Horrified: Simple RPG for horror gaming

[Mike]

I am inspired by Phoebe's thread.

I keep creating one-off RPG games that wind up being horror/thrillers where the player-characters are all 12-15 year olds: Terror at Camp Pinewood (Boy Scout horror), BFF (Stand By Me, but horror), Pariah (super-powered kids escaping institutionalization), and Mostly Dead (high-school kids vs zombies). I love these games, and I want a simple game system to run similar games in.

Here's what I have so far:

All dice are just 50/50, + or -. (Flip a coin, go high/low, odds/evens, whatever.) 3 plusses total and you succeed… barely. More plusses is better. Less is worse.

The number of dice you have for each roll is determined by:

Difficulty: the GM starts you with a number of dice depending on how difficult the task is. Most stuff will start with 3-5 dice. Difficult tasks, you may start with less than 3 dice… maybe even none. Easier things could have more dice, but after 6 or 7, it’s starting to get too easy.

Stats: There are potentially many different flavors of stats, but the gist is that you have things about your character written on a sheet, and for each one that you can make apply to this particular task, you can add a die to the pool. The way it’s arranged, I imagine players adding 1-2 dice to most rolls, and 3-4 for stuff they are really good at (or really pushing themselves for). Depending on how we define these stats, some may be used up after rolling and some may be returned to the sheet. In general, dice that are lost will refresh between scenes or after resting or whatever.

Assistance: If your friends want to assist you and they can narrate some way that their own stats can help, then they can pitch in dice as well. However, there will be a cost. Maybe Assistance dice cost twice as much? Maybe someone (helper OR helpee) has to pay (lose) one die first and then the helper can throw in 1 or 2 dice IF they can justify how their abilities apply to helping in this situation? Something like that.

So where I need help is defining exactly what those stats will be, remembering that the characters are going to be tweens and teens in some sort of horror setting. So skills don’t have to be ultra-detailed… no one’s going to be an accountant or a surgeon or anything like that. Stats should be geared around this age range and be the sorts of things that kids would use to survive/defeat a horror scenario.

[Mike]

For reference, when I wrote Terror at Camp Pinewood, I did something similar to the above, and the stats I used were in the form of Scout Virtues, Merit Badges, and Traits.

Scout Virtues were based on the Wilderness Scout Oath: Honor, Grace, Resourcefulness, Bravery, Alertness, Fitness. You might have anywhere from 0-3 in each virtue. These were the equivalent of D&D ability scores. If you applied a virtue to an action, you spent a point to gain your bonus. Virtues refreshed between scenes. If I used something like this, it would be in the form of things like: creativity, stamina, luck, charm, will, courage, etc. I usually picture having 5 or 6 of these, but it could be more or less.

Merit Badges were skills. If you had the badge, you could add a bonus to your roll. Merit Badges weren't used up when you rolled. If you have the badge, you can apply it repeatedly with no penalty.

Traits were anything else descriptive about you, good, bad or indifferent. Strong, overweight, overly dramatic, illiterate, tall, pretty, etc. Each character had an extra pool of Action Badges. Any time you could find a way that one of your traits could help you, you could narrate that and then spend a badge to get a bonus. If you (or the GM or anyone else) found a way that one of your traits could hinder your roll, then you would lose a die for that roll, but you would also get another Action Badge to add to your pool for next time.

So in my mind, I picture maintaining this same sort of structure:

Nouns: Inherent sources of strength and ability that can be applied to lots of different tasks. But each one of these is limited resource. So you can dip into your Courage to face down the bogeyman, but you only have 3 dice in there, so you can't keep going back to that well over and over. You need to mix it up and rely on your Luck, or your Poise, or Determination, or whatever.

Verbs: Skills that you know. If they come up, you get the die (or maybe 2 dice if it's something you're really good at).

Adjectives: Anything else about you. You have a pool of dice. But to use them, you have to find a way that one of your adjectives applies to the situation. And you can add to your pool if your adjectives hinder you.

On the other hand though, maybe it works better if all stats are of just one or two types so that things are simpler... more uniform.

[Mike]

Okay, I've hammered some stuff out. The specific terms are not set in stone yet, but the concepts are starting to gel for me.

[Cool Name for Game]

CHARACTERS

Characters in this game are all kids aged 11 to 16 (ish). Kids are defined by their Strengths, Interests, and Quirks. So first come up with the basic concept for your kid and then we'll get into specifics.

Example: Kayleigh is 14. Her dad works on a neighbors farm, but her family does have some of their own animals. She's on the junior high basketball team. She recently has started hanging with a new group who her parents don't approve of and she's started lying to her family and sneaking out on weekends. Never to get in any serious trouble, but just because she knows her parents don't want her out. Up until recently, Kayleigh's always been a "good kid" but she really just wants people she fits in with.

