Micro-Encounters and scene aspects

Mostly, all you need is a d6. Here are a couple of compact six-sided die tools developed for inspiration and guidance when either playing solo or with a group.

Micro-Encounters

This is a compact, generic tool for whenever you check for encounters, either in the open or in a closed environment, like a dungeon.

Roll d6; +1 for safer environments; -1 for dangerous environments:

1- Hostile, typically an immediate attack by a hostile encounter
2- Danger, a dangerous or potentially hazardous encounter; can mean an active physical threat (storm, flood, trap, etc.)
3- Obstacle, a barrier to progress, which could be locked gates, guards, security systems, and so on.
4- Neutral feature/observation, a point of interest, not immediately dangerous, such as a landscape feature
5- Information, a potential lead, or opportunity (clue, track, hint, informant)
6- Useful, a discovery, meeting, or useful resource

Guiding Aspect

For situations where you need an oracle to suggest an interpretation or inspire the next move, the guiding aspect is the overall governing term of the moment.

Each aspect can be "reversed" for another layer of possibility or meaning. If the aspect does not immediately suggest a suitable meaning, roll 4+ to check if the aspect is reversed.

Roll D6

Element: Aspect — Aligned/Reversed

1- Shadow: Darkness — Mystery/Discovery
2- Earth: Growth — Harvest/Decay
3- Air: Breath — Message/Silence

4- Fire: Energy — Revive/Conflict

5- Water: Movement — Journey/Stasis

6- Spirit: Light — Order/Chaos

A faster BRP

There's no doubt here that Basic Roleplaying is an excellent system that's surprisingly easy for beginners, adaptable, and can support extended play. But even if you were to leap in with the Basic Roleplaying SRD as your compact rules, many of the systems grouped under the OSR label, and early versions of D&D itself, have one significant advantage for new players: it's quicker to roll up a new character and get started.

Now, with a group of interested adults 30–60 minutes rolling characteristics, assigning and calculating skills, deriving HP and MP and the rest, creates a substantial, interesting character sheet that will serve well for a long time. But it would be fun, sometimes, to just create a character and go in half the time or less.

To that end, here are some notes towards faster BRP characters. The skills and professions offered heavily favor fantasy and historical worlds.

Faster characters for Basic Roleplaying

Characteristics

Generate the BRP characteristics—STR, DEX, CON, SIZ, INT, POW, APP—according to the SRD. Calculate Hit Points (HP), Magic Points (MP), and Damage bonus (Db), as well as characteristic rolls, using the same procedures.

Adventuring Skills

The standard BRP skill list is comprehensive but long, and skills are drawn from many incompatible eras. These skills are adjusted for fantasy adventuring.

These skills are common to all characters at the starting percentages given. 

• Jump 45%
• Climb 55%
• Perception 35%: replaces Listen, Spot, Sense, Insight, etc. May also be used to track targets with a suitable profession indicated.
• Stealth 25%: Used for all covert movement and covers hiding also. Hiding (without moving) is generally easier (+20% bonus).
• Swim 30% or DEX x 5 if Lucky or approved by GM as suitable to background.
• Throw 45%
• Brawl 45%: fighting with hands and feet, or commonplace and improvised weapons (knives, sticks, etc.).
• First Aid 45%

Professional Skills

Select a broad profession, and figure the related skills accordingly. 

Warrior

Any martial profession, from soldiers to wandering mercenaries to mounted knights.

• Ride (DEX x 5%): may substitute another mode of transport or Strategy (INT x 5%).
• Warrior (Average STR, INT, DEX) x 5% in 3 weapons (maximum 75%).

Expert

Any profession relying on specialist knowledge and training, from scholars to diplomats, merchants, spies, and performers.

• Literacy INT x 5%
• Expertise (Field) INT x 5%: field may be any area of specialist training: medicine, exploration, trade,  engineering, performance, spy-craft, alchemy, and so on.

Magician

Any profession using magical or spiritual powers. such as wizards, sorcerers, witches, mystics, and so on.

