The Horrific Game

[PhoneLobster]

Here is something I felt the need to whip up during somewhat more than several hours of headache plagued sick day today.

I found myself compelled to finally get around to this after running a "Cthulhu" game using the setting only touched on in this document which frankly ran in the Style of zany rules lite fairy tea party even if we were officially trying to use d20 Cthulhu (sort of). I mean I've known for a long time that what we needed for these games was something more like what follows, but I just couldn't bring myself to be assed. But finally here it is...

I pretty much intend to put this rather simplistic if overly verbose mess to use next time the opportunity comes up. But if anyone is interested or has suggestions, or just wants something to read, here we go.

(this may take me a moment to figure out some way to convert this god damn document, wait a minute...)

[PhoneLobster]

Okay I'm losing justification and boldness all over with this quick dirty conversion, if anyone has any problems with readability, let me know.

The Horrific Game
The following has come to my attention. I need a rules lite system for certain one or two session throw down games primarily the “not really Cthulhu” vaguely horror themed action games I run from time to time.

I don't really LIKE rules lite games, they are a bit too close to fairy tea party for me, but in addition to that a lot of rules lite systems have really bad rules that make them in various ways NOT rules lite and also kinda shit.

Fortunately rules lite systems are easy to write so here we go!

What Is This Game For?
Well like I said, for not altogether serious or long term “rules lite” throw down games.

Using this system should require very minimal rules knowledge from anyone (there aren't actually that many rules to know) and little or no preparation from the GM.

Specifically I intend to use this to run what passes for “Horror” games with my groups, but really what passes for horror games with my groups is... well... often closer to “Zany Comedy Action”.

I mean really it's more like a cross between Scooby Do and Benny Hill with just a bit of Lovecraftian background art than it is a nail biting and grim dark death fest.

So What About Failure Rates and Fatality Rates Then?
Here is something I've learned.

Players do NOT want to play the adventures of the doomed guy who dies and never finds out what was going on.

They WANT to play the adventures of SCOOBY FUCKING DO. Those adventures go like this.

1)Form rag tag Team of them damn kids and their damn dog.
2)Oh no a “Mystery!”
3)Run in circles waving arms
4)NOW you encounter the monster “Run Away!”
5)Get more serious about running in circles waving your arms maybe scream and giggle a bit
6)Defeat monster (switch with 7 if you want)
7)Solve Mystery (switch with 6 if you want)
8)Damn you guys and your damn dog.
9)The end

Note that that DOESN'T include “And before act one was even over we found Shaggy and Thelma dead naked and dismembered in the freezer, characters were rerolled and we got Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble joining the party until THEY got eaten by a Gru later in the mystery and we ALL got replaced by Josie the Pussy Cats...”

It ALSO does not include “We never found out WTF was going on”

It DEFINITELY doesn't include “We lose”

It DOES include comedy, zany antics, a bunch of stupid, and your damn dog.

What does this tell me?

It tells me I need zany rules lite bullshit where you can get away with all sorts of crap and where there isn't specifically a hard fatality rate or anything like that.

I mean you can TOTALLY KO Shaggy every five seconds, dose him up with drugs until he is sedated (he probably does that anyway), hell, shoot him in the knee caps, but you can't just KILL him casually, gratuitously or repeatedly even if we make him a cheap throw away easy to make rules lite character in a low value throw down system.

You can even kill Thelma, but if you do she probably needs to either die right in the big fight at the end, and ideally in an explosive and hilariously entertaining manner that ultimately doesn't prevent them from winning, or needs to almost immediately come back and continue helping the gang as a Crime Solving Banshee or something.

At a stretch Fred can cop it in the first two minutes of the show before any of the plot is invested into him, but only if his replacement lasts basically the rest of it, we can't sit here ALL day thinking of variant neckerchief colours for the latest Fred Clone.

The rules lite system also helps to be adaptive so the story can change potentially A LOT to accommodate the zany hand waving and still get us to SOME sort of viable outcome.

I mean you can walk away with a partial victory, you can win but lose the life of a much loved major character in the process, you can save the world at the cost of every PC life in the gang, you can solve the mystery, stop the murders but Jack The Ripper gets away for another 50 years, you can join the forces of darkness and declare victory through defeat, you can at a stretch have everyone lose in SUCH an explosive and hilarious manner that it's a win on sheer FUN.

But you CANNOT ABSOLUTELY CANNOT just lose. And the gang MUST FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON either before or after winning in SOME sort of paltry way.

YES Cthulhu and other "dark" games wank on endlessly about high PC fatality and an environment of despair. Well that's just pure wank. Talk big about DOOM! with all the melodrama you can muster then play like a big old softy just trying to scare kids out of his theme park, it makes for a better gaming experience.

[PhoneLobster]

The Basic Mechanic
Roll 1d10, add your bonuses, compare to a difficulty number if you get equal to the difficulty number you succeed, if you get less you fail. Margin of success/failure WILL be important.

The bonuses you add to your roll are the Attribute relevant to your action, and any circumstantial bonuses negotiated with the GM.

The Difficulty is a number provided by the GM, or occasionally may be the result of an opposed 1d10+bonuses by another character. In some cases the difficulty may even be one of your own attributes perhaps with an additional circumstantial modifier.

So again it is one of the following...

1d10+Attribute+Modifiers VS Difficulty
1d10+Attribute+Modifiers VS 1d10+Attribute+Modifiers
1d10+Attribute+Modifiers VS Attribute+Modifiers

On some occasions you may be rolling for an action where you have NO relevant attribute bonus, in which case... you have an attribute bonus of Zero.

Margin Of Success
If you get exactly equal on your roll for an action you only BARELY succeed

But the larger the margin of success is the more effective your success happens to be.

If you succeed by 5 you have a “Critical Success” which should be about as good or better than succeeding at TWO actions.

If you succeed by 10 you have a “Dangerous Success” which should be about as good or better than TWO critical successes and may be so successful it is potentially dangerous in it's over achievement.

So for instance, if you are shooting at gun men in a helicopter, a Success shoots a gun man, a Critical Success shoots a gun man and he falls on another enemy on the ground, a Dangerous Success shoots the pilot and the helicopter crashes into the ground exploding killing all the guys on board and maybe some guys on the ground and maybe threatening to land on top of you and/or your friends as well.

Margin of Failure
Similarly if you fail on an action attempt you may suffer additional bad results.

Failure by 5 points or more is a “Critical Failure”, not only do you fail at what you were doing, you also fail at something else in the process, you not only miss your enemy with a gun shot your gun jams, or backfires, or you shoot the hostage, etc...

Failure by 10 points or more is a “Dangerous Failure”, you fail so badly you may well fail at several things, but also have some marginal risk of accidentally succeeding at something entirely unintended in the process. You aim at the gun man, miss, drop your gun, fall over and accidentally shoot the guy sneaking up behind you with an axe that you hadn't noticed previously.

Creativity And Situational Limits to Margins Of Success and Failure
The problem with these margins of success and failure is they are... kinda vague. To make them work you need IDEAS, and also complex situations in which additional effects could apply.

And sometimes no one will be able to think of precisely how a “Dangerous Failure” could benefit them, in which case they simply fail, and fail hard. Similarly sometimes there is no way to make a “Dangerous Success” dangerous in any reasonable manner, in which case they can simply succeed and succeed strongly.

To a lesser extent the same goes for Critical success and failure results. Sometimes even “succeed only MORE” is really hard to do when attempting a very simply binary task. I mean you can talk it up as much as you like, but “not falling off the tightrope” is basically just “not falling off the tightrope”.

Luck Points
Action point type mechanics are popular. Let's throw a (slightly) less than retarded one into the game. Characters have a pool of “Luck Points” There is no particular limit to the size of this pool, but you can START with 10 and can never (personally) spend more than 10 on a single action.

Luck points are spent as followed, you spend them AFTER seeing the result of one of YOUR actions to modify the margin of success up, OR down by one point per Luck point spent.

If characters are “co-operating” in an action, or opposing it, or are targeted by it, they can also spend luck points to modify it's result even if it isn't THEIR action. Each character still has a limit of 10 points they can modify a single action by, but any or all of them can spend up to that limit each. Generally it is going to be considered uncommon for them to HAVE enough points (each) to exceed that limit anyway.

You restore spent Luck Points by experiencing bad luck. So if you get your arm torn off by a monster always remember to ask your GM to refund you some luck points for the event, and he SHOULD give you some small arbitrary conciliation prize in the form of a handful of Luck. This is nice because in a game where we WANT bad things to happen to your character you can now be rewarded for that with a resource that you can further use to influence events in a beneficial way as well.

Setting Difficulties
Difficulties rolled against, and circumstantial modifiers, are basically entirely arbitrary in nature and usually set by, or negotiated with the GM.

GMs should not be afraid to do the following...

1)Some tasks should be really really hard and have Difficulties so high the active character will need to have a very high attribute, and maybe some luck points, and a lucky roll, to succeed at all.

2)Some tasks should be really really easy, and have Difficulties so low the active character cannot even roll a fail, and all they are rolling for is critical success or something.

3)Some tasks SHOULD NOT BE ROLLED FOR AT ALL, many actions should “just happen” when they are declared, and that's final. You also can negotiate with players to allow some characters with higher abilities in certain fields to “just do” certain things other characters less skilled in that field WOULD need to roll for (or just couldn't do).

4)Five is NOT automatically a “standard difficulty”. There is no reason at all that you should commonly pick the number 5 or numbers around 5 as difficulties for tasks. NONE. A “coin flip for a zero skill character” is NOT the standard success/difficulty rate. The system doesn't HAVE a “standard success/difficulty rate”. Set you difficulties on a circumstantial basis depending on how hard you feel a task should be and in some cases how acceptable or not success or failure will be for the game.

5)Don't automatically increase or decrease difficulties just to match someone's skill or lack of it. Just because one of the characters has a “Breaking And Entering” Attribute that is really high does NOT mean that you should automatically increase all breaking and entering difficulties by a matching amount. That is VERY wrong. The whole POINT of them having the higher Attribute means that those tasks generally should be easier for them, for challenging stuff they should be making Breaking and Entering checks for a whole ADDITIONAL set of breaking and entering actions so hard that untrained guys wouldn't even try to succeed at at all. But the “regular” actions should still really be the same difficulty regardless of whether an amateur or an expert attempts them.

