Dungeons & Dummies: A Formal Introduction

This was the original starting point.
Frame from Dungeons&Dragons cartoon by TSR.

This is the presentation of a short “fantasy heartbreaker” I wrote some time ago. I’m actually quite proud of it; it has some serious GLOG vibes and I hope I captured half of the simplicity and fun that Arnold K has managed to allow players worldwide to experience. Today I want to explain the basics of it. Some other time I’ll post some more interesting stuff like classes.

Now I’m going to digress a bit on its birth, skip to the end if you’re interested only in the rules. Also, I’m going to make some digressions in the middle of the text because I want to explain (first and foremost to myself) the thought process I used to make this thing. I’ll make a rules-only document if people are interested, since this post is mostly digressions. It will be more complete than this post of course.

My original intended audience.
Orc Child by Blizzard Entertainment.

First things first: I’m not sure if “Dummy” is a derogatory term, it seems to be the equivalent of one of the nicknames I use with my brother in Italian. Sorry if someone is offended by it, I don’t mean to offend anyone.
I called this thing “Dungeons&Dummies” originally because it was born with a very specific goal in mind: to be simple enough to be run for kids and by kids - but at the same time it had to be something familiar enough to allow the transition to more traditional games when (if) they wanted to.
I wanted to create something simple enough that I could run it with my little brother and his friends, and if they liked it I could handle them a few pieces of paper explaining the game, a bag of dice and tell them “Go and make your own fun!” (I’m absolutely not trying to get rid of my brother, I swear). As time passed and as stuff was made I realized that it would not be suited for kids too much, but I also realized I made something that was worth exploring.
It is a “pure” thing in my eyes, one of my dream RPGs come to life almost by accident: nearly leveless and very adept for running the kind of OSR-style things that I love. I actually have developed a bit of a theory about what makes good OSR-style things that I love, but it’s not the right place and time to explain it, so let’s go over the basics of the thing that I still call “Dungeons&Dummies” out of sheer laziness.

My most probable audience.
Ghost by Ghost (I guess).

Back to Basics:

The whole game only uses a d20.

There are 3 Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence. You must assign to each a value from the following list: 6, 8, 10.

Digression: since I wanted everything to be as simple as possible, the 3 stats also double as saving throws and are meant to be interpreted in a broad sense (eg: Strength is to be used also for Intimidation with social skills). Maybe names such as Brutality, Finesse and Smarts are more representative of that, but I still wanted a sense of familiarity with the world most famous RPG. That’s also the reason for using a d20 instead of a more common d6.

Whenever you want to achieve something non-trivial and potentially dangerous (like attacking or climbing), roll a d20 and check it against the relevant Ability Score. You must roll equal or under it in order to achieve a success.
For more complex things, roll more than once (up to a maximum of 5 times), and if any roll fails the whole check fails. The number of times you must roll is called Difficulty.

Having Skills relevant to the check reduces Difficulty. The final number of times you must roll the d20 is Difficulty - Skill. This can actually make the check an automatic success if you go to 0 or below. Skills are broad definition that can be applied to many things, like a profession, but are not absolute: “Sailing” (for anything sea-related or navigation-related or for knowledge about boats) or “Mountaineering” (climbing, foraging, cooking with a campfire) are good example of Skills; “Magic” or “Anything” or “Picking Locks at Midnight” are not.

Digression: only roll if there is an actual chance for failure, and only for actually dangerous or otherwise uncertain things. And while even the best marksman in the world can make a mistake, this is not the real world and the gains in speed and player agency can be great. However, keep in mind that Skills are not that easy to acquire, are limited, and are tied to some choices made during character creation, so nobody can go over everything like a bulldozer. A useful thing would be a fast conversion table for common targets across the editions, eg: a DC 20 roll in D&D5 would probably be a Difficulty 2 check.

Saving Throws work like normal checks with Difficulty 1 and no Skill. They are fully based on the Ability Scores.

Digression: Ability Scores don’t grow. You’re gonna have at best 50% chance to deal with anything that forces a save. Choose your stats carefully.