• Literacy INT x 5%
• Spells: define four spells at INT x 3% chance to cast

Rogue

Shadier pursuits, often developing expertise on the opposite side of the law. Rogues may be thieves, burglars, outlaws, or merely drifters who live by their wits.

• Sleight DEX x 5%: replaces the Fine Manipulation skill, and tends towards pick-pocketing, snaffling and concealing small items, and so on.
• Tinker DEX x 5%: crafting and improvising with materials at hand, but also tampering with devices such as locks and traps, forcing chests and windows, and so forth.

Hybrid

With approval, combine two professional skills from two professions. The Magician profession spells are too demanding to master with another profession.

Background Skills

As a finishing touch, distribute INTx5 across all skills, including weapons, which have the same base skill rating as the SRD. Can be used to acquire or improve spells with GM approval.

No skill for a starting character can total more than 75%.

Identity

Record Name, Profession, Background, other personal details.

Back to Basics

Add suitable equipment, and you're now ready to play using any flavor of the Basic Roleplaying rules, although the lightest version can be found in the SRD.

Alone on the range: Strider Mode

 Recently, the tinkerage picked up Strider Mode, the solo rules for The One Ring RPG. Strider Mode, as you might think, contains rules for playing a single player-hero in Middle-earth, adapted from the system of The One Ring.

Now, The One Ring Second Edition is a fine system with many thoughtful and atmospheric touches, but it still isn't the game I would choose to run adventures in Middle-earth. As per my review of the first edition, the system is still too programmatic and committed to phases and counters of all sorts. It feel sometimes as if deep down it's a board-game, where your character's engagement, reactions, and choices are shuffled off to dice-rolls on a table. As readers might gather, my instincts for gaming in Middle-earth are either to strip everything back to a free-form core in the style of the Green Dragon, or to use the clean, flexible structure of Basic Role-Playing.

Strider Mode, on the other hand, is a great resource for playing through a solo Middle-earth experience. It contains two elements that are essential to solo play (and darn useful for group play also): a chance resolution system and a semantic generator.

By a chance resolution system, I mean a way to pose the question how likely is a certain thing to come about, roll, and resolve that question. In Strider Mode, that's a d12 roll ranging from a "certain" chance to an "unthinkable" one, with an extreme result on either end. I often use the same sort of roll to determine the severity or intensity of a certain condition, so a low roll is hardly at all and a high roll is extremely so. This can range from the friendliness of an inn to the severity of the weather on a given day. And chance resolution also provides a basic action resolution system, as you can check whether, given current conditions, a character's action is likely to succeed or not.

What I call a semantic generator is the "oracle" in other systems. The semantic generator allows you to randomly generate words or phrases that you can use to attribute meaning to an uncertain or open situation. Strider Mode calls this the Lore Table. In my play all the books approach, this would be the library of tables and generators that you can call on to frame an otherwise open encounter or scene. In fact, as you travel in Strider Mode there are "Event Detail" tables that provide descriptive seeds for events along your journey (from mishaps to chance meetings), as well as the atmospheric lore tables which suggest the Action, Aspect, or Focus of the moment.

These two tools provide the adventure and discovery for the player that the GM's preparation or the written scenario usually deliver. If you lost your way, did you stumble on a ruined tower or a bandit camp? What is the tale of that ruin? The task for the solo player is to deliver these questions to the dice and then play the options they suggest.

As I mentioned before, I don't use the core rulebook for The One Ring for resolution, but rather a free-form approach using the chance resolution system. Of course, there's nothing wrong if you enjoy using the published rules and engaging with the variables of the full system, but I find that a lighter, more adaptive system allows me to engage with the scenario at hand rather than the intricacies of the rules. 