[PhoneLobster]

Default Attributes
OK so now we need to know what kind of attributes are out there and what characters look like and stuff. Now pretty much all actions in this game WILL be by “negotiation”, so we seriously don't need to worry TOO much about balancing attribute types and builds, because the generally idea is that if your character has a notably higher “Dental Hygiene” Attribute or something you WILL be regularly trying to leverage actions such that you use THAT attribute.

But it would still be nice to have a small set of broad “fall back” attributes that are fairly common to all characters and that let players measure their relative coolness in certain “basic” actions against each other.

And those attributes are...
Awareness – Your ability to notice stuff
Intellect – Your basic smarty-pants-ness.
Social – Your ability to socialise
Toughness – Your strength and vitality
Agility – Your acrobatic and fall back sneaky skill.
Chance – Blind luck

For a “normal human” these are typically all going to be +1 each. Some normal humans will shuffle the numbers around to a minimum of zero on any attribute and a maximum of 3.

For a 'normal hero” these are going to be +2 each and then you can shuffle the numbers around with a minimum of zero and a maximum of 4.

Both types of human can increase these attributes through “experience”. And in some cases will have already done so in some vague “past”.

Monsters and weird thingies could have pretty much any kind of stat distribution even “before experience”.

Side Bar Attack : Zero Points May Mean No Check
As a general rule with other attributes in the game sometimes you shouldn't be allowed to make a check when you have a mere zero points in the Attribute. This would notably not be the case with base attributes, might sometimes OCCASIONALLY be the case with Tool Attributes and will probably frequently be the case with Other Attributes.

But this will pretty much ALWAYS be the case with Sphere Attributes. If you have 0 points of Mountain you CANNOT perform the most simple Mountain related action, like finding your way INTO the mountain from a location steeped in the power of the Mountain, even if the difficulty of the check is totally 0 for a guy who actually has at least one Mountain point.

Tool Use Attributes
In addition to a bunch of broad whatever attributes we also may want some specific attributes for using things like Cars and Guns. SURE we could fold them into some basic attribute, but screw that I wanna fluff up some space on the character sheets with the pretence of more “important” attributes. However unlike Default Attributes the “Tool Use” attribute list COULD extend into infinity and beyond. So you won't record a tool use attribute onto your sheet if you have Zero in that attribute, that's just assumed.

YOU SHOULD NEVER JUST LET A CHARACTER USE A BASE ATTRIBUTE IN PLACE OF A TOOL USE SKILL. At BEST you should let them use maybe half a base attribute, if they make a good argument, and probably not even that, otherwise we pretty much outright devalue these skills entirely.

YOU SHOULD NEVER LET A CHARACTER SUBSTITUTE ONE TOOL USE CHECK WITH ANOTHER. If the tool use skill set overlaps that's one thing, but if a character wants to use their Boat use skill to pilot a submarine THAT is not entirely OK. At best, again, you might let them apply ½ the skill for a “related” check. This isn't AS bad as letting them use a base attribute, but it's still something better avoided.

TOOL USE SKILLS REQUIRE TOOLS. That is a primary theme of this attribute set. To use your Guns skill, you need a Gun. In this system a gun MIGHT very rarely provide a (tiny) circumstantial bonus of it's own, but the MAIN thing it will do is just let you make a Gun tool use check to perform gun related actions.

Normal humans have 3 points to put into tool use, and while they will “typically” put them into three different tool use attributes they can put up to all 3 into one attribute. Normal humans will typically only invest in “normal” or “common” tool use skill types like “Cars” and “Guns”.

Heroic humans have 6 points to put into tool use, and the “standard” is to put 2 each into three, they can put up to a maximum of 4 on a single attribute. Heroic Humans may invest in one or more “unusual” or “exotic” tool use skill, like “Boomerangs” or “Bladed Bowler Hats” or “UFOs”.

Again, Experience can modify this and monsters could have all kinds of tool use skills.

The following is a sample list of “Common Tool Use Attributes”.
Cars
Bikes
Planes
Boats
Heavy Vehicles
Guns
Knifes
Swords
Tasers and Stun Guns
Gardening Tools
Construction Tools
Kitchen Tools
Cleaning Tools

The following is a sample list of “Exotic Tool Use Attributes”
UFOs
Submarines
Space Craft
Gliders
Jet Packs
Bows
Shuriken
Bladed Bowler Hats
Boomerangs
Hammers
Axes
Spears
Chain Saws
High Heel Shoes
Capes
Evening Gowns
Hats
Naughty Underwear
Swimsuits
Hair
Your Momma Jokes

Yes these sets are vague, yes many sets could overlap or even be outright inferior subsets of other things (Gardening tools and Chainsaws anyone?) but really WHATEVER.

“Other” Attributes
This is where some really exciting character defining attributes could crop up, your one of a kind things, your weird narrow fields, things like “Laser Death Vision” or “Rocket Scientist” or “Computer Hacker” or “Alien Plant Doppelganger”.

Normal humans MIGHT occasionally have one point in one such skill. Usually gained only through Experience.

Heroic humans however could commonly start with these skills. And have 4 points to spend (up to a maximum of 4 on a single skill).

But since we might commonly want these things to remain mysterious or something (Hey guys I didn't KNOW I was an alien plant doppelganger!) you might want to let player characters, or even characters in general place their “Other” points into reserve and spend them “later”.

Points placed into Reserve can be spent by the player, or perhaps even by the GM, to fill out freaky powers or skills “on the fly” that are gained through experience. So for instance when Sally the perfectly normal school girl gets eaten by alien plants from another world you can have her player keep her character sheet and tell the player to spend some or all of Sally's reserve “other” points on “Alien Plant Doppelganger”. That should be fun.

In addition Reserve points can be spent to enhance a skill picked up through “Experience”. So if you have 2 points of Other attribute in reserve and suddenly your experiments with alien drugs cause you to gain an Other skill of “Telepathy 1” you can throw the points on top of that and advance you way straight to “Telepathy 3” or something.

All this allows importantly allows a player to do things like NOT spend their “Other” points on some “mundane” character type just because the game starts out with everyone being “normalish” people and lets them hold them back until game events suddenly justify them getting zany supa powas like “I Am A Robot Assassin From The Future”.

SIDE BAR ATTACK! : Reserve Points In General
Hi, the reserve points “mechanic” if it can be called that is also a fun mechanic you can apply to ALL of a character's attributes.

It's a great way of getting a game rolling to just say “You can define your base attributes, other attributes and tool skills as they come up!”.

It's also a handy way of dealing with fun horror themes like “We all lost our memories and don't actually know our own skills” or “We are all kids with unspent/undiscovered potential and a high likelihood of being eaten by monsters”.

And so the way that then plays out is... “Oh god guys the only way off this island is by that rickety old light aircraft!” and then character number four, severely lacking flavourful skill background suddenly says “Wait! I just remembered I have 2 points of the Planes tool attribute! Er. Because I used run drugs in South America!”. And that is definitely a fun moment.

[PhoneLobster]

Okay this part of the document is the most setting dependent crap, and with incomplete setting notes (at least here and for now) is a little incomplete, but whatever...

Spheres Of Influence
OK so I want my game to be about supernatural horror and I want some mythology cosmology and I'm being a mad bastard and making my own instead of using some good old canon Lovecraft or something.

Sphere Attributes are going to be my equivalent to the creeping corruption of evil magical (or evil supernatural pseudo-scientific) power.

The mythology of the setting will differentiate between the various spheres and what they do and give further fluff and material, but maybe more on that later, here I'll just throw in a VERY brief description and some rather brief examples of things to do with them.

There are FOUR Sphere attributes. You only need to record ones you have points in.

Doing It Differently
Before I describe my four sphere lets make one thing clear, their nature and description is entirely optional you could easily remove them from the game outright, or substitute them with differing spheres or some alternative. You could very easily have spheres like “Mad Science”, “Aliens”, “The Devil”, and “Jupiter”.

I just picked four themes I wanted to represent various ideas and imagery with, and which matched certain elements of my own strange and dark nightmares, which it seems from my experience is where I get all my best “horror” game ideas.

Travelling the Spheres
One of the most basic things you can do with the Spheres I described is travel to them, because all of them aren't just sources of strange powers and monsters, they are also actual places you can sometimes go to, if you just know where to find them in between the cracks in the “normal” world.

How easy it will be to find an entrance into a sphere will depend on where you are, ideally you should be somewhere with strong influences of the sphere, for instance you can enter the Mountain from caves, the Sky from an open desert salt lake (or simply from within your dreams), the Green from an overgrown weed infested garden, or the Deep from the bottom of the shadowy cold bit in your swimming pool.

Similarly another common check for Sphere attributes will be navigating within a Sphere or trying to find your way back out again, and those checks will vary in difficulty depending on the “mood” of the part of the Sphere you are in (ie, are completely arbitrary according to GM whim).

Resisting The Influence Of The Spheres
The spheres often are associated with certain compulsions or confusions, they can make you act in ways which normal people might think strange or confused, Mountain characters frequently get historical facts, and indeed what they were up to yesterday, strangely confused, Green characters go on mad food, drug, sex and violence orgies, Sky characters confuse themselves with a chair or a chair with a reality eating Clown monster, Deep characters might just hate you, and themselves.

In certain contexts things might crop up where sphere influences might compel a character to behave like they might prefer not to.

A Mountain steeped character might have to resist the urge to go back in time and shoot Hitler, AGAIN.

A Barbie Doll who turned into a real girl might still have some serious Sky influence and need to roll against it to remind herself she is a real person and needs to buy real person sized accessories. (IE she is in real danger of pulling out a tiny plastic GI Joe gun and telling everyone to “Put Their Hands In The Air!”)

A Green character might need to check against their Sphere influence to prevent themselves from turning a simple beating of some thug into unconsciousness into a tooth and nail cannibalistic murder.

And a Deep character might need to check against their Sphere influence to prevent themselves from trying to drown themselves in the sea every time they hear it's siren call.

The check to resist a Sphere is a simple 1d10 vs your own Sphere Attribute. But the GM can declare circumstantial modifiers on each side. And from time to time probably should, especially in those rare circumstances where some potential influence is so strong it exceeds the restriction of characters having only Zero in the related Sphere.

