More than Nothing: The System

[Part of the Party Time journal]

It's homebrew time again, and this time around I'm using a simplified Ironsworn system which uses five base stats: Edge for dexterity stuff, Might for strength and fighting stuff, Wits for smart stuff, Heart for will and talking stuff and Shadow for hiding and spotting hidden stuff. Skills go up or down when I deem them to do so. :P

These all start as blank and can go down to -3 and up to +3. When doing a dangerous or interesting action the player will roll 1d6 and 2d10. The d6 result then gets modified based on the number against the relevant stat (plus any extra situational bonuses or negatives) and if that beats both d10s its a success, if it beats one d10 its a partial success with consequences, and if it beats neither d10 its a failure with consequences. Should the d10s have the same number that's a critical (success or failure defined as before).

Characters have 13 boxes for health and stress, health being marked off from the left while stress starts from the right. Health being harder to recover. PCs can spend 2 stress on their own character to reroll all dice, or 1 stress (for themselves or their team mates) to reroll one dice. And they can just keep doing that. If the bar fills up with stress and/or damage then the character is "out" and quite probably dead.

I'm also adding occasional table top warfare here using old toy figurines, with simple rules of you can walk 3" and do something or run 6" and do nothing else. Heroes need to be within 2" of allies to command them (and said allies have to be a chain of 2" or less apart each to move together) and at the end of movement all units have to be facing the same direction (usually, unless it was an intentional "spread out" command). In instances where I have grid maps, its the same with the walk being 3 squares and the run being 6 squares.

Bad guys don't really get to roll in most situations except in the table top warfare bit. There its simply a dice roll (and I determine the situation on how many dice) and the result equals how many soldiers die and/or how much damage goes to a PC. 

Lastly, each character has an option to avoid damage by using limited "plot armor". These are basically a set of flashback questions made from plot threads I couldn't incorporate into the main story that lead us to know more about each character's past, usually shady or dark. It's funny that my group knows what I'm like and try their best to avoid using it at all costs!  

As usual I'll throw in more systems as we go along but those are the basics, and a lot of this is based off the many RPGs I've been reading through. :)