One might think that this adds another kind of challenge, switching between the GM's mindset of making assessments and calls on the fly and the player's mindset of responding to the action without the support of firm procedures. This isn't what I find. Consider that even with a complete "system" in play, the GM or the scenario author has already prepared the encounters and considered the modifiers and relative difficulties, and this means neither setting dead-end tasks that are too difficult nor challenges that are too simple. All you need to do to GM yourself is be open to the chance of success and failure, which means that you sustain the uncertainty and hence the drama of the moment, and estimate chances fairly. For any given roll, there's always a chance of a wildly high or low outcome; and if you're rolling for yourself, that wild result is bound to come up. Finely-measured probabilities are not really required. And as Hickman et al observe, in the end it always comes down to a probability, assessed as a number on the die or dice that is constrained to a given range. Call it fairly as you see it, check the result, and keep going.

In my test of Strider Mode, I found myself bushwhacked by bandits in an abandoned farmstead, trading words with stiff-necked dwarfs, and battling orcs and a cold-wyrm in a ruined tower. The Lore Tables in particular do a good job of pushing your to engage with Tolkien-like tropes and challenges. For something that's either in one's own head, or in the dice and the tables on the page, that's a pretty good trip, alone, across Eriador.

Roll on the random notes table

 It's been a while: some random notes and impressions.

Roll a d6:

1. Warhammer FRP 4E

The Old World is still as cool, dark, and evocative as ever. This is the one "almost played" game that I've known of for years and never played a session. This edition is massive, detailed, comprehensive, wonderfully illustrated. But there are so many fiddly rules, stats, statuses to manage. XP converted to individual skill percentages! While there are plenty of enhancements to the original system, there are also too many gritty sub-systems.

• The map on the inside cover should be evocative, but the coloring is too green-grey, the detail too fine, to make it engaging, let alone readable.
• Years ago, I converted the classic WHFRP adventure "Night of Blood" to RuneQuest 3, and it was an easy conversion and an excellent adventure in play.
• All the classes and careers would make an excellent sourcebook to convert to Whitehack (see below).
• Even better, convert to BRP using the SRD (see below).

2. Whitehack 3E

A hack of the original "White Box" edition of D&D, Whitehack uses the familiar design elements: the same six ability scores, levels, accumulating hit points and Hit Dice (HD), armor class, saving throws, classes, and XP advancement.

But these original rules have been ingeniously adapted into a flexible, compact system of their own. The profession-like classes, Fighter, Thief, and Wizard, have been converted to true archetypes: the Strong, Deft, and Wise. You then assign your own groups—species, vocations, associations—and abilities to create professions and sub-classes that can be wholly unique. For the Wise, magic "miracles" are a free-form system to duplicate any powers. Sometimes, the slightly awkward generic phrasing—groups, slots, miracles—makes it hard to follow how these choices mesh together to make a character.

Although it's the version of D&D I'd play if I were to play D&D, it still has the same features of the original. Armor makes you harder to hit, but this doesn't scale much with your chance of hitting or your chance of hitting something else, so you gain an abstract reserve of hit points instead. Monsters have HD alone, so their chance to hit you is always proportional to the number of hits they can take. You chase experience points, and at certain points acquire levels that grant instant access to new abilities that you perhaps didn't have or even practice before.

On the other hand, Whitehack has some brilliant subsystems, like bases to represent patrons and other extraordinary adventuring party resources, and it's concise and clear and engaging. And it has some neat random tables that would work for solo play as well as in-game inspiration.

• There are a few intriguing pages in Whitehack about converting ability scores to use those of other systems. This means with relatively little work, you could convert content from almost any ability score and hit points system to run with Whitehack. I looked at the old ICE Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP) modules and the idea was very tempting (Strength=St, Dexterity=Ag, etc.).

3. The One Ring 2E

I only have the PDF, but this is evidently a beautiful book. But you don't play the book design or the illustrations, you play the system, and the rules, though no doubt strengthened and improved, seem to me to have the same issues as with the first edition. As in my previous review, the rules are evocative, but my concern is that in trying to guide play through a Middle-earth experience the systems tend towards being prescriptive or procedural, with multiple conditions and narrative elements to track for every activity. When journeying, or in encounters with major NPCs, this ends up pushing the players' significant decisions away from their sense of the world and towards a series of dice rolls.

• On the other hand, the descriptions of cultures and locations, the way that Eriador is presented, is exactly how I'd like to play that old corner of Middle-earth. BRP would make a better fit, but also the freedom of XD20.