Sphere Gadgets and Supa Powas
Also you can use Sphere Attributes as tool attributes for zany magic or super science gizmos, if you have HG Wells' time machine it probably takes a Mountain Check to steer it.

In addition in time characters with higher rating in the Spheres may learn that the spheres are associated with certain powers and might try doing things like “Dodging a bullet using micro time travel and multiverse branch selection” or “Commanding the Waves to Drown That Fool” or “Calling on the Green to tame the attack dogs and turn them on their enslavers”, “Using the Sky to not really be in two different places at the same time” etc... And with appropriate difficulties or modifiers this sort of thing should probably be allowed and encouraged, especially after a character has become familiar with similar uses they may have observed or extrapolated from their adventures.

The Four Spheres
Mountain

The “Eternal Mountain” is the sphere of the unimaginable truth, the heavy gravitational mass of time and space itself, within it's endless twisting tunnels and chambers linear time itself is a lie. Within the mountain are things that watch the universe, and perhaps control it, and change it. Once you have been lost in the mountain you are ALWAYS lost in the mountain, even if manage to escape, even if you manage to escape more times than you have entered even death itself is not a certain means of escaping the Mountain. It is not uncommon at all to end up in a new place, or even time, when you travel through the mountain, sometimes you may even end up in a strange new world entirely.

Powers of the mountain deal with manipulating (and travelling within) time, causality, and controlling physical forces and energies and also to some degree the stasis of immortality and the prison of destiny. Characters likely to have points in Mountain sphere are things like Time Travellers, Inter dimensional Travellers, Reincarnated “past lifers, mad physicists, Ancient Undead, and those watching controlling things that can be found within the mountain.

Sky

The “Impossible Sky” is the sphere of surreal lies, a place beyond everything that rightly is in which all the things that rightly aren't yearn to break through the barrier of existence itself and take on the poorly disguised pretence of simply being. Within the Sky are dreams and nightmares both, everything unreal that anyone might wish for, everything impossible that they might fear, and a fair number of things no one has managed to even imagine for long enough to form an sane opinion of. Travelling within the Sky is like entering the land of dreams and madness, and while leaving the Sky may not cause you to travel through time like the mountain, you frequently may find you have travelled through space, you may also find you have accidentally arrived in some shadow pocket world that isn't entirely real, or that when you returned from the unreal lands you brought something with you, like a monster, or an idea, or simply a strange and impossible change to reality itself that propagates in the wake of your trip that disrupted the edge of what is allowed to be real.


Powers of the Sky deal with illusion, lies, and fantasy or fear made real. There are few limits to what a power of the sky may do, and often the only rules they follow are ones of their own twisted imaginings, and the more general rule that these powers are indeed bound by, and products of those same twisted imaginings. Characters likely to have points in Sky include to Swans who transform into Princess due to the miracle of human love, Evil Puppets who come to life through the miracle of human fear, people who went Narnia and were abused by Aslan as small children, those poor bastard trapped in the D&D Cartoon series, Dorothy, Max Headroom (from the movie), Clowns, and everyone with anything to do with Peter Pan.

Green

The “Wild Green” is the sphere of raw pulsating life, a place where everyone and everyTHING is alive, wild, horny, hungry and packed full of crazy bouncy beans. The Green is improbably rich and verdant, often appearing as an impossibly deep, rich and fertile, and dangerous, alien jungle. The Green may not be as much of a sphere behind reality, like the Sky or the Mountain, but more of a symptom or even strange and gargantuan inhabitant of reality, perhaps the source of life, or if not the source then somehow the sum or product of all life. Travelling through the jungle can be a very different experience in it's different parts, or just depending on when you do so or even how you react to it, sometimes it can be an improbably hostile jungle in which every blade of grass is out for your last drop of blood, other times it is a trippy romp through a field of gentle clovers amongst impossibly sweet fruiting trees in which you lose track of time and wake up later on with all your clothes missing and a healthy new glow to your cheeks, other times it's a nightmare orgy of sex and insane procreation and you come back from your brief adventure with a bunch of mutant half animal (or plant or fungus) grand kids to look after. While travelling through the green CAN sometimes displace you in Space and Time just a little, generally the closest you get to time travel is emerging from the green a mere few moments after entering despite it seeming like more time passed inside, and the most distance you will travel is usually to the other side of the forest or coral reef or corn field in which you found the entrance to the Green.

Powers of the Green deal with life, healing, hunger, lust, sleep, fertility, animals, plants, fungus, addiction, disease and the stubborn primal struggle against death and danger. Green monsters and characters are always living things and subject to the weakness of living things, with the notable proviso that they tend to be rather powerful living things, and rather potently alive. Characters of the Green persuasion include Fertility Cultists, Mutants, Animal and Plant mutants, Shonen “I will grow stronger/survive!” Heroes, evil rabbits, pirahna monkeys, everything crawly and creepy that wants to eat you or lay eggs in you, and probably the Green itself is a character... of sorts...

Deep

The 'Bottomless Deep' is the sphere of endless murky depths, a place of water and darkness and cold, you can travel the deep for what seems like endless aeons and not encounter a thing. But there ARE things in there unique fishy things, one of a kind sea monsters, heartbreakingly pretty mermaids, sweet sad songed sirens, and various things with tentacles. It is unclear what the true nature of the Deep is, whether it is some sort of occupant or symptomatic sphere like the Green or a fundamental building block of reality, like the Mountain or the Sky. Certainly it seems to be a complimentary Sphere to the Green, providing a death for every life, a drain of energy for every burst of life, a murderous despair or revenge for every piece of bloodthirsty joy and glee. And the Deep and the Green commonly cohabit in mixed Sphere pockets, Coral Reef and Kelp Forest variants of the combined Deep/Green are common as are swamps and flooded jungles. The deep itself is full of despair, longing, obsession and death and it's creatures are representations and servants of those and similar themes. The Deep wears away at all things and touches all things, it is erosion and destruction, the endless void beyond awareness. Travelling through the Deep will rarely get you anywhere other than where you went in, or maybe somewhere in the same body of water, though occasionally more time than you might expect will have passed outside.

Powers of the Deep often deal with compulsion, obsession, revenge, destruction, erosion, cold, water, telepathy, despair and loneliness. Deep monsters are commonly unique lonely snowflakes or members of some unique mated pair or one of a kind matching collectable sets (often eternally separated and pining for each other, or plotting revenge on those that took their partners), the deep has murderous intent by dent of revenge, hate, sorrow and envy among many other rather less “green” urges, deep characters include mermaids, sirens, selkies, octopus and squid monsters, the fish who walks, and any number of sea monsters, fish men and drowned sailors.

[PhoneLobster]

Insanity And Corruption
OK so the spheres alone are a sort of potential insanity and corruption device. But maybe you ALSO want people to develop other forms of more traditional crazyness or something.

Well look no further, you can treat madnesses just like you treat rolls to resist the influence of the Spheres. So you can go ahead and give out your “Fear Of Cats” Attribute at 4 points and make a sucker roll against it every time they encounter Hello Kitty lunch boxes.

Creeping Insanity
Is a simple contextual resistance roll triggered by game events NOT insane enough for you? Do you feel that you NEED to have MORE?

Well now you can give your character “Creeping Insanity” points!

If ANY roll, ANY ROLL AT ALL has a net result (with bonuses attributes etc...) UNDER the threshold of Creeping Insanity the character is overcome by one (or more) of their listed Insanity and/or Sphere attributes and not only fails their current action, but INSTEAD goes off and attempts completely different (and usually very counter productive) actions more in keeping with their obsessions.

And it may well last a lot longer than the single action that triggers it, characters however should be given some chance to “recover” immediately, and perhaps from time to time after that, by succeeding in a resistance roll against the Insanity or Sphere that has possessed them.

Creeping Insanity IS A GIGANTIC BIG DEAL. It is a VERY painful long term effect, I mean SURE you could abuse all the bad luck it creates to farm Luck Points (and so you SHOULD) but really even 1-4 points of Creeping Insanity potentially will severely cripple a character (and probably anyone who stands too close to them).

Still it's an option that is “out there” if you happen to lack the attention span to keep on pulling out contextual triggers for sanity and sphere resistance checks. I mean sometimes there just aren't enough hello kitty pencil cases in the world.

Starting As Insane and Influenced By the Spheres
Starting attributes for Insanities and Spheres are... questionable things.

I mean if the starting party is Sarah Conner, Alice From Wonderland, The Sub Mariner and Tarzan then sure, you can and probably should have at least some starting points of Sphere Influences and maybe even insanities, you could give out from 1-4 points of Sphere Influence and maybe similar amounts of Insanity if you REALLY wanted to. Hell, you could throw down a 1-2 point creeping insanity on a Mad Hatter or something if you were a total dick.

But often you will want to start the game with “Bunch of Perfectly Normal Dudes” and you spent all your “Other” Attributes on somehow relatively mundane crap like “Olympic Gymnast”, “Computer Hacker”, and “Infamous Porn Starlet”, or just left them in “Reserve”. THEN you probably don't want to spend points in Sphere attributes or Insanity attributes.

You could give out Reserve points again, but actually it's probably best at this point to just set all those values to zero.

HOWEVER there is one thing you might want to do. IF you are going to use specific non-sphere based Insanity attributes, you can let the players pick Insanity attributes for their characters at character creation and set the value on that Insanity attribute to ZERO. Then if things happen to make them insane instead of having to think of one on the spot/randomly generate one/wait for the GM to screw them with the one choice they really don't want, they can just advance their zero to a number that will start meaning something.

Gaining Experience and Advancing Your Attributes
OK so sooner or later you will want to advance your characters, or at least change them. OK so you just navigated the Mountain successfully and arrived the day before yesterday, OK you might want to earn yourself a nice +1 Mountain point there.

And that's pretty much the sum total of advancement rules for this stupid little rules lite system.

When it is appropriate the GM can give out bonus points or entire new Attributes to characters.

Did you just accidentally get bathed in the blood of a rampant Green monstrosity? Right +1 Green for you.

Are we using specific non-sphere insanities and you just failed a sanity resistance check after seeing the horror beyond and behind all of normal reality? Right +1 Creeping Insanity or +1 Fear Of Cats for you.

You spent all week in a library studying every monster book you could find? OK gain a new attribute at 2 points called “Monsterology”.

