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.

Sword Peddler's Sword & Backpack - mini review

A while back, the Tinkerage attempted an XD20-style hack of the minimalist d20 RPG Sword and Backpack.

The Sword Peddler has, without a doubt, done a much more elegant and concise job.

For the purposes of a review, the Sword Peddler's Sword & Backpack rules can be summarized as:

• To do anything, roll higher than a target number (or your opponent) on a d20.
• If the roll relates directly to your job, add 5 to your roll.
• A PC can take up to 5 "hits" – failed rolls – in combat. NPCs and Monsters can take more or fewer "hits" or "rounds" to be defeated.

There's more color and guidance than this, but that's as minimalist and flexible as an RPG can be, while providing a systematic framework for play. 

A quick conversion - XD20 and Sword & Backpack

Not too long ago, the Tinkerage mentioned the ultra-light Sword & Backpack system. The rules of Sword & Backpack are minimal: roll a d20 and decide what's fair. But with a little tinkering, Sword & Backpack could be adapted to XD20, or my still nameless D20 adventure rules.

Here's how it goes. In Sword & Backpack you can play as either a Warrior, Rogue, or Sorcerer. These are types rather than classes, but we can all guess that the Warrior excels in combat, the Rogue in subterfuge and skill, and the Sorcerer in magic. Hence, we can map these to XD20 stats, or Fighting, Skill, and Magic.

Warrior (WAR) = TAC/Fighting
Rogue (ROG) = PSYCH/Skill
Sorcerer (SOR) = WAH/Magic

Assign the three scores (WAR, ROG, SOR), takes the best score as the character's primary role, figure out hits and what-not (possibly a simple three-strikes-and-you're-out system), and you're ready to play. Each character type will be able to do a little of what other types can: a sorcerer can engage in light swordplay, a rogue can read a magic scroll.

Once you have your characters, why not try the scenarios in the Lanternport adventure setting, because, really, nothing can beat delving into a vast, magical library guarded by traps and bookwyrms, and patrolled by eerie undead librarians.

Library Revenant - Art by Sam Mameli