Mythic Logos

Here is my role-playing game rules, or as I like to think of it, story-playing game.

Philosophy: Give a rough form to improv, group story-telling. Think big and imaginative. Reinvent each time. Be inconsistent. Embrace the inner chaos of creation.

Setup: Story Generator [SG] (aka GM, DM) sketches out rough plot and has some ideas of the challenges that the players will have to overcome. The SG should design a doable path, but one that in real-life would be unlikely. Yet in this game, it becomes quite possible to do.

The players in preparing their characters invest time and energy in the ongoing story of their characters. Between adventures, their character growth depends on what the character does. The more that story develops a character, the more powerful their character is in an adventure. It should be done in consultation with the SG to maintain balance and to feed into/from the SG greater vision.

The SG determines how massive and heroic the characters can be. Also, it is perfectly acceptable to have characters that pursue something that they are not good at it. So they do not grow in ability as much. This is the SG and player’s decision and is for increasing the storyline. Maybe they can do something about it or change direction.

Stories can be about heroes becoming superheros or becoming villains or becoming non-heroes, losing everything, and building up again. Or the characters start as nobodies, nothing special, and decide to turn that around. Maybe they succeed, maybe they don’t.

Not D&D: The system rejects character levels, turn-based combats, ability scores, XP, alignments, and well-defined spells, skills, and equipment.

Dice Rolls: A lot of the time, if something makes sense for a character to be able to do, they can just do it. If it is quite a stretch, then some dice rolls need to be done. Even combats can be thought in that way. Combats could just be resolved with some standard cost if the opposing forces are not really a threat. But hard combats should always use dice.

There are two kinds of dice rolls. Both use 1d20 (4d6-4 could also be used which would center the outcomes mostly around 12).

The first kind is a stand-alone skill usage, such as doing some amazing feat of strength. Here, roll 1d20 and add any bonuses based on the character background (i.e., skill bonus) and the situation (e.g., trying to impress a lady friend) while subtracting any penalties from character (e.g., being drunk) and situational (e.g., being taunted by said lady friend). After adjustment, basic success is in the range of 8-13 with every +4 above that being an extra goodness of success (14-17 is a decent success, 18-21 is a good success, 22-25 is an impressive success, ….) while every -3 below leads to failure, big failure, and humiliating failure, and then dangerous failure.

The second kind of dice roll is an opposed roll, such as in combat. Add attack bonuses, situational, apply negative bonuses (such as wielding two weapons which increases damage at the expense of to hit). Attacker rolls 1d20 and computes. The defender knows the result and can choose how much effort to expend in defending and how. They roll 1d20 and add/subtract bonuses. The two rolls are then compared,  attacker – defender. The center point is 0. Above this, a hit happens. Equal to and below this a miss happens. If it is a miss, then the more negative, the more failure and it can be converted to penalties or even damage depending on severity. If it is a hit, then any damage bonuses (two weapons, special property of the weapon) adds to and damage reduction (plate mail, magic absorber) subtracts from the rolled score. At this point, for every +4 increment, 1 point of damage is done. So (1-4) would be 1 point, (5-8) would be 2 points, etc.

The bonuses in both kinds of rolls can be modified (before rolling!) by expenditure of stamina points. There is a normal bonus level which represents a 1 point of stamina usage. This is the level the character is comfortable with. Above and beyond this, one can spend more stamina points as detailed under the skills. Also, part of a failure penalty is increased use of stamina, generally a multiplier.

The same can be said for magic.

Character Bonus: One way to make the characters extra lucky is to give them automatic rerolls for bad rolls. So if they roll 1-3 unmodified, they get to reroll. On the other extreme, normal monsters could be forced to reroll natural 18-20. This makes it much more likely for characters to do well and monsters not to. Significant monsters might instead reroll 1-3 as well.

This rule means that significant failure for characters should only arise by them trying to do hard stuff. If terrible failure is a desired feature (more comic or tragic than epic), then ignore this rule. This is also what gives the characters the ability to be more heroic than the average fellow.

