Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Sword & Spell - My new retro RPG

The interwebs are full of gamers talking about simpler times when D&D had fewer rules and gamers were more manly. There are several retro-clones available for free these days with names like OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry. These games seem fine, but I get the sense some old-timey types still think they are too complicated. For those folks, I offer my new game system free of charge. I call it Sword & Spell - The D2 Game System. All you need to play is a pencil, a blank post-it note and a quarter. On the post-it note, you write your character class of which there are two choices, wizard or fighter. Under your character class, write the following:

Status:
Dead:________
Not Dead:____

There, now your character sheet is complete.

Ok, now for the system. Combat is based on the time-honoured coin flip engine. Heads, you hit, tails, you miss. The attack roll is countered by the opponents defense roll: heads, you're not dead, tails, you're dead. Some monsters can survive more than one tails roll for defense as demonstrated in the complete bestiary below:

Orc - one tail
Troll - two tails
Dragon - three tails

There are two attack modes, spell and sword. They differ in name only.

All other actions in the game are similarly decided by a "heads, you succeed, tails, you fail" mechanic, subject to DM's approval.

There you have it, a complete retro-RPG. Enjoy.

-Rognar-

4 comments:

Tayloritos said...

How do you grapple?

Rognar said...

Real men don't grapple.

Obiri said...

"simpler times when D&D had fewer rules and gamers were more manly"

Manly! Ha Ha Ha. That was my laugh for the day. To be honest, your rules really are not that bad.

Aaron E. Steele said...

A little more complicated than I like. Time for some houseruling.