RPG system with modular rules

An outline for the basic premise of my heartbreaker. Let's condense the six traditional D&D stats into three that I personally find useful: Physique, Intelligence, and Wisdom. These three can be referred to for a wide variety of tasks. Similar to this post, though, I'm thinking about using stats that aren't descriptive but extremely gamey. …

Quick selection

Ever need to pick a player on the spot, but don't want to be biased by unconscious factors? Time to draw lots! There's two ways to do this, both stress-inducing in their own way. You'll need some popsicle sticks. Everyone gets a popsicle stick and writes their name on it. When the referee needs to …

Cozy tavern meals

All my friends like to go to nice restaurants to eat good food. Since I don't want taverns to be gross-out spots where there's fried monster parts and cannibalism and so on, and since I want to convey the idea that villages are a cozy space, I made a list of foods that invoke that …

Stretching OSR’s Limits: Portability of RPG Systems

Portability refers to a language's ability to be consistently understood in different contexts, usually in the sense of programming languages that mean the same thing from computer to computer. The same principle applies to role-playing games, in how they allow the players to adapt a system across different contexts. One of the big pros of …

Card-Based Success Checks

Simple mechanic to determine binary success/failure based on comparing two cards. I intend to use this system for my settlement game. Premise Each card has a rank: Ace > King > Queen > Jack > 10 > 9 > 8 > 7 > 6 > 5 > 4 > 3 > 2 > Ace Each …

Stretching OSR’s Limits, Part 2

What better way to avoid a bunch of bookkeeping than abstracting mechanics away into a deck of cards? I'm going to adapt a system similar to Avalon Hill's Civilization from using meeples into using cards to handle success/failure checks! I only vaguely remember Civilization from when I was a board game geek in high school …

Stretching OSR’s Limits, Part 1

I'm going to start posting updates about a potential collaborative game about sustaining a village! Let me link the initial post I made on The Pit that got me down this route. So, this is really all about throwing the principles of old-school roleplaying games outside of their original context: dungeoneering and hexcrawling. Game Inspirations …