You guys defeated the evil bad sorceress and her army of zombies and have a long term “life returns to normal” montage? Fine we should give out a few points of Attributes for everyone, where do you guys think you should put them based on your adventures or a down time training montage?

You can even let characters “cool down” Creeping Insanity, Non-Sphere Insanity, and maybe even Sphere attributes over time or thanks to treatment and remove points off those (and indeed any undesirable) attributes in a similar manner. (I used to be a were-axlotl but then I got better...)


Transforming Attributes and Characters
Transforming someone's character is... kinda bad GMing in a lot of ways. But 1) Horror games get special exemptions and 2) This is a throw away lite system so your characters are more justifiably disposable.

So sometimes when someone drinks from the disturbingly tainted wild milk and honey like “spring water” of the Green and falls over on a passing rabbit they transform into a hideous Rabbit-Ogre. Or you know, other routine everyday stuff like that. And when they do maybe rather than just give the a bunch of Green and some points in “Rabbit Monster” you might also want to TAKE some points from “Professional Ball Room Dancer” in the process and perhaps even shuffle some points from their Social and Intellect into Awareness and Toughness or something.

That's cool. I mean, you might want to be a bit cautious but sometimes rewriting the disposable character sheet is a good way of bringing the terror that is diabolical character transformation to your horror game.

[PhoneLobster]

COMBAT RULES!
So far about all we can do with all this is write some character sheets and make a few one off self contained action checks and the like.

But some more complex and opposed scenarios are going to be troubling for this very limited and vague rules set, so we will want at least SLIGHTLY more formalised and detailed rules, or at least guidelines for how to deal with complex simultaneous opposed action attempts, you know, like when everyone is trying to shoot each other and not get shot in return.

1) Number and Order Of Actions
Combat breaks into “Turns”. Each turn a character can perform one “Action” and one “Defence”. There is NO formal order to which actions are attempted and actions are considered to be “simultaneous” and with limited formalisation there will be the occasional conflict due to simultaneous actions but screw it, it's the easy “lite but cool” option and that's what these rules are about.

2) Attacking Some Sucker
OK so I want to shoot that guy over there? FINE. Since I'm shooting him with a gun it's a Guns attribute check. I could have stabbed him with a Knife for a Knives check or punched him with a ham fist for a Toughness check or cart wheel kicked him in the crotch for an Agility check or you know WHATEVER.

But what is the difficulty? Well the difficulty is the result of his Defence check this turn. What is his defence check? Why, it depends on what his defensive action IS this turn. Duck and weave? It's Agility. Is the monster just looking kick ass and bracing itself against all damage? Toughness (or it's “Bullet Proof Monster” Attribute). Are you relying on the fact you are actually a Tin Man from Oz to deflect the bullet? Fine it's a “Tin Man” attribute check. Are you just spraying bullets everywhere to lay down covering fire for yourself? Fine it's a Guns check.

3) Negating Some Suckers Attack
OK Luck points aren't enough for you? Betty the Time Girl just got shot up bad? You haven't acted this turn? It's all supposed to be simultaneous and you want to save her? FINE. You can spend your ACTION (not your defence which you still do if YOU get attacked) to roll an action to try and save her. Like shooting that guy before he shoots here, just laying down some covering fire, or leaping through the air to take the bullet or to push her aside. If your action result is higher than the attack you are trying to negate congratulations you cancelled their action!

4) The Quick And The Dead
As an extension of 3. You shoot character 1. Character 1 shoots you. YOU BOTH SUCCEED ON YOUR ATTACK ACTIONS AGAINST THE OPPONENTS DEFENCE.

In circumstances like this ignore the defence results, compare the attacks, highest result wins and shoots first, the other one is interrupted and loses their action, assuming the shooting result is something the character gives a damn about (see injury and attack effect rules).

If you tie, you BOTH succeed simultaneously. And you BOTH cop a bullet, cool hey?

5) The Results Of an Attack/Combat Action
Well so what does an attack DO? Well it does what you were trying to do (or better or worse with criticals and such). “But wait Jim” you say, not knowing my real name, “what if I'm trying to punch the guy for a KO or shoot him with a Rocket Launcher? I mean they have different values of results, surely, so is it REALLY OK for us to just let those rely largely on your Attributes and not on the value of the result?” The short answer is, well, it's kinda OK and most “normal human” characters should be potentially disabled by a single successful attack.

But on the other hand you can also deal with this to some degree with some small arbitrary circumstantial modifiers. “Disabling that sucker by shooting him” SHOULD be easier than “I Ice Cold Assassinate that sucker by shooting him directly through his eye!”. Shooting at someone just to distract them and provide cover fire SHOULD be easier than shooting at someone and trying to ACTUALLY kill them! So apply a penalty to the called shot on the eye, a bonus to the non-injury causing cover fire WHATEVER. That's totally fine.

6) Combat Actions That Don't Need A Roll
OK even in combat your action might be something that really doesn't NEED a roll, like “Dive behind the bullet proof dumpster”. In which case it can eat your action but not require you to roll to check if you succeed, unless someone tries to negate your action and turns it into a contest or something...

7) Combat Modifiers
OK just because it is combat does not mean the GM shouldn't be throwing around circumstantial modifiers and the players shouldn't be trying to negotiate to receive or reduce them. You dived behind a dumpster? Fine, have a +3 bonus to your defence against those guys trying to shoot you with guns. The monster you are shooting is specifically known to be proof against all bar elephant guns and you have a tiny pistol? Fine -4 to your Guns attacks on him. You are sword fighting from on top of a table? OK +1 to you. Etc... that's fine WHATEVER, we like this, it's involvement, it's what rules lite fairy tea party is FOR lets roll with it... you know, “like-yeah-dood” or whatever the cool kidz say..

8) Attacking Multiple Targets
OK fine, so maybe you have a big flame thrower and you want to spray like five guys. Easy. Circumstantial penalty compared to shooting just one guy, make your attack check, compare the one check to all those guy's individual defence checks. DONE. It isn't perfect, it is quick and REALLY dirty, but that's the name of the rules lite game.


Making Monsters Live Longer In Combat
In this sort of game sometimes we want monsters to be big fat assholes who pretty much romp across the universe destroying and being largely untouchable without significant casualties, co-ordinated plans and maybe even specific knowledge and equipment based on the monsters supa secret bullshit weaknesses.

But if the normal assumption for combat is that one successful attack is enough to pretty much alternatively KO or even KILL a character... well... that makes for any outnumbered one off monster to be pretty much SCREWED. And action negation will step in and make his life hell in a similar way too!

So maybe we need some beefing up for monsters here are some things...

1) Some monsters just don't give a shit about fists or bullets.
So you have a note on your monster like “Bullet Resistance 4” and it applies a +4 to all defence against all bullet based attacks (and maybe even against bullet based Defenses or negations etc...) Better yet, you put down “Immune to Bullets” now it doesn't CARE if you shoot it, yay you succeeded it doesn't do anything monster trudges on and you need to try a new plan.

2) Monsters can have piles of Luck Points
Give your monster a big bunch of luck points and spend them freely that will help him out of a sticky situation.

If you really need to make him immune or resistant to ENEMY luck points (if resistant then you give it a value and that is the new TOTAL cap on luck points that can be spent against Mr Monster on any action!).

3) Give Monsters big fat bullshit Defensive themed Attributes
Give your monsters stupid attributes like “Invulnerable Monolith Of Doom” and a fairly large number to go with it and then basically only use that Attribute for big fat defence checks all the time. Making it REALLY hard for players to hit them.

Making PCs Live Longer In General
OK so we actually kinda want a low mortality rate system, even though PCs CAN apparently cop it from a SINGLE GOD DAMN ACTION!

Well. What the hell do we do to fix THAT?

Well remember how those actions were generally vague. The answer is simple, the universe is a biased son of a bitch that hardly ever shoots to kill.

If you walk away from the gun fight with three guys removed from combat with shooting injuries, just pop down to the first aid supply store and BAM, on their feet, hell just look the other way for five minutes until your action movie attention span says they feel better if you have to.

Only the really MOSTEST BADDEST bad ass bad guys shoot to kill, and they probably cop fat nasty circumstantial modifiers for trying to shoot you through the damn eye.

Of course many monsters want to do horrible things to you, but you also get the benefits of several other things.
1) Other characters to save your ass with negate action attempts.
2) Don't forget your Luck Points!
3) Failure options other than outright death.

3 is the one that needs elaborating. Right. You just got KOed by the Three Armed Mutant Albino Atomic Ape Monster when it flung you across the room. It could
A) Eat you, game over.
B) Eat your arm, give you some luck points and then run away (or die) when someone conveniently interrupts it.
C) Wake up covered in Atomic Ape Drool an extra point of Green and a strange appetite for Atomic Bananas

Vaguely defined actions/attacks means you get to pick your damn attack results, so explore non-character ending defeat options.

It's more fun if Thelma survives the Ape attack and stays with the gang trying to solve the dilemma, and removing one of her arms and giving her an eye patch or the power to turn into an atomic she ape is just icing on the cake that is not having to write a new character and abandon all the story development invested in Thelma sticking around.

Injury Effects and Healing
OK so the game is vague as hell about what sort of injury an attack leaves you with. KOed by a fist attack? Shot with bullets? Are you dead? Do you need First Aid? Will you suffer circumstantial penalties? Will you get better? If your arm is ripped off are there ways to make it grow back?

The answer to all these questions and more is seriously “Wing It”. This is a rules lite fairy tea party system that means “shot with bullets until you stopped participating in that combat” means whatever the hell it needs to mean in terms of impact and recovery times. And if the guy who copped those bullets was a regenerating super Green werewolf then the impact of THAT on recovery times is... WHATEVER. I mean hell the monster SHOULD probably get better faster, but how much and why is basically just arbitrary crap.

Your character is the Barbie Doll who wished herself into being a real girl? She has a special Attribute in “I'm a Barbie Girl” or she just has really high Sky? Her arm gets ripped off, hell her HEAD gets ripped off, maybe it's not a problem. Maybe there isn't even a check, if there is a check, it's just a “I'm A Barbie Girl check” to pop the missing bit back on it's freaky plastic ball joint socket, or even to steal a missing bit off a regular barbie doll and “make it her own”, maybe she can just go walking around town with one arm and no head like one of those freaky half broken barbie dolls and maybe if she rolls well enough on Sky checks no-one even notices.

