Sunday 1 November 2015

Systemless posts on Trollish Delver



I'm currently dabbling in some systemless writing at the moment, which has already started to leak over to the blog during Fear Week, and expect more of that from now on. I want to present game material that you can plug into whatever you're playing, covering fantasy, sci-fi, modern, horror, supers and so on.

Granted, most of the posts will rely on description, being systemless and all that, but in order to make it easier to adapt the material to your game I'll be using the following attributes and descriptors for characters/NPCs:

Body (covers athletic prowess, toughness, strength and essentially how well a character fights)
Mind (how intelligence and wise the character is, in either an academic or a 'streetwise' sense)
Disposition (how much willpower someone has, how charismatic they are and how well they do diplomacy)
Spirit (this is where magic/hyper abilities come into it. Spirit is also used for any kind of healing or empath abilities).

They will also come with a selection of broad skills, such as: Geography, Swords, Magic, Mechanics, Forging etc.

Each will be rated on the following descriptive scale:

Abysmal
Poor
Fair
Average
Good
Excellent
Incredible

For example, I could have a rogue magic-user that looks like the following:

Brianna Fleetfoot
Flame Rogue

Body: Good
Mind: Excellent
Disposition: Poor
Spirit: Good

Skills: Sneaking (Excellent), Knives (Good), Fire Magic (Average)

Equipment: Dagger, spellbook, rope, lockpicks, torch, leather armour.


Magic or special items will also be rated on the descriptive scale as well as a price rage: cheap, affordable, expensive, priceless. For example:

Neutrino-pulse Beacon (Average)
Price: Expensive
Effect: Creates an energy beacon that stretches above the planet's atmosphere, allowing orbiting ships to detect it. 

I'm hoping that these posts, along with published material, will help anyone playing their favourite games find further inspiration.


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