I'm currently on vacation, with my wife's family in their summer house.
I'm happy to spend some time with them, but this vacation is so utterly
boring that it brings me a new form of sorrow and grief. The place
is in the country side, and there's literally nothing going on here,
except for sweat, mosquitoes and baby sitting.
I spend the whole day looking after our little child, who requires a big
deal of attentions (I was about to write "maintenance") in this stage
of his life. I am so fucking bored.
The only thing that relieves my boredom is the occasional catching up
with a bunch of gopher journals I follow. Or perhaps checking if some
interesting was posted on the newsgroups, although it is admittedly hard
to gather the required focus to read a technical article. Witness the
amount of links I've saved for "later" (when will that later be?
I've no clue).
On the top of it, the local municipality clearly decided not to waste
money on the communication infrastructure. Being a countryside place I
can understand, yet this hits me by introducing delays and failures in my
few moments of effective relax. In this situation, you can imagine it,
I despise advertisement even more than the usual.
Half a week into this deadly routine, I came up with the idea of a
role-playing campaign involving my wife, our nieces, and possibly their
mother - that is my wife's sister. I'm the only one who ever role-played
before, so I figured I could try to be the master.
Of course I've got no manual, and even if I did, I would have no time to
study it. And even if I had time, the players would be total beginners,
and probably not willing to study infinite rules! I decided to make up
my own rule set, as simple as it I could, even facing the possibility
of an unbalanced game.
In short:
- Characters have four attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Intellect
and Wisdom. The player can allocate 15 points however they desire.
Initial health is 10 points.
- Initial wealth is 10 coins and they can be spent in buying items from a
limited set of items. Items in turn can influence one or more attributes.
- Fight rules are plain: a melee attack sums Strength, to the "Melee
Attack" score of equipped weapons, to a D6. The defender sums Strength to
the "Melee Defense" score of the equipped weapons, to the roll of a D6.
The sum of the defender must be higher than the sum of the attacker in
order for the defender not to take damage. The damage goes linear with
the difference between attack points minus defense points.
- Ranged attacks work in a similar fashion, except they use the "Ranged
Attack" points and "Ranged Defense" points. The rationale is: a Shield
has both "Ranged Defense" and "Melee Defense", since it is effective
against both a Swords and Arrows, while a Sword is effective only against
another melee weapon[1].
- Finally, having a high Intelligence score allows to do "magic", which
boils down to influencing the outcome of the die.
Nice and simple, isn't it? Or maybe it sucks. I honestly don't
know, and chances are that I will never know: the crew seems not to
be that interested. Also, I can't find a stupid D6! Not even in the
local stores! This place is futile.
Will I get some fun out of this? Stay tuned for the next part. But don't
hold your breath :-/