4. Basic Roleplaying SRD

Chaosium has published the core rules of Basic Roleplaying (BRP) as an SRD, and it's astonishing that there isn't more discussion about this. The BRP system in the SRD is truly basic, in that it's a base, a foundation, for any range of games. It presents only a compact version of the core rules. Sure, it lacks a detailed equipment list, bestiary, or magic system. But if you're a GM building your own campaign from your own sources, these are what you're designing or lifting from other sourcebooks already. 

• Download it, print a copy, decide on your skills list—you could run your game in the Old World or Middle-earth with this. (OK, for WHFRP you'll have to add the Consume Alcohol skill.)

5. XD20 2E

The original XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery was insightful, inspiring, and influential, but as I noted in my review, it was also hastily written, oddly organized, and not always adequately edited. So I was keen to join the second edition kickstarter. With the PDF of the page proofs in hand, I've confined myself to checking out the revised in-house system, or XD20, before the printed book arrives. 

It's a promising start. The second edition XD20 is now presented in one version, the simple rules for creating your character makes sense, and the core system—roll a d20, roll high to succeed and then roll again for effect—is elegant and flexible.

I still have no idea what the stat "WAH" means, but I know exactly what all the stats do. It's maddeningly unclear if the combat system means enemies would roll each round exactly like PCs or if it's all combined in the PCs' roll, but it would work either way. It's a system designed to wing it, but now you can wing it with elegance and speed.

• If TAC=Strong, PSYCH=Deft, and WAH=Wise, you basically have the means at hand to play any fantasy setting.

6. Roll a d100 instead

While reading a certain tome mentioned above, a compressed d100 system kept running through my head. For some actual rules tinkering, see below.

The situation:

• Grim 15
• Perilous 30
• Risky 50
• Uncertain 70
• Favorable 85

+/-10 for unusual circumstances

Roll d100 under the situation number to prevail.

Character can use a Quality to reprise a roll (reroll a single die) or change the situation (if feasible).

EXAMPLE: Linz, the boatman, find himself on the river as a possibly magical storm sweeps through. Suddenly, the situation is Perilous! Linz decides to try and run to shore. The first roll is 42! Linz can reroll the 40 die to try and reach safety, or use the next round to steer into the current to find a better course (roll Risky).

Your character has a Station in life (roll situation and read accordingly), a significant Characteristic (Strong, Quick, Smart, etc.) a current Career and two related Qualities.

A character has Toughness (3) points and sometimes armor points (1-3) with which to fend off wounds. Each wound taken then potentially makes their situation worse.

Getting in to Adventure

The scenario is the bridge between the characters and the world. But how do your characters find themselves gathered at the Many Ways Inn?

Roll a die:

1. Runaway: whether from a cruel or dull situation, you had to escape.
2. Landless: through conflict or other chances, you have lost all your prospects and must, perforce, begin again.
3. Summoned: whether by a letter from a patron or some other call, you are brought here to answer.
4. Commanded: a patron or lord has ordered you to join some mission or venture.
5. Happenstance: pure chance or a series of unfortunate events brings you to this juncture.
6. Choice: Perhaps worst of all, you have chosen a life of danger and uncertainty.

What the character will do and encounter (the scenario) comes before mechanics (the game system). And although every scenario needs a setting, consider not just the “where” of the adventure but the “when…”. A scenario is not just a place, it’s a challenge, a dynamic, with constraints and possibilities, that the characters approach organically.

Here’s a simple starter.

Mutton and Marauders

Two ettins, Nygel and Treffor, have crept down from the Garshaws barrens to remedy their hunger, rounding up a small flock of sheep and a shepherd for good measure. Unknown to anyone, grimlock rustlers on a similar mission have picked up the ettins’ trail, and so rescuers, trolls, and grimlocks are set to intersect near a site* at the base of the Garshaws.

