So, last week’s post about attributes as a very limited skill system just would not leave my head, no matter what I did. So I started doodling in a notepad document (as a linux user I tend to use plain text a lot more than most folks, lol) and ended up having some cool ideas. Thus we have this post.
How to OSR but Not
As I mentioned last week, I’m not actually a huge fan of most OSR games. I like skills and I don’t like levels, so forth and so on. But why not challenge myself and see what I could come up with? Now, I don’t know if this even counts as OSR, and I really don’t claim it, just because I don’t feel super comfortable in that space, but I will say it is OSR-ish.
Anyway, one OSR game I like fairly well is the Black Hack, so I decided to start from there. Thus we start in familiar design space for me, with a unified mechanic, the d20 roll under, complete with advantage and disadvantage. This has the added benefit that it makes it easier to get D&D 5e players to try as well.
Skills, Backgrounds, and You
So, starting there, and knowing that I am not going to be adding any skills or anything to keep this challenge “pure” I started thinking about how advantage and disadvantage works. Essentially, if the GM feels like there is some reason for a roll to be positively modified, it gets this flat benefit, right? Well, what are the typical reason in a OSR game to do something like that?
“Well, my character was a blacksmith’s apprentice, I think I should get advantage…” or something like that, right? The player or the GM invokes the character’s backstory or some environmental factor. So, since I already know I want to ditch the classes and levels if I can, I think, why not ditch the races too? All they are really are collections of bonuses, and they never actually feel “real” anyway. Either very generic or really fiddly, or whatever.
So, why not have a series of background traits the player can choose at character creation, lets say two of them, that both replaces that “50 page backstory” but also gives players the chance to simply mix and match what they want to give them something to “hang their hat on,” as it were. Of course, there are a few things that races can give that can’t be done with advantage or disadvantage, so a few of these actually act as an ability in some more traditional sense, but I tried to keep it as open as possible so it could be styled at the table as much as possible. Thus the bat person and the dwarf might both choose “Special Senses” but one calls it echolocation while the other calls it darksense.
Training Day
When it comes to classes, there is something to be said for the OSR mentality. The one time I played 5e I was just overwhelmed with the number of options and just how much looking forward is not just encouraged but practically required. I hate the very concept of “builds” but after that game I started to see why such things exist. They are kind of baked in, after all.
But not in the OSR. The really old-school games, like Swords & Wizardry or Old-School Essentials pretty much through out all of the class abilities, or at least most of them, while modern takes on the movement like the Black Hack pare them down to just two or three iconic abilities each. Hmm. Maybe we can keep going with this trait idea.
So I started flipping through the Black Hack book, and I took note of some cool abilities and then I brainstormed some additional choices within that design space. Stuff that can make you feel powerful but that don’t really require a bunch of little things to get the point across. Thinking about the major classes in both 3rd and 5th edition D&D (the 2 versions I am actually familiar with more than passingly) and I came up with at least one core ability for each (or that fit this design space but echoed those ideas).
Again, I kept it fluid, allowing as much to be themed by the players as possible, so Engine of Destruction (my version of the Black Hack fighter ability) could be a beserker rage, or a holy smite, or whatever, and the Channel Faith could be lay on hands, for the right deity, but it could be something else like magically repairing items for the blacksmith god, or something.
Then I realized the issue with my plan. Most of these abilities only get cool as the character levels up…
How to Level without Leveling
I’d already decided that I was going to add “experienceless” to my list of “lesses” and use a variation of the old Call of Cthulhu/RuneQuest “level what you use” system. But I didn’t want to roll for it, because that always felt cheap, but I also have never liked just advancing stuff like the newer rules do.
So instead, I decided to count the number of times rolls fail which has the added benefit of still gradually tapering off as the attributes get closer to 20, so the character doesn’t just race to max attributes. I like the number 5, so I chose 5 failures to gain a point of that attribute. Okay, that was easy, but there is still the idea of levels that is messing with this whole thing…
Then I remember Mage: the Awakening, and how Gnosis sort of works like a level, granting more powerful abilities, etc. But how to work that in without experience. It actually took me a whole day to solve this problem, actually, but it seems really obvious to me now.
Essentially, the player can forgo gaining advancement with two attributes to gain a level of Mastery. And to make sure that players didn’t rush to put all their advancements in at the beginning when they are easier to get, I decided to place attribute requirements on each level, requiring one at 12, 14, 16, or 18 (respectively) while another has to be 10, 12, 14, or 16 to qualify. This forces the players to work for a little while to get there and keeps the power level low.
The Health Dilemma
And now that I had Mastery, I could fix another issue I was starting to see. I was planning on HP being equal to the character constitution, a very easy solution, but it wasn’t flawless. While a starting character would have more HP than most OSR starting characters, a max of 20 would be pretty low for a system that I was planning on spanning up to around level 5-8 of an original D&D system. Max rolls for a fighter at level 5 would get you around 50 HP, after all, not 20.
