----------------------------------------
The drama of a bored geeek
June 30th, 2021
----------------------------------------
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 my 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 :-/
