Strange Brew
A downloadable game
An uber-lite rules hack for Old School Roleplaying Games. No preamble. WIP.
Hacked and Smashed and Inspired By:
- Knave by Ben Milton
- Die Trying by the Slight Adjustments blog
- Into the Odd by Chris McDowall
- Medieval Occupations and Careers blogpost by the Iron-Bound Tome
- Dungeon Crawl Classics
Art Generated in Midjourney AI and theoretically to be painted over by Yours Truly
The PDF is A4 sized and pretty print-friendly if you don't print the cover/title page.
Any feedback is much appreciated. The game has so far been fairly extensively playtested by a dozen very loud third graders and a couple parties of adult adventurers. Worked just fine with:
The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford by Chance Dudinack
Tomb of the Serpent King by Skerples
*Note: For higher-level monsters, their attack bonus is instead reflected as a negative modifier to player rolls.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Table of Contents! Injuries Table!Nov 18, 2022
Comments
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You say starting HP = CON. I don’t understand how you increase your hit points. I get that you can increase once you have 3 experience checks against HP, but what does it mean to say that to reach level 2 you roll D6+[the level you’re coming from], in this case it’s L1 so the roll is D6+1. Does that mean you get D6+1 hit points extra?
That’s correct. My thought is that you would only occasionally increase HP on “level up”, hence the “+[level you are coming from]”. So if you wait longer to increase HP, you get more all at once. Seemed to work ok in playtesting.
So when you level up you only increase one thing that has 3 checks, plus roll for your stats. Then erase all your check marks, right? - so there is no reason to check a stat unless you want to guarantee an increase or develop something else related to a stat, and no value in splitting checks between different things because they all get erased when you level up? Or is it only the thing you level up that has its checks erased?
Yea, your first instinct is correct. So, depending on what you’ve done before leveling up you’d have different choices based on what you’ve checked. Then you erase everything and start over with making check marks. Of course as DM you could rule that players could level up a couple (or more) things at once if it made sense. You could also rule that players don’t need to erase check marks after leveling.
And yes, you’re right that there’s no value in splitting check marks. However, I found that players in many instances would have a lot of checks to choose from so it wasn’t ever an issue that they’d checked 3 things only two times for example.
Also, keep in mind that if you make some checks next to something weird on your sheet , the DM has to think of a way to level it. So I had one player make checks on a map or a note or something that they had in their inventory. So I gave them a more detailed map of the area and ruled that they then were more skilled at tracking and wilderness related things and could roll with advantage on those types of actions. I’d probably change that to an x-in-6 in the future but it worked out in the game.
I like the basic thrust of your system. I have played a couple of other games that do a similar thing. One of them, if I applied its method to your game, you’d just erase the checks that you converted into an increase. That game works by the GM telling the PCs what they can put their checks against though, based on using a stat or skill etc in a scenario. I do like the idea that a player can put the checks into anything though. That is rather thought provoking, and could take the game in lots of interesting directions.
Thanks for answering so promptly. I hope to find time to try this out sometime this year because it really is quite intriguing.
Thanks for the kind words and the questions! Let me know how it goes if you end up running something with it.
Wow www, what a beautiful style and the content!
Who's an artist?