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chuckroThis is a quick-and-dirty one-page system that relies heavily on GM fiat for difficulty mods and involves rolling large numbers of d6s. It’s simple and flexible to any setting or time period, but it’s at best inoffensive and at worst unbalanced.
Mostly, it’s not terribly well-scaled: An “average” character has 5 in a stat (and a starting character would be hard-pressed to go above 10), and the “moderate” difficulty mod is -5, while “difficult” is -10. Which means for anything moderately difficult (or more so) the average character would be rolling one die, for a roughly 20% chance of success. “Easy” tasks (+0) would roll five dice and generally succeed. So the GM fiat of easy versus moderate difficulty basically is saying whether you succeed or not. But it’s not immediately clear, because of the fistful of dice, that this is the case.
There are more straightforward systems that are just as simple to use but rely on a d20 roll or the like, which makes it easier for the GM to actually scale expectations of character success. There’s no XP/scaling system, which is fine, but that indicates this is a system for one-shots, and you want to have characters in one-shots generally be middlingly competent, or at least have that competence under control.
(The game I ran didn’t involve much combat at all—the players generally ran away from monsters—but the attack and damage system is at least better explained than World of Dungeons. This at least has mechanics for combat, if condensed ones. And the system is more focused on ability checks than fighting.)
Overall: I was underwhelmed. This wasn’t bad, but inferior to many other ways of approaching a setting-neutral one-shot system.
Mostly, it’s not terribly well-scaled: An “average” character has 5 in a stat (and a starting character would be hard-pressed to go above 10), and the “moderate” difficulty mod is -5, while “difficult” is -10. Which means for anything moderately difficult (or more so) the average character would be rolling one die, for a roughly 20% chance of success. “Easy” tasks (+0) would roll five dice and generally succeed. So the GM fiat of easy versus moderate difficulty basically is saying whether you succeed or not. But it’s not immediately clear, because of the fistful of dice, that this is the case.
There are more straightforward systems that are just as simple to use but rely on a d20 roll or the like, which makes it easier for the GM to actually scale expectations of character success. There’s no XP/scaling system, which is fine, but that indicates this is a system for one-shots, and you want to have characters in one-shots generally be middlingly competent, or at least have that competence under control.
(The game I ran didn’t involve much combat at all—the players generally ran away from monsters—but the attack and damage system is at least better explained than World of Dungeons. This at least has mechanics for combat, if condensed ones. And the system is more focused on ability checks than fighting.)
Overall: I was underwhelmed. This wasn’t bad, but inferior to many other ways of approaching a setting-neutral one-shot system.
