[A Test - when there are sufficient (2 or more) stakes for a discrete action, assign a relevant die to each stake and roll under the relevant Score to succeed. The dice may succeed or fail independently of one another.
Stakes - Uncertainty, Consequence and Time or; can it be done, what might happen in addition and will it take a lot of time
Spite - a resource generated when you take damage, fail a test with Long Odds or draw a negative Quality from your deck of qualities. It is also generated when you are insulted, belittled or mocked. You may roll it in place of other dice and take the higher of the lot. It is stored in the Liver, up to 5
Love - the same as above but it comes from where you think it does. it is stored in the Heart, just 1 at a time]
Life is Pain Princess
In my heartbreaker the sacred cow of Hit Points works a little differently:
1. They are represented by physical dice you physically put in your character sheet (I recommend good, corrugated cardboard)
2. They are rolled each morning so your HP total varies from day to day/skill check to skill check
3. You use them to roll for the various skills, procedures and resources in the game
This is because:
1. I hate erasing and rewriting HP fuck that noise and also physical memory 2. It's more like real life, you just wake up feeling rough some days or better after certain tasks
3. As you lose HP, you get worse/more desperate because your skills depend on them
Called Life Dice instead of HP, you get one of them for each
hot meal you eat that day,
boast (current and complete) you have and for each
Heart you possess. Hearts cover both Love and literal physical hearts you possess so you start with one. You should feast before dungeons if you can afford it and collect monster hearts like a freak. Just be careful, loving or killing changes you, gaining Qualities of those you Love and kill.
 |
"Oh look a handy graphic." "Oh really? I don't its that gross." |
Life Dice sit on a special line of hole along the top of your sheet called the Life Line. Other things will be stored here as well like gold because your Heart is an empty coffer and devoid of Love and can act as
HP up to a limit. The needs of addiction will build up here as well, threatening Life Dice in the precious few spaces on the Life Line.
The Life Line can be further divided up between Flesh (FLSH), Mind (MND) and Soul (SOL). It basically makes three dice pools kinda like Numenera or something. You can probably upgrade them as time goes on. I like the MechaHack thing where you have to roll dice higher than your Score at the end of each mission to increase it.
When you lose all your dice in these pools/thresholds you gain a Scar, Memory or Trauma, respectively. Generally bad.
You roll them for tests like jumping dangerous gorges and making complex attacks (regular boring ass attacks are just auto-hits but more on that later). I'll probably use them for procedures like Carousing and Delving into dungeons as well when I get to those.
Failing a test with one or all of your die means that stake is lost. If you fail the consequence stake, foes gain an advantage or you lose a degree of fictional positioning. Or maybe you just take damage. If its Uncertainty, then the task fails with no further harm, though the referee has lateral in (consistently) interpreting this. Lost Time is as it sounds. You may succeed in performing the action (Uncertainty stake) but at the cost of much crucial minutes or hours (Time stake).
Snake eyes always means the worst possible thing that caa happen, happens.
When you gain horrible Conditions like starvation, isolation and sickness you move your Life Dice from the Life Line to Condition boxes a al Mausritter. They exist in a Warning/ Danger set up and you get them back when you address them. They'll "explode" if they fill up, going into other Conditions, further wrecking your poor little guy.
Damage removes Life Dice as you'd expect. If you take damage more or equal to the rightmost Life Die, it goes away but not off your character card. As this loss passes the thresholds of flesh, mind and soul you gain Scars, Memories and Trauma.
It goes to your Liver where it becomes Spite, extra dice you can spend to gain advantage on tests. It can hold 5 Spite though you may store extra in the Conditions. Holding onto it hurts you.
When you run out of Life Dice you are not Dead but instead Defeated. Your foes may Rob you of your Gold and Hearts, Scar you (giving you a vendetta) or kill you though this always threatens a ghost or worse, the living dead so it is best avoided. A vendetta prevents this.
Love can be used the same way as Spite without the nasty side effects but it's so much rarer in the world of your character's lives. It is precious and something unfamiliar to them and it's why they cut out more and larger monster hearts, thinking it will fix them, thinking harder work will make people love them more. Does it hurt yet?
Fighting, Violence and Pain
There are many paths to survival. Violence is one, one that begets itself all the way back to the first child struck by an errant hand. It has not forgotten the sting, for some the first Spite they could ever recall. Bruises are threats. Scars are promises kept.
Violence is not always a Test (rolling under an ability score where multiple stakes are concerned). Just hurting someone almost always succeeds because it’s a bastard’s lot (along with begging, stealing and
praying cursing). Just roll special die called a Hit Locator Die to see where you hurt them, or heaven forbid, where you’re struck.
Hit Locator*
- Leg, left
- Leg, right
- Arm, left
- Arm, right
- Torso
- Head
[*I recommend doing the Macarena to remember]
Other forms of Violence may require Tests.
When you fight you have Fighting Dice, which are just your current FLSH Dice. As you get beat up, you will get less good at fighting.
When you wish to do Violence, first determine how badly you want to hurt something or what you want to subject another creature too. You have four options*:
Pain: a punch, a flesh wound, a bruise, a ring to the dome. Roll all your Fighting Dice and choose whichever you like. You deal that much damage to your foe. If the damage chosen matches the Hit Locator die, it’s a critical hit; roll the damage again. Use this option to whittle down powerful foes for a maiming or killing blow.
