks like: she wears a mask at all times, and it's impertinent to ask.

4 - Discover

Find for us a certain volume of impious prophecies concealed in the lower shelving of the Gaunt Archive. Never mind the literate rats or the mummified librarians; it's the crow-headed researchers you need to avoid.

5 - Guard

Secure the crumbling Oblique Tower from the intelligent were-ferrets and their demented pine-martin shock-troopers.

6 - Capture

Retrieve the phoenix tapestry the House of Kellin recklessly purloined from our drowned treasury. They have no idea what will happen if the wrong threads are tugged.

Lurking creatures

1 - Vermin

1–6 Giant Rats ABILITY 5 ENDURANCE 3

2 - Pests

1–3 Crow-folk ABILITY 6 ENDURANCE 4

3 - Prowler

1–2 Were-ferrets ABILITY 6 ENDURANCE 5

4 - Hazard

Ghouls ABILITY 7 ENDURANCE 6 (infected claws)

5 - Marauder

1–3 Gargoyles ABILITY 7 ENDURANCE 8

6 - Hunter

Hippogriff ABILITY 8 ENDURANCE 10 (flies, pounces for 4 damage on first attack)