Roll 6 or Roll 9: Blade and Haversack

 A quick note on a recent find. Blade & Haversack on the msjx blog is a neat 2d6 iteration of the concepts of Sword & Backpack, but I also noticed that the B&H target numbers – 6 for Average, 9 for Hard, 11 for “nigh Impossible” – align very closely with the scale for Roll and Read on 2d6, as seen here.

Maybe it’s because 6 is half of 12, but there’s something quite satisfying about rolling for 6+ for an average or routine task, where skill and circumstances come together, and the next check of 9 neatly flips the chances of success to about 1/3.

B&H also introduces Stress Points to manage “hits” and other categories of challenge, like multiple successes to unpick a complicated lock. Like any other ultralight system, including Sword & Backpack, you need to do some of the development yourself to arrive at a playable game. But it’s nice to see how these principles converge.

The Green Dragon in its lair

Under pandemic restrictions, the Tinkerage is confined to home and taking the opportunity to play Green Dragon style scenarios with two novice, or beginner, players. Overall, this has gone very well. Green Dragon play is designed to get up and running fast, and adventures are full of encounters, battles, and dramatic turns.

Here are the current conventions, in a nutshell.

Characters are simple, and fit on a single index-card:

• Type: this is a short description of background and calling, such as Knight of Chalice, Elven Archer, Mysterious Witch-doctor.
• Attribute: a significant characteristic, such as Tough, Intelligent, or Agile.
• Skill: the character’s signature skill, such as sword and shield, archery, or knife-fighting.
• Special: a character”s outstanding feature, often inventive and unique, such as a talent for detecting lies, talking to animals, or magical tricks and curses.
• Each character begins with 3 Hits.

All aspects of the character, including equipment, are chosen by the player, and approved or modified by the GM.

The rules are a familiar version of roll and read with two regular dice. In this simple method, the player declares an action, the GM assesses the likely outcomes, and the dice roll. Any roll of 6+ is close enough to go as expected. Lower rolls are progressively worse than expected, higher rolls, from 9+, are better and better!

The only new rule is the addition of Luck points the younger players can spend to overcome unreasonably bad results that can lead to frustration rather than engagement. We will experiment with a small luck pool, starting with 1 point per session. (Sessions are usually short.)

Addendum; Easy battle pieces

Pitched battles run quickly in this system, but younger players appreciate a figure that they can focus on and to visualize the situation. Any handy chess pieces work well, but the Tinkerage has been experimenting with custom printable tokens folded into standing playing pieces.

1 - Locate some suitable icons, with clear, distinctive graphics. The icons site game-icons.net is a great place to start.

2 - In Google Draw, or a suitable app, set up your printable pieces, using an approximately 1” x 4” grid, with four 1” squares (in fact, slightly less than 1” sits neatly on a standard battle map). The two center blocks will represent the facing side and back of your playing piece. The icons are up to you and the players, but for the facing side I used a portrait style icon, and for the rear side icons representing the character’s battle gear.

3 - Print, cut out, and fold the pieces into a triangle. Use a small coin (a US penny is perfect) to weight the base, with a piece of clear tape wrapped over to hold the paper together. 

Now, choose any adventure or propose your own, and begin.

Solo tinkering — Play all the Books

The Tinkerage has been experimenting with solo roleplaying as a way to test some of the freeform, light and Play the World concepts with house rules and designs.

One unexpected benefit of this approach, which could be brought to multiplayer games, is that you get to play not just your own system but ALL the RPG systems, and so one's collection of gaming books acquires new life when you're not tied to a single rules set. So far I've used Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to generate careers and encounters, BareBones Fantasy to generate missions and locations, Blacksand for Advanced Fighting Fantasy for urban design, adapted Traveller to set up combat ranges, and so on. Now, all the careers, classes, spell-lists, and random mission, encounter, and reward generators scattered across a shelf of game books and systems become relevant and useful again, and help to generate a world and adventures I would never have picked from my own head.

The "system" is free-flowing and based on roll and read principles with other ideas I’ve used here, but structured enough to generate variety and surprises.

For characters, I pick or adapt a handful of basic characteristics from any system that inspires or feels right. In this case, Strength, Dexterity, Intellect, and Will. I roll 2d6 for each characteristic, and a 9+ is "+1" and an 11-12 is "+2"; a 5- would be "-1", but for the sake of playability I would discard a character with a net negative set of characteristics.

Then, from the career or class description (I used a Soldier from Warhammer, rolled at random) I choose a suitable 4-5 skills or talents, and allocate 6-7 points, with +2 the highest single rating.

