A Teaser Release for the New Year!

I did a review. You read it, right? 

So it should be ok to at least talk about our own game a little...maybe even release a "game jam" version?
Behold! 

Level One RPG

This is a minimalist derivative of the soon-to-be-released OneRPG!

We don't generally like class and level systems, so we built our rules not to require them, but Level One uses those rules to implement a class and level based game that works. 😁

It's totally playable, and I'm gonna get Paul to open up the Discord so folk can ask questions and discuss, maybe run some games over Twitch to demonstrate. 

Here's what he put in as the blurb on the release page:

A simple, flexible, ENIOTS (Everything Needed Is On The Sheet) game using any dice you like.

Freeform Classes, spells and magic items. Custom advancement and metacurrency.  

Uniform system for resolution of actions that sets effects such as damage in the same roll.

Yes, with any dice you like.

Don't believe it? Try it for yourself and see.

Released under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY. 
Background art by Ramona (https://ko-fi.com/alderdoodle/)
"Pixies in the Vineyard" and other Pyrography Art by @uncheckedarts.bsky.social (https://goimagine.com/uncheckedartsllc/) 

So maybe this is where I should talk about the AnyDice system.

Yep, practically any dice. Really.

Most games bake a lot of assumptions in, but we opted not to do that. We wanted to boil a test down to not just Can you Do The Thing? but rather HOW WELL can you Do The Thing this time? 

This thing is designed to be setting agnostic. To do that, it makes the simplest assumption that when a game calls for a Test there will be a rating to test against - a number. It could be a Stat, a Skill, or anything else, but it rates the ability to Do The Thing, whatever the Thing may be. As the ability gets better, we expect that number to get bigger. That's a pretty basic premise, yes? 

It also assumes we are going to answer that with some sort of pseudo-random number generation like dice. Compare the number generated to the rating to get an answer. Nothing weird about that.

We add one rule that says the highest number on a die always fails that die.
We maybe say for expedience that you can't use more of a die than the highest number on it. 
We say the degree of success is the number rolled - for example, the damage of an attack.

Watch what this does.

So Which Dice Do I Use?

Let the player choose. Yes, advise them if they want it, and yes, apply some limits so the game doesn't bog down while someone flips a coin 73 times; that's why we limit the number of any given dice.

Really think about this.

Say Skill is 5. What dice do you use? A d6 is the obvious choice. On a d6 the 6 always fails, so every other number it could roll would be 5 or less, a success. Quick, simple, easy. This is what the system was designed for.

What if they want to use a d8? Explain that it would be silly, because instead of a 1/6 chance to fail they'd have 3/8...but let them. If they want to roll a d4? That's a 1/4 chance to fail, because the highest number always fails the die, so now they can't get a roll higher than 3, but if they want, it works. It works badly, but it does work.

It Can't Be That Easy

Well, it can, but it doesn't have to be. >;op
What if the min/maxing crunchy guru does a little math and decides they want to roll 3d3 and add them together? 
You can let them.

Math Warning: Remember that the highest number on a die fails that die, so any that roll a 3 are removed from the result... so instead of one to three, each die is actually contributing zero to two, and now you've introduced a curve. 

Of the 3x3x3=27 possible results, the roll will fail if all three dice roll 2's, because that's a 6 and is higher than the Skill, or all three dice roll 3's, because that's all dice failing out of the roll. All 25 of the other possible combinations are fine. 

Heck, if they're smart enough to make that 3rd d3 a d2 they can drop that failure chance to 1/18.
As long as they don't hold up the table to talk about it for too long, it works fine!

Ew! TOO MUCH MATH! I Do Not Want To Play That Kind Of Game!

No problem. Discuss with your Table, and just agree not to use additive dice. Q.E.D.

In fact, you can say We are only using d12's in this game. That's valid, and sets a scale...
It changes the feel and gives the players easier math, if that's what you want. 

But Sometimes It's Fun To Throw Lots Of Dice...

It is. If you want a simple middle ground, try the other multi-dice option -
Your Skill is a Pool of dice. At Skill 5, roll 5 dice and take the best single result.

This makes more Skilled characters more competent, but less Skilled characters less competent.
Maybe that's what you wanted.

Likewise, this works fine whether you allow players to choose their own dice, or you say This game is d6's. 

And of course, you can disallow multi-dice options entirely. 

It's up to you.

And That's The Point.

The underlying AnyDice system isn't a game, it's a toolkit, released for other game designers under the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY. These options and others can be included in individual games or not. Individual Tables of players playing these games can choose to use those options, or not. 

As a Proof of Concept, Level One does this, and assumes additive dice.

Try it out, and let us know what you think.