There really isn't a functional system of tracking healing or even really formally understanding what “injuries” mean in this system, just keep a list of “bad but funny stuff my character is suffering from” on your character sheet and negotiate with your GM for what that means and how to fix it. Remember to demand luck points every time he pulls your Barbie head off and makes you find a new one.

[PhoneLobster]

Other Conflicts – Social Combat
OK so sometimes you want to tell lies, learn secrets or make some guy your new best friend.

We can do this two ways.

1) Bullshit Arbitrary one off checks
This IS a bullshit fairy tea party rules lite system with arbitrary difficulties, and arbitrary modifiers, hell very nearly arbitrary Attributes, thrown around like magic fairy dust. Which means we are WELL within the territory that it is perfectly fine for the GM to just pull a number out of his ass for how hard it is to trick the guard into letting you past hist post. Make it an opposed check if you must.

2) Elaborate Social Combat
The regular combat “rules” are sufficiently broad and vague there is no reason we can't just use THOSE for any high stakes rolling social conflict. Instead of reading like a bunch of guys trading bullets you get things like.

(PC) Lillian The Seductress : I totally seduce the suspicious nerd with the History Of British Rail book and make him my luuuurrve slave. (Makes Sultry Seductress Attribute check, gets a 12)
(NPC) Mitch The Suspect Train spotter : I Defend with my general Social wiles (Makes Social Check, gets a 13, the attack failed)
(NPC) Mitch The Suspect Train spotter : I Counter Attack in the same turn by trying to bore her asleep talking about Train Spotting (Train Spotter check, gets a 7)
(PC) Lillian The Seductress : I Defend by letting my wardrobe malfunction so he trails off into dazed silence... (Sultry Seductress check gets a 4, the attack succeeded against her)
(PC) Lillian The Seductress : Zzzzzzzzz...
Player : If he does anything bad to Lillian while she is asleep, like drag her to his secret murder lair and dangle her chained and naked over a rabid monster alligator pit or something I expect to earn Luck points...
GM : No luck points for you, he goes home to watch a train documentary and the bar tender wakes Lillian up at closing time after an uneventful nap.
Player : Damn that Mitch, he is either not the Jack The Ripper Clone or he is a VERY TRICKYJack The Ripper Clone...

Social Combat and Real Combat, it's all Bullshit Rules Lite Combat
Hey you know what? Social combat and “real” combat use the same bullshit rules here. So we can totally have Lillian and Mitch duking it out with their knowledge of british rail and their boobie related expertise at the same time as several other guys are trying to shoot each other. Hell we can even have Lillian lose a few buttons on her blouse as an actual attempted defence against being shot.

It's all negotiated bullshit so it can all totally just get negotiated together! Say hi to some REALLY stupid, but hopefully entertaining, combat options coming your way!

Other Conflicts – Running Away and Chasing Things
Probably best to be treated as one off opposed checks using actions somewhat related to chasing or running away.

But if you want a long running comedy chase scene you can just go and use the regular combat “rules” and make all the attacks and defences chase related, maybe throw in some occasional obstacle attacks on all and sundry like “Bridge out, now everyone gets attacked by the lack of a bridge! It gets an 8! What are your defence actions?”

Other Conflicts – Being Sneaky
OK you want to sneak around? Barring cunning tricks and special skills it's basically Agility vs Awareness rolls. There, done.

But you MIGHT want to know how catching someone by surprise helps combat? Well, I don't have a good answer so give out a bullshit little circumstantial modifier if you like, my main plan is that if you are surprising some sucker with combat it must be on your damn terms already then mustn't it?

Other Conflicts – Beauty Pageants
Finally sometimes you might want to have a contest of success between a whole BUNCH of contestants.

Say hi to the beauty pageant, because with any luck that's about as common a circumstance as this sort of event will be.

Everyone is making an action to win the contest (doesn't have to be the SAME action, one guy is trying to bribe the judges, another has the Beauty Queen other attribute, another is using Alien Mind Control, and the last is just being really Social or something).

Who wins? Well, turn all applicable circumstantial modifiers into bonus or penalties to the relevant active party, roll and add up each participants results, and the highest result wins.

If you care for ranking the remaining results just go down from highest to lowest.

If people tie and for some reason a tie is not acceptable THE TYING PARTIES ONLY get a new action to decide between them (same action or negotiate a new one, whatever) to determine which one of them wins more than the other one does, but they retain their general position in the ranking with all the OTHER contestants in the initial contest.

There, now you can resolve beauty contests and five man dart's matches and stuff. Like we care.

[PhoneLobster]

What I might still like to add
Okay I still could use several things.

1) Maybe a bit of a biggish regular combat example
2) Maybe a few more bits of example text in general
3) Maybe a big list of ridiculous "Other" Attributes broken up into categories like "Normal Humans" and "Freaky Bastards of Various Themes"
4) Perhaps a whole fat Sample Adventure, maybe a conversion of my popular Teddy Bears Picnic adventure to the rules and setting.
5) Maybe even a full example run through of the sample adventure.
6) Some more setting fluff for my specific intended setting so all that Mountain and Deep and junk fleshes out a bit.
7) Time Nazis

Edit: 8) Character Sheet
9) Sample Characters
10) More Time Nazis

[Username17]

Players do NOT want to play the adventures of the doomed guy who dies and never finds out what was going on.

They WANT to play the adventures of SCOOBY FUCKING DO. Those adventures go like this.

1)Form rag tag Team of them damn kids and their damn dog.
2)Oh no a “Mystery!”
3)Run in circles waving arms
4)NOW you encounter the monster “Run Away!”
5)Get more serious about running in circles waving your arms maybe scream and giggle a bit
6)Defeat monster (switch with 7 if you want)
7)Solve Mystery (switch with 6 if you want)
8)Damn you guys and your damn dog.
9)The end

Note that that DOESN'T include “And before act one was even over we found Shaggy and Thelma dead naked and dismembered in the freezer, characters were rerolled and we got Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble joining the party until THEY got eaten by a Gru later in the mystery and we ALL got replaced by Josie the Pussy Cats...”

It ALSO does not include “We never found out WTF was going on”

It DEFINITELY doesn't include “We lose”

It DOES include comedy, zany antics, a bunch of stupid, and your damn dog.

I don't know if it is possible to give meaningful responses to a rules-lite game. I personally don't like d10s aesthetically, for example, but I'm not sure that really means anything in this context. But the above is absolutely 100% true. People want to play Scooby Doo in all humans vs. supernatural situations and they are frustrated and annoyed when it doesn't turn out like Scooby Doo.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Isn't 6 the TN for a coin flip on a d10?

Sorry, I just wanted to ignore everything else and focus on that one insignificant issue.

[PhoneLobster]

True, I mean what with equal being success and all, which I totally went with.

But you know, close enough, it's an easy if stupid mistake and doesn't actually alter the point of the comment regarding the 5s (which should have been 6s).

I'll blame it on rounding errors from 5.5 and the inability to reliably count ever since I learned programming and started getting confused over whether I should start counting at zero or not.

[Koumei]

People want to play Scooby Doo in all humans vs. supernatural situations and they are frustrated and annoyed when it doesn't turn out like Scooby Doo.

Very much this. Now, they might say or even think they want Call of Cthulhu (which can be played two ways: enjoyably as a game, or faithful to the source material. These are mutually exclusive) or Ring or whatever, but what they actually want is Scooby Doo.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I'll blame it on rounding errors from 5.5 and the inability to reliably count ever since I learned programming and started getting confused over whether I should start counting at zero or not.

In that case, just consider it 1d9. Good thing you chose the only die that has 0 on it.

[PhoneLobster]

I won't convert to 1d9, as that is silly, but due to that coincidence now I am blaming a convergence of insanity, terrible destiny and the evil forces of synchronicity for the original error, as that is clearly not silly.

Edit: On second thoughts 1d9 is probably the most evil of polyhedral dice even more so than the insidious 1d24, and probably at least rivaling the vile 1d5.

But still, I'm not using a 1d9.

[For Valor]

Dangerous Failure sounds.... kinda dumb.

"I'm going to make a divine inspiration check to see if I can defeat God?"
"Alright, you fail my infinity"
"That's a dangerous failure. Do I kill an apostle by accident?"

So I think a dangerous failure should just be extra dangerous for you, in that binary sort of way that you described. This could be my inherent bias against turning failures into successes because I'm an asshole, but I dislike the idea of someone failing by 5 and just SUCKING HARD, but failing by 10 and doing better, indirectly.

On another tangent, players should be allowed to take a penalty to their checks when they make them (self-induced) equal to or less than their attribute. This must be declared before the d10 is rolled. Just to introduce the fact that "you can screw up on purpose if you want", and to help people avoid dangerous successes as a result of being just too badass. Of course, this would be abused if you don't change the "dangerous failure" clause.

Also, could I make a "regeneration" check for d10+attr+mods as a check to see if I heal myself?

[Vebyast]

I actually kind of like the dangerous failure and dangerous success rules. Two reasons:

1) They make optional bonuses and penalties much, much more powerful, thereby opening player options. If you decide that you don't want to risk hitting yourself with a burning helicopter, you drop in a ton of power attack to make sure you succeed by just a little bit. I haven't tested this, but it could make the game more fun. Of course, it could also lead to player numbercrunching and option paralysis, which is why I say it needs testing.
2) The Dangerous Failure rules make playing Inspector Clouseau possible. That's awesome. I think that I'm going to spend this weekend putting together the shittiest character I can with the express goal of getting a Dangerous Failure on every single roll.

[PhoneLobster]

Dangerous Failure sounds.... kinda dumb.

It kinda is. I should really fix that. Not sure if I will though.

"I'm going to make a divine inspiration check to see if I can defeat God?"
"Alright, you fail my infinity"

Guidelines in the rules already imply there are some things you just can't do, so you don't get to roll against infinity, you just can't do whatever it is that infinity doesn't want you to do.

"That's a dangerous failure. Do I kill an apostle by accident?"

More accurately the result should go a bit like this.

Less than difficulty = Failed to defeat god
5 Less = Failed to defeat god and earned his wrath
10 Less = Failed to defeat god, earned MORE of his wrath, but his wrathing also killed that guy sneaking up behind you with an axe. No guy sneaking up behind you and/or equivalent available target? Too bad all you got was the "more wrath"

On another tangent, players should be allowed to take a penalty to their checks when they make them (self-induced) equal to or less than their attribute.