Two Dwarves, not caring about the miasma from the other's unwashed beard since they don't breathe.
Screencap from the intro to Dwarf Fortress.

Classes, Races and You:

Everyone has 1 Skill Point and a Race. The Skill represents their profession.
Races are exclusive and give a single special passive ability, such as the ability to not breathe at all (Dwarf) or to eat anything remotely organic without risks (Orc).

Digression: I was really inspired by the ideas Arnold K had in his post about designing races. It is really good and offers some excellent insight. I want racial abilities to synergize with themselves first and foremost, and to allow alternative playstyles thanks to that: the Orc is an excellent example, as an all-Orc party never needs to buy fresh food since it can eat rotting carcasses and wood planks all of the time, just like a party of Dwarves can march in a river without any problem. However I also wanted them to work nicely as one-offs: a single Orc can still make a difference in a long travel, due to the sheer number of ration the party needs not to buy; a single Dwarf is still useful to pull a lever inside a room full of poisonous gas.

Adventurers and other important people have a Class and subsequently a Level. A Class has many subclasses. For each Level a character has an Advancement Point, that can be used to obtain a Skill Point or a Magic Point. The maximum level is 3.

Digression: I like low level adventures (actually, I love level-less stuff that remains relevant forever and I think it’s one of the best features that the OSR movement as a whole has, knowingly or not, brought to life), so it makes sense to sticking to what I feel is most interesting to play. The very low number of levels allows that easily, and the little changes between lvl 1 and 3 keep everything very consistent.

There are 2 main Classes: Warriors and Specialists. Each class has many Subclasses.
Warriors are the only ones that get the Fighting skill, and get 1 Point of Fighting each level. Fighting is used for everything fight-related (mainly attacking). They can’t grow any Skill besides Fighting past 1.
Specialists get 2 extra Skill Points each level. They can take any Skill besides Fighting. Their cap on a single skill is equal to 1+their level.

Digression: I’m not going to explain magic today, my drafts are too messy and so am I. Quick recap time. There are no mages or designated casters by design. There is a magic system that allows anyone with the right knowledge and tools to cast spells. This system is meant to convey a sense of danger, dabbling with magical forces is not something one should do carelessly, but at the same time it will allow anyone so inclined to work with them and to make marvelous stuff. Magical things are only found through adventuring, however. I think it gives some good Howardian vibes, or at least “adventuring out in the unknown” vibes.

Spot the Warrior among the Specialists
Star Trek: The Next Generation promotional image by Paramount.

Warriors level up by beating things with a Fighting score equal or better than theirs.
Specialists level up by using a Skill in a check with Difficulty equal to double that Skill.

Digression: I wanted a slight sense of progression, but I wanted it to be linked to tangible actions and I didn’t want levels to be an integral part of characters and progression (at the very least I don't want them to be as impactful as they are in other games). I think this is an acceptable solution, that still gives higher level characters a sensible edge without making them too different from lower level ones.

A third Class exists, that includes all the dangerous and really special things in the world. Those with such a Class have no race (their physical identity is part of their class), can’t usually choose an Occult Profession, and are too distinct from a normal human to be broadly categorized as such. They are fully defined by their Subclass (which is appropriately more interesting than a normal Subclass). An example of such a class is the Greathound, an extremely intelligent dog capable of sentient thought..

Digression: there is still space for Race-as-Class here. It allows you to make some really messed up things and I want messed up things to be part of any game. The Really Good Dog from Arnold K comes to mind, as does something like The Extras or The Clockwork Octopus by Against the Wicked City.

The many Subclasses of the Warrior.
Colorized Berserk panel by Kentaro Miura.

Subclasses, or the art of becoming an artist:

Each character with a Class has a Subclass. Subclasses are a set of two extra abilities, usually active in nature, gained at Level 1 and Level 3. For example, the Stormtrooper is a Subclass of Warrior that can attack freely at the end of a movement; at Level 3, it can attack at any point during the movement (effectively moving, attacking, moving again to up it’s full movement); a Subclass of Specialist is the Packrat, which can carry 3 extra items at Level 1 and 5 extra items at Level 3 (for a total of 8 extra items).

