Those of you familiar with the game company Sega are probably also familiar with the Shining series of games (if you're not, like, twelve years old). I am especially fond of the second game in the series, Shining Force, which kept me entertained for many an hour back in elementary school when my parents were out doing something or other. Now it just keeps me entertained whenever WoW gets boring (which frequently occurs). Being the huge nerd and fanatical tabletop gamer that I am, I took the concept of Shining Force and turned it into a tabletop game. The idea is that it's ridulously easy to play if you can remember the terrain penalties- terrain was a big part of Shining Force -and have a bunch of six-sided dice (d6es) handy. I went with an extremely generic title, Order and Entropy (OnE for short, pronounced "own" wink . But I'm not going to post that here. Instead, I'm going to post the rules for ARPG, pronounced "RPG", the Arbitrary Role-Playing Game, another creation of mine. To answer the question of why I created ARPG, it's because I wanted something that could be started and finished, say, on a car trip or plane ride. Depending on the mental capacity of the Master and the players, the game takes maybe five minutes to set up.
Point of interest, sans Character Creation Example, this game is within Compact RPG parameters.
Yeah, Shlomo's an inside joke. We love Shlomo dearly here.
ARPG Rules
ARPG
Arbitrary Role-Playing Game
Materials
-At least two players (five is a good number), one of which will act as Master (a generic term for the guy running the game).
-Something to write on and something to write with for each participant. The Master should probably have several somethings to write on.
-A bunch of dice of whatever variety you like. This tutorial uses standard six-sided dice (abbreviated here as Xd6 or XD). Every participant needs to be using the same sort of dice, unless you have some funky house rule or other.
Character Creation
Race: The player can choose whatever race he likes. The Master then tells the player what sort of modifiers his race gives him, which might wait until after character creation is finished.
Class: Again, the player can choose whatever he wants, and the Master tells him what he gets at every level, which might wait until character creation is finished. The character’s class can be the same as his race when appropriate, although the reverse is not true (Giant can be both a race and a class, but not Carpenter). Multiclassing is allowed at the Master’s discretion.
Aspects: Every character has four aspects of themself that they want to capitalize on, in Physical and Cerebral varieties. The player chooses these Aspects as they like, being sure to have at least one Physical and one Cerebral. Where appropriate, one Aspect must be derived from a player’s race, and one from their class. After selecting Aspects, the player is given twelve points to divide between them. No Aspect can be higher than 4 at character creation. The number of points in an Aspect is the number of dice the character rolls when using that Aspect. A player’s race or class might influence this number.
Skills: Now the player is given ten more points, this time to divide amongst the Skills his character possesses. At least one Skill must relate to the character’s class, and no one skill may be higher than 3 at creation.
Using Skills: Whenever a character uses a skill, they roll a number of dice equal to the skill’s rating. One additional die is added for each Aspect the player can reasonably apply to the task.
Making Checks: ARPG uses a dice pool system. This means that a character has X dice to roll when performing an action requiring a check, and that action requires Y successes to be…successful. The number of dice you roll is equal to the Aspect or Skill being used. The Master decides how many successes are needed to complete the task, and what constitutes a success.
Attacking and Defending: The attacker chooses the Aspect he is going to use for the attack, like Strength for bashing straight through an opponent’s defenses or Agility for going around them. The Defender chooses an appropriate Aspect to defend with, like Resilience for shrugging off attacks or Agility for dodging them entirely. The attacker and defender roll the appropriate number of dice, arranging them in the order rolled and comparing them in that order. Higher rolls by the attacker indicate hits. The attacker wins ties unless otherwise ruled by the Master. Every hit sustained by the defender, unless ruled otherwise, is a loss of one Hit Point (see below).
If the attacker’s Aspect and the defender’s Aspect do not give them the same number of dice, the defender can use another Aspect to “boost” his defenses. When boosting, the defender temporarily allocates as many dice from his boosting Aspect as he needs to in order to make his defense equal to his opponent’s attack. There is, however, a penalty for doing so. If the defender suffers a hit during the round in which he boosts, one of his boosting Aspects is reduced by 1 for the remainder of the battle.
Who goes first in combat? Whoever has the highest speed-type Aspect. If that fails, go by whoever’s closest, whoever rolls the highest on a d6, or by the Master’s arbitrary (it’s the name of the game) decision.
Being Injured and Dying: A character can only sustain a certain number of hits before they snuff it. The number of hits needed to kill a character are determined by the character’s class and any appropriate Aspects. The Master decides how many hits a character can take per level. For every appropriate Aspect, the character can take one additional hit (like Stamina or Resilience). When a character’s HP drops to zero, he dies.
The other way to die is by having all of your Aspects reduced to zero.
Gaining Experience: It takes twenty Experience Points (XP) for a character to gain a level. For every challenge overcome (a successful use of a skill or the defeat of an enemy), the character gains one XP. The Master might wish to award more than 1 XP for particularly challenging challenges.
Leveling Up: At every new level, a character gains additional HP, and the Master informs the player of what new powers their character gains according to their class. Also, players are given 3 points to advance their character as they see fit.
-Raising a Skill by one costs one point.
-Learning a new Skill costs two points (and gives the character a rating of 1 in that Skill).
-Raising an Aspect by one costs two points.
-Adding a new Aspect costs three points (and gives the character a rating of 1 in that Aspect).
If necessary, unspent points can be saved for later use.
Character Creation Example
The Kaiser is rolling up a new character, who will be named Shlomo.
The Kaiser decides that Shlomo will be a Jewish Giant, and informs his DM of this. The DM tells the Kaiser that Shlomo’s race requires him to have at least one Giantish Aspect, and because he’s Jewish Shlomo has to keep kosher.
Next comes a class. Jewish Giants are famous for their hatred of Gazebos, so Gazebo-Slayer is a sensible choice of class for Shlomo. The Kaiser announces his choice of class, and the DM rules that as a first-level Gazebo-Slayer, Shlomo receives one additional die when attacking Gazebos. Hit Points are also an issue, and the DM decides that Gazebo-Slayers get ten HP per level (meaning that Shlomo requires ten hits to bring down).
Now that that’s out of the way, the Kaiser needs to choose Shlomo’s aspects. He already knows that Shlomo has to have at least one Giantish Aspect, so Strength seems like a good choice. Maybe Toughness as well (which the DM rules grants Shlomo one additional HP per level) to represent Shlomo’s sheer mass. A good mental Aspect would be Perception, since Gazebo-Slayers must always be on the lookout for their hated foe. Shlomo is also quite good with people, so Charm is his last Aspect. The Kaiser takes his 12 Aspect Points, and divides them as follows: Strength 4, Toughness 4, Perception 2, and Charm 2.
Skills are next. To account for Shlomo’s knowledge of his hated foe, the Kaiser assigns 3 of his 10 Skill Points to Carpentry. Another 3 go into Fire Magic, because Gazebos are weak against fire (that’s right, schools of magic fall under Skills in this game if’n you like). To round things off, the Kaiser assigns 2 points to Wilderness Survival and 2 to Surgery (because every good Gazebo-Slayer needs to be able to treat severe wounds).
And there you go. That’s how it’s done. Shlomo looks like this after the Kaiser finishes with him, minus fluff:
Shlomo
Race: Jewish Giant
Class: Gazebo-Slayer (1)
Aspects: Strength 4, Toughness 4, Perception 2, Charm 2
Skills: Carpentry 3, Fire Magic 3, Wilderness Survival 2, Surgery 2
Special: +1D when attacking Gazebos, must keep kosher