The addition of Mastery let me allow a player to gain HP when it goes up, but instead of rolling for it, I wanted to do a flat 5 HP. That would give a maximally built tank-type character to have 45 HP (20 with CON 20, 20 from Mastery boosts, and then 5 from the Hale talent). Pretty good! Add the fact that I had decided armor was going to reduce damage (not a fan of the Black Hack’s armor system from either edition), and they should be able to survive encounters with creatures from old modules for characters as high as level 8 or even 10 with care… perfect!
That Sinking Feeling
So, that is a good chunk of the design work done, but I’m not digging it. Its missing something. I started thinking about what a lot of people like about OSR, and I realized that encounters are scary and there is a distinct horror-ish vibe to a lot of what people talk fondly.
Well, I already dipped into CoC, so lets loot at that a little more. What about a Stress mechanic? Another health pool, but for mental health? So, Stress would probably work off of Wisdom, I figured, and stuff like undead and dragons would suddenly be way more interesting. And now characters have a meaningful choice when putting up their Mastery, able to choose 5 HP or 5 SP. And why not, they can also choose to pick up another trait if they want. That is a trade off that some people will be willing to make.
So, since I’ve taken so many ideas from CoC, why not steal at least one more. After all, a d20 roll under is just a d100 roll under system with a Napoleon complex (and yes, I know Napoleon wasn’t actually short, sue me). So, rolling under 50% of the attribute gives you a special success that you can use to do something out of the ordinary, like maybe knock an opponent down or disarm them or something, and criticals become 10% of your roll, which automatically gives you a better chance at criticals once you hit 15 in an attribute, which is even better. And because I love them, every type of roll can have specials and criticals, so its not just for combat anymore, because I have never liked that. Good rolls feel even better when you get rewarded, after all.
Time to Look at Magic
At this point in the process, I was starting to feel pretty good about this system. It was already feeling very distinct from Black Hack and the whole “less” thing was actually panning out pretty well.But the elephant in the room was the magic system. I hadn’t even thought about it yet, other than I knew I wasn’t going to mess with divine/arcane distinctions.
You see, magic in D&D and OSR both is… pretty boring to me. I dislike spells per day, I dislike “it just works,” and I dislike memorizing spells. Not only that, but spell levels are just not something that is going to work with this concept.
D&D magic just simply doesn’t work for this system.
Okay. So. What is a cool magic system? Probably one of the coolest out there has to be Shadowrun, honestly. Lots of meaningful choices for the player, including deciding how powerful you want the spell to be. And Stress is kind of like Stun in that system, so we could even work in something like drain.
Okay, so set the potency, roll the spell, take the drain. Take out the roll to resist drain, because I am trying to keep it simple and fast as possible. And setting the potency above your mastery gives you a penalty. Even better. This all clicked into place really easily, and I was able to quickly map out what a dice chain from potency 1 to 10 looked like.
The only question left was how to learn spells?
Enter the Other OSR Influence
So I picked up Knave a few weeks ago when I saw a second edition was coming out, because I’d heard good things, and I wanted to know if I should Kickstart it. Looking through it I had an epiphany. Knave already had a classless OSR system.
I already knew I didn’t like usage dice, but I was still on the fence about inventory, because I don’t normally even track stuff like that. I do political games and mysteries, not dungeon delves. But managing resources is a huge part of the feel of those kinds of adventures. Knave had the perfect solution. So, I made your encumbrance equal to your CON, but I decided to let spellbooks hold five spells instead of just one, because I like having options, and the SP cost for casting would keep it from getting out of hand. It also solved the issue with needing a trait to be a spell caster, which was also a cool bonus.
Final Review
So, reading back over it, I decided that it was pretty awesome, but I still had a few wishes. I included a Qualified Success option, because those are always fun, and I decided that I had inadvertently nerfed the spellcasters with the Stress system. I decided that I liked the magic system though (especially because I ended up making 75 spells for it that were all really easy to make work within the system I had made) so I decided to make the physical abilities also cost Stress. I may still go back and put in something like the way Magical Tools work to reduce stress costs, but we’ll see.
I also realized that, with Qualified Successes in, I now had a fun opportunity to steal more from Mage, and brought over my favorite version of wild magic, paradox. Or at least, a version of it that makes sense outside of the context of Mage. So, Misfires. A few tweaks and I am ready to playtest!
So I tossed this up on itch after taking the time to make it pretty, because I am exceptionally proud of it. I managed to take a genre and playstyle I don’t normally like and created something that I am actually excited about. It probably no longer qualifies as OSR, and that’s ok. It does still come in at 20 pages, even with a small GM section with some sample Magic Items and Bestiary, though, so its at least in the right size weight category.
To The Dice Cave 
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