Nygel, Ettin [3] - Armed with tree-root club
Towering, massively strong, dull-witted, slow

Treffor, Ettin [3] - Armed with nocked axe, heavy hides act as crude armor
Lean, strong, sly, greedy

Grimlocks [1] a troop of 13 - Armed with spears, daggers, oddments of armor
Ragged, half-starved, nasty; dangerous when cornered, or when able to surrounded and sneak-attack an opponent

* Note that the adventure site is left open, with an eye to continuing the adventure. Is it a cave, leading into greater depths; or a stone circle near a partly exposed barrow-tomb; or a ruined hill-fort, a remnant of better times for the kingdom?

Resolution

The key to play-the-world or FKR resolution (the game system or rules) is not that every action is determined by referee fiat, but that the players concentrate on their characters and the situation, and the referee is ready, through judgement and experience, to resolve their efforts with tools that are both fair and simple to use.

It’s not that there are no mechanics, but that the mechanics are compact and easy enough to generate the chance element that means that the play is not simply dictated but develops in unexpected and dramatic ways as it runs.

Of course, the right tools that are also fair and simple require some judgement or a sense of what works at the table. This might well come from one’s experience of another game, but for anyone new to this style of play, it means that some guidelines, however slight, are useful.

So, here’s a brief rundown of the Tinkerage’s current resolution toolkit.

Roll and Read

Roll and read for characters assumes that characters have a fair, but by no means certain, chance of success, based on the conditions and their own aptitudes.

• Roll 2d6 and read the outcomes, adjusting to circumstances: 2–3 (fail); 4–5 (mishap); 6–8 (standard - the expected outcome); 9–10 (good); 11–12 (great).
• Can roll opposed and read for active opponents. Resilience rank breaks ties in opposed situations.
• Modifiers of +1/-1 are very rare, for exceptional circumstances (magical gear, terrible conditions).
• For a specific aim or outcome, like shooting a bow at a distant target, also read to meet a threshold number within the basic ranges: 6-8 is within standard range of difficulty; 9+ hard, and so on.

Combat is a kind of challenge where characters attempt to inflict strikes on their opponents while maintaining their own guard. A hit of sufficient force inflicts a strike, and when strikes are greater than a character’s resilience they are struck down. A character struck down may be stunned, injured, disarmed, or even killed or in a critical condition.

Screening rolls

For the referee, a single die is often the best tool. A screening roll is a quick roll of a die to clarify a situation or filter out a range of possibilities. 

• Roll for quality or conditions: 1 is worst, 6 is best.
• Roll for questions of probability: 2+ is very likely, 6+ is very unlikely.

Play the Adventure, not the Rules

Look back and think about Mutton and Marauders. The ettins are tough — unless the characters find a way to weaken them first, they should be harder to hit even for the strongest warrior in the group. Maybe roll and read and look for 9+ to hit? What if a character is hit by Nygel’s tree-root club? Make a screening roll to see how bad that strike is. The grimlocks aren’t strong individually, but what if they get the drop on the characters during the hunt, are they then defending at -1 or worse? What is the weather like when the characters set out to track the ettins — there’s another screening roll, perhaps.

And finally, if you don’t care for 2d6, then grab a d10 or put a classic d20 on the table. Think in terms of percentages? Then roll a d100. Know the rough chances of success and failure, give the characters a decent chance when they make a decent choice, and you have the core of freeform play at hand. Sooner or later the dice will surprise you and your players, and that’s when the adventure begins.

Geting in to Character

 Those who meet at the Many Ways Inn are a curious group, driven by many strange paths to seek adventure, after their fashion.

Every game, free-form or otherwise, rests on the interaction of characters and world. And although the referee is the arbiter of the given world, players and their characters represent the active inhabitants and movers of that world. Player characters are there to question and explore. These questions can reveal even to the referee opportunities and realities that were never before apparent.

Characters briefs: in the world, not the numbers

The peoples of Arihmere, townsman and peasant alike, have long settled within stout walls and hedges.

In a free-form system, characters are not defined primarily by mechanics but the terms of the world itself. 

So, we begin with the character’s descriptive brief: a short summary of abilities, background, and calling.