I shall run with a "No" on that one.

Players don't get to try and avoid a dangerous success like that, if the roll is really THAT easy then either
A) The GM should stop being a dick and just let them do it without a roll
or B) The roll is being specifically applied for the dangerous success so giving them a mechanic to avert that is sorta counter productive.

Also remember players ALREADY have a mechanic to help control this sort of thing with the Luck Points business. Luck Points that if already spent will actually regenerate if something bad happens because of a Dangerous Success/Failure.

Finally remember that there is a proviso in the critical and dangerous success/failure mechanics that if you can't think of a good enough "special" result then too bad, no special result. So pretty much definitionally the degree of success/failure mechanics are SUPPOSED to turn themselves off when they would be stupid or annoying. But still, "supposed to" is a long way from working right.

And I think there are definite problems with the degree of success failure mechanic in the system as it stands.

Here is the main thing I thinks need fixing/clarifying right now.

Degree of Success in complex combat is annoying bullshit!
OK so the degree of success/failure mechanics are totally no problem when rolling against some difficulty or other, even a one off opposed rolls are sorta OK.

But in a complex multi party combat similar to the combat guidelines/rules proposed the degree of success stuff is potentially five kinds of bullshit.

I mean If I just shoot a guy and he fails his defense, well we can do degree of success easily.

Quick And The Dead vs Degree of Success
But he is ALSO shooting me, and then there is the Quick And The Dead tie breaker that might kick in... So when that happens use original degree of success vs his defense to determine degree of success, the quick and the dead tie breaker business is just to determine which of you succeeds first (and thus at all).

Actions Canceling Actions vs Degree of Success
OK so we said that if Mook 1 shoots Sally then Tommy can take an action to try and protect Sally. This is... problematic. We kinda want Tommy's action to influence degree of Success, because that is indeed part of the whole point. So I'm afraid that actions canceling actions MUST influence degree of success and effectively substitute a new Difficulty for the canceled action to measure it's degree of success from. Note that an action canceling an action will only substitute as the Difficulty if the result is HIGHER than the initial difficulty/defense.

Multiple Targets and Degree Of Success
OK this one is really hard. We know the mechanic for spraying 3 guys with automatic bullet fire is Roll+Attribute+penalty for shooting three guys vs each target's defense individually. And that crazy crap could trigger multiple critical successes or failures, hell it could trigger BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.

So now the official rule is this. When targetting multiple dudes at once you measure only your WORST degree of success for "additional success effects", so if you spray five guys with bullets and 2 misses, 2 hits and 1 critical success.. that just counts as 3 hits. So you CAN critically succeed vs multiple targets, but it is harder.

And if you fail vs ALL targets you use your WORST degree of failure so it is sorta hard to trigger critical failure at all vs multiple targets, but when you do it will be pretty damn bad.

This ultimately encourages you to sometimes shoot at just one guy or "just the helicopter I don't care if the guys jump out and survive" with automatic weapons and rocket launchers, hoping for the easier single target critical success to give you extra targets/effects. And this is probably good because it prevents the GM from constantly generating "Multi Target" circumstantial modifiers for you.

Also This all brings up one or two other combat rules circumstances I would like to clarify.

Defenses and multiple attackers
SO you perform a defense action for a round like "Acrobatic Cartwheels" and get a 8. Should you reroll it vs each attacker. The answer hearby is NO. It stands for all attacks for the turn. Why not, whatever. If an attack is somehow so dramatically different that you must pick a different type of defense entirely THEN and only then do you pick and roll a new defense action, and even then I would rather just let you use Cartwheels to defend against social attacks and psychic mind control and maybe just give them a Circumstantial bonus against you while you insist on Cartwheeling, because frankly it's quicker and easier.

Luck Points, Defenses and multiple attackers
So if your same defense check stands vs all attacks against you each round... what about if you suddenly need to spend Luck Points to enhance it against something annoying like the third out of 5 guys to shoot you this turn?

Fine, if you enhance your defense with Luck Points the bonus sticks to you for the rest of the turn, effectively raising your Defense against everyone all turn! More survivability. Yay!

Actions canceling actions, Defenses, and multiple attackers
Similarly if Tommy steps in front of Sally to save her low defense ass for her then whatever he substituted with his action can be used as her defense against everything for the rest of the turn (If Tommy wants it to, he can decide to make Sally fall back to her own defense on an attack by attack basis if he insists).

Also, could I make a "regeneration" check for d10+attr+mods as a check to see if I heal myself?

Of course. Bonus healing results if the Attribute used is "Mad Doctor", "Mad Nurse", "Wolverine", "Green" or maybe even "Toughness".

So there we go that was nice, some guidelines, clarifications and new rules, nice and meaty.

[Judging__Eagle]

"I'm going to make a divine inspiration check to see if I can defeat God?"
"Alright, you fail by infinity"
"That's a dangerous failure. Do I kill an apostle by accident?"

"I'm going to make an Atheism check to see if my character can defeat God"
"Alright, roll your Atheism check"
[rolls] "Alright they got one success"
"They, personally, don't believe in God"

Is probably more accurate. You can't really have opposed checks against things you can't face, can you?

"I got a bunch of successes thanks to my Dawkinism and Atheism skills; I disbelieve in God."
"Dieties get [arbitrarily] large dice pools; you lose by 10 b/c your opponent is a major multi-national diety [5 successes for major in one nation; 10 if counted as major multinationaly] and you were making the check on your own on the spot. You just pulled off some high end blasphemy that the target heard."

Even if you fail by 10+, a result would be

"So... I accidentally God's minion? or minions"
"No, you accidentally Opus Dei is sending hitmen after you yesterday"


In any case, I really enjoyed reading this Phonelobster.

[PhoneLobster]

I actually kind of like the dangerous failure and dangerous success rules. Two reasons:

In both your examples remember this.

Luck Points are spent to modify rolls AFTER seeing the results. And can be spent to modify the result in either direction.

Thus making the whole tone down the helicopter crash and go for the backfire beneficial failure options somewhat easier since you don't have to invest for them before discovering the result of the random element in the check.

Luck points BEFORE rolling would indeed be option paralysis, and will end up sitting there on character sheets not being spent. Luck Points AFTER rolling are much more simple choices because they are choices with known outcomes.

Finally if you really want to be Inspector Gadget or Agent Smart you could just do it with SUCCESSFUL actions buy having points in an Attribute like "Bumbling Detective" or "Lucky Idiot".

[Vebyast]

Luck points BEFORE rolling would indeed be option paralysis, and will end up sitting there on character sheets not being spent. Luck Points AFTER rolling are much more simple choices because they are choices with known outcomes.

Yes, that's true. I was mostly thinking about characters with really, really high skill bonuses. A guy with insanely high lockpicking, for example, shouldn't have to worry about a dangerous success every time he picks the lock on a kitchen closet to grab a bagel. I realize that that's why you have a suggestion for giving characters automatic successes, but it might be worth thinking about (I wouldn't know; it's right before bedtime for me).

Finally if you really want to be Inspector Gadget or Agent Smart you could just do it with SUCCESSFUL actions buy having points in an Attribute like "Bumbling Detective" or "Lucky Idiot".

True. On the other hand, constantly failing so hard that you actually succeed is much more fun.

[PhoneLobster]

An Excessively Extended Combat Example
Players -
The player characters are members of the Nestcliff Village Town Improvement committee, a committee tasked with saving the small town's ailing economy. The committee includes -
Walter Wagon – Former used car salesman, given a job on the committee to represent the towns few surviving business interests and because the other business men were afraid he was going to shoot himself with that hunting rifle he carries everywhere if they didn't give him something to do. He is the committee chairman. He plans to shoot things and lie.
Lady Quiltington – Some sort of titled land holder, and a neo-pagan fertility goddess worshipper with a few points of Green. She got a job on the committee because everyone in town knows she is a witch and if we can learn one thing from fairytales it is that you ALWAYS INVITE THE WITCH (they get really snarky if they feel left out). She plans to tap into the mighty powers of the mother goddess, and maybe show some cleavage if that doesn't work.
Jacob Two Uzis – Jacob is a crack pot gun nut. He aggressively volunteered his way onto the committee in order to push his idea of turning the entire town into a “Guns and Explosions Theme Park”. He plans to shoot things with two uzis, or make things explode with his supply of Hollywood pyrotechnic explosives.
Mindy Four Legs – A mutant high school cheerleader with abnormally large hips and four long athletic legs. Athletic, intelligent, cheerful, and rumoured to be negotiating a contract for a reality TV show focusing on her “struggle” with her medically unique and for the most part not altogether inconvenient abnormality. She is on the committee because she is the town's biggest tourist attraction. She plans to jump around and kick things.

Bad Guys-
Only moments after the Nestcliff Village Town Improvement committee thought they had found the makings of a perfect tourist attraction in the ruins of the old Flightless Cave Gull Harvesting Factory they are attacked by mysterious men in dark suits, and they have guns! Little do they know these men are all mere zombie puppets controlled by brain eating octopuses that serve the Deep. The mission of the Octopus zombie men? Explode and erode the cliffs below Nestcliff village and cause the entire town and it's rocky peninsula to collapse into the sea, thus extending the domain of the terrible Deep!

Location -
Over the time period of about 1870 to 1930 Nestcliff was overtaken by a mildly mysterious and widely forgotten industry centred around harvesting the eggs of the Frenton's Oily Flightless Cave Gull, a now very endangered species found exclusively among the dangerous and inaccessible dark cold jagged rock sea caves far below the village. To access those caves the harvesters carved an underground facility directly into the rock beneath the village. When the committee stumbles across Octopus Zombies stacking boxes of explosives it is in a large round room carved into the stone. It is strangely stepped like an ampitheatre and to one side there are large stacks of crates, one stack is labelled as dangerous high explosives. The exits are the stlippery worn stone stairway the party climbed down, an cave like opening about 15 m wide and 3m tall out onto the open cliff side (rusty crumbling safety railing) and a pit at the low point in the centre of the slippery stone amphitheatre with a giant rusty iron bucket “elevator” attached to some sort of rusty chain and winch thingy (no safety railing around the deep dank shaft at all). Five Octopus Zombie Men are over there near the crates, one is near the window looking out to sea, the town improvement committee are all clustered around the entry from the stairs above.