Stats: The base levels are fixed.  These scores change downwards during a session. Fractional results are rounded to the nearest integer.
LP (life points) is 10. Each point of damage leads to a 10% reduction in all skill levels. Healing without magic is 1 LP per 2 days of complete rest, or 1 LP per week. 0 LP is death.

SP (stamina points) is 100. Every loss of 10 points leads to a 10% reduction in all skill levels. If one does not have enough stamina to cover the normal cost of the activity, then a great penalty is invoked. Failure can be catastrophic. At 0, the character fights for consciousness with rolls. The longer it goes, the more the penalty.

Between 0 and 30, the character is winded and really wants to rest if possible. Resting for 5-10 minutes can get a character up to 50. With water, they can get to 60. They can have a snack for +10. A full meal can get them up to 85; only two (post-breakfast) allowed. Sleep restores SP to 100.

MP (magic points) is 100. They fuel magical effects, both common and trained. They get restored at a rate of 5 MP per hour in a normal magic flow area. At a site of recently used magic, it is drained and the rate is 1 MP per hour. In an area with a lot of magical history, the rates can be much higher.

Skills: The ability to do stuff is determined by what a character is good at, trained at, or practiced in. There are no ability scores such as strength. There are no well-defined skills on the character sheet other than some basic sketches. A character that is well-trained and practices swimming can swim far and fast or in adverse conditions. The more training and practice, the easier it is and the better. Each skill should be pegged at a base level. This is the bonus which only takes 1 SP of use. Up to double this bonus can be used in super efforts, at a cost of 2 SP each +1 bonus up to the double level, up to three times this bonus could be done at a cost of 3 SP per +1 over the double limit, and so on.  One might want to place a max limit, but having players decide how much to expend can be interesting. Too much expenditure in any single effort could also reduce stamina for a longer time.

Categories of skills feed into one another. So being good at swimming increases the athletic level in general. So all athletic skills can get a bonus, say 1/2 the top bonus in a category gets added to all the bonuses in that category, including itself. So factor that in when deciding on the top bonus. One should have some ideas as to the bonus levels for the adventure in mind.  They should go up to make it more epic as needed. Not all skills need to go up and while going up should happen a lot in the beginning of a new skill, it should then taper off and only increase with tremendous dedication.

A rough rule of thumb is a +1 bonus for every 20 hours of training until +5 bonus. Then +1 for every 100 until +10. Then +1 for every 500 until +15. Then +1 for every 1000 hours until the max of +20. That’s a maxed superskill and represents about 8000 hours of training or about 4 years of continuous study. To go beyond requires something extraordinary. These times are just suggestions and may be tweaked for whatever reasons, generally magical or mystical.

The skills include acrobatics, thief skills, diplomacy, weapon skills, parrying, riding, tracking, whatever you like. And one can have a whole package of training for a variety of related skills.

These skill bonuses are the base level. So they can be upped significantly by using up stamina, but stamina does not increase making super expenditures quite rare.

Magic: Think of various kind of elemental types of magic such as fire, water, air, earth, light, life, death, mental, space-time, force, magic. Perhaps more. Some ideas for their use:

• Fire. Create a flame for light, sheathe a weapon in fire, burst in flame, throw a fireball, explode a fireplace.
• Water. Part the waters, crash them back again, walk on water, freeze, boil.
• Air. Breathe underwater or in a casket, create a hurricane, fly.
• Earth. Crack the ground open, thrust the ground up, travel fast through rock and ground, listen to the histories in the soil.
• Light. Throw a lightning bolt, transform into light and travel fast, have blinding light or total darkness, become invisible.
• Life. Accelerate healing, return the dead to life, rejuvenate the life of an area, talk with animals and plants, create food, water.
• Death. Raise an army of the dead, try to kill outright, summon monsters of destruction, ferment.
• Mental. Communicate with telepathy, be aware of companions status, have a sixth sense for danger, imminent attacks, control others, relax.
• Space-time. Travel in space, travel in time. See visions of the past or future. Find things, see maps.
• Force. Make rigid, such as a deflection shield, or an extra edge to a weapon, or a ram-head bursting a door.
• Magic. Sense magic, understand it, dispel it, take control of it.