It’s sometimes useful to throw the dice for inspiration to shape your character's background, but there's always choice and room any character concept that appeals.

Roll or select an attribute, a feature of your character that is distinctive and characteristic.

1. Strong
2. Agile
3. Tough
4. Clever
5. Learned
6. Bold

In the largely feudal realms of Arihmere and about, determine a social station: roll 1d6 low to high, or work out a background with your referee.

1. Outlaw, outcast, or an outlander
2. Serf
3. Peasant
4. Freeholder
5. Wealthy
6. Gentry (petty nobility, knight)

Most individuals come from a manor or village attached to a stronghold, but on a roll of 6 they may originate in a larger city or town.

Weave together station and background with a calling. All along the Wolves Lane, we find those who fight, those who work, and those who study.

1-3: called to toil and trade

4-5: called to arms

6: called to faith and learning

For example, a high station and martial calling would suggest a knight errant. A lower standing a soldier or levy. A peasant, called to toil and trade, may be a sort of crafter, or perhaps a forester. An urban freeholder may well be a merchant or artisan.

Character record

Now we're ready to introduce your character with a few notes and mechanics.

Assign three notable abilities related to to their:

• attributes (characteristics or physical and mental features)
• skills and training related to calling and background
• Player characters have one distinction (a special ability, characteristic, or knack that makes the character unique).

Resilience

For the purposes of play, characters have an initial Resilience rank of [2].

Resilience is used to assess how many major impacts or injuries the character can withstand, and also their general level of ability and expertise.

0: Unranked—weak or untrained

1: lowly — commoners, levies, harriers

2: adventurers (start here) — trained militia, soldiers

3: skilled —veterans, captains, tough creatures

4: experts — strong, deadly

5: masters — champions, exceptional, monsters

6 or more: legendary — heroes, dragons

Many ways in (to the FKR)

The Many Ways Inn is famous for standing at the meeting of three great roads on the chaotic margins of the Harrowmarch, and infamous for the many adventurers and ne’er-do-wells who gather there seeking rumors of suspect ventures.

Over the last couple of years(!) circumstances as well as interests have guided the tinkerage farther in the  direction of free-form, minimalist rules — or the Free Kriegsspiel Roleplaying (FKR) style of gaming, lead by play worlds, not rules principles.

Now there are plenty of resources online to learn more about FKR, and the Green Dragon and Fighting Fantasy systems I’ve discussed earlier are also an introduction to this style, but in the next few posts I’m going to delve into some of the many ways in to free-style gaming that have developed.

But first, a note about FKR play.

FKR is based on the innovation of the original “frei kriegsspiel” wargames, where detailed and systematic resolution methods were discarded in favor of an experienced referee or adjudicator. 

Hence, a free-form toolkit has these elements:

• A world, being the shared setting for the game and its scenarios. This world can come from an existing game (like the dungeon-y system), an existing fictional world (like the Star Wars universe or Middle-earth), or, of course, the referee and players’ own invention. That being said, the world serves best as a starting point: it’s a place to enter and explore, to map and develop. And although a trend in some FKR circles has been to lean towards playing in existing fictional worlds and genres, for me it’s the creation of one’s own world with rules-light play that offers the most fun and challenge, while (as I’ve said in my Play ALL the Books posts) it’s hugely productive and fun to ransack all the sources you have at hand for tools and inspiration.
• A format for characters. This is usually diegetic, meaning that simple description tells you about the character in terms of the game-world, not with reference to detailed metrics like stats and ability modifiers, hit points, skills, and so on. See Getting in to Character here, for an example.
• A resolution system that is as minimal as possible, so that it operates behind and not in front of the character’s choices. See Getting into Adventure for an example.

The key to play-the-world or FKR gaming is not that every action is determined by referee fiat, but that the players concentrate on their characters and the situation, and the referee is equipped to apply, through judgement and experience, with a set of tools for resolution that are both fair and simple to execute. It’s not that there are no mechanics, but that the mechanics are compact and easy enough to generate the chance element that means that the play is not simply dictated but develops in unexpected and dramatic ways as it runs.