Strengths: these are innate 'virtues' that each kid uses to deal with most things--their instinctive strategies for solving problems. The list of possible strengths includes: Alertness, Anger, Charm, Cleverness, Common Sense, Courage, Diplomacy, Fitness, Fortitude, Intuition, Knowledge, Luck, Memory, Persistence, Rebellion, Resourcefulness, Self-Control, Willpower, Wit. Each kid takes six strength chips. You can take one, two, or three chips for a given strength, but again, no more than 6 chips total. List your strengths on your character sheet and the maximum number of chips for each, and then place the chips next to them.

Kayleigh takes 2 Fitness chips to reflect her athleticism. 2 Persistence chips because she is stubborn. Then 1 Rebellion and 1 Alertness to round it out.

Interests: These are your skills. Things that your kid is good at. And by that, it means they are better than the average teen/tween. For example, the average kid is pretty good at using a smartphone and social media. It would only be listed as an interest if they are noticeably more proficient than their peers. Each kid takes chips for 6 different interests. List your interests on your character sheet and place the corresponding chips next to them.

Kayleigh's interests are: basketball, cross country, camping (she says it's dumb now, but her family's been doing it all her life), animals (she's had chores to do since she could carry a feed bucket), driving (just the little tractor and the four-wheelers, but she's getting a learners permit soon), drawing.

Quirks: This is literally anything else--good, bad or indifferent--that makes your character unique. You can have as many quirks as you like, but the minimum is three. List these on your character sheet and then place 4 generic action chips next to them.

Based on the character concept, Kayleigh takes the following quirks: Tall for her age, Just wants to be liked, Has to have the last word, Fastest kid in her class, Soft spot for most animals.


ACTION

All of the chips involved in this game have a "+" on one side. For any action, players will 'roll' a number of chips, and if they get at least 3 plusses, then the action is a success.

When a character wants to do something, use the following steps:
1. GM allocates difficulty chips based on how easy or difficult the action is
2. Player applies their various traits to add extra chips
2b. Other players may assist if appropriate
3. Player throws all of the chips
4. Determine results based on the number of plusses showing

1. GM allocates difficulty chips based on how easy or difficult the action is. Most tasks will get 3 or 4 chips, but easy things will get more, and difficult tasks could get less. For the most difficult things, the GM may assign no chips at all.

Chips Difficulty
-- 0 -- Near impossible
-- 1 -- Super hard
-- 2 -- Difficult
-- 3 -- Challenging
-- 4 -- Routine
-- 5 -- Simple
-- 6 -- Easy
-- 7 -- Easy Peasy

2. Player applies their various traits to add extra chips:
Strengths - The player can choose one strength that they have chips for. They narrate how that strength will apply to this task, and then add the chip.
Interests - If the player has an interest that applies to the given task, they may add 1 interest chip.
Quirks - If the player has a quirk that can help them AND they have an available action chip, they narrate how the trait applies and then add the action chip. More than one trait can apply to a given task, as long as the player has enough action chips. Also, if the character has quirks that could hinder the action, then (at the GM's discretion) the player can remove one difficulty chip, BUT add an extra action chip to their pool to be used later.
Assistance - Other players can potentially assist. Rules to be determined later.

3. Throw the collected chips and count the plusses.

4. GM and player work together to narrate results based on the number of plusses achieved:

'+'s - Result
0 --- Critical Failure
1-2 - Failure
3-5 - Success
6+ -- Critical Success

You can get finer-grained than this... 3 plusses is just the bare minimum to succeed--by the skin of one's teeth, as it were. Where 4 is solid success, and 5 is slightly better than you hoped for, etc. In general more is better, less is worser.

[Mike]

Having played just a bit so far, I have thoughts and don't want to lose them.

Strengths, skills, quirks... those are pretty good as stats and just need more defining.

For terminology, I refer to "rolling" as "throwing coins". For example, "I need everyone to throw 3 coins for me. This is a perception type check."

Playing online, we just roll Xd2-X where X is the number of coins, and the result will then be the number of successes. But in a face-to-face game, I'd love to play with actual coins, and then whenever anyone has to throw coins, they have to call heads or tails before they do it. The statistics don't change, but the effect of calling heads or tails will add more dramatic tension, because on almost every failure, you'll know that you could have succeeded if you had just called it right.

I decided that Strengths would give a 2 coin bonus to any check.
Skills still give 1 coin.
Traits give 1 coin IF you pay for it out of your action pool.

So far, it feels like everyone has too many resources. I'm thinking that in the next iteration, each character will have only two Strengths: their primary strength that has 3 points available, and their secondary strength that only has 1 point (or maybe 2). This will also give a little more focus, stat-wise.

Maybe only 5 skills?

More definition on quirks so that there is a clear spread of useful/detrimental possibilities. Start the action pool at only 3 or 4 coins.