Tactical Note -
Note the players in this example use some TERRIBLE decision making and builds and such, but manage to demonstrate a bunch of things as a result. And anyway, rules lite players do crazy stupid shit all the time.

Turn 1 -

Octopus Man 1 (near boxes) – One mysterious man pulls a hand gun and shoots right at Mindy Four Legs, intending to put one right through her heart, assuming it's in the usual place. (Attack Action, Guns skill 1, called shot penalty -2, Net roll+mods of 4)
Mindy Four Legs – Eeep! Mindy does the four way splits to dodge the bullet. (Defence, Agility 4, Net roll+mods of 9, Bullet misses, by 5, attacker critically fails, gun jams)
Octopus Man 2 (near boxes) – the guy next to the first mystery guy also pulls an identical gun and also tries to shoot Mindy, a little less discriminately (Attack action, Guns Skill 1, no called shot, Net roll+mods of 10, this exceeds Mindy's defence (already rolled) and hits her)
Mindy Four Legs – Mindy spends 2 Luck points to increase her defence result for the turn, (making that attack a miss and raising her defence to 11 for the turn)
Octopus Man 3 (near Boxes) – Seeing the four legged girl doing the four legged splits and dodging bullets like a bending willow the next mysterious gun man fires at Jacob Two Uzis. (Attack Action, Guns Skill 1, Net roll+mods, 2)
Jacob 2 Uzis – I open fire wildly on all of them to provide myself with cover. (Defence action, Guns 3, Net Roll+mods=8, attacker fails by 6, critical failure, attacker not only misses but is hit by the cover fire he was attacking against and goes down with a few bullets in him)
Jacob 2 Uzis – Enough of this waiting to resolve their actions! I Open fire with my other Uzi and spray three suckers with bullets! (Attack Action, Guns Skill 3, Multiple target penalty -6, Net result a whopping 6)
Three Octopus Men (1, 2, and 4) – They all just try and dodge behind a crate marked “Bullet Proof Pillows” (three Defence actions, all at Agility 1 with a Circumstantial cover bonus of 2, they get net results of 3, 6, and 9, Jacob mows down two and the other survives, the survivor happens to be Octopus man 2, who has already acted, there was no critical success because it was a group attack and the worst margin of success was a failure).
Octopus Man 4 (near Boxes, human body dying to Jacobs Fire) – While mysterious Man 4 is going down to bullet fire one of his eye balls pops out and an alarmingly large slimy octopus catapults across the room in Jacobs Direction (Attack Action, “Brain Eating Octopus” Attribute 3, Net result 9, compares to Jacobs existing 8 defence, and hits him, Octopus is grappling Jacob around the neck trying to eat his eyes)
Jacob 2 Uzis – AAAAAH BRAIN OCTOPUS IT HAS MY NECK!
Walter Wagon – Don't worry I have it... hehehehe, I shoot it with my hunting rifle at point blank range (Attack Action, Guns 0, Circumstantial penalty -1 for Dodgy antique rifle and another -2 because Walter is a sadistic bastard who hates Jacob and his amusement Guns and Explosives park plans, Net result 0, vs Octopus' existing 6, critical failure, shoots Jacob in the neck)
Jacob 2 Uzis – AAAAAAAH MY NECK! (falls unconscious, gains 2 Luck Points)
Octopus Man 5 – Spends his action messing with a box marked “Danger High Explosives”. (Mysterious miscelaneous action, no roll).
Lady Quiltington – Er... I use my mighty power as a new age Fertility Goddess to um... defeat them.
GM – Wait, what are you going to do? Be Fertile at them?
Lady Quiltington – Damn straight, and I might even Bless their crops if they don't start learning to behave.
GM – OK so maybe you try and exude Motherly Love and to make all the bad little boys just try and get along? And maybe you target Octopus man 6 by the window.
Lady Quiltington – Sounds great, will taking my top off help?
GM - No
Lady Quiltington – Well I do and I throw it at him just in case that makes it help. (Attack Action, Green 2, GM relents and gives a +1 Circumstantial modifier for blouse throwing, net result 10)
Octopus Man 6 – Resists with his dark powers (Defense action, Deep 2, Circumstantial bonus of +2 for staring at the sea, Net result 6, Lady Quiltington's attack is succeeding.)
Octopus Man 6 – However Even as your powers overwhelm his inner child he tries to draw his gun and shoot you. (Attack Action, Guns 1, Net result 6)
Lady Quiltington – MORE MOTHERLY LOVE, also I breath in deeply and puff my bare chest out, do I get a circumstan...(Defense Action, Green 2, NO Circumstantial bonus, Result 5)
GM – (Octopus 6's attack succeeds AND Lady Quiltingtons succeeded, but her result was higher so she succeeds first with the Quick and the Dead mechanic and negates the shooting success) Octopus man 6 lowers his gun stumbles across the room to fall to his knees before Lady Quiltington, while he does so Octopus tentacles wave wildly out his ear holes trying to regain control of a rebellious human host.
GM – Right has anyone not acted yet?
Mindy Four Legs – Er, all I did was do defensive four way splits. For my action I run Mindy across the room and jump into the big hopefully bullet proof iron bucket. Oh and I pull out my sling shot for later. (The ground is uneven, slippery, and there is a jump and there is no safety railing on the shaft she is running right at, It is a declared a difficulty 5 action, She has Agility 4 and gets a result of 10)
GM – Not only do you leap effortlessly into the giant two man sized iron bucket thingy you also find a rusty but servicable Hooked Gulling Knife in there.
Mindy Four Legs – I take it for later.

Turn 2 -

Octopus Men 1, and 3 – Are already dead.
Octopus Man 2 -, panics and runs for the cave opening, then cliff dives into the sea! He is never seen again. (Surviving the dive is probably an action, but we don't care about the result so it's not rolled)
Jacob 2 Uzis – Would have been grappling an octopus around his neck, but got shot by Walter so he is out of the fight.
Octopus Man 4 – Lost his host body and is stuck to Jacobs bleeding neck, seems somewhat slow and helpless out in the open air and plays dead (Bullshit Social Action From Nowhere vs everyone, Social 1, targets everyone but is not a fatal attack so it's modifiers even out to nothing, Result 9, everyone is asked to roll Awareness, they all fail)
GM – Lady Quiltington should roll a resistance roll against Green+2 for being a girl gone Wild last turn, wild with spooky magic!
Lady Quiltington – (Resistance roll, 1d10+0 vs Green(2)+2modifier, gets a 5 vs 4, doesn't go more wild), Lady Quiltington goes “Oh Phooey”.
Lady Quiltington – Well, I guess I'm gonna have to use even more magic, I use my healing Witches Spit power to purge this poor sick child of his parasite, I hock a big juicy loogy into his tentacle filled ear hole (Attack Action, “Witches Spit” Other ability of 4, gets a 10)
Octopus Man 6 – Resists with his Octopus Powers (Defence, “Brain Eating Octopus” Attribute 3, Net result 5, failing by a large margin)
Octopus Man 6 – Fights back trying to crawl into Lady Quiltington's open mouth, (Attack action, going for the Quick and the dead again, “Brain Eating Octopus” Attribute 3, Net result 10!)
Lady Quiltington – EEEP! But not before that damn octopus gets past my magical drool! (Defense, Witches Spit 4, Result 6, not quite enough Luck points to save herself, no one else volunteers)
GM – (Both Lady Quiltington and Octopus 6 succeeded against each others defences, their attacks when compared are equal and BOTH ATTACKS SUCCEED. However lady Quiltington's attack was a Critical Success and not only heals the host body but revives it to full strength marginally under her magical control.) The brainless host body stumbles to it's feet and roars with joy, but meanwhile a large slimy octopus crawls into your mouth and starts eating it's way into your brain case.
Lady Quiltington – Mfmememfmfmfphtrft!
Walter Wagon – Time for me to spring into action I shoot the Octopus man messing with Explosives (Attack action, Guns 0, Circumstantial antique rifle penalty -1, Net result 3)
Octopus Man 5 – Ducks slightly (Defence action Agility 1, Net Result 9, Walter misses critically, his gun explodes, burning his hands but not disabling him).
Walter Wagon – NOOOO! Not Rhiana My Precious Rifle!!! (gains 1 Luck Point)
Mindy 4 Legs – I peek out of the iron bucket and throw that funny old knife thing at Octopus man 5. (Attack Action, Knives 0, Result 7, She adds 2 Luck points for a bare success vs octopus 5's existing defence, knocking out Octopus 5 with a machete in his head).
Octopus 5 – As he goes down his action is to try and activate the detonator he just hooked up to a box of explosives last turn. (Miscellaneous action that might be prevented by Mindy's already successful attack, but it isn't an attack against anyone so it gets a circumstantial bonus of 3 on top of it's Explosives 1 check, Result 12, the detonator is beeping!)

