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The generic pen and paper games system

 

--> What this system aims to do

 

These are the goals I want to achieve with this system:

 

1. Generic

This system will idealy be not just usable, but suitable for anything, from RPGs to civilization management games, to any other games you might imagine, with a lot of ease. On top of that, it is very easy to adapt ideas from other sources to this game, and that's the main reason why I don't present any lists myself in this text.

 

2. Lightweight

A low set of rules has a lot of meaning. For one, you won't have to skim through pages and pages of books just to find an old rule buried somewhere. Since it requires so little to play the game, the system is suitable for online play events, like forum play. The lack of concrete stats or skills or any other of those tropes seen frequently in other pen and paper systems means that it is very very easy to adapt content from other games to this one. On top of that, this means that each game can have its own meaningful stats, and you're not stuck with HP in a game about professors trying to find the cure for cancer through research and diplomacy.

 

3. Free

This system does not present any kind of point costs or balance/fairness aimed features. It is a game for people that want to tell a story with their friends, and not have to worry about the time it takes to look up rules, or to set up NPC stats or even their own stats. The game is very numbers light, and it is much more qualitative than quantitative. The text presents lots of abstract ideas that can be very easily turned into concrete situations, which gives you the freedom to use the system as you see fit.

 

Keep in mind that this system might not be suitable to play with strangers, since it is very rule light and some people might be upset at some of the GM's decisions. Your group should trust in you and you should trust your group to make this system the best it can be. This is not a system for you if you like concrete rules.

 

It is also a great system for beginners to pen and paper games, since it allows them to focus much more on the freedom that these games bring, instead of the bunch of stats you have to first calculate and come up with in many other systems.

 

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--> Making decisions

 

GPNPGS uses 3 six sided dice which are meant to add some randomisation, to present unexpected and exciting situations. Of course, you could use any other dice system, or no dice system at all (simply making the outcomes up yourself), to use GPNPGS, but I like the 3 dice system better than any other because it has a good bell curve of results. The examples here will all be presented using the 3d system.

 

If you do use random results to add some spice, the other thing you should know is how to interpret the roll. This is largely dependent on the GM and the situation at hand, but higher numbers mean more positive outcomes in favour of what you're rolling for. Later, we'll talk about modifiers, which are bonuses or penalties that are added to the roll to make the result more or less favorable.

 

As the GM, when should you roll? You should roll whenever you want to add randomization to something. You could roll for each action that is prone to failure, to see if it succeeds. If you do this, it generally works well to give a target number for success (in the case of 3d, a 10 is a good middle number), and treat every value lower than 10 as a failure, and every value higher than 10 as a success. The more deviation from the success point, the more drastic is the failure/success. Use your imagination, and try to make the results meaningful and fun. Of course, you could roll in situations where success or failure aren't really a factor. You could roll to determine the temperature of a region, deciding that lower numbers mean cold and higher numbers mean hot, with the median level being temperate. You should ask players to roll if the roll is associated with a decision they made.

 

The GM is of course free to make hidden rolls.

 

If conditions are favourable, the GM might choose to add penalties or bonuses to the original roll, effectively changing the result. These modifiers will change based on the dice system you're using, but the idea is very simple: if the GM thinks something is more likely to be favourable, he will give a bonus (a + to the result), if he thinks the situations presents problems he might give a penalty (a - to the result). Then, based on how likely something is to fail or succeed, the magnitude of these results will change. Keep in mind that this is not a science, and that it is much more important to keep the game flowing than to get to the perfect modifier.

 

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--> Taking notes

 

If decisions (dice and successes), are the silverware of  GPNPGS, the properties of things in the world are the meat and potatos.

 

In GPNPGS, the GM will use modifiers to make situations more or less favourable, or more or less likely. The way this works is very simple: if a character is trying to impress a damsel in an ice skating competition, but never ice skated before, he might get a -4 penalty for his roll, which means he is not very likely to pull it off. If Finley is looking for metals in a copper rich planet, he could receive a +2 for his roll. The GM should pay attention to the conditions of the elements relevant to a specific situation, and give meaningful modifiers when he think those conditions would have a meaningful inpact on a decision or situation. Players are encouraged to help the GM out with this, giving sugestions.

 

In GPNPGS there are no character sheets, or any other kind of sheet. You make your own sheet with whatever you need. A piece of paper that contains information about a city might be really complex, down to the number of houses and the number of people that inhabit it, or be as simple as a phrase "the city is dirty and has a lot of hobos." What can happen and how it can happen is dictated by a series of descriptions of the conditions the relevant parties are under, and not a set of base, imutable stat points. Do you need a sheet to hold all your items? You can just grab an old piece of paper and write on it whatever you want. Is your country under severe financial debt? Grab a paper, and write it down. You don't even need to write anything down in many cases. Are orcs seen as being strong? Cool, make sure everyone in your group knows that and you're good. You don't need to have a sheet for the orc species saying "they're strong man." Of course, some things are good to have written down, like important details you might forget.

 

These properties or conditions of things can be as vague or as specific as you would like. If a planet has a lot of diamonds you could write something like "1/6 of the crust is made of diamond" or simply "Has lots of diamonds."

 

Since the GM is free to hide information from the players, he should know everything there is to know about all that is relevant to the situation, but he is free to hide any information he sees fit from players, of course.

 

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--> That's it.

 

That is literaly all the "rules" this system presents. If you feel you don't know how to handle the situation don't panic, just use the very organic and maleable (in my oppinion), system presented above to resolve the situation in style. Always let the players add to the action, that's a big part of the system since there isn't any turn based solutions presented (I don't really like turn based solutions since I feel they tend to turn a game into a whole different game. They always feel very detached from everything else).

 

Here's a list of things you need to play:

- NOT this text

- 3 six sided dice, if you opt to go with the 3d system

- Paper and pencils, or computers, or anything else to write on

- A GM (sold separately)

- IMAGINATION! (don't do drugs kids)

 

Have fun.

 

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