If it’s a critical hit to the head (6) the die explodes; if you roll a 6, keep rolling damage until you do not roll a 6.
A helmet prevents this once or twice or so before breaking.
[This gives you an occasional choice; do I choose a die with less damage because it matches the Hit Location and I could crit for more or higher guaranteed damage. Maybe not interesting but a choice nonetheless]
Maneuver: Test to trip, disarm or otherwise impede your foe temporarily. Roll Fighting Dice under your MND score you tactician you
[Or FLSH if you just want to brute force it I suppose you hunk you]
Maim: Test to permanently impair your foe by hamstringing them, gouging out their eyes out or breaking delicate wings. Roll over their current Life Dice. The Consequence is a crippling wound.
Kill: Attempt to kill a foe in one fell swoop, head lopped off, knife in the back, sword to the Heart. Roll over their current Life Dice and under your FLSH or MND . The Consequence is a savage wound**
[*Stolen from Gundobad's excellent series here]
[**Or hell maybe just Defeat or even death. One fell swoop indeed]
Violence can be done to you as well. Foes have the same options, and you defend yourself the same way you attack: roll your Fighting Dice and choose how much damage you take. Then roll the Hit Locator Die to see if you’re crit or not. Its only fair.
Counters and Parries
If you ever only deal 1 damage or damage is reduced to 1 by armor, you are Countered!* and your foe may immediately interrupt you to attack you back. Your weapon gains a scratch as well. Roll the weapons quality; if it's under the number of scratches it breaks…
Of course, you can Counter! their Counter! if its reduced to 1 as well.
[*As a rule, when a Counter! occurs, all at the table must scream "Counter!" for purposes of morale.]
You can usually parry, if armed and whatnot, taking no damage but either your situation gets worse 1 step (your foe gets the higher ground, the ground cracks more, the ceiling finally collapses) or you are set back 1 degree (you are knocked to one knee > knocked prone etc.) whatever degree means to you. Should probably never have more than three degrees for any given fictional thing. Fictional positioning stuff we love and adore. Each set back makes tests harder. Each discrete degree or step gives enemies +1 damage, a dangerous thing where weapon damage and HP are measured with the same die.
As always shields will be shattered.
Wounds
Wounds are longer lasting injuries. While Life Dice return each day after eating something hot (FLSH, ten minutes), recalling boasts (MND, an evening of stories) and feeling alive as your heart beats in your chest (SOL, sleep and then see the sunrise or a loved one), wounds may take much longer to heal.
You acquire a wound as either a consequence of combat (maiming and killing strikes) or when damage exceeds twice your rightmost Life Dice. If it exceeds the die by twice its value but less than thrice*, you gain a crippling wound on the part indicated by the Hit Locator Die.
- A crippled leg can hold your weight but not run
- A crippled arm can hold an object but not wield one nor parry
- A crippled torso lets you act or run in quick succession but not both
- A crippled head is stunned; you act last when speed is required including initiative
If the damage is more than thrice the Life Dice or its been crippled a second time, the limb is savaged.
- A savaged arm cannot hold anything; ruined
- A savaged leg cannot hold your weight
- A savaged torso cannot benefit from armor
- A savaged head is stunned and loses an eye or an ear.
Crippling wounds take a week to heal IF all your Condition boxes are empty. This will be hard. Savage wounds take twice as long. This will be harder.
[*Damage less than the Life Die are ignored. Damage equal to or more but not twice or more removes the Die but does not wound. Shit that's complicated. Will charts fix everything? Surely not.]
Conclusion
I think this is pretty neat and elegant. Dice pools are nothing new but it does what I want it to do: link conditions, HP and skills all together in a neat package that does all the remembering for you. You can see the tangible loss of HP due to starvation or lack of sleep. I'm sure with some fudging it could include Saving throws in there too.
The goal is for the entire character sheet to fit on a single 4x6 corrugated cardboard card. It'll basically be a dice holder and your items will be note cards so when your sword breaks I can tear into pieces and give them back to you when you get it reforged.
HP is now a physical thing the referee can now see. Lost HP becomes a resource in Spite. Condition boxes are something monsters can attack. That's a whole post right there. Ghosts might not do damage but what about when they possess you and the referee puts his own ugly ass die in your Condition box and now you're perpetually sick, lonely or starving until you exorcise it. Or worse, you're already dangerously isolated or exhausted and your Life Dice get thrown into the other boxes. Call that attacking the character sheet. Eat your heart* out OSR monster tactics weirdos
It's also sufficiently diegetic/Cottonmouth. Pissed you can't hold more than 5 Spite? Put an ogre liver in your abdomen. I'm sure that doesn't have gameable consequences. Does stealing someone's heart make them love you? That sounds cool as hell and really frightening. Write a poem about it. It would certainly explain all the weird obsessive undead we have in this undead-obsessed shit show game genre.
And most importantly to me, it makes Love a palpable thing in a game. Yeah, it's just a mechanic but its intentionally vague. Sit down with your adult players and ask them what they hell they believe in. Is it love? If no why not? Define it in your game and then redefine it. Should this NPC love you? Interrogate what you think you can do in an RPG. We've all played badasses. Can you play someone broken? Can you fix them? Maybe not. Worth finding out and crying about it.
[*Monster that literally eats your heart out of your chest and you got kill it/to steal its heart/ make it fall in love with you and then you kiss while shambling around as a loveless wight. This bestiary writes itself]