The player character has 3 Hits, but experimentally I converted each "Hit" to 1d6 hit points, so rolling for a total from 3-18.

For example:
Corporal Angfire, Peasant, Soldier
Strength 6, Agility 9 (+1), Intellect 9 (+1), Will 8
3 Hits (12 hp)
+1 Fight, Cool, Dodge
+2 Marksman

In play, whenever the character is in a spot, a point where I, as player or GM, can't easily judge the outcome, I roll 2d6, and add any modifiers for the character:

• On 7+ the outcome is a bare success, enough to keep the scene moving. The character may still be in trouble.
• A roll of 9+ is decisive.
• 5- is a setback or failure. A hit in combat. 
• A 2-3 indicates severe negative consequences, such as a heavier hit.
• The target roll occasionally shifts to indicate situational risks or advantage, but it is is never less than 5+ or more than 9+.

Most combats are skirmishes, and so only the character rolls to attack and/or defend. If the combat were to be more dangerous or against a single, determined opponent, both sides would roll and compare totals.

As I said, the character's Hits are tallied by hit points, and so damage is also converted to a d6 roll, with armour reducing the hit points lost by a small amount (1–2 points for light to medium protection). Ordinary creatures and opponents just have a fixed number of Hits to take them down.

There are two other rolls I use to represent the uncertainty of a scene in a solo game:
Probability - what are the chances? (1d6):
Very likely 2+
Likely 3+
Possible 4+
Unlikely 5+
Very unlikely 6+

Situation - how good or bad is the current situation? (1d6):
1- Very Bad
2 - Bad
3 - Doubtful
4 - OK
5 - Good
6 - Excellent

So with a light framework and some inspiration it’s possible to play all the books.

Roll and Read advanced version

This post picks up on the system for Roll and Read solo play, with a different die and extended for group RPG play. It's also based on a micro-system submitted for the 200 Word RPG Challenge.

Roll and Read

The key to Roll and Read is that, however you set up the character, the player and the GM agree on the expected outcome of the action before the die is rolled. If the die comes up high, then things go better for the character; if the roll is low, things are worse.

In this case, a warrior is expected to hit a foe, a wizard is expected to cast a spell, a scout is expected to pass unseen through cover. If the task is harder for some reason, then only partial success can be expected, and the character needs a lucky or even exceptional roll to do well. On the other hand, if the task is easy, then only an awful roll will have an effect on the outcome, although an unlucky roll may cause complications. There are no modifiers, ever, because the circumstances are already built in to the range of expectations.

The system also heads off the effect of pure dumb luck. A novice won't necessarily fell a master because of a lucky critical; a master won't necessarily foul up utterly because the die rolls low.

The advanced system uses a d10, because the range of results can be split into five categories, and centers on the expected outcome.

When you meet danger (skirmishes, traps, natural hazards), discuss the expected outcome, take action, and then roll a 10-sided die. The GM will determine the consequences accordingly.

1-2: Awful/Poor
3-4: Unlucky/Weak
5-6: Expected/Middling
7-8: Lucky/Strong
9-10: Advantageous/Exceptional

As before, if the character seems to hold a great advantage in terms of skill or circumstance, then roll two dice and take the best.

And, if the roll seems like sheer bad luck or runs against expectations for the character, then the player may spend a point of Res to reroll (representing the character's effort and resolve). If this roll is Exceptional (9-10), then the Res point is not lost.

Characters in Roll and Read

Characters can be generated free-form, with a short list of skills, abilities, knacks, and characteristics. 

They have one common score, Resources/Resilience (Res), a measure of resourcefulness, resolve, level, luck, and even hit points. If you want to take an experience levels approach, then character can begin with Res [1] and gain Res as they adventure. If you want characters to have a better chance of survival from the start, begin at Res [3]. Res should be used to represent character ability by gaining rerolls on critical efforts.

Combat

Combat is a matter of rolling, comparing, and reading a result. Hence, a squad of attacking gremlins might pose a slight threat for an armed warrior. In combat against these gremlins, if you’re Unlucky, you’re hit. This character would stand on equal or slightly better terms with a ragged goblin, and so probably wound with an Expected/Middling roll, and a Strong roll would read as a vital hit. But even an armed and armoured knight would have to be make an Exceptional roll to hurt a powerful dragon.

Where the roll is low enough that the character is wounded, deduct a point of Res. When the last point of Res is lost, the character is out of play for the rest of the scene. The player can then decide whether the character continues on play or is discarded.

[This section updated 11/23/16]

Encounters and Hazards

For the sake of comparison, encounters, and hazards, can be ranked on the Poor to Exceptional scale. Encounters can also have individual or group Res.