Turn 3-

Octopus Man 1,2,3 and 5 are dead.
Octopus Man 4 - tries his play dead trick again but gets a 2, and everyone sees through him, except Mindy who has an Awareness of zero, rolls a one and gets an Iron Bucket penalty of -2 for a net -1.
GM – Lady Quiltington dabbled with diabolical Green Magic again far too successfully last turn, Green Resistance +2 again...
Lady Quiltington – Oh Phoey, passed again! (Green(2)+2, rolled a 1)
Walter Wagon – Hey, you know that detonator, can I see the count down from here? (Free bullshit Awareness check, Awareness 4, Difficulty 6, result 8)
GM – Yes, the counter is at 1 second remaining meaning it will blow up next turn. Good thing you have Explosives 2 and might be able to disarm it (Difficulty 6, Circumstantial modifier -2 from burnt hands)!
Walter Wagon – Screw that I run up the stairs screaming and blowing on my fiery hands. (No roll action, automatically succeeds).
Octopus 6 - Is inside Lady Quiltington's head and goes right for her Brain, (Attack Action, “Brain Eating Octopus” Attribute 3, Net result 6)
Lady Quiltington – I Oppose it with raw Green magic, so that I can finally fail that Green resistance roll next turn! (Defence, Green 2, Result 7, Octopus fails!)
Lady Quiltington – And then I eject it with my magical healing spittle! (Attack Action, Witches Spit 4, Result 7)
Octopus 6 - holds on for dear life (Defense, “Brain Eating Octopus” Attribute 3, Net result 9, attack fails against it, it stays inside her head but not yet in charge)
Lady Quiltington – I get that dumb brainless brute I healed last turn to rip my head off with his savage animal strength and throw it and the octopus into the sea!
GM – What is your plan to survive this genius strategic move?
Lady Quiltington – I plan to fail my god damn green check, go berserk, grow a newer younger prettier head and increase in magical power. (Uses Octopus 6's former host body, Toughness 2, Result 6 compared to her existing defence of 7, she spends 2 Luck points to lower the result so the former host succeeds)
GM – You realise that lowers your defence for the whole turn and the octopus retroactively ate your brain with it's original attack?
Lady Quiltington – And I hope it enjoys full control over my useless old head while it sails into the sea and I grow a much much new shiny one. (She also earns 3 Luck points for losing a perfectly good head, even if she DID stupidly do it on purpose).
Mindy – I try not to pay attention to the gory terror going on with Lady Quiltington and instead try and shoot the detonator off the explosives using a rock from my sling shot (Misc Action, Difficulty 10, Sling Shots 1, Result 9, close but Mindy is out of Luck points! So it fails)
Mindy Four Legs – Uh oh, good thing I'm in a heavy iron bomb shelter.
Walter Wagon – Good thing I'm not there.
Lady Quiltington – Good thing I'm about to fail my green check and outheal even the explosion!
Jacob 2 Uzis – Is anybody even going to drag me out of here? And where did that neck octopus go...

Turn 4 -

GM – BOOM!
GM – Walter who is already KOed so we don't need to bother rolling survives the blast by being on prone and far away and luck of the unconscious or something, but he does get dusty and more beaten up and no one knows if the octopus around his neck crawled inside or got splatted by the explosion.
GM – Lady Quiltington rolls a Green resistance check +2 for magic use, +4 for not having a head (She checks vs a 8, and rolls a god damn 10, she spends 2 Luck points to fail it)
Lady Quiltington – Yay! I failed and give in to bestial urges or something.
GM – You do that while growing a new head, gaining +1 Green, roll to see if you can outheal the big explosion (Witches Spit 4 vs Difficulty 12, result 8, failed) and you fall unconscious in the blast while giggling with a half formed mouth and tearing at your remaining clothing.
GM – Quiltington's mindless new friend, Octopus 6's former host body rolls a green resistance check as well, fails, gains more Green and slips a little out of her control, he then rolls Green vs explosion to stay standing and Succeeds!
GM – Mindy is saft in her iron bucket, but the rusty chain holding it up isn't, it snaps and Mindy and the Bucket plummet into the Inky Black!
Mindy Four Legs – EEP! I leap out of the bucket!
GM – There's explosion out there!
Mindy Four Legs – Into the shaft above the bucket as it falls then, where I four legged splits again and hold onto the walls with my many mighty feet. (Agility Check Difficulty 14, Agility 4, rolls a net result of 12)
Mindy – Uh oh, I'm all out of Luck Points...
GM – Even with the four platform high heel shoes you insisted on buying earlier today you barely brush the slippery wet artificial sea cave walls with your four tippy toes, you plummet into the darkness close behind the bucket, you splash into icy water in a inky blackness with not a scrap of light, gain 2 Luck Points as you hear the racket of strange Shrill Squaking as a flock of threatening sounding Rare Flightless Cave Gulls are alarmed by the disturbances.

Aftermath
Walter Wagon puts out his burning hands in a bucket of water somewhere outside even as dust and explosion debris flies out of the entrance to the old stone stairway. Moments later Former Octopus Host 6 stumbles out dragging the bodies of Jacob and Lady Quiltington with him.

Walter (and everyone) will probably suspect that Jacob has been taken over by the missing Octopus 4. But Walter and Jacob never saw what Lady Quiltington did with her old head and will just wonder why her face looks a bit younger, prettier and much more wild eyed and dangerous.

Lady Quiltington's flirtations with death and Green magic have made her stronger, but also stranger and more dangerous, her new little buddy is strong enough to tear peoples heads off with his bare hands and is ALREADY starting to slip from whatever limited leash of control she has over him, assuming a guy who tears your head off was ever under your control in the first place.

Only Mindy saw what happened with Quiltington's head, but she is trapped blind in the dark, drenched, icy cold, dazed and on an oily Guano Beach being menaced by unseen and probably meat eating endangered flightless gulls.

The Octopus Zombies may or may not have been stopped, are there more explosives around town, was that blast enough to destabilise even part of the cliffs? (the ones right above where Mindy is now trapped) and what WILL Octopus 6 who was thrown into the SEA be doing, and will it be able to put Lady Quiltington's former head to any real use? Will there shortly be a rival slightly older looking Lady Quiltington in town wearing a neck scarf and trying to buy explosives and turn people against the Town Improvement committee? Etc...

So Is this Example about right?
It seems to do pretty much what I want it to, I'm still not sure that going with opposed rolls was the right idea, but it doesn't look TOO bad.

Was that clusterfuck story you told too zany?
Hell no. And notice, all the characters got out alive and only ended up in a more exciting position. The worst one off lost his gun (but was also the guy to contribute the least) and the best one off did lots of exciting zany stuff for our entertainment and got a Green point a prettier face and a monster side kick that will inevitably turn against her out of it. Even if one (or maybe two) of the characters died they got better or otherwise stuck around. And all in all the encounter was far worse off for the enemies and over all “winny” for the party, at least by Zany Horror standards.

EDIT: a little extra after notes...
Are your players really like that?
Sometimes, and really letting players go wild and do "bad wrong" things that would kill a more organized game is part of what a rules lite one off romp is about. We let Walter shoot Jacob in the neck and leave everyone for dead because who cares, this is like a one, maybe two game adventure that may or may not ever continue. In the mean time, it was good for laughs.

Where does this fit in the Scooby Doo adventure Arc
This encounter is pretty much the "Encounter Monster" bit. They "won" pretty well but also scattered and set up nicely for another long phase of waving arms before ultimately driving the Octopus men out of town for good. Presumably THAT is achieved by means of one or more OTHER encounters, and a lot of running around screaming and waving their arms while the local endangered Cave Gulls chase them in circles.

[PhoneLobster]

Well.

I've run this guy twice now and it basically does what it is supposed to, and seems to do it pretty well. People did things, people ran around with arms waving, people where horribly corrupted by hideous alien forces, people pulled the rubber mask off the monster in the end and shot the American Secret Army Base commander with an RPG and that propelled him into a underground car park full of burning jet fuel before exploding.

Which is all rather unsurprising since for this system "what it is supposed to do" is actually pretty damn simple.

So anyway I think I should point out, while you can cut down on the word count somewhat in general the mechanics of rules lite systems should look rather a lot like the ones here. Simple, direct and with some discussion of player/gm negotiation, difficulty guidelines and general usage.

[For Valor]

I'm using this for a solo game I'm playing with a guy during out math class when we finish up our learning (which happens at least twice a week). So far, it's going good. I got rid of the "magic" concept, and just went with Tool use: Aircraft (Int) and Yo' Mamma Jokes (Soc), and Other: Lazers (Int) and Holy Magic (Tgh).

I haven't used luck points yet, as I've forgotten all about them. And I don't like the base stats as they are... kinda want to change them to something more comprehensive. But I dunno yet. I might just be stupid.

Anyways, will provide feedback and "LOL RETARDED" comments about stuff if it comes up. Right now, I've just gotta say that, from character creation, a maxed offensive skill with a full stat has +8, versus your average NPC's power of about 2 (1 for average stat; 1 for average tool use rank. The range for this is probably best at around 1-4). At minimum, that's a solid 40% advantage. At maximum, it's 70%. Honestly, that's AT LEAST a critical success almost every time. The balance disparity just seems pretty big.

[PhoneLobster]

I got rid of the "magic" concept

Perfectly understandable. That's effectively setting specific and I haven't even provided the damn setting, so why on earth would you use it? There were very specifically mentions of not using it or substituting something different for good reason.

I haven't used luck points yet, as I've forgotten all about them.

OK so personally I hate action point mechanics in most systems. But I feel that in rules lite games some sort of moderately finite "I say that at this important moment it goes this way!" resource is a pretty good thing. It's a way of saying "Players have this many points of "nuh ah!" vs the GMs arbitrary difficulty ratings ruling over their sorry asses". Which is nice.

So I strongly suggest you use luck points, or SOMETHING like them.

Now Luck Points in this particular case were very specifically designed for horrible horror in that they refreshed from bad things happening to you and while that could work in ANY game where you wanted to reward bad luck with better luck later... if you aren't going for horrific horror you might want some different refresh mechanics.

Also the presented rules didn't have much support for longer ongoing games but in "the continued adventures of..." you might want to throw some extra luck points at people in multiple sessions or adventures beyond the standard refreshing mechanic.

And I don't like the base stats as they are... kinda want to change them to something more comprehensive. But I dunno yet. I might just be stupid.

No, really, you aren't stupid, it is in fact those base stats ARE stupid. And arbitrary. And really they could be just about ANYTHING else and be as good or better so go ahead and write a new set.

The important thing to take from this rule set isn't stuff like the specific ability names, it's stuff like the transparent and simple manner in which actions resolve and the GM can set difficulties. And other important stuff like realizing that even a VERY simple resolution mechanic will need some exceptions and additional rulings to handle complex cases like competitive actions and complex combat.

If you say, took this system. Changed all the base attributes to new names. Picked a new base dice like a 1d12 or 1d8 or 1d16 for the roll mechanic. Messed with a luck point substitute. Removed or replaced the magic/corruption mechanics. Renamed Tool Attributes and rolled them into Other attributes, or just had ONE big list of attributes that even included base attributes and just added named crap from there...

Well, you would have a different system, your own in fact, but as long as you had simple RNG, the basic concepts about difficulties and action resolution, and basic philosophy of this mess then you will have an actual functional and rather similar rules lite game.

Most rules lite games end up looking pretty much similar eventually and always have. The trick is to just avoid those few pit falls that they do risk falling into, like stupid incomprehensible RNG mechanics that remove the basic benefit of being rules lite in the first place or a lack of the simplest formalization of known problem areas like how to resolve two (or three or five) guys shooting at each other at the same time.