These are just suggestions and starting points. Doing any of this requires training and practice as any skill does. Most who do not focus on magic learn about healing and giving an edge to other common pursuits. That should be the focus unless one wants to really delve into something. To do really amazing stuff, one has to specialize and do the same training as the skills in terms of training.

Basic effects are manipulations, creations, and perversions. Manipulations take existing situations and manipulate them to one’s own will. This requires a base of 1 MP and 1 SP. Creations are much more difficult and take 2MP + 3SP at base. Perversion is 4MP+3SP at base. These are added up in the same way as with skills, doubling or more as appropriate.

As an example, taking an existing fire and blowing it up and at someone using the fuel present is manipulation. Creating fire out of nothing, say in a fireball independent of a fire source, is creating. Creating and manipulating can stack so creating a firestorm and moving it around is both. Perverting is making something go against its nature, such as snuffing out a fire using fire magic. Better to use air or water magic for something like that.

Continuous magic effects take the given cost per hour. So having a sixth sense on all the time might be 24MP and 24SP for the day. Resting and refreshing does not recuperate these costs while the effect continues on. Sleeping does restore it all.

One needs to decide the power of these effects. These can be dice rolls if it is unusual or it can be a standard setup. Others can try to counter it particularly those of the magic school of magic. Take a very simple setup such as a small ball of fire and then when casting, each increment of success above, the effects can be augmented in the way specified by the player, adding size, damage, longevity.

Those who reach a high-level of capability in a particular school of magic should have their appearance change. Fire should lead to flame and smoke encircling the person, a flame appears at a snap of the fingers, etc. Light people look wavy, water people teary, whatever flair is appropriate. Eventually, at high enough level, some of the basic spells become essentially supernatural abilities that occur without cost or thought.

Equipment: There should be variety such as bonuses on weapons to attack with penalties during the damage phase or just the opposite. They could also have special abilities such as increased range or ability to trip or whatever one can think of and makes sense. Larger weapons might do more damage but being heavier means it is harder to hit. Thinking like that. Similarly with armor, shields, whatever. Magic items can be used to channel the user’s magic, stamina, etc., but direct those costs into effects that they might not otherwise be able to do. That is they give them a specific skill bonus for some well-defined action. Potions that restore LP, SP, and MP can be allowed, but they should be scarce. Managing these three stats should be a hard part of the game.

Combats: At any given moment, every character can say what they will do and change in mid-action as needed. Attacks are carried out, defenses, etc. The pace of the combat and what it all represents depends on the situation, but the idea is that it should be a bit chaotic. Be creative in descriptions and possibilities. Try to gauge speeds as appropriate and if needed, roll randomly to determine who goes first if it really matters. Ideally, a team working together would order themselves appropriately to not get in each other’s ways.

Monsters: Pretty much write them anyway you like. The points levels can be the same or not as you choose, but I think the main thing would be to determine the basic attacks and their levels. This can be easily scaled as needed. And don’t forget that not every monster needs to be slain. For both these and equipments, feel free to get inspired by other role-playing games. They have delved into stuff much more than I ever would.

The End of the Beginning: This is a quick sketch of the kind of role-playing that I and other hares might enjoy playing. I think this outline makes sense and allows for structure and rules without the rules being a focus. The story should be the focus in this game. Make it rich, terrifying, glorious, cinematic, funny. But make it alive. More can be added such as more ideas on skills, magic uses, equipment. Examples probably should be written. But I am a hare so don’t expect any of that anytime soon.

Inspired? Made something of this? Comment a link to it below; that would be awesome. Know of something similar? Post it below. Please.