Digression: Subclasses are like Glog classes but with ketamine. They can be made up on the spot, since they are basically 2 thematic skills of different power (or a skill that gets upgraded). That’s a very important to me, since it allows people to come up with interesting concepts at the table and be able to effectively interpret one by boiling it down to one or two core factors. I was thinking about calling them Specializations, but it caused confusion with the Specialist.

At Level 2, each character gains an Occult Profession, a single supernatural ability outside of a normal person’s capability and a sign of the adventures he’s been through. For example, a Necrocrafter can make occult fetishes out of fresh corpses that allow him to temporarily obtain a special ability from a slain foe. A character can choose to forego an Occult Profession and instead boost all his Ability Scores by 2.

Digression: not magical in nature. These are cool, nice ways of spicing up characters, with useful extra abilities, that can help make your characters more distinct and give you more interaction with the world and the weird lore surrounding it. Or you can be the boring Fighter with +2 Strength, your call. 

Sticks and Stones:

Each character can have up to 2 Injuries. Each Injury is made of 6 Afflictions.
Each Injury will reduce speed by 5 feet and will impose a penalty of 1 Difficulty on every check made.

Characters naturally recover 1 Affliction for each night of rest, or 3 for each day spent fully recovering. Completed Injuries cannot be normally recovered this way; the only way to remove an Affliction from an Injury is a surgical operation: Difficulty is equal to 2 + the current number of Injuries. If the operation is successful, a character can rest for a full week and remove an Affliction from an Injury, allowing normal recovery afterwards; if the operation is a failure, a character won’t benefit from rest for a week, and will receive 2 additional Afflictions.

Characters that don’t eat a ration’s worth of food each day won’t benefit from rest and will receive an Affliction for each day they don’t eat. Characters that don’t sleep 8 hours a night will receive an Affliction for each day of continuous activity.

A tipical player character after a small skirmish.
Frame by Mad Max: Fury Road.

Digression: Injuries are harsh. That’s the way it was meant to be. Easy to get and very hard to live with. Keep in mind that there is no explicit healing spell, or at least no explicit default magical healing source. You’re gonna have a hard time if you consider your health as just a sack of replenishable HP. I think this better models the kind of game I want, where violence is always an option against anything but it’s always a meaningful choice, and where failure and damage are of very serious concern without creating messy subsystems to simulate lasting injuries. Also a knife fight is relevant for the whole game, not just in the first session, and that’s good: there is no need for escalation in order to create threats for the characters.

Characters with 2 Injuries that receive an Affliction have to make a Strength Saving Throw: passing the Saving Throw means that an Ability Scores gets reduced by 1, while failing it means that the characters is dead.

Digression: I haven’t thought of ways to recover lost Ability Scores, except maybe magical ones. I probably should, but at the same time I like retirement mechanics and I don’t like people always fighting to the death, and this seems a nice way of telling the players “maybe your character is getting too old for this shit”. Thus, for the foreseeable future, I don’t plan on adding ways to recover Ability Scores.

Extra digression #1: this post is too long for talking about how to cause injuries. Weapons and equipment will be covered some other day.

Extra digression #2: I was thinking of adding Aggravated Afflictions for special damage types (such as magical ones or fire) that need extra effort to heal. This however sounds a little bit too complicated for all this system and as such I have decided against including them for now. However this is something that I toyed with in my D&D games and have been quite successful with (Dragons don’t just reduce HP, they are extra badass assholes that reduce max HP by giving out aggravated damage that need special rituals to be recovered).

That’s all folks!
I think I wrote too much. Next time I’ll try to write something actually cool and hopefully short, I swear. Like some example classes for this thing, with extra “WTF” in them. A lot of things needed to run a game are still unexplained, so maybe I’ll take the time needed to complete them first (even if I really like coming up with Occult Professions so be ready to hear a thousand of them in the near future).

Frame from Looney Tunes by Warner Bros.